A platform, live across 15 pilot sites, that turns electrical events at the insured site into evidence. I'd like to explore a pilot with Old Mutual.
Dmitri Ramzaitsev · Co-founder, Enerthon
For S'onqoba Vuba · Chief Partnership Officer, Old Mutual · FI Mentor
Customer Development · Old Mutual
Who's Talking
Oxford-trained. Operated and sold across 3 continents.
A finance and partnerships operator, now building cash-flow-first in South Africa.
Dmitri Ramzaitsev
Co-founder · Enerthon
Top 0.25% globally with IBO Diploma (45/45). Oxford Maths, then MSc Financial Economics at Saïd (Distinction).
First job: Morgan Stanley (London). Then Finance Director on a $1B metals & mining project – $350M+ invested; arranged Chinese bank funding and a $700M EPC contract (witnessed by Putin and Xi).
Rescued and sold 2 distressed companies (Russia and South Africa) in 2025 for €4M. It took grit, patience and perseverance over >7 years. Restructured and liquidated 25 legal entities in 7 countries.
⚡ Today
Co-founded Enerthon and built Tena.
We built Tena: insurer-grade evidence platform, live across 15 pilot sites with a top-tier insurance administrator engaged. I run strategy, commercial and partnerships.
🇷🇺 Born in Moscow · 🇧🇪🇬🇧 Educated in Europe · 🇨🇾 Based in Cyprus · 🌎 Operate globally
Customer Development · Old Mutual
The Problem We Saw
You pay electrical claims you cannot see.
Short-term insurers settle electrical-damage claims on a one-time inspection and a Certificate of Compliance – a snapshot that says nothing about what actually happened at the moment of failure. The cause is invisible, so the verdict is a guess.
👀
No causality. Grid surge or internal fault? Today nobody can prove it, so the claim is paid, declined or disputed on assumption.
💰
Leakage on both sides. Valid claims declined hurt retention; invalid claims paid hurt the loss ratio. You lose either way.
⚖️
No subrogation lever. When the grid is genuinely at fault, there is no time-stamped evidence to recover against.
🔌
A standing tail risk. When load-shedding returns, switching events, inverter and generator damage and disputed claims spike with it – you want the evidence layer in place before it does.
The gap
A Certificate of Compliance certifies a moment. The claim is about a different moment – the one nobody was watching.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
The Market
Where the electrical peril lives in the value chain.
SA non-life is a concentrated ~R150B market. The capacity sits at the top, the risk flows down, and the electrical-damage claim lands on millions of insured sites at the bottom – where there is no objective evidence today.
~200 UMAs · ~60 SAUMA members influence ~R20B+ premium
Brokers / Intermediaries
~10,000+ licensed advisers (FIA-represented)
Insured properties
~6M sites with short-term property cover – every one a place for a device
Inside short-term cover
All short-term insurance · motor, property, liability, marine, engineering, accident
▼
Short-term property cover · buildings & contents
▼Tena's wedge
Electrical-damage claims · surge / inverter / generator. A permanent peril that spiked ~60%+ in the load-shedding years – and the only one with no objective evidence layer.
Second customerEskom
The same device can monitor the grid's assets. Eskom loses ~R200M+ a year to theft and vandalism, with ~2,500 transformers overloaded and at risk of failure. Tena can give live visibility on the health and tamper-state of distribution assets – and SA has hundreds of thousands of distribution transformers.
Figures rounded. Insurer count, ~R150B 2024 revenue and top-10-carry-80% from KPMG SA Insurance Industry Survey 2025. UMA figures from SAUMA (~60 members, ~R20B+ premium); ~200 total UMAs is a founder estimate. Broker figure from FIA (~10,000+ licensed advisers). Eskom ~R200M+ annual theft/vandalism loss and ~2,500 at-risk transformers from Eskom (2024–2025). ~6M insured-site, electrical-claim and transformer-fleet device counts are founder estimates; ~60%+ surge-claim growth from Santam / Dialdirect load-shedding reporting (2022–2023).
Customer Development · Old Mutual
How Big
A R30B SA market – and SA is the small one.
Every monitorable insured site in SA is a device we can place at R400 / month. The same problem is far larger abroad.
