The Asia InsurTech Podcast spoke with Gustaf Agartson, the founder and CEO at Bima about the opportunities for insurance in emerging markets like Africa and Asia.
Find the full transcript of our conversation below:
Michael Waitze
Okay, we’re on. Hi, this is Michael Waitze. And welcome back to the Asia InsurTech Podcast. I’m already nervous, by the way, about names. This is the only podcast in Asia, focused on insurance that gives entrepreneurs, thought leaders and investors a platform to discuss how technology is reshaping the insurance industry in Asia and frankly, in the rest of the world. Today – and here is where I jump off the cliff – I am joined by Gustaf Agartson. I butchered it didn’t I? The founder and CEO at Bima. And you should know this Gustaf, right? When I was like, 12, or 13 years old, we actually had an exchange student from Stockholm. I’ve never said this actually out loud or in public. And he lived with us for a year. And it changed my whole worldview. Right? Because we were just like provincial people. We were living in a small town in Connecticut, and this dude just rocked up and he was amazing. I think my parents still talk to him. And that was 40 something years ago. Four years, he graduated from high school after graduating from high school in Sweden, I think he came to Connecticut. He was in the AFS program, and then graduated from high school in Connecticut, as well as pretty awesome, actually.
Gustaf Agartson
Okay, now, I heard about other Swedes who stayed there for a year and also really enjoyed it. Even if, of course, I mean, that age moving and staying one year in a new country away from the family is a big thing. But you have heard heard many, many Swedes enjoy doing that.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, it’s awesome. Really awesome. Anyway, and again, it changed my worldview. I thought, Wait, there are other countries out there. I need to find you to go to all of them, basically. And it really changed my life. Anyway. From your perspective, what do you think is the biggest trend – you’ve been at this for a while – in InsurTech? And by definition in insurance, just in the world, really? We’re just in emerging markets, actually, to be fair.
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah. So I mean, in emerging markets, for me, the biggest trend is actually related to how the wallets are growing across emerging markets, which basically means that people who were previously not get access to financial services. And I think this, combined with the fact that the smartphone penetration is growing rapidly, is basically enabling insurance providers to go direct to consumers with their offers. So thanks to that wallet today, you can collect premium on a recurring basis. And when you collect premium on a recurring basis, you have a customer that can stay with you for a long period of time, which enables you to invest more in sales and marketing, which you can do in a more effective way, thanks to the smartphone. So this, for me will fundamentally change the insurance penetration in emerging markets going forward or is changing the penetration.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I want to know this, though. We were talking a little bit offline about you started Bima in 2010. And I asked you kind of casually like how old you are. And I don’t, it doesn’t really matter in a way. But when you look back, do you feel like the current year looks back at the 2010 year and things? What was that guy doing, like so young at the time?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, I do look back at that. And I think the same, I mean, I didn’t know much back then. I did have a lot to learn, right. But I know a little bit more about what it means to build a business and how hard it is. So I’m also quite pleased that I didn’t know too much back then. Because I might have done hesitate to get going. But it just was something I wanted to do. And I had amazing support from Kinnevik, which is the founding shareholders that enabled me to do something like that.
Michael Waitze
So your founding shareholders were also sort of pretty prolific investors in emerging markets, right. I mean, if I remember correctly, they were also investors in Rocket. Yeah.
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, exactly. And they’ve had telcos in emerging markets. And now they’re, again, more focused again on Europe and the US, but now they’ve gotten a lot across Latin America, Africa, and Asia.
Michael Waitze
So at the beginning of your, I don’t want to save your life, but as sort of as your business life, you kind of took a traditional path, right. Did you go to university as well?
Gustaf Agartson
I did. Yeah. So I started first and then my first job was with the for the European telco, which was great. I mean, I had an opportunity to work in a number of different countries, etc. But it was, for me doing something like founding Bima and move to an African market was super exciting.
Michael Waitze
So this is the thing, right? Like you started with a just a pretty traditional path. What was the thing that sort of lit the entrepreneurial fire when you just woke up not one day and just said, I think I just want to venture out on my own.
