Would you like some insurance with your broadband bundle?
Six months after TechCentral revealed in December 2011 that the company intended to get into the insurance game, Vodacom has finally provided a few details about its plans after it was awarded short- and long-term insurance licences by the Financial Services Board that allow it to underwrite and sell insurance products.
Vodacom is hoping to leverage its existing client base — which exceeds 30m in SA — and says it plans to “dramatically reduce the costs traditionally associated with acquiring and serving customers”.
“Our insurance business proposition is simple: we are focused on providing Vodacom customers with unbeatable value,” says Vodacom Financial Services managing executive Mark Taylor in a statement. “The vision is to dissolve the barriers to entry for all South Africans previously unable to access insurance products.”
Vodacom has appointed Frank.net, a local direct life investment company owned and capitalised by Liberty Holdings, to provide administrative and claims support for its long-term insurance offerings.
The operator says it plans to provide a full suite of insurance products relevant to its SA customers. It has yet to announce the official launch date for the offerings.
In an interview with TechCentral in May, Vodacom Group CEO Pieter Uys said the company might even seek its own banking licence from SA regulators if its M-Pesa mobile payments system takes off in the way it expects it will in the next few years.
He said at the time that Vodacom had decided to work with a bank to launch the service because it realised it could not launch it in the timeframe it had set itself without a partner. “We have a good partnership with Nedbank, [but we want to] start opening it up so you can transact with other banks,” he said. — (c) 2012 NewsCentral Media