Build a Micro-Health Insurance Product for Lagos Market Traders

Lagos has over 200 formal markets and millions of informal traders who earn daily, spend daily, and have almost no financial buffer. A trader at Balogun Market might clear 15,000 naira on a good day and 2,000 on a bad one. Monthly insurance premiums built around salaried workers are structurally incompatible with this reality. When illness hits, most traders borrow from cooperatives, sell assets, or simply do not seek care. The problem is not that traders do not value health coverage. Research consistently shows they do. The problem is product design: premium cadence, claims complexity, hospital networks that exclude their neighbourhoods, and enrolment processes that assume a smartphone and a government-issued ID. A product built for this market needs to work around all of these. Your task is to design a micro-health insurance product for Lagos market traders. Your deliverable is a product strategy document (8-12 pages or slides) that covers: the target customer profile, premium structure and payment cadence, what the product covers and excludes, how enrolment works, the claims process, and the distribution channel. You should also include a one-page financial sustainability note showing how the product could break even. Good work will show that you have actually thought about the constraints: daily cash flow, low literacy in some segments, distrust of insurance companies, and proximity to care. Name the specific markets and neighbourhoods you are designing for. The best submissions will feel like something a real insurer or fintech could pilot tomorrow.