vritti
Changing Lives
September 2017
25
Orange Money Mali: Mobile savings and insurance
Orange Money in Mali offers a savings product (Sini Tonon) and an associated life/disability and maternal
health insurance product (Tin Nogoya). The service is specially targeted at women.
Mali has a maternal mortality rate of 587 per 100,000 live births, one of the highest in the world. In order to
make pregnancy and delivery safer Orange Money in Mali partnered with the NGO Population Service
International (PSI) and NSIA, an insurance company, to launch a linked savings and insurance product
targeted at pregnant women. Orange Money users can open a mobile savings account with a minimum initial
deposit of 3,000 FCFA. Once the account has been opened users can save money anytime with a minimum
deposit of 100 FCFA, by moving money from Orange Money account to Savings account via mobile phone.
When savings balance reaches 40,000 FCFA the user automatically gets enrolled for a 12 month
life/disability and maternal health insurance. Orange Money pays 100,000 FCFA for child delivery
complications including haemorrhage, eclampsia and dystocia, 50,000 FCFA for the C-sction and 150,000
FCAF in case of death or permanent disability. Patients who do not attend prenatal consultations only gets
75% benefit. This encourages women to seek prenatal care. Additional Orange money used female
actresses to market this insurance product effectively and relate with women.
The service is making substantial social benefit to the customers. As per GSMA, Sini Tonon is encouraging
customers to save. 55% of women did not save before using Sini Tonon. Tini Nogoya enabled made many
people to get insured for the first time. 97% of female users have never been insured before. The insurance
product is appealing to customers over 30% of Sini Tonon users reported using it because it allowed them to
be covered by insurance under Tin Nogoya. 24% of Orange Money users in Mali are saving and using Sini
Tonon regularly, while 4% are insured by Tin Nogoya.
Source: GSMA
MNOs and banks should also facilitate growth
of each other's services. While MNOs should
provide access of USSD channel to banks to
launch their mobile financial services, on the
other hand, banks should adopt more flexible
approach towards MNOs where both have
partnered to offer a mobile money service.
Another area which requires innovation is
customer on-boarding and registration (KYC).
The 2015 e-money guidelines increased the
threshold of transactions not requiring the
identification of users from 10,000 FCFA per
transaction and 100,000 FCFA per account
to 200,000 FCFA for all transactions per
month on an account. This allows service providers
to offer different digital wallets to different
consumers based on KYC. Many users who
do not posses complete documentation are
unable to use formal financial services due to
incomplete KYC. However, with this regulation
it is possible for such users to open a mobile
money account without presenting a valid
identification if transactions remain within the
thresholds. With a tiered KYC model, MNOs
and banks would be able to extend reach to
many financially excluded consumers with
incomplete documentation.
However, the biggest challenge which mobile
financial services are facing is inactivity
rates. At the end of September 2015, 69% of
the subscribers were inactive compared to
40% in 2014. The primary reasons for inactivity
are low income of consumers and high service
charge of mobile money services. MNOs and
banks have to focus on increasing the activity
rate by keeping the service pricing low and
providing value to even low-income consumers
through relevant services.