Old Mutual launched two products in Kisumu today. The first, Motor-Rahisi, lets you pay for comprehensive car insurance over up to three months instead of the whole year at once. The second puts an Airalo eSIM inside Old Mutual Travel Insurance, so the same purchase that covers your trip also gets you mobile data where you land.

Kenyan motor cover comes in three tiers. Third party only pays for damage you do to other people and their property, and nothing for your own car. Third party fire and theft adds your car back, but only if it burns or gets stolen. Comprehensive covers your own car for accidents too, plus theft, fire and the third-party liabilities. It is also the expensive one.

Expensive because it is priced off the value of the car. Standard Chartered Kenya publishes its rates: 4.25% of the sum insured for cars below KES 2.5 million and 3.5% above that, with a minimum basic premium of KES 37,500, then the AA fee, levies and stamp duty on top. On a KES 1.5 million car that is roughly KES 63,750 in basic premium, due on renewal day. Miss it and the cover lapses.

Section 156(1) of the Insurance Act, Cap. 487 says no insurer shall assume a risk in Kenya until the premium is received. The industry calls it cash and carry. No money, no cover, and the insurer breaks the law if it writes the policy anyway.

The Insurance Regulations bend that in two places. Regulation 41 lets cover start early if a licensed bank guarantees the entire premium, or if the customer has a deposit with the insurer big enough to cover it. Regulation 43 then lists the policy types that can genuinely be paid in instalments: sickness schemes, aircraft and marine hulls, contractors’ all risks, performance bonds, a few others. Private motor is not on that list.

That leaves premium financing, which is how pay-monthly car insurance is normally sold in Kenya. A lender pays the insurer the full year’s premium on day one, your cover starts immediately, and you repay the lender in monthly instalments with interest. Old Mutual already owns a lender that does exactly this. Faulu Microfinance Bank, part of the same group, finances motor premiums over up to 10 months and asks for two months’ instalments upfront.

Old Mutual has not said whether Motor-Rahisi runs through Faulu or through something else, and it has not published a rate. So before you sign anything, ask for one number: the total you pay across the three months, against the total you would pay today. The gap between those two figures is what the instalments cost you.

An eSIM is a SIM card built into the phone. Instead of a plastic card, you download a profile and the phone joins the network. That is what makes it possible to buy a foreign line before you have left Nairobi.

Airalo sells those profiles to travellers. It started in 2019, runs out of Singapore, says it covers more than 200 locations with over 30 million users, and raised USD 220 million in July 2025. Inside the Old Mutual policy you pick a data plan, activate it digitally, and manage top-ups from the same place while you are away, so you land with data already working and your Kenyan line still in the phone.

Two things to check first. Your phone needs eSIM support, which rules out most budget Android handsets sold here. And Old Mutual has not said whether the data is bundled into the premium or bought separately on top, or what the plans cost.

Old Mutual General Insurance Kenya Managing Director Japheth Ogalloh used the launch to push households and businesses to review their cover before the rains. “Insurance is an important part of financial resilience, but protection also starts with preparedness,” he said.

The release frames El Niño as a possibility later in the year. It is firmer than that. GHACOF 74, the regional climate outlook issued on 18 August 2026, says El Niño has already developed and will strengthen through the rest of 2026. It gives a 90% chance of enhanced rainfall over north-eastern Kenya and seasonal totals above 400 mm in parts of central Kenya over October to December. Onset is expected early to normal across eastern and central Kenya, so if you are reviewing a motor or home policy ahead of the rains, you are working with weeks.

The Kisumu event was part of There Will Be Signs, the financial wellness campaign we covered when it started in Thika in May. It has since run through Nakuru, Mombasa and Eldoret. Old Mutual Life Assurance Kenya Managing Director Martin Karenju used the Kisumu stop to push savings, retirement planning and long-term investing.

Old Mutual Holdings made KES 882 million in the first half of 2026, more than it made in the whole of 2025, and its insurance service result swung from a KES 303 million loss to a KES 287 million profit. In July 2026 GCR raised Old Mutual General Insurance Kenya’s financial strength rating to A(KE) from A-(KE). A stronger general insurer can absorb the credit risk that instalments create, and the lump-sum premium is the barrier Old Mutual says it is trying to remove.

Motor-Rahisi is worth taking if the three-month total lands close to the one-off premium, and worth skipping if it does not. Ask your Old Mutual agent for that total before renewal day.