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, I grew up, my father has been running his own business, his parents did as well. So it’s always been there, something I wanted to do, at some point in time. And what triggered the idea was that I heard about Kinnevik and the team called new ventures, which was led by a guy called Henrik and I got a meeting with him. And I said that I would like to do something in Africa, never been to Africa, to do something there. I think they have an opportunity to do something in insurance. And that’s something that they looked at, as well. And we basically came to the conclusion that we should give it a try. He was a handshake agreement where he said that, yes. Move to Ghana. We picked Ghana because it’s English speaking and fairly safe, politically stable countries. Move there, do some pilot project research on the ground, prove to me that there is a business here. And I beg you financially and that’s what I did.
Michael Waitze
So I want to get back to this Ghana thing. Right, I have some other questions about your entrepreneurial experience. But if I look at Africa, it’s a pretty large and diverse continent. 50 something countries, right and 1.2 billion people. So massive and pretty much ignored by the global community and definitely ignored he almost not until today by the entrepreneurial community. I know Ghana was safe and stuff like that. But if you look at where it is kind of in the northwestern corner, just below Sub Saharan Africa, right? It only has 30 million people in it, and only about 456 kilometers away is Nigeria and Legos, which is also pretty well developed and stuff. So why Ghana as opposed to Legos, which has, well, I mean, Nigeria, just 200 million people in it.
Gustaf Agartson
I think the obviously the the kind of, if you really want to succeed in the African continent and make it big, you have to go to a large market, like, or several large markets where Nigeria would be would be one of them. So if you succeed that you have a massive business, but it’s also quite challenging in energy, I think the business climate is more challenging. And Ghana is, if you come as a foreign company and wanted to set up a business Ghana is a great place to start. It’s, it’s I think, easier just to get around just to I mean, in, in, in Legos to go out and do research on the street requires more from the in terms of safety, and that kind of setup. So Ghana is a good place to start. And you can, you can if you can prove a business in Ghana and develop your business model there. Then you can expand into Nigeria. And that’s how we’ve been thinking about the method, we continuously look at a country like like Nigeria, and we haven’t yet been able to launch there. And it’s partly related to what I mentioned earlier about the wallets and then growing and they’re actually Ghana is much more advanced than Nigeria. But there will come a point in time where I think we will hopefully enter Nigeria as well.
Michael Waitze
So it’s 2021 right. So 11 years ago, you founded Bima. Do you feel like back then, I just can’t imagine the environment. I remember when I went to Tokyo in 1990. And frankly, when I went to Kyoto to study in college in 1986, and I really felt like a little bit of fish out of water. You know, what I stood out that I’d never stood out before in my whole life. But I feel like did you feel like you were operating in a vacuum?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah a bit a bit like that, and I also have is that it was just such a massive change moving from Stockholm, to Accra in Ghana. But there was also something with the Ghanaian culture extremely, like welcoming. So people are smiling, happy and are friendly. And that also used makes a huge difference. I mean, when you go outside, I mean, how do people look at you? Right? And yeah, I obviously look very different from them. But it’s that smile on their face, which to me makes it easier.
Michael Waitze
I mean, and to be fair, when I was in Kyoto in 1986. I mean, how tall are you? I’m 183 centimeters, right? You’re much taller than I am. I’m 170 on my best days, but I Definitely stuck out in Kyoto and back then there weren’t that many sort of Caucasian people like I was there. And it was the first time I felt like just by looking at me, you could tell that I was different because I grew up in the northeast United States. And everybody just kind of looked like I did, right. It was a weird feeling. And Japanese are much less smiley and friendly. They’re not mean by at any level, but they’re much less welcoming. Yeah. And maybe the Ghanese people are?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, they are. And I think that Yeah, for me, that’s made it made a huge, huge difference.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, so the other thing I wonder about right is, you know, I’ve been operating in the Southeast Asian startup ecosystem for the past, like nine or so years, and there’s kind of a bubble here where, you know, you go from your home to a co working space, and everybody you interact with is either a venture capitalist, or an angel investor or something like that. And I feel like it is a little bit of an entrepreneurial bubble. When you when you were there, who were you commiserating with, do you know what I mean? Who are you leaning on? And like, what did it feel like back then when you were kind of operating alone?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, well, so that was also the case, what was known as with with Ghana at that time, and it comes back to that it is a country located in West Africa, Sub Saharan Africa, but more challenging neighboring countries. But among that other kind of expats also see see Ghana is an opportunity if they want to do something in Africa. So this was also when the cannot mobile wallet. thing started to take off. It hadn’t been launched, but it was being prepared in Ghana, and there was some some guys that are working on that, that were from other parts of the of the world for from Latin America, and from Europe and the US, it was a mix of people and some people trying to build something new and exciting. So I had, you know, quite a few people to discuss with, which also means that I didn’t feel like I was the only foreigner in Ghana trying to do something new or other people’s doing that as well.
