ImaliPay Embedded Insurance Platform
ANTHONIA OJO
ImaliPay — From Fintech Platform to Embedded Insurance Ecosystem
Leading end-to-end product design for a white-label embedded insurance platform deployed across airlines, e-commerce, hotels, remittance, and retail channels across Kenya and Zimbabwe
7+
Partner channels designed for
2
Markets launched Kenya & Zimbabwe
25%
Increase in conversion rate
31%
Improvement in user engagement
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ImaliPay began as a B2B fintech platform serving vendors and merchants across Africa. When the business pivoted to insurtech, I was the sole designer leading the product design end-to-end — building a white-label embedded insurance platform called Imali.Click that could be deployed across airlines, e-commerce, hotels, remittance services, in-store retail, and events, with insurance partners across Kenya and Zimbabwe. The result was a scalable, modular platform that reduced operational friction for partners, enabled faster go-to-market across multiple channels, and made insurance accessible to customers at the exact moments they were already transacting.
Role: Lead Product Designer (Sole Designer)
Company: ImaliPay · Nairobi
Timeline: Sep 2023 – Apr 2025
Tools: Figma · FigJam · Google Docs· Jira
01 —CONTENT
A platform in transition
ImaliPay started as a fintech company solving real operational problems for vendors and merchants across Africa. Before the pivot, I designed a full B2B financial operations platform including a multi-currency wallet system supporting NGN, KES, and ETB, a payments and collections module, a merchant management system, a messaging and reminders engine, a BNPL engine, and a Cash Management System for Access Forex.
This was complex, data-heavy, multi-stakeholder product work — and it gave me the foundation to lead the much larger design challenge that was coming.
Then the business pivoted.
ImaliPay saw an opportunity that most people missed: insurance adoption across Africa is critically low not because people don't want it, but because they never encounter it at the right moment. The insight was powerful. What if insurance could be embedded seamlessly into moments where people were already transacting? Buying a flight. Booking a hotel. Shopping online. Sending a remittance. I was brought in to make that insight real through design.
The fintech platform before the pivot
Dashboard
Multi-currency wallet overview with monthly transaction chart and recent activity feed
Payments Module
Pending, payout, collection, and settlement tabs with bulk payout and export functionality
Wallet Management
317 sub-wallets across NGN, KES, and ETB currencies with assign and return value controls
Buy Now -Pay later Engine
Instalment-based purchasing flow designed to expand access and reduce upfront payment barriers for underserved customers.
Messaging & Reminders
SMS and email delivery tracking with 80% success rate and full message history
Merchant Management
Merchant onboarding and activation with search, filter, and activity status management.
02 — The Problem
Insurance in Africa is broken at the distribution layer
Insurance adoption across Africa remains critically low. The reasons are well documented — products are complex, distribution channels are inaccessible, and trust between customers and insurers is fragile. Most people only encounter insurance at high-friction moments: walking into a branch, filling out lengthy paper forms, waiting days for approval.
For ImaliPay's insurance partners, the operational challenge was equally painful. Onboarding a new distribution channel required significant custom development effort, making it slow and expensive to scale across new partners and markets. The business needed a platform flexible enough to power completely different insurance experiences depending on where it was embedded, without rebuilding from scratch each time.
03 — My Role
Sole designer, end-to-end ownership
As the sole product designer on the insurtech pivot, I owned the entire design of the Imali.Click platform from discovery through to live deployment across multiple markets and partner channels. I worked directly with the product manager and engineering team, translating business and regulatory requirements into clear, scalable user flows
What I owned
End-to-end UX strategy for the full insurtech pivot
White-label embedded insurance journey design across 7+ partner channel types
Travel insurance microsite platform and full claims module
Partner-specific integrations: Kenya Airways, Tawuniya, Cannon, Globeconnect, Pacis
Agent Management Platform design for Pacis insurance agents
WhatsApp bot conversation flow design via Jitta for policy and claims support
Cross-market research with insurance partners across Kenya and Zimbabwe
Translating regulatory and operational constraints into scalable user flows
Prior fintech platform: wallet, payments, merchant, BNPL, and CMS modules
04 — Platform Architecture
One engine, many contexts
The core design challenge was not building one insurance journey. It was building a single flexible platform that could power completely different experiences depending on where it was embedded. A Kenya Airways passenger opting into travel insurance mid-booking needed a different flow to a customer purchasing insurance at an in-store retail point, even though the underlying policy and claims process was identical.
