Equity Bank Group has received an approval in principle to set up a general insurance business. The initial approval has been granted by the Insurance Regulatory Authority.
“The Board of Equity Group Holdings is happy to announce that it has received in principle approval from the Insurance Regulatory Authority (IRA) to set up a General Insurance Company,” the bank said in a statement to Bizna Kenya.
The application for a General Insurance business license follows the successful launch of Equity Life Assurance Kenya (ELAK) which has been running the Life Insurance business from 2022.
“In the 9 months that ELAK operated last year on receipt of product licenses, it achieved significant milestones with gross written premium of Sh.3.99 billion,” said Equity Bank Group in the statement.
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In addition, the number of policies issued stood at 4.1 million with profit before tax at Sh. 405 million and profit after tax at Sh. 281 million.
The Equity Group subsidiary’s gross premiums from the group credit business in the year ended December, saw it become the second largest insurer in underwriting the risk of customers defaulting on loans due to death or injury.
Equity Life Assurance overtook Britam Life to account for 24.33 per cent of the Sh. 15.79 billion credit life business behind the market leader CIC which wrote Sh. 4.56 billion or 31.26 per cent of this segment of the business.
“The subsidiary emerged as the 11th largest insurance in Gross Written Premium out of 25 Life Insurance companies and has an overall market share of 2.97 per cent,, total assets of Sh.5.5 billion and Total equity of Sh. 881 million,” said Equity.
“The impact of the early success of the Life Insurance business inspired the Group Board to seek the General Insurance business licence in the hope that Equity Insurance business will contribute in innovatively transforming the insurance industry for the betterment of our people, country and continent through insurance inclusion, affordability, reliability in protecting life, health and wealth,” the bank said in its statement to Bizna Kenya.
