$12.00
TOTAL PAID
DEEP DIVE DATAINSURANCE · ECOSURE · IPEC DATA
Zimbabwe's most profitable insurance failure.Designed to lapse.
47.6%
Q4 2025 LAPSE RATE
9/10
NEVER-USED POLICIES
$21M
5-YEAR ESTIMATE
SWIPE TO READ ›
THE DISTRIBUTION MODEL
Open the My Econet app. Look at your data bundles. The difference between two packages is one dollar. One of them is insurance.
$1
the premium hidden inside a $4 WhatsApp bundle
That $1 is the EcoSure premium. Here is what five years of IPEC filings show about what happens to it.
MARKETING VS DATA
What the app says. What the filings say.
| "Affordable funeral cover from $1/month" | marketing |
| 47.6% of policies lapse every quarter | Q4 2025 |
| "Over 3 million customers" | marketing |
| 9 in 10 never-used policies, industrywide, are Econet's | IPEC |
"Just buy a bundle," the marketing says. The consumer reality: most subscribers may not know they're insured at all.
FIFTEEN-YEAR HISTORY
This is not new
- 2010 — Ecolife launches. 1.2M subscribers at launch; free cover activated by $3/month airtime spend.
- 2012 — Ecolife shuts down. A Trustco dispute strands 1.6M subscribers overnight, most never notified. World Bank later cites it as a consumer-harm case study.
- 2014 — EcoSure launches. Econet owns it outright this time. 1M subscribers claimed within two months; reports of unauthorised enrollment begin immediately.
- 2019 — Auto-enrollment controversy. Subscribers charged without verified consent; Econet cites "data capture errors." No regulatory action recorded.
- 2024–2026 — Bundle linkage. EcoSure gets embedded directly in data bundles — the $1 increment visible in the app today.
IPEC DATA 2021–2025
Five years of regulatory data
| 2021 — lapsed | 8.92% |
| 2022 — lapsed | 28.00% |
| 2023 — lapsed | 78.92% |
| 2024 — lapsed | 35.00% |
| 2025 — lapsed | 27.39% |
Industry average across the same five years: 11.2%. In every single year, more Econet Life policyholders left without claiming than the industry average. Over five years: 1,070,151 policyholders left without claiming, out of roughly $49.9M in premiums collected.
ECONET LIFE VS EVERYONE ELSE
78.9%
Econet Life's 2023 lapse rate — industry average was 44.3%
Red is Econet Life. Green is everyone else. The gap never closes across five years of filings.
TERMINOLOGY
A lapse is not a cancellation
The subscriber didn't call to cancel. They bought a different bundle next month — one without EcoSure — and the cover disappeared silently.
The premium for the months they were enrolled? Already collected. Recognised as earned revenue. Non-refundable. Under insurance accounting, this is entirely normal. What makes these numbers unusual is the scale, and the consistency across five straight years.
TRY IT · YOUR PREMIUM HISTORY
How much did you pay for cover you may not have known about?
$500–$2,000
COVER ENTITLEMENT
Lapsed
STATUS
Earned by insurer
OUTCOME
FIVE-YEAR ESTIMATE
What did policyholders who left actually pay?
Conservative estimate:
US$15 million
Central estimate:
US$18 million
Upper estimate:
US$21 million
Based on published IPEC filings only, not verified by Econet Life or IPEC. Assumes ~3 months of premium before a lapse, ~1 month before a never-activated policy stops. This is not a legal claim — earned premium from a lapsed policy is standard, legal insurance practice in Zimbabwe.
REGULATORY RECORD
The regulator has noticed
| 2023 — Observational | "highest number" in sector |
| 2024 — Minor enforcement | fined, late returns |
| 2025 — Named concern | "market conduct" |
In 2025, IPEC states lapse treatment is receiving attention "from a market conduct perspective" — naming Econet Life directly for the first time. No enforcement action on lapse conduct has been recorded as of Q4 2025.
DATA ANOMALY
The year the numbers became hard to explain
99.2%
of 2023 insurance revenue came from policies that were never used
Two explanations, neither ruled out: genuine near-total non-activation amid Zimbabwe's currency crisis (consistent with the 78.92% lapse rate), or an IFRS 17 accounting-transition artifact that makes the figures look more extreme than the underlying economics. We can't determine which from public data — but the lapse rate makes the first explanation hard to dismiss.
OBSERVATION 01
The premium is one dollar. The cover is real.
EcoSure is a genuine product from a registered insurer supervised by IPEC. If you hold an active policy and a covered event occurs, you're entitled to claim. The question is whether you know you hold one.
OBSERVATION 02
Nearly half of all policies don't survive a quarter.
47.6% of Econet Life's lapsable policies lapsed in Q4 2025 alone — the highest rate in the industry by a wide margin, against an industry average of 11.2%.
OBSERVATION 03
You cannot claim on a policy you didn't know you had.
The most direct consumer consequence isn't financial — it's informational. Families of a covered subscriber are entitled to a funeral benefit, but only if they know the policy existed.
THE PROVOCATIVE BIT
$1 in the bundle
Does not mean you know you're insured, will stay insured, or can claim when it matters.
A telco distribution mechanism, packaged to feel like a bundle feature.
It generates premium income primarily from policyholders who exit before they can claim. That is not illegal. The question is whether it is insurance.
FOR POLICYHOLDERS
What to do
- Check your current bundle — open My Econet or dial *143# to see if EcoSure is included.
- Find your policy number — dial *900# or check My Econet under Insurance.
- Tell your family you have cover, and where to find the policy number.
- Switching from the $4 to the $3 bundle may silently lapse your policy — check before you switch.
- Unresolved claim? Contact IPEC: [email protected] · +263 443 358-61 · ipec.co.zw
END OF STORY
Deep Dive Data covers Zimbabwe capital markets and financial products.
Produced independently using IPEC Life Assurance Sector Reports 2021–2025, the Zimbabwe Supreme Court ruling Econet Wireless v Trustco Mobile [2013] ZWSC 43, a World Bank Zimbabwe consumer protection review (2014), Techzim reporting on EcoSure auto-enrollment (2019), and a My Econet app screenshot (April 2026). No relationship exists with Econet Wireless, Econet Life, or IPEC.