The Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) was established in December 1994. It replaced the former Preferential Trade Area (PTA) which was formed in 1981. COMESA (as defined by its Treaty) was established ‘as an organisation of free independent sovereign states which have agreed to co-operate in developing their natural and human resources for the good of all their people’ and as such it has a wide-ranging series of objectives which include in its priorities the promotion of peace and security in the region.
Business Partners
ZEP-RE has identified the need to improve access to insurance products, particularly in the agricultural sector, which plays a key role in supporting the achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). As a result, ZEP-RE has invested in Agriculture and Climate Risk Enterprise Ltd. (Acre Africa).
As a thought leader and supporter of InsurTech, ZEP-RE identifies specific companies that contribute to improving access and affordability of insurance products in high-impact sectors, including healthcare. Our drive to extend services saw us invest in Medbook, a health/InsurTech company founded in 2014 as a joint venture with Strathmore University and @iLabAfrica.
“Through digital health transformation, we strive to leave no one behind to achieve Universal Health Coverage”
Medbook has evolved to become a leading digital healthcare and Insurtech solutions provider, providing claims management systems to insurance companies and hospital management systems to hospitals. Medbook is used by more than 250 hospitals and 3 million people across three African countries.
ZEP-RE’s focus on InsurTech led to us partnering with Alton in 2021 to improve services to the motor vehicle sector.
The group’s primary focus is on providing innovative solutions, across a range of verticals, that have a meaningful impact on society by addressing challenges facing communities in South Africa and beyond.
Altron, a large player in the South African telematics industry, was identified as a strategic partner for ZEP-RE as the motor insurance industry faces a key challenge due to the severity and number of claims made. Through Altron’s work in South Africa, it was identified that the use of telematics has the ability to reduce the number of motor-related claims. Through the partnership, Altron has been able to expand its operations into Kenya and provides ZEP-RE with exclusive technology. The use of this technology provides ZEP-RE with the opportunity to improve driver behaviour, which in the long term is expected to contribute to a reduced number of claims, lower severity and frequency of claims, and reduced motor vehicle-related fatalities and incidents.
Our focus on digitalisation led us to partner with SwiftAnt. The company assists insurance companies to build intelligent solutions to address business challenges, increase market penetration, and improve customer experience which results in top-line and bottom-line growth.
“The digitalisation of the insurance industry increases transparency and improves the image of insurers.”
SwiftAnt provides solutions across the value chain which are powered by artificial intelligence, machine learning, and a suite of analytics tools intelligently assembled to enable their customers to achieve more. Through this partnership, ZEP-RE focused on the introduction of motor vehicle valuation technology, which is aimed at reducing fraud at inception of coverage.
InsuResilence Global Partnership
The InsuResilience Global Partnership was officially launched at the UN Climate Conference COP23 in November 2017 to significantly strengthen the resilience of the world’s most vulnerable people to climate and disaster risk. ZEP-RE’s membership of the Partnership allows us to bring global thought leadership and best practices to our responses to regional climate and disaster events.
The Partnership facilitates accessible and affordable products and solutions for vulnerable countries by linking needs to solutions, enables convergence, collaboration and coordinated implementation efforts by empowering actors and integrating climate and disaster risk finance and insurance (CDRFI) in climate adaptation and resilience policy.
“ZEP-RE is delighted to be a member of the InsuResilience Global Partnership, whose vision to increase protection of the vulnerable communities against the impacts of disasters is aligned with ZEP-RE’s own mandate to strengthen resilience of our communities through increasing access to inclusive insurance solutions.” – Hope Murera, CEO at ZEP-RE