Dominic Kavugwi
Dominic Kavugwi is a Kenyan financial-services innovator and fashion-industry catalyst whose career bridges bancassurance, insurtech, and design entrepreneurship. As Acting Head of Bancassurance & Alternative Channels at Old Mutual Kenya, he steers strategy for embedded insurance, telco partnerships, and AI-driven underwriting, leveraging more than a decade in digital distribution across Equity Bank, NIC Bank, and AIG. In 2023 he represented East Africa at the Insurtech Israel Summit, spotlighting generative-AI chatbots that have since cut Old Mutual’s customer-query turnaround time by 48 percent.
Away from spreadsheets he founded Frederick Bittiner Wear in 2019, a fast-casual menswear label that releases 14 fresh designs every week, tailored in Nairobi from locally milled cotton and denim. The brand’s Startup Designer Package provides machines, workspace, and market access to early-stage creatives; forty alumni now run their own micro-labels, and the 30-person workshop exports to Rwanda and the UAE. Kavugwi’s dual-sector influence earned him appointment as Executive Director of the Kenya Fashion Council (2021), where he launched the Fashion SME Export Roadmap and Kenya’s first Denim Sustainability Standard. Featured in The New York Times and named among Business Daily’s “Ones to Watch,” Kavugwi continues to prove that Kenyan ingenuity can shape both financial inclusion and global style.