Business Innovation: New goals for the Insurance Market in Ecuador
- Carlos Ramirez
- Sep 15, 2022
- 9 min read
Updated: Jun 26
By Carlos Ramirez
The pandemic that hit the world in 2020 forced all economic sectors to be innovative and implement new ways to sell their products. In Ecuador, micro and macro companies struggled to adjust to these new technological requirements. These companies had been handling physical forms, premiums, contracts and doing face to face sales, things that neighboring countries were already carrying out digitally. Technological development in Ecuador is not as advanced as in other countries and there were a number of technical failures during this process that prevented us from providing the service that the community expected. It was during this time that the insurance industry had to make the decision to pivot in order to keep up with the demands of the world, and that's exactly what it did.
Innovation almost always requires us to explore unknown territories. In 2019, Ecuador remained stable according to government reports, but in reality things were different. The changes that Ecuador had suffered in recent years, before the pandemic, in terms of education, health and social security, would begin to take their toll during the pandemic. The changes to academics exponentially affected the preparation of our professionals and education declined in many aspects. In terms of healthcare, Ecuador has high rates of malnutrition and this does not help the overall health of the population. Additionally, safety had been affected by the idea of opening our borders, this being mainly the reason why insecurity is currently one of the most sensitive issues in the country. This micro-analysis of the state of Ecuador in 2019 tells a lot about the aspects of a developing society and with this information one can easily see what we were experiencing before the pandemic even began.
In March 2019, the digital and economic divide was heavily accentuated for the general population. According to INEC, the unemployment rate in 2019 was 3.9%, a figure that would not vary for 2021, in which the INEC reported the following data, “In 2021, the gross employment rate at the national level was 62.5%, at the urban level it was 58.4%, while in the rural area it was 71.7%” (INEC, 2021). Additionally, "the adequate employment rate at the national level was 32.5%, at the urban level 39.8%, and at the rural level 18.7%." (INEC, 2021) Most people are not satisfied with this data since notoriously the pandemic left a much higher percentage of people without work, people who today live from informal work, or who are on the streets. In Ecuador, the measurement of official data does not always adhere to the truth when there is still an unemployment rate of 3.6% in 2022. Although considered lower than previous years, it still shows economic shortcomings that impede development and progress post-pandemic.