R30B ARR · TAM
Every monitorable insured site in SA – ~6M devices × R4,800 / year.
R3B ARR · SAM
SA high-risk segment: commercial 3-phase + repeat-claim residential.
~R90M ARR · SOM
3 administrators × 100 brokers × 5 customers / broker / month → ~18k devices within 3 years.
The same problem, far bigger markets
🇮🇳 India ~10× · 🇧🇷 Brazil ~10× · 🇲🇽 Mexico ~2× the size of South Africa.
Device counts are founder estimates · revenue basis is the R400 / month subscription, not claims value · multipliers based on relative non-life insurance market size. Pilot figures are aggregate fleet data (March–May 2026); site-level identifiers and administrator names held under NDA.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
About You
Old Mutual – 180 years, a continent wide.
A premier African financial-services group, founded in Cape Town in 1845 and JSE-listed. The electrical peril we address sits inside its short-term arm, Old Mutual Insure.
~R1.5tn FUM
Funds under management, up ~10% year on year – one of Africa's largest asset bases.
12 countries
Across Africa, plus a niche business in China. Primary market: South Africa.
~32k employees
And a distribution network of ~36k intermediaries and ~800 retail branches.
~9% non-life share
Old Mutual Insure is the 3rd-largest short-term insurer in SA – the entity that owns the electrical peril.
People to know
Jurie Strydom· Group CEO (from June 2025, ex-Sanlam Life)
Old Mutual Insure· the short-term entity that carries electrical-claims loss-ratio risk
Why the timing fits
Recently launched its own bank – an innovation and partnerships appetite at group level.
Electrical claims spiked ~60%+ in the load-shedding years – a tail risk that can return.
A partnerships-led entry point (S'onqoba) into a book that needs objective evidence.
Old Mutual figures from Old Mutual Limited 2024 results and "At a glance" (March 2025): ~R1.46tn FUM, 12 countries, ~31,700 employees, ~36,000 intermediaries, ~816 branches; Jurie Strydom appointed Group CEO effective 1 June 2025. Non-life market position (~8.7% share, 3rd-largest) from KPMG SA Insurance Industry Survey 2025. Figures rounded.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
What Tena Is
A certified device that watches continuously and reports like an assessor.
Tena sits on the site and records every voltage, frequency and earth event at sub-second resolution – then produces a formal Power Quality Incident Report in a structure a claims desk already understands.
Continuous
Sub-second voltage, frequency, SPD and earth-impedance monitoring – not a one-time snapshot.
Certified
NRCS Letter of Authority (to 2029) and ICASA Type Approval. A regulated, insurer-ready device.
3-phase
Built for commercial sites – where the large, repeat electrical claims actually sit.
Report-ready
Executive summary → root cause → insurance relevance → final position. A claims-desk voice.
The Tena device · built in SA
The shift
From "we think the grid did it" to a time-stamped, causality-attributed verdict on every event – before the claim is even filed.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
The Data Is Real
15 devices. 2 months. 900 events.
This is not a demo. It is the raw output of a live fleet, analysed end-to-end. Five things continuous monitoring revealed that a one-time inspection never could:
1
Phase Imbalance
One phase was carrying nearly half the load.
2
Earthing & SPD
Valid CoC. Earthing had degraded anyway.
3
Generator Health
Grid blamed. Generator was the real problem.
4
Solar Inverter Damage
The backup was the source of the damage.
KEY
5
Multi-Site Cluster
Repeated clusters, then a regional event.
~1 event / device / day
Well above anything a site owner would notice. The loudest device runs ~6/day, the quietest near zero – a wide range that identifies high-risk policyholders inside a book.
~50 cluster events
Cross-site correlations in 2 months – roughly one per working day. Peak: 10 devices within a tenth of a second, an unambiguous transmission-level disturbance.
~20 / 40% external / internal
Every event classified by archetype: external (cluster-validated) or internal, with a small dual-source tail. A defensible verdict, not an assumption.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
Why Us
The right depth for this specific problem.
Insurer-grade evidence needs three things at once: someone who can build the hardware, someone who understands the energy physics, and someone who speaks the claims desk's language. We have all three.
