Britam Uganda and Airtel Money have launched a mobile-first insurance and investment partnership, adding fresh momentum to the use of telecoms platforms to distribute financial protection across underinsured markets.
The partnership will operate under the “Insurance Ku Ssimu” banner and initially allows Airtel Money customers to purchase compulsory Motor Third Party insurance through a USSD journey. Customers dial 185761#, enter their vehicle details and authorise the premium using their Airtel Money PIN. Confirmation is delivered by SMS, with a link enabling the customer to retrieve a digital insurance sticker.
However, the agreement extends beyond motor insurance. Britam, which operates across general insurance, life assurance and asset management, and Airtel Money say they intend to develop further regulated insurance and investment products based on customer demand.
The ambition is to remove some of the practical barriers that have held back insurance adoption in Uganda, including paperwork, distance from branches, limited operating hours and the cost of taking time away from work. Uganda’s Insurance Regulatory Authority says the country’s insurance industry passed UGX2 trillion in gross written premiums for the first time during 2025, but penetration remains low. The latest East African Community outlook places insurance premiums at only around 0.87% of Ugandan GDP.
This makes mobile distribution potentially transformative. Airtel Money brings a familiar payment mechanism, extensive agent network and the ability to reach customers through USSD and SMS as well as apps. Across Africa, Airtel Money now claims 54.1 million customers, 2.4 million agents and $196bn in annual transaction value.
Jordan joins the mobile insurance push
The Uganda launch comes alongside a similar move in Jordan, where Orange Money and Middle East Insurance Company have signed an agreement to develop insurance products that can be discovered and purchased through the Orange Money app.
MEICO’s recently developed Haseen product is due to be integrated into the wallet, which has more than 1.7 million registered users and a market share said to exceed 50%. Haseen emerged from a hackathon organised by the UN Development Programme in conjunction with the Central Bank of Jordan, Jordan Insurance Federation, Institute of Banking Studies and FinTech Academy. The partnership is intended to promote both insurtech innovation and wider insurance inclusion.
It is not Orange Money’s first insurance partnership in Jordan. In June, Orange Jordan and MetLife introduced life and personal accident insurance packages, with premiums paid through the Orange Money app. The subsequent MEICO agreement suggests Orange is building a broader insurance marketplace, rather than adding a single third-party product.
That marketplace approach is also appearing elsewhere. MTN MoMo Zambia launched a digital insurance marketplace through *115# in February, allowing customers to access health and motor cover from multiple providers. Airtel Money Zambia followed with its own marketplace covering life, health, motor, travel, home and property insurance.
In Ghana, MTN’s MobileMoney business, Sanlam Allianz and aYo launched life insurance for MoMo agents in 2025. More widely, aYo distributes hospital and life cover through partnerships with MTN, MoMo and Sanlam in several African markets.
Airtel Uganda itself is not entirely new to the sector. In 2023 it partnered Prudential Uganda and insurtech Turaco to launch Hospital Sente, a low-cost hospital cash and funeral benefit product accessed and paid for through Airtel Money. The Britam agreement therefore represents an expansion from individual microinsurance products towards a more comprehensive mobile financial-services platform.
Where does DCB fit?
For the telemedia industry, the development raises an obvious question: if insurance can be sold through mobile money, could premiums also be collected using direct carrier billing?
Technically, the answer is yes. The early mobile microinsurance model pioneered by companies such as BIMA connected insurance platforms directly to operator billing systems, allowing small daily or monthly premiums to be deducted automatically from prepaid airtime. This removed the need for a bank account, card or separate wallet and made very small premium payments economically viable.
Airtime billing could still be useful for simple, low-cost products such as hospital cash, funeral benefits, personal accident cover, travel protection or short-duration device insurance. It offers extensive reach, a familiar confirmation mechanism and the possibility of collecting small recurring sums from prepaid customers.
However, DCB is not universally available for insurance. In the UK and EU, for example, the telecoms exemption within payments regulation is narrowly drawn around digital content and voice services, tickets and charitable donations. Insurance is not among the permitted categories, making conventional carrier billing for premiums far from straightforward. The precise position also varies between markets and may involve insurance, payments and telecoms regulators simultaneously. The UK Payment Services Regulations illustrate how restricted the telecoms billing exemption can be.
Insurance also creates obligations beyond processing a charge. Providers must handle product disclosures, explicit consent, customer eligibility, recurring-payment authority, cancellations, refunds, lapsed cover and claims. Depending on the product, identity checks and anti-money laundering controls may also apply. A payment flow that works well for a ringtone or video subscription cannot simply be repurposed unchanged for a regulated insurance policy.
Mobile money therefore looks like the more immediately scalable rail in many African and Middle Eastern markets. It creates a clearer separation between airtime and financial funds, supports authenticated payments through a wallet PIN and can accommodate premiums, refunds and claim payouts within the same ecosystem.
Cards, account-to-account payments and bank-backed wallets also have a role, particularly for higher-value or longer-term policies. The likely model is consequently not DCB versus mobile money, but payment orchestration that selects the most appropriate locally regulated rail for each customer and product.
An opportunity for telemedia?
However, for the telemedia sector, the opportunity is still substantial – but it stretches well beyond collecting premiums. Operators possess distribution, customer reach, authentication capabilities, USSD access, apps, messaging channels and extensive agent networks. Insurers have regulated products, underwriting expertise and claims infrastructure but often lack affordable access to mass-market customers. Telemedia aggregators and payment companies can connect those two sides.
They can also manage the wider insurance journey: customer acquisition through SMS, RCS and messaging apps; consent and authentication; recurring premium collection; renewal reminders; policy-document delivery; customer support; and claims notifications. In feature-phone markets, a combination of USSD, mobile money and SMS may remain more inclusive than an app-only service.
The strongest opportunity could therefore be for telemedia payment providers to evolve from pure DCB specialists into multi-rail financial-service orchestrators. Airtime billing may be part of the mix where regulation allows it, but mobile money, cards, wallets and account-to-account payments will often carry the actual premium.
Insurance is unlikely to become just another content subscription. Nevertheless, the Uganda, Jordan and Zambia launches demonstrate that the mobile channel is becoming one of insurance’s most important routes into underserved markets. For operators and telemedia providers, the real prize lies in owning the secure connection between discovery, payment and continuing customer service – not simply adding another item to the phone bill.