Michael Waitze
That’s really interesting. I want to know about this, too. I was recording with people talk a lot about you know, penetration, penetration of insurance in Southeast Asia, we can get to that in a second as well and penetration in Africa. And I was talking with a guy named Greg Krasnov, I don’t know if you’ve met him, really super good guy. And he is the founder and the CEO of a company called Tonik Bank. And he’s building this thing in the Philippines. And he noticed at least he mentioned to me, he noticed that there’s an inflection point at a GDP per capita of approximately $3500. Which means that before that, you can sell people financial service products, which insurance included, but that growth after that level, just kind of really starts to accelerate. You’ve been doing this for 10 years, what has been your experience in Africa and in some of the other countries in which you operate? And again, if I look at the I don’t know what the right word is, but the GDP per capita in Ghana? Right now, it’s about $2,200. Which puts it in the third in Africa for sure.
Gustaf Agartson
I agree with that. But the way we look at it is there are two things, there is the willingness to pay, and there is the ability to pay. And I think the willingness to pay is very much linked to the GDP per capita. So at what point do the mid income segments in the market actually, at what point will they be able to allocate a portion of their their income towards insurance? And I think, yeah, that happens probably somewhere between that kind of 2000 and 3500 that you mentioned. But in order to actually provide them with these products in a profitable way, you need to have a payment channel that is kind of frictionless and convenient for them to use, and that’s where the wallets come in. So I rather operate, if from offering insurance and health services like we are to consumers, I rather operate in a market where the GDP per capita is 2000. But where people have started to use the wallets, then market where the GDP per capita is 4000. But they’re not using the wallet, they’re still using cash. So the willingness to pay might be higher in the 4000 market, but the ability to pay in a convenient frictionless way on a monthly basis, will be higher in the $2,000 mark, and that makes it a huge difference.
Michael Waitze
So this is also really interesting to me. You see a lot of companies in India and frankly in Southeast Asia as well. There are payment companies are that are other type of FinTech companies getting into the insurance business. And I know you offer other kinds of financial services products, what what are the kinds of products that you offer? And do you consider going into payments as a service as well or have you already done that and I just missed it.
Gustaf Agartson
No. So our focus is on insurance and health. So we have life insurance offer for consumers and we also have a health insurance offer. But the health insurance offer includes also access to telemedicine, we have health programs, and we have other health related services. So, for example, as part of the onboarding journeys in some markets, we offer customers to go and take a blood test to be can can tailor our support based on those results. So that’s our proposition. We will not going and compete with the payment platform providers, I think in we operate, I mean, in nine markets, and some of them are huge, like Indonesia, Pakistan, Philippines, and I think we would, we wouldn’t be able to compete with the big players trying to build a payment platform. So our focus is to integrate with as many of them as possible, because it’s also really hard to predict who will win, right? Who will be the leading payment platform in these markets. And we can’t really predict that we try to integrate with as many as possible of them so that we can leverage them, and then go to consumers and say that we have this this offer for you, you can buy insurance or health services from us. Now you choose how you want to pay for it, whatever is most convenient for you.
Michael Waitze
So this is also fascinating this idea of health services, right? What was the trigger for you, and the Bima team that said, providing insurance is great, and definitely necessary. But if we bundle that with other health services, now we have an offering that nobody else has. In other words, it surprises me sometimes that these big incumbent insurance companies have not been offering these health services, because they moan a lot about you know, banking is an everyday thing but insurance is like once a year, twice a year. And they’ve really lagged behind in providing health services, which is kind of constant, no?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, no, exactly. And I think for us, we started to look at it instead from the customers perspective. So if we ignore what the industry definitions look like. So if you ignore what’s legally defined as insurance and what’s legally defined to something else, and you look at what is it that customers want and need. So we saw, like health insurance or hospital support plans and realize that consumers buy these products, because they won’t have access to doctors, medical care, or other ways of providing that access in a more convenient and cost effective way. And yet, you know, get doctors on board and hire doctors that would be there and say to consumers that if you buy our policy, yeah, you can go to hospital, and then we reimburse you, or you can just pick up the phone and call our doctors and get advice. And it was in Bangladesh, where it started. And people liked that, that service, and then we’ll continue to, to expand it. And the thinking is also that the traditional insurance industry has always been suffering from low engagement levels right there. You buy an insurance product and you don’t use it. Hopefully you don’t use it because that means something bad has happened. We want to flip that around and say that we sell you a product, and we actually want you to use it. And we want to demonstrate to you as a consumer every month that we’re there for you and we can provide value. We also think that’s how we’re going to build up, build up trust in the market.
