What Kinship is not building, and why

Every few weeks someone suggests, kindly, a business we should be instead. Usually it is one of three. Writing them down is a way of saying what we are.

Not a money-transfer app

The apps are good and getting better; sending money to Nigeria costs a couple of per cent and lands in minutes. Adding a health tab to a remittance app is an obvious idea, and it misses the point. The transfer is not the problem. What happens after it lands is the problem, and that is not a feature, it is a person in Lagos with a registration number who goes to the house.

Not a care home

Nigerian families overwhelmingly want their parents at home, and the parents want to be there. A care home is the right answer for a small number of people and we will always say so when it is. Building one would make us an operator of beds, which is a different business with a different customer. We would rather put a nurse at the door of the house the person already lives in.

Not a comparison site

There is money in ranking HMOs and taking a commission. The trouble is that the plan is the smallest part of what a family abroad is trying to arrange, and a card in a drawer in Ibadan does not know the member missed her review. We use a licensed provider's benefits inside the plan and we are open about it. We are not in the business of listing them.

What we are

One plan, in the person's name, paid for by whoever loves them: health benefits they can use at a hospital, a qualified nurse who visits and writes it down, a Kinkeeper who reads every report and whom the family knows by name, and an app that keeps everyone in the same picture. Nigeria first, Lagos for visits today. Other places and other kinds of protection when we can do them properly, and not before.

Read next: How Kinship works