IEMAS INSURANCE BROKERS: Belongings & Business, Family & Future: All Secured With Care

“We are your 360-degree insurance solution,” sets out Iemas Insurance Brokers, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iemas Financial Services (Iemas) established to focus exclusively on the specialist provision of insurance solutions.

“In April 2017 we became fully operational,” MD Piet Wolmarans informed us when we spoke in April 2020, explaining his role in guiding the project through the litany of regulatory approvals and operational aspects required to be in place.

“We had to register the company as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Iemas, transfer all contracts from service providers, move over employees and get all operational capabilities in place according to full compliance regulations required by the Financial Service Conduct Authority.”

With this accomplished Iemas Insurance Brokers quickly went on to become an FCSA-registered member and holder of its own FSP license. Purchasing insurance can be an overwhelming endeavour, and Iemas Insurance Brokers has gone on to build a commanding reputation around offering comprehensive solutions to secure clients’ future, family, belongings and business.

CO-OPERATIVE STRENGTH

Iemas is a true household name in South Africa and far and away its largest financial co-operative. Originally formed as the Iscor Employees Mutual Aid Society (I.E.M.A.S.) within Iscor (now Mittal Steel), the success and growing renown of the business allowed the addition of a wealth of finance products to a burgeoning portfolio, officially registering in March 1996 as a trade co-operative.

Operating as a co-operative has allowed Iemas over a 10-year period to allocate over R1 billion to its members, in the form of rebates on interest and premiums and allocations to their individual member funds. In 2017, for example, the member benefit allocation was R109 million. 

“This is a significant contribution to our members of which we are extremely proud,” effused Johan Nel, Iemas CEO, “and testament to Iemas’s unique and resilient business model.”

“We celebrated our 80th anniversary in 2017, and thus remain sustainable – even in the current challenging and uncertain economic times,” Iemas says of a rich history and a comprehensive range of competitive financial products and services on offer to over 160,000 members across South Africa.

The future looks ever-brighter, with more than 10,000 retailers on board including Woolworths, Pick n Pay and Shoprite/Checkers, a staff complement of almost 600 and a large base of loyal members.

FINANCIAL WELLNESS

Although only a relatively young standalone entity, Iemas Insurance Brokers benefits from the full weight of the Iemas’s more than eight decades of experience in the financial services sector. “We are proud to be associated with the largest financial co-operative in South Africa,” the company asserts of this valuable alliance, “and share the same ethos and member-centric focus as Iemas.

“Our business is founded on the well-established co-operative principles of democracy, equality and social responsibility,” states Iemas, “underpinned by the commitment to live our brand promise of being a caring partner.” It is an ethos which bleeds right through Iemas Insurance Brokers’ own philosophy. “As your caring partner in insurance,” the company outlines, “Iemas Insurance Brokers always strives to give our clients the best value together with professional service.

“We walk with you, through your life journey and beyond,” the company stresses, and as such product solutions are based on four key pillars. Securing your future comes through tailored savings and investment plans and retirement annuities, while your family is safeguarded with funeral, disability and life cover as well as education savings plans and Wills and Estate planning.

Belongings are taken care of through comprehensive car, home, buildings and personal belongings insurance, while lastly business is secured with various options to allow you to solely focus on growth and progression.

Underpinning its philosophy of protecting your most cherished assets Iemas Insurance Brokers continual promotion of financial wellness and freedom, a key differentiators and of higher importance than ever during these most uncertain of times. It is wrong to think that this translates to being wealthy, Iemas Head of Corporate Marketing, Communications and New Business Development Nomtha Lusu told Tech Financials: “Financial wellness is about planning and adapting your finances to your current or future situation,” she clarified.

“It is so important to achieve financial wellness,” furthered Piet Wolmarans, “because if you are in control of your finances and know how to manage your money then you will be able to adapt financially when the unexpected happens.

“Living financially well is very similar to living physically well.”

In the spirit of co-operation and giving back, Iemas Insurance Brokers empowers stakeholders to approach financial wellness through the provision of tools, resources and personal advice on their journey towards financial freedom.

“As such,” Lusu rounds off, “we offer financial wellness training at no cost to our partner employers across South Africa, providing financial discipline, tricks and lessons learned, and tools to assist people with managing their finances responsibly no matter what life brings.”

DIGITAL DAWN

The annus horribilis that was 2020, whose reverberations continue to be keenly felt, at least brought hurtling home the critical need of extensive cover, allowing the industry to again show its resilience while positively impacting the lives of its customers at a time of great financial need.

McKinsey and Company has recently labelled Africa as “one of the world’s hot regions for insurance,” second only to Latin America for rate of insurance growth globally and with the potential for prodigious development. South Africa, the largest and most established insurance market, holds 70% of premiums on the continent.

The past year was also, perhaps less obviously, a year in which the industry made meaningful strides in changing its operating model. It expedited the introduction of the digital capabilities that have long been positioned as crucial to unlocking this vast potential, and which will transform the industry for many years to come.

“The shift to digital channels in Africa is well underway,” Confirmed the McKinsey report, “and the Covid-19 pandemic has accelerated this trend. Lockdowns and working from home have accelerated digital adoption and shifted expectations in the next normal, and interactions that are not digital or digitally enabled will no longer gain traction.”

Iemas Insurance Brokers was immune to the mad scramble which followed this digital dawn, with Wolmarans detailing to us last year how well-armed the company had made itself to adopt this trend. “We have created an array of digital functionalities on our platform,” he described, “and as part of our long-term insurance solutions we have developed a digital self-serve portal for financial planning.”

Iemas Insurance Brokers 2019 partnership with Simply, the South Africa-based company selling life, disability and funeral cover online, transpired to be an astute move, as the Insurtech startup registered a fivefold explosion in sales on their No-Touch Broker Platform as lockdown took hold.

Wolmarans underlined how these crucial digital systems have come into their own while chaos has abounded. “By digitising our products and ensuring they co-exist with our face-to-face service, we’ve been able to reach more people and offer them proper financial service and risk protection in a convenient way.

“This has been invaluable during lockdown, when digital sales have soared as a proportion of our overall business.” More than a mere temporary swell in demand for digital insurance solutions, experts predict that, post-Covid, this will be one significant way in which the world will change permanently, and Iemas Insurance Brokers is superbly positioned to capitalise. 

“We’re going to see businesses that are well-suited to the new normal do better than ever,” Anthony Miller, Simply CEO, concluded. “The world is going to be less face-to-face and more remote and online. In our industry, if you’re digital, if you can adapt quickly, if you can target accurately, the future looks good. The time for digital life insurance has arrived.”