Michael Waitze
So does Bima do things on its own separate from the health services that provide engagement for its clients? And the reason why I ask Obviously, I’m in the podcast business, but I’m also in the information business, right. So I think that everybody should kind of run their own media company at some level, right? In other words, have constant contact with your customers, whoever they are in whatever vertical you operate, and in insurance more so because financial inclusion, which is something that you’re working on, for sure. I think it’s also predicated a little bit on financial literacy, right? You have to understand it first to be able to participate. So how do you handle all of that type of engagement stuff as Bima not as just the health services thing?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, that’s a good question. I think this is an area where we have a lot more work to do it in this proper area, how to engage customers, but health content programs is one thing where I think there’s a massive opportunity to tailor the content based on where people are in in their life. So I mentioned earlier that we can have onboarding journeys where for example, customers do a blood test and then you can tailor communication and content based on that. I also think there’s a massive opportunity for when do people start to care about things like insurance and access to health care? When you if you’re in your 20s, that might not be top of mind right? But then you know, you meet someone and you start to plan to have a family and you both have your first kid then the mindset is shifting quite significant. And we see a massive opportunity in being there from that time, right? The young couple pregnant, what can we do to support with information, access to doctors access to content during the pregnancy, and then also when the child is born is so much you can do where those young people or parents for the first time are really open and interested in getting that kind of help and advice. And I think that’s where you can build really interesting engagement during this. And then when the kids are growing up as well. I mean, I have two young kids, they’re always challenges related to your children and their health and their well being. And I mean, there’s just so much you can you can do in terms of support families during during that time.
Michael Waitze
So, has COVID changed the way. I was on I was on a panel discussion yesterday and one of the things we talked about was like how the pandemic changed the way insurance is perceived in the markets in which you operate. Right. Do you get the sense that COVID has changed the awareness around the necessity for insurance?
Gustaf Agartson
Yes, I will definitely definitely say. I mean, health in general, I think is more more top of mind. I think the awareness and understanding of telemedicine services also increased a lot. I mean, we see utilization of telemedicine services and more than doubled compared now with and then pre COVID. So yeah, definitely.
Michael Waitze
Wow, it’s doubled. Yeah. And again, I was talking to a telemedicine company here in Bangkok. And one of the things that they’re doing is they’re partnering with you believe this, but they are partnering with supermarkets and they’re putting booths in close supermarkets. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this. So like, you know, if you’re, if you’re shopping with your wife, and you’re taking the kids around and taking stuff off the shelf, but she wants to ask a doctor about something she can pop into the booth while you’re shopping. Yeah, and have a telemedicine checkup?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, I think that’s great. I think those those kinds of things will also. I think it’s great that people can try that kind of service for the first time. And it wouldn’t surprise me if a significant portion of those, those people that do that later on, you know, try telemedicine services from their laptop or or or smartphone as well.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I mean, I just think it’s so neat that when you’re out shopping, you know, there’s one person who’s always not interested in if you’re shopping as a couple, if you can just pop in and do your doctoring and health services. It’s just kind of cool. I thought. This show has spent a ton of time in the past 18 months talking about what I kind of dubbed alternative forms of distribution, mostly in Southeast Asia, but including the likes of grab and sort of go jek and other companies like that, trying to build super apps and trying to move away from sort of ride hailing and into the distribution of insurance products. Do you see the same thing? In the places where you operate? How about? I mean, obviously, in the Philippines, Indonesia, and Southeast Asia, you see that for sure. But how about companies in Africa? They’re growing pretty quickly trying to be a super app. Are they also a distribution channel for you? Do you think?
Gustaf Agartson
I think they could be I think all all, all platforms can be the distribution channels, for us or, or for others. But the way we look at it also that it comes back to the point you made earlier about understanding and custom education. And our approach from the beginning has always, has been that we combined the digital approach with the human touch. So majority of our our policies are more than 90% of the policies that that is sold today, which is not it’s not close to 40 million, has been sold with an involvement of a salesperson.
