Reconcilia

Our solution, Reconcilia is a multi-sided mobile, web and USSD platform that provides on-demand access to a range of financial instruments such as microinsurance, microsaving, microlending and pensions that builds the financial resilience of users and protects them against social and financial risks through an interoperable economic and social identity system. 

Reconcilia provides revolving credit for informal sector workers and people in the low to middle income bracket that usually face financial constraints and shocks caused by unforeseen occurrences such as economic recessions and hardships which lead to lack of liquidity and the inability to save.

The robust technological platform combines a strong backend to an intuitive and easy-to-use consumer-facing mobile, web and USSD interface that would support the provision of bundled value of services that help to effectively and efficiently register, collect contributions, provide Retirement Savings Account support, pay benefits and provide financial advisory services to this class of workers.

Every year millions of people across Sub-Saharan Africa especially women and the poorest segments of society are denied access to crucial services such as healthcare, social protection and insurance stemming from their lack of liquidity and their inability to save thereby pushing them into extreme poverty, financial hardships and suffering. One major reason why these people do not have access to social protection services is because they do not have or belong to any recognized or organized groups.

Social Insurance (SI) coverage is low and reaches
mostly formal sector workers
• SI systems are fragmented and inequitable
• Subsidy systems are non-transparent, often
regressive and distort incentives to work and save
• Social assistance tends to have low impact due to
small benefits and weak links to human capital
development
• Active labor market programs are underdeveloped,
especially for the most vulnerable workers

“In the wake of the COVID-19 crisis, identifying and providing social protection to informal sector workers, who do not have coverage but are vulnerable and may slip into poverty, has become more critical than ever. The WURI program can support social insurance systems for the informal sector, that are interoperable with social registries and build regionally on foundational identification platforms”
(Dena Ringold, World-Bank, Africa Regional-Director for Human Development)

Entrepreneurs, and owners of informal small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – many of whom are women – represent a crucial, and sizable, component of many economies. This is particularly the case in West Africa, where SMEs are believed to constitute more than 70 per cent of all businesses in the sub-region.

Although these enterprises play an important role in society and the economy, their potential is often constrained by a lack of meaningful identification (ID). In particular, these individuals and business owners find it difficult to highlight the legitimacy of themselves and their firms, and to demonstrate their trustworthiness and credibility. Due to these issues, they are often unable to access social insurance services such as business support services, sourcing of new customers and suppliers, and professionalize and grow their businesses.

The Reconcilia platform's interoperability with social registries, will allow stakeholders carry out assessment of participants’ vulnerability and eligibility for fiscal incentives. This will help governments disburse prompt relief to the missing middle in times of crisis.  In addition, Reconcilia has the potential to improve efficiency at scale as well as support labour mobility, with portability of benefits, due to the robustness built on foundational identification systems.

Through an interoperable platform, Reconcilia integrates the four major components of Payments, Insurance, Credit and Savings  by building, aggregating and leveraging on new and existing Regional Identity systems and registries such as the Ecowas National Identity Card, Passports, Voter’s ID, Birth Certificates, Driver’s license as well as other country-specific recognized identity systems to provide financial risk protection and social insurance services for millions of  individuals and small businesses across Africa.

This provides inclusiveness to the millions of informal sector workers who are normally marginalized and fall in the "missing-middle" which denies the access to critical social protection programs and initiatives.

Reconcilia is designed such that it is available on all platforms right from USSD for feature phones, Android, iOS and Web, It also leverages on existing mobile money which a vast majority of the target population are already familiar with, enhancing usability.

The uniqueness of the Reconcilia platform is that it integrates the four major components of Payments, Insurance, Credit and Savings by building, aggregating and leveraging on new and existing Regional Identity systems and registries such as the Ecowas National Identity Card, Passports, Voter’s ID, Birth Certificates, Driver’s license as well as other country-specific recognized IDs to provide financial risk protection and social insurance services for millions of informal sector workers across Africa.

Reconcilia provides social insurance products for farmers, market women, small-scale enterprises, the self-employed and those working in the informal economy. Clients can save daily, weekly or monthly, with flexible contribution amounts, using their mobile phone (mobile-money) or via cash payment.
This was our motivation for starting Reconcilia and founding a company that prides itself in developing innovative yet simple ways of getting traders and other informal sector  workers to prepare adequately against unforeseen circumstances.

Reconcilia aims to leverage the power of informal collective saving schemes through a digital and decentralised collective wallet for saving groups. Reconcilia allows both the unbanked and underbanked population to access financial services without necessarily having a bank account.


