CIC Insurance has launched a low-cost cover package for members of the informal sector. The new product, dubbed Nuru Ya Jamii, is a house, life and personal accident insurance policy that allows low income earners to insure their homes for as little as KES 480 a year.

CIC Insurance Group CEO Nelson Kuria officially unveiled the product in Kamkunji. He said that the company was targeting members of the informal sector, a market that had, so far, been ignored.

Other insurers like APA, UAP and Dawit do not cover slum dwellings timber houses and iron sheet structures. This means that Nuru ya Jamii is the first product of its kind in the region. Other low-cost schemes are limited to health and life insurance.

The initiative will join the ranks of other low-cost schemes like the Mbao Pension Plan, UAP’s Salama Sure and Eagle Africa’s Afya Milele Halisi.

CIC launched 3 similar services in 2009, including an agricultural policy, an SME scheme and Jamii Salama, a shared family insurance policy with an annual premium rate of KES 3650. CIC is currently Africa’s leading co-operative insurer and has a capital base of more than 1.3 million clients. The new policy could see this number rise, given the fact that the is an untapped market of  over 11 million Kenyans who desperately need micro-insurance, according to a report by the Association of Kenya Insurers (AKI). Moreover, Kenya Re, the country’s leading reinsurance provider, forecasts that the insurance sector will show a growth of 16.6 % to KES 108.3 billion worth of premiums in 2012 from KES 90.2 billion in 2011.