I solved this through a modular, white-label architecture. The core insurance journey, policy selection, application, payment, and claims, was designed as a reusable system that could be skinned, configured, and deployed for any partner without rebuilding from scratch. Each partner integration was a configuration of the same underlying design system, not a bespoke build.
Partner Channels Designed For
✈️ Airline (Kenya Airways)
🛒 E-Commerce
🏪 In-store Retail
🏨 Hotels & Bookings
💸 Remittance
🎟️ Events
🌐 Microsite
🇿🇼 Zimbabwe Market
📋 Agent Platform (Pacis)
💬 WhatsApp Bot
05 — Key Products
Seven products, one platform
Each product drew from the same modular design system but was adapted for its specific channel context, user expectations, and partner branding requirements.
🌐
01
A standalone microsite allowing customers to purchase travel insurance directly. Included a full claims flow from submission through to status tracking and resolution.
Live · Multiple markets
✈️
Live · Multiple markets
Kenya Airways — Opt-in Travel Insurance Embedded opt-in insurance within the Kenya Airways flight booking journey. Designed for minimal friction. A clear, low-commitment step with transparent pricing and instant policy confirmation.
Live · Kenya
🔄
Tawuniya — Multi-channel Embedded
Five separate embedded journeys for Tawuniya across e-commerce, in-store, remittance, hotels, and events, all from the same white-label system, adapted per channel context.
5 channels
📋
Agent Management Platform (Pacis)
A web platform for insurance agents to manage policies, customers, and claims on behalf of Pacis, reducing manual workload and improving visibility across their book of business.
Live · Kenya
💬
WhatsApp Bot (via Jitta)
Designed conversation flows for a WhatsApp bot handling policy inquiries and claims support, meeting customers on a channel they already used daily, improving accessibility in low-smartphone markets.
Conversational UX
🏢
Cannon Microsite
A partner-branded microsite for Cannon's travel insurance distribution, designed to match Cannon's brand identity while maintaining the core Imali.Click insurance journey underneath.
White-label
Insurance product screens
06 — Impact & Outcomes
Measurable change across markets and channels
The platform is now live, serving underserved communities across sub-Saharan Africa. The shift from paper-based to digital-first operations delivered real operational improvements at scale.
7+
Partner channel types designed and deployed across the platform
2
African markets launched — Kenya and Zimbabwe — with architecture ready to scale
25%
Increase in conversion rate through simplified information architecture and optimized flows
31%
Improvement in user engagement through redesigned journeys and reduced friction
↓
Reduced operational friction for insurance partners through modular white-label system
↑
Faster time-to-market for new partner integrations — no custom rebuild required per channel
07 — What I Learned
Distribution is the product
Leading the design of a platform pivot taught me that the hardest design problems are not about individual screens — they are about systems. Designing one insurance journey is straightforward. Designing a platform that can deliver that journey across airlines, hotels, e-commerce stores, and WhatsApp simultaneously, while remaining coherent and trustworthy in each context, requires thinking at an architectural level that goes beyond UX.
I also learned that in emerging markets, distribution is the product. The most elegant insurance journey in the world fails if it's not where the customer already is. Embedding insurance into existing transactions — rather than asking customers to seek it out — was the insight that made the platform valuable. My role as a designer was to make that insight invisible: to create flows so natural that customers barely noticed they were buying insurance at all.
Finally, being the sole designer across a platform of this complexity taught me how to prioritize ruthlessly, communicate design decisions clearly without a design team to lean on, and maintain consistency across multiple products simultaneously — skills I carry into every project I work on.
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Posted May 13, 2026
Designed an embedded insurance platform increasing conversion rates by 25% in Kenya and Zimbabwe.
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