Michael Waitze
Can I interupt you for a second. I love the way you say that. Just like in passing the number of policies we sold is around 40 million, like it’s nothing. If I had no but wait a second, if I had gone to you back in 2010 and told you in 2021, you would have already sold 40 million insurance policies. So I think you, your parents or friends would have liked said you’re insane. But you’ve got like, that’s weird, right? In a way.
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, it is. And I wouldn’t Yeah, I wouldn’t have believed you then. Yeah. So we have more than 2000 full time salespeople, because sales associates across our markets that are working, they’re not like traditional insurance agents, they’re doing a bit of insurance sales and then doing other things as well. These are our employee spending their full time working, working selling Bimas policies. And that’s not required. It’s not because they have paperwork that needs to be signed by the customer, the customers can also register themselves, they can register themselves either through a handset or on a smartphone or through phone an app or through microsite from a partners app. All of that is, is possible. But what we see is that when someone is buying, let’s say a package of services, which include life insurance and hospital support plan, it includes access to telemedicine services, we now also, in some of our markets have something that is similar to like a health wallet, it doesn’t mean that we’re competing with them, with the wallet platforms, payment platforms, for our customers, they’re basically building up a balance over time that they can use, choose for paying for, for drugs, or they can pay for other things related to their health. All these things requires a bit of explanation and education for the customer. And we’re I think that the platform’s you mentioned Gojek or Grab what they can do really well, is to say to customer quite now you’re going to travel from A to B. Now, click here and you’ve paid two cents, and then this ride you’re gonna be insured, right? People understand that easy, you don’t need someone to call you to explain. That’s very straightforward. But if you’re offering a combination of life, and health insurance combined with health services, it’s pretty good to have someone who is there educating you. And therefore, our approach has always been that we try to find ways to get to consumers and make them interested in our products. But then we actually also speak to them and educate them about about what they’re buying. And, and that way, I think we will be different from these platforms going forward, they will be able to generate leads for companies like us or other insurance providers, they will be able to be the payment platform. But actually education of consumers I think will be a bit different. And it will be a combination of digital communication and that human touch, face to face interaction.
Michael Waitze
You’re like I’m a big believer. And if you look across all the verticals about which I speak, I don’t think humans are ever going to go away in the sales of products are really dumb, particularly for complex financial products. People have questions, they want to feel comfortable, and particularly if they have an issue, like, what does it mean if this is investment linked, right? or How can I combine my life with my health? And I don’t understand, I don’t want to read through it. I want to ask somebody, I want to say if this happens, and that happens. So I agree with you completely, that even if you have a digital distribution channel, it doesn’t eliminate the necessity for humans. Is that fair.
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, funny way to do and I think that doesn’t mean that you, those humans that are working with Bima and doing sales, that doesn’t mean that they should sit and do just cold sales and go through the same pitch over and over again to consumers. That’s a waste of people’s time. We should make sure that they speak to people that are interested in our product, we should have some data on them. So we can tailor our offering. And it should be more of a kind of education blended with sales that both. I think that’s much, much better conversation, both for the consumer and for the person working with sales, it feels more relevant rather than the same message over and over again.
Michael Waitze
Yeah, I mean, look, we said this about the podcast before we started recording. It’s a much more compelling event if we have a conversation rather than if somebody asks you, here are the five questions I want to know. Where did you go to school? Why did you do insurance and like, did your dad’s job influence your? like nobody cares about that? But if it’s a conversation, that I also feel more connected and more connected to the product as well, I’ll just keep coming back and buying more natural. That’s what I think. Look, I want to get back to this, the markets in which you operate. I think that outside of Africa and outside of Southeast Asia. Most people that haven’t been there would think these are very sort of monolithic markets. And they think they think the same thing about Southeast Asia. They just think, Oh, it’s all the same. We know because we live here and we operate, it’s completely different. What are some of the challenges for you, for managing across these diverse market micro structures?
