First Mutual Limited is the product of the demutualisation of First Mutual Life Assurance Society of Zimbabwe.

As part o
f that process, all employees, assets and liabilities of the Society were transformed to the First Mutual Group with ef f
ect from 1 July 2003.
First Mutual Limited is the holding company of First Mutual Life Assurance Company, African Ac tu arial Consultants,
First Mutual Reinsurance and various property holding companies.

First Mutual Limited is a holdi ng company with diverse interests in the financial services and property sectors. First
Mutuals core subsidiaries are invo lved in the provision of life assurance and related products, with a strong and
growing presence in asset managemen t, sh ort-term insurance, property investment and actuarial consultancy.First
Mutual has developed key competencies and critic al mass that can be leveraged to propel it into a competitive and fully
diversified financial services group.
rst Mutual Holdings Limited is an investment holding company. The Company's business is that of the provision of short-term insurance,
health insurance, life and pensions, reinsurance, property management and development, actuarial consultancy services and wealth
management. Its segments include life and pensions business (long term insurance), which includes Life assurance and reassurance;
Health insurance, which consists of medical insurance business; Property and casualty insurance (short term insurance), which
comprises direct insurance and reinsurance; Property, which relates to the property holding company, and Other segment, which
consists of the holding company, wealth management and actuarial consultancy. Its subsidiaries include First Mutual Life Assurance
Company (Private) Limited, FMRE Property and Casualty (Private) Limited, FMRE Life and Health (Private) Limited, FMRE Property
and Casualty (Proprietary) Limited and TristarInsurance Company Limited, among others.

First Mutual Life today launched a new mobile based funeral assurance product
that is called e-FML, which suggests an acronym for Electronic First Mutual Life.
The service costs as little as $0.80 for $500 worth of funeral cover.

Heres a general outline of the product.

Firstly the service is not 100% mobile as was the case with EcoLife. To sign-up
for the service, you will have to physically buy a starter pack for $0.80 (includes
first month premium) which contains the service terms and conditions and a card
with a unique reference number. To complete the signup, the next step is to send
the reference and your personal details to one of three normal phone numbers
from each MNO which makes the cross network.
advertisement
Monthly premiums thereafter are paid either through EcoCash, debit order or
good old physical payments to any of their branches.

Invited guests testing the new e-FML mobile insurance product from First Mutual
Life
The good
The best part about this new product is its affordable and almost everyone
with can access cover for $0.80 a month. They also have higher value
packages to suite different income brackets.
e-FML does not need clients to sign any forms or go through any medical
examination. The cover also starts immediately for accidental death and
three months for death by natural causes.
What they could work on
The electronic aspect of the service is unfortunately limited. Notably, you
will have to make physical contact either at their offices or with their agents
to get the starter pack, without which you cannot access the service. The
convenience that comes with electronic systems is therefore partly lost.
The service does not have a short code and instead the texts are directed
to generic 10 digit phone numbers which is not standard practice for many
SMS or mobile based service.
Speaking to Techzim, First Mutual Lifes Colleta Simbanegamba said they have
already applied to POTRAZ to resolve the short code limitation and the next step
is to fully automate the service by removing the starter pack aspect, although
clients will still need to have unrestricted access the products terms and
conditions.

This is not the first time First Mutual Life has tried to tap into mobile phone based
insurance. They were the underwriters of the infamous EcoLife mobile
insurancebut as underwriters only, they had no direct link to EcoLifes failure.
Alfin Insurance also partnered with NetOne in 2011 and came up with a mobile
health insurance product that also failed to gain mass appeal.
Launching the service without partnering and integrating the offering to and
MNOs services means FML have full control of the product in how they drive t in
the market. It also means they are network neutral so any potential subscriber on
any network can access it.