Independent report sheds light on how Foundation partners improve healthcare access
abc
In keeping with our commitment to transparency as well as evidence-based philanthropy, we’re pleased to share the Swiss Re Foundation’s first aggregated impact report. Prepared by 60_decibels, a global, tech-powered company that takes a customer-centric approach to measuring social business impact, the report affords valuable insights into how our partners are influencing low-income people’s access to healthcare.
Five health-focused social enterprises with which we’ve engaged in multiyear partnerships since 2021 agreed to participate in this rigorous independent assessment. Three of them, Baobab Circle (Uganda) , Clinicas del Azucar (Mexico) and Karma Healthcare (India), deliver healthcare to customers directly. The others – clinicPesa (Uganda) and NucleusIS (Nigeria) – provide microfinance solutions designed to make quality care easier to access.
Based on data gathered between September 2023 and December 2023 from a total of 1 408 customers of these five enterprises, the aggregate report’s key findings include:
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The average customer interviewed was 41 years old and living in an urban household with five members. Almost half of interviewees live on less than USD 5.50 per person per day.
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Every one of these enterprises offers a unique product or service, filling a critical market gap in its respective geography. Before becoming their customers, 92% of people surveyed say they lacked access to a comparable alternative.
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Customer satisfaction varied widely both across the five enterprises and across individuals.
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The average Net Promotor Score (NPS), a common gauge of customer satisfaction and loyalty, stands at 42 – which is favourable, but lower than the 60_decibels Global Benchmark of 50.
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Customer complaints centre on service efficiency, financial burden and healthcare system constraints.
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Customers in rural areas are more likely to report increased savings (84%) than peri-urban (76%) and urban customers (54%).
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The enterprises are having a positive impact. Of the people interviewed:
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84% say that since becoming customers of these enterprises, their quality of life has improved
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43% report experiencing significantly increased financial growth, better access to quality care and improved health management
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78% say that their ability to manage health-related risks has improved, 68% report increases in their financial savings.
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About the products and services provided, customers who report no change in their quality of life cite a lack of trust and reliability, slow service and low credibility. Most are first-time users.
We’ve shared the detailed aggregate findings from 60_decibels as well as the respective individual impact reports with all five participating partners. Lacking resources to fund such in-depth analyses on their own, they’ve welcomed the resulting insights and recommendations for improvement. As well as offering more tailored advice, 60_decibels recommends that they all work to increase customer satisfaction by building stronger programmes for onboarding new users, creating more frequent touchpoints with customers, offering more technical support and following up on customer feedback.
The Foundation, too, has learned important lessons from these impact reports, especially about the groundwork needed to gain reliable, actionable insights. This includes getting people’s up-front consent to collect their anonymised data for possible research, ensuring representative sampling and controlling for such factors as gender and age where sampling could be biased.
Another important takeaway for the Foundation is that the solutions offered by these health-focused social businesses appeal disproportionately to people in urban communities. This suggests that collaborating with NGOs will remain important to our efforts to improve healthcare access for low-income people in rural areas as well.
We’re now integrating these and other insights into the planning of our strategy for 2025-2027. We’ve also commissioned 60_decibels to assess 10 more projects drawn from both sides of our portfolio – Natural Hazard and Climate Risk Management, and Access to Health – over the next two years.
The aggregate report can be accessed here.
The individual reports can be found here:
Heartfelt thanks to the Foundation partners who participated in this research and to those of their customers who took the time to speak to the 60_decibels team.