There is a version of Africa that exists in the minds of underwriters who have never been there. It is the version that takes six weeks to quote an African risk that would take 48 hours if it came from Frankfurt. It is the version that prices political violence cover as if African governments have little experience managing instability, when, Mikir Shah argues, some have become considerably better at it than their counterparts in the developed world.
Shah, chief executive officer of Africa Specialty Risks (ASR) based in London, has spent the past five years building a business around the gap between that imagined Africa and the real one. ASR wrote its first policy, property cover for a mine in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in February 2021 with eight employees. It now employs close to 200 people, operates Syndicate 2454 at Lloyd’s and expects to write approximately $500 million in gross written premiums in 2026.
“The thesis for this business came about from my own experiences,” Shah said. “My cousins, all my family friends were in business. Their experiences in trying to get insurance for new businesses and new investments into Africa, it wasn't possible in those days.”
The problem was never indifference, it was economics. A risk from sub-Saharan Africa might generate $20,000 or $30,000 in premium. The same underwriter’s time spent on a US risk could produce ten times that amount.
“It is common sense that you would focus on the larger risk,” he said. “And that is totally economically fine.”
The consequence, however, was that many legitimate risks were either priced punitively or declined outright. Local insurers were largely structured for retail and SME business rather than complex specialty risks placed on a facultative basis, leaving a gap that constrained investment.
“If you remedy that problem, you facilitate investment. You facilitate the investment and suddenly you have growth and you are bringing more people out of poverty. That is literally the thesis of this business.”
Closing that gap requires more than capital. Last year, ASR's underwriters collectively spent 1,400 days travelling across the markets they write.
“When you see the landscape you are underwriting, it really changes your perceptions,” Shah said. “The local markets see us as local because we spend so much time in these countries.”
Political violence remains one of the classes most closely associated with African risk in the London market. The history is not in dispute, what Shah questions is whether the assumptions built around it remain current.
“The governments have now understood how to manage these situations,” he said. “They know that you need to do things for people so that they are not in a position where they have no option but to riot.”
“When things do happen, because they have experience, they know how to deal with it quickly,” he said. “Ironically, we saw some of that in developed markets, and I think the developed markets were less capable of dealing with it rapidly to limit the damage.”
For brokers and underwriters placing political violence and terrorism cover, Shah's point is that risk models built on historic assumptions may no longer reflect present-day conditions.
The same perceptual lag applies to technology. The conventional narrative casts innovation as something that flows from developed markets to emerging ones. Shah sees it differently. Mobile money, the infrastructure underpinning digital finance across much of Africa, emerged from the need to move money safely in markets where traditional banking infrastructure was limited.
“The concept of mobile money comes from Africa,” he said. “Remember that.”
Rather than waiting for solutions developed elsewhere, many African markets built their own, bypassing stages of financial infrastructure that developed economies spent decades constructing.
ASR has applied a similar principle to insurance distribution. Its automated underwriting platform, ASR24-7, launched in 2025, allows local brokers to obtain instant quotes and bind cover for standardised risks without manual underwriter intervention.
Solar energy plants, directors and officers insurance and cyber cover are already live on the platform. Trade credit is expected to follow.
“Some of these solar plants are small and the premium size is not sufficient for a London underwriter to want to spend time on it,” Shah said. “So we use our own engines and our own AI tools to solve that problem.”
The demand is significant. According to the International Energy Agency, approximately 600 million people across Africa, nearly two in five, still lack reliable access to electricity. Private investment in solar, wind and geothermal projects is helping address that shortfall, creating insurable risks at every stage of development, from political risk and contract frustration cover through to construction, property and liability insurance.
In June 2026, Vitruvian Partners agreed to acquire a controlling stake in ASR from founding investor Helios Investment Partners, subject to regulatory approvals.
The deal will support expansion across East and West Africa, India, Southeast Asia and Latin America, broadening ASR's ambitions beyond its original geographic focus.
Success in developing markets depends less on avoiding losses than remaining committed when losses occur.
“We have seen global reinsurers go into developing markets, stay two or three years and pull out after one loss,” he said. “When they try to go back, everyone remembers they are not a consistent partner.”
Those comments return to the central theme of ASR’s growth story. The obstacle is not that these markets are unusually difficult to understand. It is that they are too often viewed from a distance.
“These countries have existed and the population have existed for thousands of years,” he said. “They function perfectly well. It is about understanding how they operate and fitting into their methodologies.”
For those tracking the future of specialty reinsurance in growth markets, that distinction matters. The insurance gap Shah identifies is not primarily a question of capacity. It is a question of perception. And unlike catastrophe exposure, perception can be recalibrated.
