Insurance brokers in the CIMA region, united within the Inter-African Federation of Insurance Advisers (FIAC), wish to play their full part in improving insurance inclusion for the region’s populations.
To this end, they held their 16th Annual General Assembly from 10 to 13 June 2026 in Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, on the theme: ‘Financial inclusion in Africa: the role of insurance brokerage in expanding access and improving penetration rates’. Over the course of three days, brokers, insurers and public decision-makers reviewed the measures needed to bring insurance more closely in line with the needs and realities of local communities.
The CIMA (Inter-African Conference on Insurance Markets) region, which comprises 14 Francophone countries in West and Central Africa, is characterised, like other regions of the continent, by a low insurance penetration rate, at less than 2%. A weak insurance culture, attributable to low levels of education among the population, poverty, the prevalence of socio-cultural or sociological beliefs, and historical factors, amongst other things, is most often cited as an explanation for this low level of insurance development.
According to the managing director of Raynal Assurances, Osée Gaëtan Quenum, one of the obstacles to insurance inclusion is a lack of financial resources, which appears to be the most significant barrier, affecting 81% of French-speaking Africans, compared with 52% globally. Added to this is the high cost of financial services, which also represents a major obstacle, affecting 22% of French-speaking Africans, compared with 17% globally; not to mention the lack of official documents (28%) and the distance from banking institutions (29%).
On the demand side, Quenum argued that several factors continue to hinder access to insurance across all social strata.
“These include a lack of understanding of insurance products, how they work, and their potential benefits, which limits people’s interest in insurance products; widespread mistrust of financial institutions and insurers, often linked to negative past experiences; and, above all, the priority given to basic needs, such as food, housing and children’s education, which relegates insurance to a secondary position in the budgetary priorities of low-income families.”
The ideal role of the insurance broker
Whilst these factors are all valid, it must be acknowledged that they do not cover the whole issue. It is therefore necessary to consider or examine other factors, notably the role of players in the insurance market – namely insurers, intermediaries such as insurance brokers and general agents, and public authorities, both executive and legislative…
For their part, insurance brokers in the CIMA region, through FIAC, have clearly chosen to scrutinise their roles and responsibilities in the face of a certain lethargy within the insurance industry in this regional community, despite the enormous potential it holds. This is because the low insurance penetration rate implies significant room for growth.
The FIAC aims to reposition insurance brokerage as a means of promoting insurance inclusion. Indeed, as an intermediary between insurers and policyholders, the insurance broker or insurance adviser is ideally placed to improve access to insurance for the public, particularly those who are generally excluded from the traditional system. It is the broker who can simplify technical insurance jargon and translate it into accessible language.
This is because the technical nature and complexity of insurance products constitute the first barrier hindering or slowing people’s uptake of this financial instrument – one that is essential for the social protection of communities and the safeguarding of assets and investments, both public and private.
A social, economic and political challenge
Through their proximity to consumers, they are also in a position to understand their needs and translate these into innovative insurance products tailored to their circumstances, to be developed and rolled out by insurance companies. In this way, it could help break with the traditional approach of “products designed for wage-earning and formal economies that do not correspond to the irregular income streams of informal workers and smallholder farmers, according to Quenum.
Expanding the range of insurance products available to excluded groups such as small-scale producers and those in the informal sector represents a niche for insurance inclusion within the CIMA region. Furthermore, successful initiatives in index-based agricultural insurance in Burkina Faso, Togo and Senegal demonstrate that the insurance market holds significant potential for the financial inclusion of these populations.
We must therefore pull out all the stops and overcome all obstacles to achieve this inclusion of insurance, because insurance is more than just a financial product; it is a social, economic and political issue.
“When we exclude people from our insurance offerings, we are in fact depriving them of their right to health, education, prosperity and human dignity,” emphasised Déborah Gnagne, CEO of the Dayo Group.
This reality – faced by millions of households, farmers and micro-enterprises who remain exposed to risks without any protection – is not merely a statistic; it is a human and economic reality that the insurance sector has a duty to change. And as Abdourahmane Kiemdé of Burkina Faso’s National Agency for the Promotion of Inclusive Finance (ANPFI) emphasised, “the ultimate objective is to build protection that is useful, understandable, accessible and sustainable for underserved populations.”
Pooling resources, building capabilities
But to fulfil this dual role fully, everyone agrees that a paradigm shift is needed. Indeed, the broker must move beyond the role of a mere commercial intermediary to become a genuine catalyst and agent of change, thereby evolving into the indispensable ‘architect’ of a rapidly changing market.
“The broker must not be merely a commercial intermediary. Adopting an inclusive approach, they can become interpreters of needs,” said Kiemdé.
Today, technology, digital solutions and artificial intelligence offer players in the insurance market – and insurance brokers in particular – greater resources, both in product design and in streamlining distribution, to fully fulfil their roles as true architects of insurance inclusion. However, this requires substantial investment in keeping knowledge up to date and continuously strengthening professional capabilities, as demanded by the challenges posed by technological, societal and regulatory changes. Pooling resources through shared platforms to reduce technology costs for all members is a structural solution that needs to be put into practice.
In any event, the new FIAC president, Léopoldine Fondop Ngoula, has reaffirmed the management team’s full commitment to ensuring that insurance brokers in the region have the resources to embark on this new path they must take to revitalise their profession, in support of the development of the insurance market in the CIMA region.
“The new FIAC executive committee will not be a distant administration. It will stand by your side to help your national associations build their capacity, lobby regulators and gain access to modern tools so that you can become stronger,” she assured them.
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