Sim Shagaya’s Myka Aims to Replicate Agency Banking’s Fintech Disruption in Insurance
More than 70% of Nigerians have no form of insurance, according to the Nigerian Council of Registered Insurance Brokers (NCRIB). The most common explanation is that Nigerians simply do not believe in it. Sim Shagaya, founder of Konga, uLesson, and Miva Open University, spent time testing that assumption, and concluded the real problem was never belief. It was distribution. That conviction led him to build Myka, a licensed digital broker now entering Nigeria’s long-troubled insurance market with a fresh approach to Myka Nigeria insurance distribution.
Myka allows consumers and businesses to browse and purchase insurance products from up to 17 underwriters, including AIICO, Leadway, Cornerstone, Coronation, emPLE, Rex, and Tangerine, all from a single platform. Policy documents are delivered directly on WhatsApp, and customers can compare offerings across providers before committing. For motor and gadget insurance, the platform verifies vehicle data and matches identities against regulatory databases to cut down on the documentation errors that typically derail claims.
But Shagaya is clear that selling insurance through an app is only part of the vision. “People have talked a lot about embedding insurance in checkout flows and in digital flows, but I think that that is a mistake,” he said. “The truth is that the flows in Nigeria are very manual for a lot of businesses. Nobody has provided a channel for a car dealer to sell comprehensive or third-party insurance as the car is being sold. That is a role that Myka seeks to fill.”
The centrepiece of Myka’s strategy is its Structured Customer Referral Program, which was admitted into NAICOM’s regulatory sandbox in May. The program explores a community-based model where trusted individuals, a pharmacist, a travel agent, a community association leader, can refer or facilitate insurance sales within their networks through Myka’s partner platform. The parallel to agency banking is intentional. Just as local agents extended financial services into communities that banks could not reach, Myka is betting the same model can work for insurance.
The business model relies on commissions earned from providers for policies sold through its platform and network, a standard approach in the brokerage space. What sets Myka apart is how it handles claims, building repair networks that connect policyholders directly to approved service centres. A customer with gadget insurance and a cracked screen can report the claim, get directed to a repair centre, and walk out without paying anything out of pocket. The same approach is being extended to vehicle insurance.
Nigeria’s insurance industry recorded over ₦4 trillion ($2.9 billion) in total assets in Q4 2025, per the National Insurance Commission. Yet most of that activity is concentrated in large corporate policies. Retail remains thin, driven by a trust deficit rooted in poor claims experiences, fragmented records, and a long history of fake insurance policies circulating in the market. The Nigeria Insurance Industry Reform Act 2025 has since put digitisation and retail expansion at the heart of sector reform, creating space for startups like Myka to operate with clearer guardrails.
Investors appear convinced. Myka closed an undisclosed pre-seed round backed by Ventures Platform, TLcom Capital, Shola Akinlade (co-founder of Paystack), Ridwan Olalere (founder of LemFi), and Olumide Soyombo (founder of Voltron Capital). Kola Aina, founding partner at Ventures Platform, pointed to Moniepoint as proof that agent-led models can achieve real scale in Nigeria. “We’ve always believed that there’s a significant opportunity to create consumption of insurance,” he said, adding that solving insurance at scale could meaningfully improve livelihoods and economic growth. Myka joins a growing field of Nigerian insurtech players including Curacel, Casava, and PaddyCover.
Myka Nigeria insurance distribution is the specific challenge Shagaya says he has been circling for years. “I’ve gained a lot of experience in Nigerian distribution, and I’ve not seen that distribution problem as acute anywhere as it is in insurance,” he said. “The scale of how underserved this market is staggering.” Whether his diagnosis is right, and whether pharmacists, travel agents, and community groups can become reliable insurance touchpoints, will determine how far Myka can go.
