BrightRock has rejected rumours that Sanlam’s decision to take full ownership of the life insurer was prompted by the possibility that BrightRock might not be able to meet its obligations to policyholders. The rumours were brought to Moonstone’s attention earlier this week.
Read: BrightRock will remain a separate division after Sanlam acquires full ownership
Sanlam’s sizeable investment of between R494 million and R836m (excluding roll forward growth rate) in BrightRock over the next three years demonstrated its confidence in the company as a growing business with excellent prospects, BrightRock chief executive Schalk Malan said.
He said that in the recently released Swiss Re new business volumes survey, BrightRock ranked first by sum assured in the independent financial adviser (IFA) individual life market in 2021 for the second year running, with 16.6% of the overall cover purchased in the market placed with BrightRock. This was despite BrightRock receiving only 12.6% of the premiums in this market, which demonstrated the efficiency of BrightRock’s needs-matched product offering.
“The fact that we have the highest cover, but not the highest premiums, indicates that we’re living up to our promise of giving clients more cover for the same premium rand. On average, over the year, BrightRock clients bought 32% more cover for a market-average premium than they could have bought with any other insurer in the market. Similarly, BrightRock also held the highest market share for funeral products sold in the IFA space, with a 21.9% share of the total sum insured according to the same survey.”
Malan said BrightRock has proved itself by consistently paying out claims, “the ultimate test of how we are delivering for our clients”.
BrightRock has paid out R4.6 billion in claims to date. In 2022, it paid over R1bn, and this was the second year running in which BrightRock paid out over a billion rand in claims, which was more than the total claims paid in its first seven years in the market.
Although there are signs that claims are returning to pre-Covid-19 levels, claims volumes remained high in 2022, and BrightRock paid its highest claim ever in November 2022, a death claim with a total value of R143m.
Malan said BrightRock was a fully licensed insurer, and the regulatory frameworks and oversight in South Africa were in line with the best and most rigorous in the world. As such, intermediaries and policyholder could be assured that BrightRock has not only always met but exceeded all the capital solvency requirements for an insurer of its scale.
