Firms in the financial sector are leveraging on ICT for better service provision. This has in turn led to lower cost of service provision, better satisfaction from the clients and increased accessibility of the companies products. This was brought out in a few case studies presented during the ongoing CIO 100 Annual awards competition. The awards are been held for the first time in East Africa and

are taking place at the Nairobi Safari Park and Casino. Madison Insurance is among the insurance companies looking to expand the 2.8% reach of insaurance through the use of technology. James Nyakommitta, senior IT manager at Madison Insurance said there had been increased uptake of mobile phone technology for service delivery and the insurance industry had introduced new products as a response.Madison Insurance is a composite company writing both life & general business and managing assets worth kshs. 3.4 billion in 2009 , a life fund with an annual premium of kshs. 2.6 billion. The company has 11 branches in Kenya including some in Kisii, Meru and Machakos.

Traditionally, Madison's payment method has included cash and cheque payments to and from the insured in addition to electronic fund transfers (EFTs), bank orders, direct debits and check offs from the employers for premium payments.
Kenya , with 78% of its population numbering 48 million living in rural areas,  has presented a lot of challenges for the traditional method of payments. 60% of the companies customers lived in rural areas.  Furthermore, only 23% of adults had accounts in the 840 bank branches in the country .
This meant that customers in the rural areas had to travel to towns to access insurance products through banks. Cheque clearment would take 4 days while direct debits and bank orders were expensive and only affordable to the banked population. The check off system was also limited to the employed in a country with most of the population in informal employment.
Meanwhile, mobile penetration in Kenya had risen from 2% in 2001 to 39% in 2008 and projected to hit 67.5 % in 2012. The insurance company thus came up with a mobile system to address due to its availability in rural areas not covered by banks, and its costs. The system allows the insurance to channel payments and receive premiums through mobile payments.
Madison's mobile payment began with M-PESA integration in 2007 and Zap integration in 2009. Developed by Turnkey Africa, the system is integrated into the insurance firms system. Claims below Kshs. 1 million are handled through cheques and mobile payment depending on the customer's choice. Mobile payment is limited to a maximum of kshs. 35,000.
Mobile payments now accounted for 37% of payments while reducing cash, cheque, bank orders & debit from 14% to 4%, 20 to 5% , 5% to 3% and 15% to 5% respectively. EFTs had remained at 37%. Research by the firm had shown that 98% of customers felt it was faster,  98% thought it was more convenient, 96% thought it was cheaper and 98% thought it was cheaper.
Savings realized were an average of 3 hours in time savings and US $ 3(Kshs. 240) in the cost of payments processing per individual customers. Futhermore payments could now be made and realized on the same day.
The system had been developed at a one off investment of US $ 7500 and had realized an accumulated return on investment of US$ 16,800.
Nyakomitta says that the main challenge of the system has been the lack of an Application Programming Interface from M-PESA.