Rwanda: Eden Care - Inside the First Digital Health Insurer in Rwanda

26 October 2022

Eden Care is the first digital insurer in Rwanda and the region. Eden Care received its license from the National Bank of Rwanda in August 2022, and it's backed by the largest and second largest reinsurers in Africa, enabling it to insure any size of employer comfortably. Eden Care is now taking on employees seeking better health experience for their team.

Eden Care's is currently focused on insuring and partnering with companies whose aspiration is to build an engaged, healthy, and happy team. Eden Care's wellness and prevention focus rewards employees for healthy living while its digital products enable a simple, fast, and stress-free healthcare experience. It plans to offer health plans to individuals next year.

For employers, Eden Care provides a dashboard that simplifies managing employee's cover in simple clicks removing the long manual and tiresome back-and-forth with insurers and brokers while enabling data-driven wellness planning that is highly engaging for your team and drives increased productivity.

For employees, Eden Care provides an easy-to-use app that helps them easily navigate the healthcare system, including finding the nearest pharmacy with your prescription, reducing wait time at the hospital, and helping coordinate their care. Additionally, Eden Care offer a fun and engaging wellness program focused on fitness, nutrition, and health check-ups that rewards our members for meeting their wellness goals. Later this year, Eden Care plans to launch free telemedicine for its members.

In the hospitals, Eden Care has built technology that reduces pre-authorisation time from current 1 hour + to a real-time event, reducing wait time and surprise billing, while providing quality data to providers and members.

This model reduces admin cost by 50% allowing Eden Care to invest 50% more premium than incumbents in member's health.

Frustrated with the long wait at the hospital, terrible customer experience, lack of transparency on benefits, and stale rigid products, Moses Mukundi took leave of absence from the Wharton School of Business to found Eden Care in 2021 with a clear vision to improve health experience and outcomes. Moses chose the name 'Eden Care' as a promise of excellence to its members.

The health insurance industry has long been defined by decades-old incumbents that deliver a passive, high-friction experience to members. Nearly half of member premiums is spent on admin work yet patient spend up to 2.5 hours insurance related wait time at the hospital and HR managers are spending 160 hours annually managing health insurance admin work for a team of 100.

It's no surprise that the sector has one of the lowest Net Promoter Score, and research by Willis Towers Watson found that 86% of employers are rethinking their current health plans.

Moses Mukundi, CEO and Founder of Eden Care, says "Eden Care was founded to create the kind of health insurance we wanted for ourselves - one that is affordable, doesn't require filling 6 pages of documents at hospital and 3 hours wait time.

One where we can easily see our benefits, and provides wellness tools, community, and incentives to enable us to get and stay healthy. To deliver this transformative experience and bend the cost curve, Eden Care has built new tech that simplifies members healthcare journey."

Covid-19 exposed the limitations of current health insurance products and heightened the need for transition to a new insurance model that built on long-term health partnership with an engaging wellness-first proposition that helps employers attract and engage employees and keeps them happy and healthy, improving employee productivity.

Post-Covid and as the formal sector of the economy grows, better health benefits will be key to attract and retain top talent. A post-Covid survey by Willis towers Watson found a 2x jump in employer focus on wellbeing and experience, with mental and physical health driving this change.

Eden Care's wellness-first model paired with its digital-first approach and focus on customer experience positions Eden Care to ride this post-Covid health insurance boom.

AllAfrica publishes around 400 reports a day from more than 100 news organizations and over 500 other institutions and individuals, representing a diversity of positions on every topic. We publish news and views ranging from vigorous opponents of governments to government publications and spokespersons. Publishers named above each report are responsible for their own content, which AllAfrica does not have the legal right to edit or correct.

Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica. To address comments or complaints, please Contact us.