ESICH Life Assurance adopts e-zwich to collect premium

ESICH Life Assurance is using e-zwich as one of its mode of collecting premiums from its customers.

The move is to create more convenience for customers and make collection of premiums less cumbersome.

ESICH Life began the process with a pilot in June last year, targeting commercial centres and is currently receiving premiums through the e-zwich payment system at Kasoa, Kaneshie, Abossey Okai and Katamanto markets.

The company, in collaboration with various banks, as well as Ghana Interbank Payment and Settlement Systems (GhIPSS), visits targeted markets and enroll customers and potential customers, who are issued with e-zwich cards.

The latest of the e-zwich enrolment took place in Takoradi and the Wood Village in Kumasi.

The use of e-zwich provides an efficient payment option to ESICH Life Assurance, which would enable all its customers with e-zwich Cards to pay for insurance services using the e-zwich Point of Sale terminal.

Speaking in an interview, the Managing Director of ESICH Life, Mr Richiard Adu-Marfo said the e-zwich is being used mainly for its micro life insurance products.

He explained that as a result of mistrust in the micro finance sector, created by some micro finance operators, ESICH Life needed to use a very credible system of payment such as e-zwich in order to win the trust and confidence of its customers.

He said since the company started the use of the biometric payment system, the response has been impressive and the company is also using it to develop new markets.

Mr Adu-Marfo said the use of e-zwich is also to support efforts to promote electronic payments in Ghana, saying the decision will also help reduce the unbanked population, since each of their customers will automatically become bank customers by acquiring the e-zwich cards, which are issued by banks.

“We are by this choice not only improving our business delivery and creating value for our customers but we are also supporting a national cause of electronic payment and increasing the banking population, he emphasised.

On her part, the Business Development Manager at GhIPSS, Mary Dei-Sarpong said the choice of e-zwich will help the Insurance Company address reconciliation issues, pilfering and risk associated with transporting monies collected from policyholders.

She said it would also provide security for the customer because it is biometric and the fact that the Point of Sales (POS) terminals are mobile means that agents of ESICH Life can move around to collect the premiums from policyholders.

With the deployment of gh-link hybrid POSes, customers of ESICH can also use their e-zwich cards to shop at any outlet that has these POSes.

The hybrid POSes accept both local ATM cards and e-zwich cards and are currently being deployed throughout the country, as part of efforts to reduce the use of cash for payments.