Root, a Cape Town-based startup building infrastructure for the digital insurance economy, is partnering with Andela, the global network for remote technologists, and financial services company Momentum Health Solutions to offer healthcare options to Andela’s talent network.
Agnes Muthoni, director of talent partnerships at Andela, says:” Andela operates a global talent marketplace connecting technologists in emerging markets with job opportunities at global companies. The company wants to increase the value it provides to these technologists by making it easy for them to access quality healthcare options directly from the Andela web portal.”
Hannes Viljoen, CEO of Momentum Health Solutions, comments: “By partnering with us, Andela is not only supporting us in offering more healthcare cover options to more South Africans for less, but at the same time, their affiliates gain access to the best healthcare cover options available in South Africa.”
Root delivers ready-made digital insurance products on API that can be seamlessly integrated into a company’s customer journey to enhance its value proposition and business. Root processes millions of policies across dozens of insurance products on its platform.
Root CEO Louw Hopley says: “The insurance products on our platform are underwritten by our network of leading insurance providers and our customers never have to deal with an insurer. We work with customers to identify opportunities in their value chain that can be solved with insurance and, in Andela’s case, healthcare options. These can then be launched almost immediately with no risk, no new systems and at near-zero cost. They just plug Root’s Insurance-on-API into an existing customer journey and go live.”
Momentum Medical Scheme’s healthcare options have been available to the Andela user base in South Africa over the Root API since April 2022. The intention is to enable digital insurance offerings to the Andela talent network across more regions in time.
Says Hopley: “Insurance is historically sold, not bought, while Root aims to enable insurance to be placed seamlessly in user journeys where the insurance need is highly relevant or top of mind. For us, this is a particularly apt intervention, as so much of what Root does is about making it easier for technologists, such as Andela’s customer base, to integrate insurance offerings in their product offerings.”
“Our API packages all the building blocks needed to launch a fully compliant insurance product in a matter of days. There is no significant upfront investment of time or money required, while we take our fee as a percentage of the premium sold over the API.”
Root provides Andela with a hosted front-end application that can be embedded into the Andela user experience to onboard Andela users onto a Momentum Medical Scheme healthcare option. Andela users will also be able to access information and medical cover options directly through this embedded application.