Egypt’s Financial Regulatory Authority has granted initial approval for two more AI insurance projects to enter its regulatory sandbox, bringing the total to seven in the programme’s first year — with insurance now the most represented sector among applicants.
The approvals go to Ameen, an AI assistant developed by Egyptian software firm EG InsurTech with Assurex Insurance Brokerage, and an AI Voice Agent and Chatbot Platform from Allianz Insurance Egypt, developed with technology partner Olimi AI. Both will test their applications under FRA supervision before any commercial launch.
FRA chairman Dr Islam Azzam said the tools aim to improve analysis of customer trends, preferences, grievances and product demand, with the goal of lifting customer experience across the sector.
Insurance leads, which is not the regional pattern
That insurance dominates Egypt’s sandbox in year one is notable, and runs counter to what regulators have found elsewhere on the continent. In South Africa, the Financial Sector Conduct Authority and Prudential Authority reported in their joint study of AI in the local financial sector that insurers had adopted AI at just 8% — the most cautious segment of the market, against 52% for banks and 50% for fintech companies.
Egypt’s sandbox shows the reverse. Alongside the two new approvals, previously accepted projects include insurance initiatives from GIG and Orient, both developed with EG InsurTech. The remaining entrants are Cassbana’s microfinance digital brokerage platform and Lumin Soft’s e-passport identity verification tool, built with Azimut.
Regional fintech attention has typically concentrated on payments and lending. Egypt’s insurers appear to see AI-driven customer interaction as the area with the most room to improve — and are testing it inside a supervised environment rather than deploying first and managing consequences later.
A level testing ground
The presence of Allianz Egypt alongside domestic players is the second point of interest. A global insurer is being evaluated on the same terms as local insurtech firms before either goes to market, which positions the sandbox as a genuinely neutral proving ground rather than a domestic startup incubator.
The FRA Sandbox has provided regulatory guidance to roughly 40 companies since launch, reviewing concepts and offering mentorship on compliance and admission criteria. It has also run workshops and seminars on cybersecurity awareness and the digitisation of financial solutions.
The regulatory groundwork
The sandbox launched in November 2024 under Decree No. 163, issued by the FRA board, to let non-bank financial institutions and registered fintech companies test new products and business models under supervision before commercial release.
It followed a sequence of earlier regulatory building blocks: Law No. 5 of 2022 on fintech use in the non-bank financial sector, Decree No. 58 of 2022 on licensing fintech companies, and a set of 2023 decrees covering technological infrastructure, digital identity, digital contracts and Egypt’s first eKYC framework.
That sequencing matters. Egypt built the identity, contract and infrastructure rules first, then opened a supervised space for AI applications to be tested against them — an ordering that contrasts with markets where AI deployment has run ahead of the governance framework meant to contain it. South Africa’s own financial regulator has noted the absence of any uniform AI governance framework locally, with international standards such as the OECD principles and the EU AI Act carrying no binding force.
Egypt ranked first in Africa on the 2025 Government AI Readiness Index, and its National AI Strategy 2025-2030 targets more than 250 AI companies by the end of the decade. The sandbox is one of the mechanisms intended to get them to market with supervision attached.
