The African association Confédération des Institutions Financières (CIF)/West Africa has selected BSB's Solife policy administration software in an important new micro-finance programme to help low-income families in Africa.
Solife will be used to provide the association's members with a flexible and powerful tool for developing a range of micro-insurance life products. The Burkina Faso cooperative will be the first to implement Solife, scheduled for completion before the end of 2012.
CIF has the support of ADA - Appui au développement autonome - a Luxembourg-based NGO active in micro-finance projects across Africa. This initiative is a major step for the African micro-finance movement, which can now offer low-income families access to savings and insurance products that are tailored to their situation. Solife was selected on the basis of its extensive functionality, with CIF's partners particularly impressed by the solution's end-to-end coverage of a policy's full life cycle, as well as by its product workbenches. These are designed to simplify and, therefore, speed up the launch of products at a reasonable cost.
"It is a privilege for BSB to be involved in a project, which provides hope and protection to impoverished people, who can now protect themselves better against some of the adversities of life," said Jean Martin, CEO, BSB.
The CIF organisation plans to implement the software at four further savings cooperatives in the near future - in Mali, Benin, Togo and Senegal. It also intends to offer insurance products to its entire client base, which numbers more than 1.6 million in Western Africa.