A year and a half af­ter launch­ing a dig­i­tal plat­form along­side two prod­ucts geared to­wards mid­dle to low-in­come earn­ers, Re­pub­lic Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny is once again hop­ing to cov­er a less tar­get­ed mar­ket.

Al­though the com­pa­ny launched in 2021 with an ini­tial fo­cus on cred­i­tors’ life in­sur­ance on re­tail loans and mort­gages, it has grad­u­al­ly ex­pand­ed its reach. In Feb­ru­ary 2024, Re­pub­lic Life In­sur­ance stepped in­to the life in­sur­ance mar­ket as it launched its dig­i­tal plat­form.

Man­ag­ing di­rec­tor of Re­pub­lic Life Robert Sover­all has said the com­pa­ny has matched its ex­pec­ta­tions since then, and was now tak­ing ad­di­tion­al steps to ad­dress peo­ple oth­er­wise ex­clud­ed from in­sur­ance op­tions.

This has al­so in­formed RLIC two newest of­fer­ings, “En­dow­ment Sav­ings Plan” and ‘Serene Cov­er’ prod­ucts which were in­tro­duced on Ju­ly 4, 2025.

“We want­ed to do some­thing a lit­tle dif­fer­ent, where we can reach cus­tomers who may not have had ac­cess to life in­sur­ance pre­vi­ous­ly, we felt that there is a large mar­ket, an un­tapped mar­ket, of per­sons who are unin­sured,” he said.

Sover­all said while Re­pub­lic Life In­sur­ance is still much small­er in terms of mar­ket share to its more es­tab­lished com­peti­tors in the in­sur­ance mar­ket, the last year and a half has had its share of pos­i­tive signs with RLIC get­ting pos­i­tive feed­back from cus­tomers re­gard­ing the sim­plic­i­ty and trans­paren­cy of its dig­i­tal plat­form.

In­ter­ac­tions with cus­tomers, Sover­all ex­plained, have al­so in­formed changes in the RLIC plat­form based on cus­tomer feed­back, the most sig­nif­i­cant be­ing the ad­di­tion of dif­fer­ent pay­ment fre­quen­cies.

He said, “Some of the feed­back cus­tomers gave us is that they would like to have dif­fer­ent modes of fre­quen­cy. So, this year, we have added the op­tions to pay month­ly, quar­ter­ly, se­mi-an­nu­al­ly, and an­nu­al­ly. And as we re­ceive feed­back from our cus­tomers, we hope that we’ll be able to en­hance our sys­tem go­ing for­ward.”

He ex­plained that the com­pa­ny’s dig­i­tal-on­ly ap­proach has meant its ac­qui­si­tion cost is low­er due to the ab­sence of com­mis­sion agents and med­ical ex­ams. This has re­sult­ed in low­er pre­mi­ums.

Sover­all said Re­pub­lic Life’s low­er ac­qui­si­tion costs and com­pet­i­tive pre­mi­ums make it an at­trac­tive op­tion com­pared to tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance com­pa­nies.

RLIC’s poli­cies on­ly of­fer far less in terms of max­i­mum cov­er­age com­pared to larg­er in­sur­ance, with a cur­rent cap of $750,000, he said, stress­ing once again that his team of­fered poli­cies for mid­dle to low­er in­come fam­i­lies who of­ten would not have the op­tion of in­sur­ance cov­er­age.

“When cus­tomers com­pare prod­ucts with the tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance com­pa­nies, you would find that we would tend to be a lit­tle more com­pet­i­tive, and a lot of that has to do with our ac­qui­si­tion costs be­ing sig­nif­i­cant­ly low­er, so that cus­tomers may find that we are a more at­trac­tive op­tion when they’re shop­ping around,” Sover­all said.

“Al­so, our min­i­mum thresh­olds tend to be a lit­tle low­er, so that per­sons who are try­ing to find prod­ucts that they can af­ford and can meet their needs. So cus­tomers can go on­line and de­ter­mine what prod­ucts would sat­is­fy their needs and al­so meet their de­posits,” he said.

Sover­all ex­plained Serene Cov­er was launched to ad­dress the needs of el­der­ly cus­tomers who were pre­vi­ous­ly ex­clud­ed from in­sur­ance poli­cies.