The Reconcilia platform constructs financial identities for people who have no traditional credit history which helps in accessing credit from Financial Service Providers and other stakeholders

How It Works

With the Reconcilia platform, Users set aside funds ranging from as low as USD0.50 in a cumulative manner into their Reconcilia accounts using the already dominant mobile money platforms in-order to offset their social risks during economic downturns and pandemics such as COVID-19. These contributions are channelled into their savings, insurance and pensions plans to allow them access the benefits accrued over a period of time. 

This can be done at their convenience either daily/weekly and monthly as they can even set a standing order.

Every time the user sets aside funds, that transaction record is used to build a credit score for the user's credit line. Reconcilia users can then get short-term smaller extensions (in form of loans) on top of their savings and annual bonuses to offset their emergency needs

So far we have been able to serve 1500 users through 75 service providers. Processed 47,810 transactions since inception with a total amount 120,000 in transactions.

The robust technological platform that combines a strong backend to an intuitive and easy to use consumer-facing mobile, web and USSD interface that would support the provision of bundled value of services that help to effectively and efficiently register, collect contributions, provide Retirement Savings Account support, pay benefits and provide financial advisory services to this class of workers.

Increasingly, social protection programs are designed to be adaptable, so that support can be increased during difficult times, when conflict, economic shocks, or weather-related disasters would otherwise erode human capital.

Apart from providing struggling informal sector workers and their families with supplemental income, social insurance also increases access to information and services, improve productivity, protect the elderly, and support people while they look for work.

The Key Activities we are focused on will include

• Needs assessment
• Educating and sensitization
• Community building and Organization into organized groups
• Pilot programmes
• Sign Up and Onboarding
• Profiling informal sector workers based on interoperable social and economic-based Unique Identity that integrates into existing registries and Identity databases
• Registering
• Saving
• Regular reminders, Tips and Updates
• Rewards for meeting goals
• Disbursement

The Outputs that will be achieved include

• Beneficiaries can purchase better goods in the incidence of economic shocks. They have a financial cushion to buy food, medicine, water and other basic household items.
• Have access to better services such as education and healthcare
• Users have better socio-emotional functioning since they have reduced stress and depression.
• Prevention of risks through the diversification of income sources, better employment opportunities.

• Facilitated and increased enrollment to social insurance through Reconcilia platform
• Improved Nutrition - Increased resources for
  poor families reduce hunger and malnutrition; Improved nutrition in first
  1000 days of life have huge impact on future incomes/productivity.
• Access to Education and health - The transfers during shocks preserve human capital; Transfers and school feeding helps meet implicit and opportunity costs of education, boosting enrollment and attendance 

The Desired outcomes of our key activities will be:

• Reduced Poverty and Vulnerability
• Reduced inequality
• Increased savings
• Lower morbidity
• Better nutrition

National level
- Promotes social cohesion, enables reform - Stimulates aggregate demand

Household level
- Fosters accumulation of assets - Increases entrepreneurial activity - Increases/preserves human capital

Community level
- Creates productive assets - Improves functioning of labor markets - Creates local spillovers from increased demand



The overall impact is to Reduce Poverty, Improve Health and well-being, Improve the Industry Innovation and create more opportunities and equity for the millions of people we serve in Africa.

Our Reconcilia platform is built using the Principles of Digital Development which ensures Human Centered design as a foundational principle that critically addresses the needs of millions of informal sector workers across West Africa and the rest of the continent.


Our 3 Guiding Objectives are:

• Resilience for the vulnerable by insuring against impacts of different shocks.
• Opportunity for All - By Promoting human capital and access to productive work.
• Equity for the poor and excluded by Protecting against dire poverty and loss of human capital.

Our goal is to make the solution an Open Source platform that will enable partner organizations and key stakeholders to build on the aggregated data points and insights that will be created from our platform.

The long term impact will be better streamlined data for actionable and evidence-based decision-making through insights and analytics.

The Identity and Access APIs maintain unique identity for users and applications that connect to the platform. The platform delivers Authentications (including 2-Factor Authentication) and Authorization in a flexible and easy way to identify users and grant secure access to user resources


The robust technological platform that combines a strong backend to an intuitive and easy to use consumer-facing mobile, web and USSD interface that would support the provision of bundled value of services that help to effectively and efficiently register, collect contributions, provide unemployment benefits, health insurance and pension benefits.
This will help governments, development partners and other stakeholders to provide Retirement Savings Account support, pay benefits and provide financial advisory services to this class of workers.

Our solution is designed based on the Principles for Digital Development which takes into account designing for scale, designing with the user in mind, open innovation among others. 

The Reconcilia platform has been designed such that it is available on all platforms right from USSD for feature phones, Android and Web. It also leverages on existing mobile money which a vast majority are already familiar with, enhancing usability. The integration with different ID systems and social registries leverages identity as a core functionality in the delivery of the solution.

We combine voice, SMS and Interactive Voice Response with mobile, web and USSD features to help users interact with the platform based on their language or geographical location.

