{"id":26278,"date":"2012-11-12T12:59:59","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T10:59:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=26278"},"modified":"2012-11-13T10:16:23","modified_gmt":"2012-11-13T08:16:23","slug":"vodacom-insurance-offerings-gain-traction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/mobile\/26278\/vodacom-insurance-offerings-gain-traction\/","title":{"rendered":"Vodacom insurance offerings gain traction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Vodacom<\/a> says it has sold approximately 21,000 funeral policies in\u00a0three months since it launched the product in July 2012.<\/p>\n

Vodacom Funeral Cover is one of the insurance products the operator offers as part of its broader financial services strategy. It enables M-Pesa\u00a0customers to receive up to R10,000 worth of funeral cover.<\/p>\n

In May, Vodacom was awarded a long-term insurance licence by the Financial Services Board (FSB). This licence, along with the short-term licence granted earlier this year, enables Vodacom to underwrite and sell insurance products, including funeral cover and life cover.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a roundtable event in September, Vodacom CEO Shameel Joosub<\/a> said: \u201cAnother opportunity that exists is what we call the fourth revenue cycle, and one we are putting a lot of emphasis on is the whole mobile money, m-commerce area.\u201d<\/p>\n

In March 2010, Vodacom, in partnership with Nedbank, launched M-Pesa in South Africa. M-Pesa enables unbanked customers to transfer money from person to person using their mobile phone.<\/p>\n

On Monday (12 November),\u00a0Vodacom\u00a0reported an 8.4% rise in revenue for the six months ended September 2012, to R34.43 billion.<\/p>\n

Service revenue jumped to R29.68 billion, from R27.75 billion in the same period in 2011, with operating profit rising to R8.97 billion, from R7.3 billion.<\/p>\n

Vodacom underlined a continued strong demand for data services with group data revenue up 20.2%, and now accounting for 15.9% of service revenue.<\/p>\n

Vodacom\u2019s data revenue in South Africa increased by 13.5% to R4.224 billion, contributing 17.7% to service revenue compared to 15.8% a year ago.<\/p>\n

The group also reported a\u00a042.3% increase in its group active data customers to 17.6 million, along with a\u00a035.5% increase in active smartphones in South Africa, and\u00a0258,000 active tablets on its SA network.<\/p>\n

However, its SMS and MMS revenue suffered a decline for the first time, albeit marginally, by\u00a00.2% to R1.53 billion.<\/p>\n

In lunchtime trade, shares in Vodacom rallied\u00a03.25% to R114.50 on the JSE.<\/p>\n

Related article:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Vodacom shares up 2.3% on H1 results<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom ready to sell you insurance<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom targets financial services as 4th revenue cycle<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom sees 8.4% rise in H1 revenue<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Vodacom beats analyst forecasts<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Vodacom says it has sold 21,000 funeral policies in three months since its launched the product in July.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":22080,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[4586,26,4587,1415,1799,3403,27],"class_list":["post-26278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mobile","tag-funeral-cover","tag-headline","tag-m-commerce","tag-m-pesa","tag-nedbank","tag-shameel-joosub","tag-vodacom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26278"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26283,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26278\/revisions\/26283"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}