Ian Mahia

AAR Insurance online

The website and mobile app where AAR customers get a quote, pay by M-PESA or card, and receive their policy without visiting a branch.

The AAR Insurance home page, with a quote shortcut for each type of cover.
The same page on a phone.
Client
AAR Insurance Kenya
When
2023 to now
My role
Software engineer, then lead engineer, at StartAppz
Team
TBC: team size, and the parts you owned end to end
Stack
Laravel, MySQL, Flutter, Dart, M-PESA, Card payments
Covers sold online
13new.aar-insurance.com, October 2026
Payments
M-PESA and card
Links

Context

AAR Insurance Kenya is a general and medical insurer regulated by the Insurance Regulatory Authority. Its customers used to buy most cover through a branch or an agent. The insurer wanted people to quote, pay and receive their documents online.

Problem

Each type of cover prices risk differently. Travel cover depends on the destination and the number of days. Motor cover depends on the vehicle’s value. Professional indemnity for nurses, accountants and doctors depends on the member’s professional body. One checkout had to handle all of them and still produce the right policy document at the end.

Constraints

  • Card payments had to meet PCI-DSS, and M-PESA payments had to reconcile against Safaricom’s confirmations.
  • The insurer’s underwriting rules decide every price. The site cannot round or guess.
  • The mobile app and the website share one back end, so a change to a product has to work on both.

What I did

  • Designed the Laravel APIs that quote, take payment and issue policies for the website and the app.
  • Integrated M-PESA and card payments.
  • Rebuilt the customer app in Flutter. Customers can buy travel and personal accident cover, see their policies and start a claim from it.
  • Since January 2026, I have led the StartAppz engineers who work on the platform.

Decisions

TBC: two or three decisions you made, each as decision, trade-off, result. For example, how a policy is issued only after the payment is confirmed.

Outcome

In October 2026 the website sells 13 covers online, from travel and motor to marine cargo and professional indemnity for three professional bodies. TBC: after the mobile rework, user adoption rose by 35%. Add the period and baseline, or cut it.

TBC: policies sold online, and AAR’s OK to be named. Without it, this page becomes “a Kenyan insurer”.