By leveraging on existing mobile money platforms, we tap into a technology solution which is ubiquitous and has been adopted by the mass market with great results. This makes the USSD  a core delivery channel for our solution to scale and thrive in multiple markets.

Our solution can be easily integrated into existing platforms and applications because of the API architecture we are using for the backend of the application.

Our API architecture will allow for seamless integration into existing platforms, initiatives and databases that will allow for cross-platform collaboration, scaling and measurable impact.

The Identity and Access APIs maintain unique identity for users and applications that connect to the platform. The platform delivers Authentications (including 2-Factor Authentication) and Authorization in a flexible and easy way to identify users and grant secure access to user resources. In a future scale up of the platform, we will integrate a blockchain system to provide transparency, accountability and immutability to stakeholders that interact with the platform.

Our solution integrates Interactive Voice Response feature which guides users in a selected local dialect in addition to the usage of the mobile, web and USSD platform. The online and offline functionality of the mobile app allows users to interact with the platform when there is no internet connection and later synchronize all data when they are back online.
Users who don't have a smartphone have the option of using the USSD or IVR channel to interact with the platform.

We leverage group formation and use of community agents  and opinion leaders in areas where there is little to no internet access. This provides accountability and promotes adoption due to the trusted networks and familiarity in a local setting.

Our solution currently serves 12,000 users. In one year we are targeting to reach One million(1,000,000) users and subsequently reach 5 million(5,000,000)users in 5 years through partners scaling into new markets.

We plan on rolling out the solution in one country in the first year. In the next 12 months , we will be executing a strong implementation plan, establish key partnerships, activate promotions and intensive sales and marketing to onboard our first million users.

We will then add at least two countries per year for the next 5 years.
We are targeting to serve at least 5 million users in the next 5 years.

We are targeting to reach one million users in the next 12 months and reach 5 million users in 5 years.
We will roll out in at least 1 new country every year for the next 5 years. We will secure partnerships with mobile network operators, development partners, technology companies, financial institutions, corporate organizations and governments to scale the solution.

We are focused on achieving at least 90% active usage for users on the platform to rewards, loyalty points and incentive packages to help users reach saving targets and milestones.

We will be achieving these goals by scaling into other markets through replication, partnerships in new countries and cross-platform collaboration and sharing of resources.

Potential barriers that exist include lack of financial resources to scale the solution, lack of human resources, cultural barriers, technical infrastructure in different countries as well as market dynamics

We plan to overcome these barriers through partnerships with organizations that operate in multiple countries such as Mobile Network Operators, Financial Service Providers, Development partners among others. These partnerships will help us tackle technical infrastructure challenges related to deployment of the solution.

For financial barriers, we plan on building a viable and sustainable business model which will help us scale. Also we will raise follow-on funding in the form of equity, grant or debt to scale the solution.

With regards to technical infrastructure barriers, we will establish partnerships with technology companies and mobile network operators in multiple countries to scale our solution via existing platforms.

We also look to overcome implementation barriers through partnerships with development organizations through the World Bank Group's network who will provide strategic advise, leadership, resources, capacity building and technical assistance.

With regards to cultural barriers we will partner with community-based groups and leaders that will help to drive acceptance, adoption and active usage of the platform. 

With different market dynamics, we will look for strategic advise and leadership through partner organizations, market leaders and country-specific sector experts.

We have 17 people in total working on the solution. We have 9 Full time Staff, 5 part time staff and 3 contract workers

Our team has a complimentary mix of business, operational and technical expertise with combined experiences in multiple sectors such as financial services, agriculture, informal sector, rural development, corporate organizations, development sector work and international business.

Team Roles are outlined below


Chief Executive Officer - Amos Narh Doku - (MBA in Accounting & Finance with 10 years experience in Health Insurance and Healthcare administration.)
Chief Strategy Officer - Kelvin Ashie (Alumnus of MEST Africa Technology Programme with  5 years experience in Product Development, Marketing Strategy and Growth Strategy)
Chief Product Officer - Abdul Sotomiwa (5 years experience in Product Management, UI/UX and Technical Management)
Chief Technology Officer - Charles Thompson (6 years experience as Fullstack Software Engineer)
Chief Operations Officer - Isaac Kankam Okyere (8 years experience in Operations, Human Resource and Business Management in Insurance and Health Management Organizations)
Head of Business Development - Olivia Nyarko ( 7 years experience as Healthcare Professional)

Platform Architect - Paul Opoku (software engineer with 12 years of professional experience in the high-tech industry. He is the architect of the Reconcilia core payment, identity and access platform.

