The tall, bulky player muscled onto the Nairobi rugby field, his 118kg figure towering over his teammates. Peter Nduati, a lock, was possessed of seemingly inexhaustible energy and was a key figure in the defense. As the game kicked off, a little girl’s eyes followed the oval ball at every try, kick and scrum.
At the end, she had an icy comment.
“Dad, but I didn’t see you touch the ball!” she said, catching her father flat-footed.
“She felt ashamed that I never touched the ball, but I explained to her that for those other guys to score, I had to scrum for the ball and defend,” says Nduati.
While embarrassing for a father, that moment remains at the core of Nduati’s management strategy at Resolution Health Group, which he founded a decade ago.
As the chief executive officer of one of the biggest medical insurance providers in Kenya with operations across East Africa, he believes that teamwork and having each employee do what they do best, is the winning formula.
“The rugby strategy works for me. As a lock number five, you need to defend a lot and you need to trust your teammates holding you up, when you jump for the ball. When crashing into someone, you know the people behind you will protect you. My skill was strength. I was not fast, so I would offload the ball to the faster players. In business you need to know your weaknesses and bring on board people with the strengths you lack. I am not good in finance, and I am not detailed; I am a conceptual guy. So I got finance and operations people who are detailed,” he says.
In just 10 years, he has steered the company from a scrappy startup to a Ksh2.4 billion ($27.7 million) turnover machine, with plans to list the group on the Nairobi Securities Exchange (NSE) by 2015 and spread the ownership to more East Africans.
The journey to the top league, Nduati says, has been anything but smooth. When he started off in 2001, after quitting a senior job at a leading Nairobi-based health insurance company, he was armed only with a business plan he had developed in 1997. He took with him a bunch of clients and 17 employees to found First Benefits Ltd, which partnered with South African Metropolitan Health Group. The 40:60 partnership, however, did not last long and soon the restless entrepreneur found himself scouting for investors.
“I had written a business plan to set up an insurance company; not a health insurance company… When the Metropolitan partnership failed, I decided to actualize the plan,” he says.
Nduati, a chartered insurer and economics graduate, raised Ksh40 million ($461,405) in capital from family and two angel investors. Resolution Health East Africa was launched in November 2003, making it the first registered medical insurance provider in Kenya.
Turnover for the first year was $1 million from 3,000 members and topped $3 million in the second year. Growth averaged 50% annually until 2008, when post-election violence in Kenya pushed the company, like many others, into the red.
In 2009, Nduati acquired the shares of South Africa’s Universal Healthcare, which owned 25% of the company, to get the critical mass to attract cash-flash investors for capital to convert into a general insurance company. In 2010, Nduati eventually won over the African Development Corporation, which acquired 25% of his company for Ksh184 million ($2.1 million).
Then, in 2011, the Kenyan insurance law was amended, requiring health insurers to either convert into general insurance or become brokers. Three companies applied, and so far two, including Resolution, have been approved after raising Ksh300 million ($3.5 million), restructuring management and cutting owner-managers’ shareholding.
“I now hold only 20 percent shares as required by the rules,” Nduati says.
Even as a fully-fledged insurer, Resolution Insurance Company is not underwriting all general insurance products yet.
“We now provide all insurance covers employees require such as group life, group medical insurance, travel insurance, personal accident and employers liability, both group and individual.”
The company has subsidiaries in Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, and is currently setting up in South Sudan, supported by more than 400 agents and brokers are working on a pan-African strategy to push the group’s presence into more sub-Saharan Africa markets.
Even though he is a relatively new player in the industry, the group has a 20% market share in Kenya and is ranked 12th, by balance sheet size, in an industry of 43 players.
Nduati has been an industry trendsetter. He is credited for revolutionizing health insurance in Kenya. In 2007, he took a bold step that opened up medical coverage for people with HIV.
“We figured that an HIV-positive person complies most with doctors’ instructions and thus lowers the risk. So we designed a product that included HIV cover. Employers loved it, because it covered both those who had the virus and those who did not have it and did not require medical test before employment. This gave confidence to people that if you get it while on our program you are covered,” he says.
At the time, 17% of the Kenyan population was HIV-positive and the company simply spread the risk across the entire population, thus cushioning itself with the 83% who did not have the virus.
But, according to Nduati, that was not Resolution Health’s biggest milestone.
“The defining moment came when we started offering gynecological and maternity products in 2004. They were seen to be pro-feminine and because most budget decisions are made by ladies, it struck a positive chord. We grew by 65 percent that year,” he says.
Before the success, mistakes were made. First, he underestimated public apathy about insurance. Because people had lost money with current operators, few were willing to commit their cash to insurance. It took investments in lobbying and education to crack the market.
Besides winning several industry awards, Nduati finished second in the Entrepreneur of the Year category in the All Africa Business Leadership Awards last year.
As an entrepreneur, Nduati says you must focus on your vision and keep to your lane.
“We are aggressive in innovation and expansion. When we can find an acquisition target, we acquire. You must also employ well. Select right at lower level because these will be the next leaders. We run an internal leadership program to build leadership skills,” says Nduati, who owns four other businesses in security, logistics, music and human resources.
With insurance penetration in Kenya at a mere 3%, Nduati is combining the stealth of a rugby player and speed of a horse to grow his market share. The fact that less than one million people service private health insurance in Kenya has powered a 25% annual growth in the industry, and over 40% growth for Resolution Health.
In East Africa, insurance penetration is just 2%, while economies are growing at an impressive 5%.
“The challenge is not growth of insurance. Its management is,” says Nduati.