The founding team & mentor
Reece Doig
Co-founder
Red Seal electrician & systems architect. Built Tena hardware and firmware from the ground up.
Kirill Popov
Co-founder
25+ years in energy & chemicals. Former division head at one of the world's largest energy companies.
Grearson Gifford
Project Mentor
37+ years as an insurance building assessor in KZN. The bridge between device data and the claims desk.
Cash-flow first
Enerthon is funded by its co-founders and its renewable-energy projects – the energy-as-a-service work in Cyprus generates revenue today that covers Tena's running costs. We are building this to last, not to chase the next round.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
The Model Is Proven
Insurers already fund devices that produce evidence.
The insurer-distributed monitoring device is not a new idea – it is a proven playbook, internationally and right here in South Africa. Tena applies it to the one peril nobody has covered yet.
🇺🇸 United States · Fire peril
Ting
Whisker Labs × State Farm
1M+ homes
Insurers fund and distribute the device for free to policyholders. State Farm placed 1M+ sensors; Nationwide adding 500K. A 2025 study showed $81/home/year in reduced fire claims.
Proves: insurers will fund device distribution at million-unit scale when the loss case is clear.
🇿🇦 South Africa · Geyser peril
Sensor Networks
SA insurance-IoT leader
Live with SA insurers
The smart geyser is the SA insurance industry's accepted IoT device for reducing risk on the geyser peril – bundled through insurer partners and developers.
Proves: SA insurers already fund monitoring devices – on one peril. The electrical peril is open.
🇿🇦 South Africa · Vehicle peril
Tracker
Insurance-channel at scale
~1M subscribers
SA insurers discount premiums when a Tracker unit is installed, because it produces an insurer-grade evidence trail. R150–R350/month, bundled into cover.
Proves: SA insurers will alter pricing for a third-party device that delivers evidence. The exact architecture Tena replicates.
The whitespace: Ting (fire), Sensor Networks (geyser) and Tracker (theft) each own a peril. None of them measures sub-second electrical events or does cross-site cluster validation. Tena is the only one built for the electrical peril – and the only one that gets stronger with every device added.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
The Proposal
A phased PoC – we fund the devices.
Low risk, evidence-gated, and structured so Old Mutual only commits further once the prior phase has proven itself. We carry the device cost for the pilot so there is no procurement friction to start.
Phase 0Today
Share everything from our live pilot
We open the data from our ongoing pilot program – the fleet event logs, cluster analysis and formal incident reports – so Old Mutual can assess the evidence before committing a single device. Zero cost, zero risk.
Phase 1~10 devices
Prove the verdict on your highest-risk sites
Tena-funded devices on a defined cohort of Old Mutual's highest-risk commercial policyholders in one metro footprint. Goal: cluster-validated external share above 60%, plus formal incident reports your claims desk accepts.
Phase 2~100 devices
Prove the portfolio-risk signal
Expand across regions and phase configurations. Characterise the risk distribution across the book and test Tena-validated claims end-to-end, from event to settlement. Gate: agreed evidence from Phase 1.
Phase 3Portfolio
Commercial rollout
Move to a paid commercial model – insurer-funded distribution, premium-linked incentive, or a portfolio-risk data line. Gate: loss-ratio and retention movement from Phase 2.
Why phased: each phase de-risks the next. You commit budget only after the evidence is in your hands. We start small, on your terms, on the sites where the claims actually hurt.
Customer Development · Old Mutual
The Ask
S'onqoba – help me find the right first cohort inside Old Mutual and the right people to design a small Phase 1 PoC with.
"Now we will have concrete evidence." · "Load shedding will kick in. There couldn't be a better time."
Senior leadership at insurance administrator · April 2026 (under NDA)
🎯
1 · A Phase 1 PoC
~50 Tena-funded devices on Old Mutual's highest-risk commercial sites. We design success metrics together.
🤝
2 · The right room
An introduction to whoever owns the electrical-peril loss ratio – claims, underwriting, or risk.
🧐
3 · Your read
Where does this fit Old Mutual's priorities – and what would make it a yes?
We are not asking for capital. We are asking for a small, well-designed pilot on the sites where electrical claims hurt the most.