Web Developer - Frederick Y. Gyebi (9 years experience as a technical consultant for high profile companies like Guinness Ghana, Unilever, KPMG, GNPC, Beige Capital, Databank etc. He was also part of a team of consultants who developed the Government of Ghana IPPD3 payroll system and also part of the Ghana Broadcasting TV license Payment Collection System development team.

Mobile Developer Nana Osafo Akoto (10 years experience in building enterprise, mobile and web applications.)  

The organizations we are currently working with are UNICEF Ghana, Fidelity Bank, Japan International Development Corporation, Ghana Health Service and the Ministry of Health. These partners are mainly implementing partners who have helped us extend our solution to a wider target market.

These partner organizations have provided us with access to network, technical assistance and resources to achieve great results.

Our social protection revenue model:

We have four revenue models for our social protection innovation, Reconcilia

 2.5% withdrawal fees by healthcare providers

2.5% Cost of Funds payable by the bank

Commission from direct mobile money payments

2.5% on loans processed

Our health-focused part of the business makes money in two major ways. Our B2B model involves charging hospitals and Health Service providers a monthly subscription fee for the use of our Electronic Health Records (EHR) software; Our B2C model involves Service charges for telehealth scheduling and Commissions from registered patients through bookings, appointments, and their automated monthly savings via our platform. 


With all these channels of revenue, we will break even within 18 months with an initial investment of USD 150,000. We will then generate a profit of about USD 125,000 within the next 6 months with a high growth rate. This profit will then be injected back into the business for growth, scale and expansion into other markets

In order to achieve profitability we are focused on driving exponential sales through high sales volumes at low-cost distribution 

Unit Economics

In this sustainability pathway, we ensure that the most efficient pricing and cost models are engaged at the most affordable rates while maximizing profits so as to provide the most value to our users at a fraction of the cost. We ensure that the margins are high enough so as to ensure continuous cash flows and guaranteed profitability even at a small scale.

Scale

In order to achieve higher margins and profitability we are focused on driving exponential sales by selling enough units to maximize fixed costs at all times. This pathway works well when we are able to leverage on the high sales volumes at low-cost distribution to optimize operational efficiencies. This gives us leverage through efficiency and cost saving strategies at all times to eliminate operational and financial risks.

Cross Platform Monetization

One of the major elements of any viable business is to create multiple streams of income channels where continuous flow of cash will always be available. Health Direct will leverage on our multi-sided platforms to generate multiple revenue streams for the sustainability of the business. Income will be generated through service charges from our suite of products ranging from our financially inclusive packages for health consumers, digital health identity and health records database and telehealth services. This will always make us liquid empowering us to constantly deliver on our promise to our clients.

We have mainly bootstrapped our operations since commencement.
We won a grant of Five thousand dollars($5,000) from the Tony Elumelu Foundation in 2019.
We also won a cash Prize of Three Thousand Dollars from the Nikkei Group in Japan after winning the TICAD Japan/Africa Startup Pitch Competition.

We have generated revenue of Twelve Thousand Dollars($12,000) mainly from B2B channels

We are looking to raise Five Hundred Thousand Dollars($500,000) in funding to scale our solution. We are open to grant, equity or debt funding options because we believe the business model is financially viable and that will help us make impact whilst providing a sustainable return on investment.

We are looking at raising this $500,000 funding in three phases.

In the first phase, We are targeting to raise $150,000 for the 6 months of the project.
In the second phase we are targeting to raise $200,000 for the following 9 months and for the third phase we are targeting $150,000 for the following 9 months.

Our estimated expenses for 2020 are
Technology Development - $30,000
Sales & Marketing $35,000
Operations and Logistics $35,000
Equipment $30,000
Management and Administrative expenses $20,000

We are applying to the Mission Billion Challenge WURI West Africa Prize because we believe we have a great solution to a very critical problem. By working in partnership with the World Bank and other partner organizations we will be able to achieve scale and measurable impact through technical assistance, funding resources, knowledge sharing and collaborative implementation.
By winning the Mission Billion Challenge WURI West Africa Prize, we would get the financial resources to scale the solution, gain exposure that will help establish other partnerships, build a strong and sustainable business model through technical assistance and replicate the solution in other markets.

We believe the technical resources and support that will be provided through the Google Developer Experts program will be a valuable resource that will help our team to accelerate implementation to scale our solution.

We would love to partner with the World Bank to roll out our solution through their partner network.
We would like to partner with mobile network operators to integrate our solution into their networks to reach a mass market of target users.
We currently have in mind MTN, Vodafone and Orange since they operate in multiple countries.

We would also like to partner with Financial Institutions to form collaborative business arrangements where we leverage their networks to scale our solution and also work with them to have access to new clients through the untapped informal market. We will work with these Financial Institutions to develop innovative products and services for the users of our Reconcilia platform and grant them access to them as potential customers in the relatively untapped informal sector market.