"A Friend Indeed": Evaluation of an Insurance Education Radio Campaign in Kenya

The overall purpose of the ICE-K radio campaign was to increase awareness and knowledge of insurance and risk management among Kenyans, with the ultimate goal of increasing individual insurance use and closing existing knowledge gaps in insurance literacy among low-income household members. The training of trainers taught participants from Kenyan insurance companies to better tailor insurance product information to the needs of the low-income market, and prepared staff from AKI and the radio production partner, Advertising Matters, to tailor the campaign to the same low-income consumers. Technical assistance was offered to select insurance companies and microfinance institutions with an interest in marketing to low-income consumers after the end of the radio campaign.  Finally, quantitative and qualitative data were collected to analyze the impact of the radio program.

The evaluation team developed methods to measure uptake and understanding of the radio content and messages, as well as changes in behavior. The report presents the results of research about the ICE-K radio campaign with listeners in Kenya and is intended to assess its efficacy before replicating similar media campaigns in the future, in Africa or elsewhere.  The project also represented an opportunity to test the adaptability of MFO’s Risk Management and Insurance training curriculum to a mass media campaign. Report findings, based on baseline research in August 2010 and endline research in January 2011, reveal that the radio campaign had a measurable impact in changing listener awareness and knowledge, towards insurance.