South Africa’s insurers are rebuilding the claims experience from the ground up

From sub-90-second quotes to ChatGPT-based premiums and claims bots, South African insurers are redesigning insurance around speed and automation , while warning that digitising bad processes will not improve them.

Insurance began as a way to spread risk long before it became a digital service wrapped in apps and chatbots. The idea can be traced back to ancient Babylon and the Code of Hammurabi, which dates to about 1750 BC, when merchants and lenders were already finding ways to manage uncertainty in trade. In maritime lending, one early mechanism was bottomry, a contract in which a shipowner pledged a vessel as collateral for a voyage. The principle has endured, even if the sums involved have changed dramatically. During the recent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Reuters reported that war-risk premiums rose to between 1% and 5% of a ship’s hull value, or roughly $1 million to $15 million per transit, underscoring how geopolitical tension still feeds directly into the price of protection.

That long history provides a backdrop to the rapid reinvention taking place in retail insurance. South African insurtechs such as Naked Insurance and Pineapple, both launched in 2018, have built their businesses around technology rather than the old paperwork-heavy model. Sizwe Mase, business development lead at Root Platform, said customers now measure an insurer’s ease of use against the best digital experiences elsewhere in their lives. In practical terms, that means policyholders increasingly expect the same speed and simplicity from an insurer that they get from a banking or shopping app.

Root Platform, founded in 2016, operates in South Africa, Mauritius and the UK, and says it has more than 100 products live in the market. The company also says its system includes more than 500 application programming interface endpoints, or APIs, which allow insurers to connect to outside data sources and internal systems in real time. That can include checks against identity databases such as Home Affairs, helping digital insurers verify information without forcing customers to repeat it manually. Traditional insurers, weighed down by older systems, often struggle to match that level of efficiency.

Naked Insurance has taken that logic further by building its own cloud-based platform from the ground up, according to co-founder Sumarie Greybe. She said the company’s aim is to collect information on a customer’s behalf wherever possible, rather than asking people to enter details that can be retrieved automatically. That approach, she said, is central to making a quote available in less than 90 seconds. The company also said it runs as a cloud-native operation without legacy insurance systems, using tools including React, Amazon’s API Gateway, AWS, S3, EC2 and Lambda, according to technology recruitment site OfferZen.

The digital overhaul does not stop at quoting. In May, Naked said it became the first local insurer to launch a native app on OpenAI’s ChatGPT platform, allowing customers to obtain a final, binding car insurance premium rather than a rough estimate. Greybe also described Jade, the company’s claims bot, as a world first, saying it uses natural language to guide customers through the first stage of a claim and gather the necessary details without a long form. More routine claims can be handled through the app, including uploads of photographs and supporting documents, while more complex cases are passed to human staff.

King Price Insurance has taken a different route, but with a similar emphasis on reducing friction. According to LinkedIn profiles and the company’s own statements, its developers are expected to know Microsoft Azure, while the insurer also uses AWS and Genasys for its insurance platform. Annemarie Pienaar, head of client care, said the company has also turned to WhatsApp for simpler tasks such as updating personal details and carrying out self-inspections of vehicles. She said that has helped reduce phone calls materially over the past three years, freeing staff to deal with issues that genuinely require human judgement.

The pressure to improve is not only technological but operational. DataEQ’s South Africa Insurance Sentiment Index 2025 found that claims were the biggest source of frustration for customers, with waiting weeks for an update, unexplained claim rejections and unnecessary bureaucracy among the main complaints. Greybe warned that insurers can make a poor process more accessible without making it better. If a paper form is simply converted into an equally cumbersome online form, she said, the burden has merely shifted channels. The same applies to chatbots that cannot answer questions properly.

That is why the more ambitious digital insurers are not merely automating old workflows but redesigning them. Naked describes its model as the Naked Difference, under which it takes a fixed share of premiums and uses the rest to pay claims. Any money left in the claims pool at year-end is donated to causes chosen by customers rather than kept as profit. Greybe said that removes the financial incentive to reject valid claims. In an industry built on the management of uncertainty, that kind of structural rethink may prove as significant as any new app or algorithm.