Insurance is a contract, represented by a policy, in which an individual or entity receives financial protection or reimbursement against losses from an insurance company. The company pools clients’ risks to make payments more affordable for the insured.
How To Sell Insurance In South Africa
Getting set up to start selling insurance can be really hard. It’s a complicated industry and learning all the ins and outs of it takes time and effort. There also aren’t many people or companies that are able to explain it in easily understandable terms.
Over the last three years, our Root team has been working hard to make the insurance industry more accessible for innovators. A big part of this is helping businesses who have ready access to loyal customers understand how they can tap into insurance to unlock new and diverse annuity revenue streams.
So, to shed some light on this complicated industry, we put together this step-by-step guide on how you can get started in the South African insurance space and offer relevant insurance products to your customers.
A summary of what you need to sell insurance
To sell insurance in South Africa, you need to meet certain regulatory and business requirements. In essence, this comes down to registering as a Financial Services Provider (FSP) and partnering with a trusted underwriting insurer.
You will also need to meet some operational requirements related to the day-to-day running of insurance products. Remember, insurance and other financial products have major implications for the customers that use them, so legitimate processes and procedures must be followed to protect them and their financial futures.
These operational requirements include the following:
- Detailed customer communication with read-receipt tracking,
- Billing mechanisms and integrations with external providers to collect premiums,
- Operational logic and process to fulfil claims and handle complaints,
- Daily and monthly claims reporting, and
- Audit trail management.
Many of these operational requirements can be easily solved and automated through technology. (The Root platform takes care of all of it.)
Don’t worry about the tech
Getting started in the insurance industry historically required massive upfront investment in technology, people, and systems to meet the various operational and regulatory requirements. With insurance-specific SaaS solutions, this is no longer the case.
Leveraging the latest cloud technologies and practices, we’ve built an insurance platform that solves all system requirements for you. It’s packaged behind developer-friendly APIs, which means you can simply plug into it and get started.
We’re continuously extending the platform to give insurance providers peace of mind that their platform is always up to date with the latest technology and regulatory trends.
This means all technology and integrations with third parties (payment providers, for example) for running insurance operations are solved for you. If you want to start selling insurance, don’t worry about the tech!
Solving the regulatory and business requirements
Besides offering a world-class customer experience, solving the regulatory and business requirements is really the only thing you need to worry about.
The work you’ll need to do consists of four steps:
- Create your insurance products.
- Partner with an underwriting insurer.
- Consider getting a reinsurance partner on board.
- Get an FSP license.
Getting started
Getting all of these business and regulatory requirements set up can be quite daunting, but you don’t have to become an expert to get started.
We suggest working with a professional to help you get set up – it will definitely be worth your while. We can recommend Desiree Pillay from Pear Advisory and Nicola Jandrell from Tyesdale Actuaries & Consultants. We’ll be happy to do an intro for you if required 🙂