LeapFrog hops into £2.8m deal

Social investment fund LeapFrog has invested $4.25 million (£2.8m) in a company that provides mobile insurance services to almost four million people across Africa and Asia.

The deal, brokered through the firm’s Edinburgh office, has seen it take a “significant” minority stake in Bima, which launched in 2010 and lets low-income customers buy products such as life and health insurance from as little as 13p a month over their mobile phones.

LeapFrog partner Stewart Langdon said: “Bima has a highly innovative model, using mobile phones to bring transaction costs down and enable people to buy the products that they desperately need.

“We’ll be helping them to expand into new markets and products. We’re very optimistic that together we’ll be able to serve millions more customers.”