“We found that the take up was quite good, but we recog­nise that we need­ed to add ad­di­tion­al prod­ucts. So based on the feed­back we re­ceived from clients, there were a num­ber of peo­ple over the age of 60 who, ei­ther be­cause of their health con­di­tion or be­cause of their age, were not el­i­gi­ble for in­sur­ance poli­cies from tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance com­pa­nies,” said Sover­all.

One of the prod­ucts RLIC de­cid­ed to launch was a guar­an­teed is­sue fu­ner­al in­sur­ance prod­uct called Serene Cov­er. This is a guar­an­teed is­sue, mean­ing some­one can­not be de­clined once they are age 18 and have not yet at­tained the age of 80. Po­ten­tial cus­tomers can al­so ap­ply for this prod­uct on­line.

“We do not have any med­ical ques­tions that you need to an­swer. We do have lifestyle ques­tions, and we do have cer­tain oth­er ques­tions on­line, but we are guar­an­teed that you will be is­sued,” said Sover­all.

He said this plan had been cre­at­ed based on chal­lenges sev­er­al peo­ple run in­to lat­er on in life as a re­sult of med­ical ex­pens­es erod­ing sav­ings plans.

Sover­all said, “What a lot of peo­ple told us is that, yes, some­times they have sav­ings, and the in­ten­tion is that the fam­i­ly could utilise those sav­ings when they pass to meet their fi­nal ex­pens­es. How­ev­er, what we have found is, and cus­tomers have told us this as well, that some­times you may have sav­ings to­day, but over time you may ac­cess it to meet cer­tain ex­pens­es that oc­cur.”

This par­tic­u­lar­ly ap­plies to peo­ple who be­come ill, who may have large med­ical ex­pens­es.

“So a lot of cus­tomers like to have an in­sur­ance pol­i­cy that’s set aside specif­i­cal­ly to meet their fi­nal ex­pens­es, be­cause they recog­nise that sav­ings can be de­plet­ed, and when they do pass on, their fam­i­lies may be fi­nan­cial­ly bur­dened in meet­ing their fi­nal ex­pens­es.”

How­ev­er, he ex­plained that RLIC would mit­i­gate risk on the pol­i­cy via a time-sen­si­tive clause, which he ex­plained would still af­ford some lev­el of re­turn for cus­tomers and fam­i­lies.

“Should you pass (away) with­in the first two years, you re­ceive a re­fund of pre­mi­ums. Af­ter two years, the full cov­er­age amount is payable to your ben­e­fi­cia­ries. Those pay­ments are made im­me­di­ate­ly up­on death.”

He ex­plained the pol­i­cy was a guar­an­teed is­sue with a min­i­mum pay­out of $10,000 and a max­i­mum of $100,000.

The En­dow­ment Sav­ings Plan, he ex­plained was tied to a more tra­di­tion­al in­sur­ance plan, but was aimed to­wards those plan­ning sav­ings for the fu­ture of their fam­i­lies and chil­dren.

He said it was de­vel­oped to pro­vide struc­tured sav­ings with in­sur­ance pro­tec­tion for young pro­fes­sion­als and fam­i­lies.

“It’s es­sen­tial­ly a short-term in­sur­ance prod­uct with an el­e­ment of sav­ings. So, we have three terms. You can have an en­dow­ment, for five years, 10 years or 15 years. And it’s ide­al­ly suit­ed for per­sons, sav­ing for ed­u­ca­tion­al pur­pos­es, or sav­ing for a wed­ding or sav­ing for a down pay­ment on a house,” he said.

RLIC’s roll­out was al­so ac­knowl­edged in the busi­ness sec­tor as the com­pa­ny re­ceived nu­mer­ous awards in­clud­ing the Sapi­ens Busi­ness Im­pact 2024 Award.

Sover­all ex­plained that the award was giv­en for the quick im­ple­men­ta­tion of the dig­i­tal end-to-end dis­tri­b­u­tion mod­el, as the tech­nol­o­gy ven­dor was im­pressed with Re­pub­lic Life’s abil­i­ty to in­te­grate var­i­ous ap­pli­ca­tions and de­vel­op a ful­ly dig­i­tal plat­form.