A-Sure Consulting: A-Plus for New One-Stop Solution

“We are busy with a lot of exciting new things which we are working hard to get off the ground,” CEO and founder Thinus Janse Van Rensburg begins, with A-Sure Consulting poised to add another brave leap to its history. “We wouldn’t class ourselves as a ‘success story’ just yet, but in time we are certain that we will be.

“We have just finished building a product aimed almost exclusively at SME’s, and are now waiting for investors to come on board when we will be able to launch it in the commercial space,” Van Rensburg continues. “We will also accommodate personal lines, as well as catering for high-net-worth individuals (HNWIs) among others, but commercial SMEs will be our main focus.”

Priding itself on seeing the normal way as “a boundary simply waiting to be moved”, in just a decade of operation A-Sure Consulting has gone through several iterations, starting out as an administrator, then an Underwriting Manager, and now soon to be a fully-fledged Underwriting Management Agency (UMA) with a Cell Captive in partnership with Cardinal Concepts, focussed on short-term as well as life insurance group solutions.

ALL-IN-ONE

The A-Sure Consulting mission is to bring together traditionally separate lines, such as commercial and personal, contractor works, plant all-risk and liability into a single policy. “We will do more than just sell our clients insurance, which is what sets us apart,” Van Rensburg elaborates. “We want to enable people to stay in business by giving them the systems and framework around it to construct an all-in-one policy and a single product.

“Usually anywhere between four and seven policies across different, specialised fields are required for a business; we will put most of the those in one box including the owner’s private personal insurance. We will also be able to include Life insurance options like Credit Life, Funeral and other covers where needed.

“We are also going to help people to stay in business,” he continues. “For example, by introducing a recruitment benefit that can be added to the insurance, which most of the smaller guys cannot afford to use because the fee that you have to pay is way too high and due all in one go. We have made it so a smaller contribution is paid along with the insurance, and then everything around it like recruitment, legal services – even a business coach – is included.”

This is all part of, as Van Rensburg puts it, putting a stop to the senseless “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” approach that he has observed in the attempted rejuvenation and regrowth of the economy. “The only way to grow the economy is to create new businesses and new jobs,” he stresses. “What we are trying to do is keep the existing players in business, which is absolutely vital, and then create new opportunities for other promising ventures to be successful.

“In this way, and only this way, will we begin to see growth.”

INSURANCE INNOVATION

When explaining the framework supporting this innovative method, Van Rensburg identifies one particular area of contracting as a prime target for A-Sure Consulting to begin to transform. “The systems surrounding the product will primarily mitigate general risk,” he explains, “a lot of which will concern the threats present in normal, everyday situations that every business will face at some point.

“However, on the contracting front, with building for example, the system that we are going to employ is going to effectively take away all of the risk from what was traditionally a very problematic area of insurance, which is performance guarantees.”

Commonly used in the construction industry, this bond effectively guarantees satisfactory completion of a project and is a means of insuring a client against the risk of a contractor failing to fulfil their obligations. “With us,” Van Rensburg continues, “the contractor will no longer be forced to put up all the collateral that is normally required in such cases.

“The system we are going to use for this is proven over 16 years of deployment, and during that time anything that was put through it had zero performance guarantee claims whatsoever. Because it is managed so diligently, even the all-risk aspect of it is more protected and robust.

“This benefit means that a lot of the smaller guys, who were previously unable to gain tenders because they lacked the required collateral, will now be able to qualify, and the system will guide them through to prevent them falling behind and ensure a timely and successful completion.”

This is quite substantial proof that there is still room for innovation and forward-thinking in this ancient art. “Our product is the first of its kind,” Van Rensburg underlines. “There is obviously a lot of insurance out there, but while lots of people have tried to do similar things there is nobody putting everything into this one package like we are going to.

“Insurance is insurance, you cannot really revolutionise it completely,” Van Rensburg admits, “but you can change the things surrounding it and which you use to mitigate the risks and make insurance work.”

SURE-FOOTED FUTURE

The pandemic has wreaked untold havoc across industry, but A-Sure Consulting now looks to find the opportunity in devastation and the scope for reinvigoration. With all the talk of this shiny new product set to hit the market, it is easy to forget that this is already an established company with a busy schedule in its current administrator guise; this latest innovative solution represents a complement and addition.

“We are not going to throw away what we have at the moment,” Van Rensburg confirms. “That will work for certain clients so that we can keep bringing them in well into the future. The product that we are building is more focussed on a specific market and therefore opens us up to new and diverse business moving forward.”

Everything is aligning to make this the perfect time to expand. “We have survived through until now, and we believe that we have all things in place to move forward,” Van Rensburg wraps up. “Our plan is to spread like a virus – everywhere locally within South Africa, of course, but our long-term goal is to extend beyond the borders.

“We don’t have our sights set on South Africa alone. We already have feelers out and people we can connect to when we are ready to expand, which we will do with a solid foundation within South Africa.

“My view is that you must always aim for the stars – that way, even if you just get to the moon, at least you got further than the guy without vision.”