{"id":475192,"date":"2021-03-11T15:16:15","date_gmt":"2021-03-11T13:16:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=475192"},"modified":"2021-03-11T15:16:15","modified_gmt":"2021-03-11T13:16:15","slug":"insurers-planning-for-two-and-a-half-more-covid-19-waves-in-south-africa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/trending\/475192\/insurers-planning-for-two-and-a-half-more-covid-19-waves-in-south-africa\/","title":{"rendered":"Insurers planning for ‘two and a half more Covid-19 waves’ in South Africa"},"content":{"rendered":"

South Africa may still be short of the halfway mark of the Covid-19 pandemic, even after two distinct waves of the coronavirus swept through the country over the past year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe are basically planning for two-and-a-half more waves,\u201d Sanlam chief executive officer Paul Hanratty said by phone.<\/p>\n

The insurer is also ‘very realistic’ that South Africa\u2019s vaccine program is not going to impact the current year very significantly, he said.<\/p>\n

Africa\u2019s most-industrialized nation has been the hardest hit by the pandemic on the continent, with an official death toll of over 51,000 and more than 1.5 million infections<\/p>\n

It started inoculating health workers in February, but the government\u2019s program may only reach the two-thirds of the population necessary to achieve herd immunity in 12 to 18 months.<\/p>\n

With the widest reach across Africa of any insurer, Sanlam is preparing for a doubling in excess claims from surges in Covid-19 infections and the longer-term health effects of the pandemic in coming months.<\/p>\n

The grim outlook echoes the view of the owner of South Africa\u2019s largest health-insurance administrator, Discovery, which said<\/a>\u00a0last month the country could record an additional 92,500 deaths from Covid-19 by the end of the year if its vaccine program isn\u2019t effective.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Excess claims<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cWe estimate our excess claims for the full 2021 year are likely to be two to three times the level of excess claims for the 2020 year,\u201d Hanratty said in a separate video conference.<\/p>\n

While the finalization of business-continuity claims at the firm\u2019s property and casualty insurance arm Santam Ltd. weighed on its outlook, reserves already raised should help it weather the uncertainty, he said.<\/p>\n

Sanlam, with a presence in over 30 African countries, reported a 13% decline in the net result from financial services to 8.4 billion rand ($562 million) for the year ended in December as growth in its general and life-insurance businesses suffered in the fallout from the pandemic.<\/p>\n

The measure increased by 17% if the Covid-19 impact is excluded.<\/p>\n

Results were boosted by a funeral-cover partnership with Capitec Bank Ltd. Another venture launched just two years ago, African Rainbow Life, has been \u201crationalized\u201d into a broader retail unit to drive efficiencies.<\/p>\n

The company has reviewed its remuneration model to retain important staff and introduced a new share program with a \u201cspeed of recovery\u201d hurdle to push management to reach key financial metrics in line with 2019 levels as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

\n

Read: Mkhize on South Africa hitting its Covid-19 vaccine targets<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

South Africa may still be short of the halfway mark of the pandemic even after two distinct waves of the coronavirus swept through the country over the past year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":59,"featured_media":384181,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[26,2880],"class_list":["post-475192","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trending","tag-headline","tag-sanlam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475192","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\/59"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=475192"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475192\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":475202,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/475192\/revisions\/475202"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=475192"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=475192"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=475192"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}