CAIRO: Arab Misr Insurance Group, a subsidiary of the Gulf Insurance Company of Kuwait, will begin to offer micro-insurance for Egypt's poor and middle class within two months, pending the approval of Egyptian regulators, according to the company's general manager Alaa El-Zoheiry. The insurance firm is currently drafting a budget for the project and will likely spend between LE 800,000 and LE 1 million during its first stages, El-Zoheiry told Daily News Egypt on the sidelines of the Euromoney Egypt Insurance conference Tuesday. The project is designed to target lower- and middle-income Egyptians, the great majority of whom are uninsured. "Who are we targeting? We are not targeting small projects, we are targeting people, El-Zoheiry said. "We are going to sell this policy to each Egyptian, each individual. The insurance company hopes to sell policies to 500,000 Egyptians within the program's first year, and to two million within the following two to three years. "This is our target, we could sell more, said El-Zoheiry. The eventual size of the project depends, he said, on the size of early investments, which are not yet determined. "In this type of policy, where you get small premiums, you need a lot of investment in the beginning, El-Zoheiry said. "We are talking about very small coverage, with very small money. We just want everyone to buy this. The company could not release further details regarding the types of coverage they will offer until it is approved by Egyptian regulators, he added. El-Zoheiry said he expects the authorities to approve the project within a month and a half, with the first offerings coming shortly thereafter. "We have prepared the policy, the policy is ready to be issued, to be marketed. We sent it to the regulator, the regulator is examining the policy right now, he said. While Malaysia, Indonesia and other countries with large, poor populations have developed similar products, there is no precedent for micro-insurance in Egypt, El-Zoheiry said. As many as six companies in Egypt could begin offering similar products in the next few periods, according to industry officials speaking at the conference. The Egyptian insurance sector is still small, accounting for just 1.2 percent of the country's gross domestic product last fiscal year. The need to better inform and serve the nation's many poor was a central theme in the conference yesterday. Insurance for the poor is still in short supply, said Abd El-Raouf Kotb, chairman of the Egyptian Insurance Federation. We are not an exception among low-income countries similar to Egypt which have the same problem.
