Tangerine Officially Launches in Nigeria

Tangerine, a Leading financial services and technology platform, officially launched with its financial service product offerings at a press conference held on Wednesday 7th July, 2021. Speaking at the press conference was Livingstone Magorimbo, Head Life Insurance, Tangerine Nigeria, Dapo Akisanya, Head Pensions, Tangerine Nigeria & Ibitunde Balogun, Head Commercial, Tangerine Nigeria who introduced the press to Tangerine and shared the businesses agenda and future growth plans.

In September 2019, Tangerine was established following the acquisition of 100% equity stake in Metropolitan Life Insurance Nigeria by Verod Capital Management (“Verod”), a leading private equity firm investing in growth companies across Anglophone West Africa. This was immediately followed by a stream of strategic mergers & acquisitions, notably: The acquisition of ARM Life through Metropolitan Life to establish the 4th largest life insurer in Nigeria – Tangerine Life Insurance Limited; Verod’s acquisition of Law Union and Rock, one of the leading general insurance companies in the space, which has since been rebranded as Tangerine General Insurance Limited; the acquisition of Assured MFB, a microfinance bank, by Tangerine Life to establish Tangerine Money; and in the pensions space, the acquisition of Pension Fund Administrators (PFA) – AXA Mansard Pension and a minority stake in a significant PFA by Verod. AXA Mansard has since been rebranded Tangerine Pensions and the process to merge the two PFAs has commenced. The merger will produce a formidable competitor with wide geographic coverage.

Today, Tangerine comprises of the following entities: Tangerine Life, Tangerine General, Tangerine Pensions and Tangerine Money. Tangerine is positioned to be Africa’s preferred one-stop financial solutions provider, leveraging a tech-driven, flexible, high-access platform to drive business across all the financial services segments in Africa to deepen financial inclusion, facilitate wealth creation and protection.

Speaking at the press conference on the progress Tangerine has made since 2019, Dapo Akisanya, Head Pensions, Tangerine Nigeria said, “In under 2 years, we have been able to successfully acquire and rebrand several businesses, firmly establishing Tangerine. We have also made significant strides in repositioning our businesses in readiness for growth by assembling a strong, agile and experienced team that aligns with our strategic thinking. In the area of recaptization, the Nigerian insurance industry is currently going through a suspended recapitalization process, which has sought to increase the minimum statutory capital levels for life insurance and general insurance businesses from N2 billion to N8 billion and N3 billion to N10 billion, respectively. For our 2 insurance businesses – Tangerine Life and Tangerine General – this recapitalization process has already been concluded”.

Speaking on their plans to deepen financial inclusion and impact the Nigerian socio-economic landscape, he added, “At Tangerine , we believe in democratizing access to financial services and products and we seek to achieve this by developing simple value-adding products that are easy to understand and, which leverage technology to increase ease of accessibility, helping millions of uninsured Nigerians have protection or save for the future”.

Head Life Insurance, Tangerine Nigeria Livingstone Magorimbo shared plans to establish Tangerine as the No. 1 financial solutions provider of choice in Africa by driving efficiency, value addition and growth.

“Our intention over the next 3 to 4 years is to build strong businesses that are profitable and have a fair share of the larger market, in all of the segments we participate in. We aim to do this by ensuring that the assets acquired in Nigeria are efficient and all the merger synergies are fully realized. In addition, we plan to generate value through customer acquisition, expansion of our agent network, cross-selling to our pool of customers and improving efficiencies. The issue of real time claims processing is one of our target deliverables, as we continue to look for operational efficiencies to add value to our customers and distribution partners”.

Mr. Magorimbo also touched on Tangerine’s growth and expansion plans, “We see our future growth coming from the retail segment where we have made significant investments in understanding the market need, and in the technology and people required to support us going forward. We are also set to expand Tangerine’s presence beyond Nigeria. We plan to have a presence in at least 8 African countries by 2024”.

Technology is the backbone of the Tangerine financial services ecosystem. Speaking on Tangerine’s approach to product development, Head Commercial, Tangerine Nigeria Ibitunde Balogun said, “We have merged deep consumer insights and cutting-edge technology to build a range of carefully tailored and relevant products that create value by broadening the financial potential of every individual, offering a unique blend of life insurance coverage, pensions and wealth management to help individuals live without the worries of the future”.

“At Tangerine, we believe that digital transformation done right, can help build a seamless environment for interaction with customers. This is what guides our agile infrastructure. We have built a one-stop platform for customers that features a front-end user interface that enables seamless interaction; with single sign-on for our mobile app; a core operating platform that is specific to each business which cross-sells within regulatory limits to other businesses; and the ability to integrate Application Programming Interface (APIs) smoothly, facilitating partnerships. We’ve also built intelligence capability by implementing business logic and Artificial Intelligence (AI), giving due consideration to the Nigeria Data Protection Regulations and other local data privacy rules of industry-specific regulators. AI is used to understand and predict customer needs and preferences, and thus optimize value-add across all touchpoints”, he added.

Tangerine is equipped with a robust, integrated and scalable digital platform that has been designed to meet the needs of a growing financial solutions ecosystem. Furthermore, it is driven by high performance and an experienced management team. As a result, Tangerine is uniquely positioned for significant growth and impact.