THE Insurance and Pensions Commission (IPEC), in partnership with FSD Africa, has launched a regulatory sandbox aimed at driving innovation, strengthening consumer protection and expanding insurance access in Zimbabwe.
The sandbox, unveiled in Harare on Friday, is being positioned as a key step towards modernising the insurance sector and improving financial inclusion by allowing new products and services to be tested in a controlled environment.
FSD Africa principal for innovation for resilience, Elias Omondi, described the launch as a major milestone for Zimbabwe’s insurance industry.
“Today, we are witnessing one of the greatest milestones, particularly in the advancement of insurance in Zimbabwe, and what we do as FSD Africa, we look at how we support policy development, particularly when it comes to closing the protection gap in the continent,” Omondi said.
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“So, under the Risk, Resilience and Regulatory Lab, we have been working very closely with IPEC in terms of how they can be really on a commercial market. However, we are looking into how then the regulator can really enable some of the most interesting and most innovative solutions to be tested within a sales space.”
Zimbabwe has become the eighth African country supported by FSD Africa to establish a regulatory sandbox.
Omondi said the platform would allow regulators to test future regulations while safeguarding vulnerable or excluded consumers.
“The insurance industry requires a lot of agility. The insurance industry requires a lot of innovation. And the only thing that most of the time blocks some of these innovations have been cited to the regulations,” he said.
The sandbox is expected to provide insurers and start-ups with a platform to test products, services and technologies before they are rolled out to the broader market.
Insurance Council of Zimbabwe chief executive Donald Muthe said the initiative would encourage responsible innovation and help the industry respond to declining insurance penetration.
“The insurance penetration in Zimbabwe around the mid-90s was in the region of 7%. We now have a penetration ratio that is below, and that is unfavourable when you compare that to sub-Saharan Africa, and more substantially unfavourable when you use the global benchmarks,” he said.
“So the industry has a major responsibility to retain the penetration ratio to respective levels that it was in the mid-90s, and we have the capacity to do that.”
He added: “We appreciated that such sandbox platforms can foster innovative hubs, accelerators, and can help us to monitor disruptive technologies and reduce the time that it takes to take the product to the market by smoothing the authorization process for the regulator.
“However, the industry is very clear that sandboxes are not a silver bullet for dealing with risks or alerting risks, but it enables controlled experimentation and learning. Our key advantage is the ability to manage emerging systemic risks to the financial value chain.”
IPEC commissioner Grace Muradzikwa urged companies and start-ups to take advantage of the sandbox platform.
“Following the issuance of Secular 28 of 2025, IPEC opened the first application window from the 1st of November to the 31st of December 2025,” she said.
“We eagerly anticipated a wave of applications that would bring the sandbox to life. Unfortunately, IPEC did not receive any applications during the first application window.
“And we have been reflecting carefully on this outcome, a very disappointing outcome. We believe, perhaps, the primary explanation is a lack of awareness about the sandbox, not the absence of innovation, ideas or willingness.”