Gustaf Agartson
Yeah, I think there’s several, several. I mean, obviously, there are cultural differences, which means that I think we have also we haven’t done enough of this, we’ve tried to take a global approach to how we, for example, communicate branding, and product design. Product design, I think works to solve that. Because the needs are, are there similar across markets, right, but how you communicate with people, how you engage people, and how you can position the brand or use something like what should we call ourselves, the different markets? I think that’s an area where we, where we can do more, and that’s been a missed opportunity for us so far. But then there was other things like, for example, what we talked about earlier with evolution of the payment platform, huge difference between markets. I mean, some markets are new, majority of the adult population right now have an active order that they transact with that’s completely different from a cash society. Yeah, there are huge differences there between markets. And then you also have regulation, right, which, which also differs. In some markets when it comes to telemedicine, the regulator, especially now with COVID, has said that they’re very supportive. So if you want to operate with a telemedicine service, this is what it should look like, you can go out. And then there are other markets where it’s very unclear what you need to do in order to comply with these regulations.
Michael Waitze
Yeah. And I look, I think, in most cases, some of the countries in which you operate are bifurcated, right? So there are actually two markets in one and I’ll tell you, I’m curious about your opinion, but I’ll tell you why I think so. If you look at a country like Indonesia, there’s like Jakarta, and then the outlying areas. And if you look at the Philippines, again, in Manila, you have a company called aiyana. That may takes money from Manila and sends it in a very innovative way to people in the provinces. Everything in Thailand, not so much in Malaysia. But yeah. And this kind of gets back to the GDP per capita conversation, right? Because you have to operate differently in the big cities than you do in the smaller provinces.
Gustaf Agartson
Absolutely. And Indonesia is a good example, right? Jakarta is very different from the the remote islands of Indonesia, it was Papa New Guinea, I mean, that you can’t just put in one set of products and one business or more than expected to be different.
Michael Waitze
I mean, 18,000 Island? Yeah, it’s hard there, right? Um, when you look at the InsurTech market in Africa now, after operating, and starting back in 2010, do you have kind of a sense of pride? In other words, you look at Carousel and Nigeria just announced a $450,000 raise and Pula, which is doing some interesting stuff in the parametric space, they were announced a $6 million raise, and then even Lami. Like all this stuff is now bubbling up. Do you look back and just think there was none of this was there then? And just feel like a little bit proud?
Gustaf Agartson
I think a little bit in the way in the sense that I was there early. And it wasn’t like, oh, now the trend seems to be that you should go to Africa and start a business. That was definitely not the case. So yeah, I can be a bit proud of of that. I took that. Not because many others had done it. So yeah, a bit.
Michael Waitze
It’s the neat feeling. And I guess the last thing I want to ask you is you operate in regions where most investors fundamentally do not understand what’s going on. And you have been fortunate to have Kinnevik, But I’m sure I’m mispronouncing that. They understood this from the beginning, that have your capital raising stories, I guess, is the only word I can come up with, have those stories and experiences changed over time? In other words, is it easier to raise capital today as people begin to understand more about what’s going on there? Or is it still a challenge when you talk to new investors?
Gustaf Agartson
I would say a bit of both. I think it’s definitely still a challenge. Because many investors who are now interested in larger markets don’t really understand it and you might have part of part of the team that is really kind of excited about the opportunity for example in in Africa, but then they might not be set up or they might not be comfortable actually investing in business focused on on African imagination. But overall, I think we’ve also been very lucky in terms of how, you know, that access to capital across the world, and also that, in general, there are now quite a few investors out there who are getting increasingly excited about the merging market and also realize that I really do look something now and look into especially Southeast Asia, or are they gonna kind of miss that train? And I think that means that more and more investors will get comfortable with Africa as well. So I think it will move in the right direction for, for Africa over the coming 10 years.
Michael Waitze
I think so too. And just to let you know, I’m actually thinking of launching an entire show just to talk about the African start operating system. So I own the Africa, I own Africa, iInsurTech Podcast, Africa Tech podcast and Africa Game Changers. I’m trying to figure out what the right framing is of this because I do think that it’s almost like where Southeast Asia was 10 or 15 years ago, in the sense that everything is just starting to bubble up, but the world still doesn’t understand yet. Right?
Gustaf Agartson
Right now, yeah. And then if you do that, you should speak to Valerie, who’s our country manager in Ghana. She’s, she’s great. And she will be able to tell you a lot more.
Michael Waitze
Definitely make the introduction. Look, I think this is a great way to end I really want to thank you. I’m gonna mispronounce your name again, Gustaf Agartson, you can laugh again, the founder and CEO of Bima. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this today.
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