African insurtech aYo Holdings seeks to power the future of microinsurance in its next step of ongoing technology transformation by rolling out a cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to underpin its ambitious growth plans across the continent.
aYo, which is 100 percent owned by MTN, has more than 16 million enrolled customers using its microinsurance products across Uganda, Ghana, Zambia and Côte d'Ivoire. It aims to grow into the largest financial services technology platform in Africa by providing a range of affordable and accessible micro financial services products.
The company’s new Oracle NetSuite ERP (www.netsuite.com) system replaces its previous on-premise solution, which battled to support the needs of a rapidly-scaling business.
aYo Chief Financial Officer Adrian Kloke said the implementation would give them the control, agility and cost efficiency it needed to support its rapid growth and capture new market opportunities. “Having one unified cloud-based platform that is agile and flexible for our business needs today will improve our business operations across the entire organisation. NetSuite will also help us standardise operations, enhance business insights and serve our customers more efficiently from a scalability perspective, and ultimately enhance future saleability,” Kloke said.
The implementation was rolled out by Oracle NetSuite Solution Provider, Linked ERP, which has an established track record of helping businesses migrate from legacy software to the NetSuite ERP platform. Kloke said Linked ERP ‘stood head and shoulders’ above other vendors in the space, hence it made them a natural choice for the project.
Linked ERP’s Managing Director Carel Bouwer said by digitising business processes with scalable and secure business management systems, businesses could support greater growth, expansion, and profitability. “aYo has implemented a powerful cloud platform that will provide the visibility and control needed to drive growth and build business resilience,” Bouwer said.
aYo said its journey to the cloud had already seen the company embark on a wide-ranging overhaul of its technology back end and data management approach. Last year, it transitioned to a cloud data warehousing approach, using Snowflake as a solution, as there was a need to grow and leverage high volumes of customer data more effectively.
Kloke said that as their customers transitioned to a world where financial services were easily accessible via mobile phones and transacted via apps and other channels, they needed to respond with a platform business model that would allow them to scale rapidly while cost-effectively managing material volumes of nano transactions.”
KPMG Global said that last year was a record year for fintech investment in Africa, and the momentum was likely to increase. After a brief dip during the COVID-19 pandemic during 2020, the deals came back with foreign investment flooding in. Data showed that there was over US $1.6bn invested across 153 deals, two times the value of 2020 (US $800m) representing a 50 percent increase in transaction numbers.
The key markets remained Nigeria in the West, Kenya in the East, and South Africa in the South. Other countries such as Egypt have also seen some sizable deals. In Nigeria, the value of deals in the first quarter of 2021 alone outstripped the total for the whole of 2020. To raise such a quantum of finance from foreign sources was unprecedented.
One of the key drivers of the uptake of fintech services is, of course, the spread of smartphones across the continent. They are becoming cheaper and much more prevalent, enabling users to access mobile apps and tools.
BUSINESS REPORT