First thing first; we are pretty good at insurance. General insurance? Piece of cake. Life insurance? We know it from alpha to omega and even the thereafter. Marine insurance? We take that like a fish does water. Pensions? Our knowledge on that has aged like wine.
Does that year ring a bell? It was the year when Kenyan men were first issued with identity cards. It was the year when the first long-distance telephone call was demonstrated in the United States. It was the year pop star Frank Sinatra and jazz legend Billie Holiday were born, too.
Something jazzy was happening in Kenya that year. The predecessor of the
Kenyan Alliance Insurance Company Ltd landed in Kenya, Sun Insurance Office and Alliance Assurance Company. It was called Sun Insurance Office and Alliance Assurance Company. It was a UK-based firm that had decided to place some of its ambitions on a ship and ferry them to Kenya.
It was a great sail, with the nascent Kenyan agency growing from strength to strength. After some time, the parent company ceased to operate through agency representation and opened branches.
The company kept growing and in the early 1960s, as Kenya was cranking up towards being a republic, Sun Insurance Office and Alliance Assurance Company held a wedding. In Kenya, the product of the merger was called Sun Alliance. Sun Alliance was considered a Kenyan branch of its parent company. But in 1979, the Kenyan Alliance Insurance Company was founded to take over its the operations.
Sun Alliance Started operations in January 1980. The Kenyan Alliance Insurance Company was incorporated with the sole purpose of taking over Sun Alliance group operations
After four years, we moved to the first floor of Chester House in Koinange Street. The company operated from there until February 2020. You may want to say we are inspired by the west and chasing sunsets and all that. Actually, some of our many products are meant to make lives smooth for people in their sunset years. Almost 40% of our business is in the pensions sector; so you can understand.
And we don’t have the word “Alliance” in our name for nothing. We are all about unity of purpose. That is why we are members of the Association of Kenya Insurers.
And when it comes to numbers, we put our money where our mouth is. Today, we are one of the most financially sound composite insurance companies in Kenya.
We have asset base in excess of Kshs. 7.6B. If you convert that into Kshs.1,000 Kenyan notes and lay them side by side in a single file, they will cover 972 kilometres. That means they can line the entire road from Nairobi to Moyale!
By the end of 2020, our Gross Written Premiums(GWP) was Kshs. 3.2 billion, and it has been growing every year.
And we’re not just perched in the capital. We have representation in Mombasa, Nakuru, Kisumu, Nyeri, Meru, Thika, Eldoret, Machakos, Kitui, Kitengela, Industrial Area, and Kakamega.
Kenyan Alliance means business in what it is doing and we are determined to become a leading regional insurance provider across various products, giving our customers the best.
We have grand dreams, among them is to be the market’s preferred financial provider renowned for innovation, expertise and security.
And, by the way, our favourite colour is blue. Partly because we believe the sky is only the lower limit.
