Banking group Capitec has been granted a licence to conduct life insurance business in South Africa and is planning to start underwriting its own life and funeral insurance products soon.<\/p>\n
The group announced this week that the South African Reserve Bank’s Prudential Authority granted it the licence, effective 3 October 2022.<\/p>\n
Capitec has been offering funeral and credit life insurance products since it first dipped its toes into the sector in 2017 and 2018. It has been offering credit life and funeral policies through two cell captive agreements with the underlying policies underwritten by licensed cell captive insurers, it said.<\/p>\n
“Proposed changes to the third-party cell captive regulations and strong growth in the number of insured clients prompted Capitec to apply for its own life insurance licence,” the bank said.<\/p>\n
The new licence has been granted to Capitec Life, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Capitec.<\/p>\n
Capitec Life will, in due course, replace the current cell captive insurers as underwriters of Capitec\u2019s credit life and funeral policies, said the group.<\/p>\n
“Capitec remains committed to ensuring that its clients continue to enjoy the simple, affordable, accessible and personalised experience to which they are accustomed.”<\/p>\n
The new licence opens the door for the banking group to explore new products and services in the industry and forms part of a host of new features and business changes customers can expect from the company in the coming months.<\/p>\n
Capitec CEO Gerrie Fourie told BusinessTech in September that the bank wants to leverage its client base of 19 million customers – the 5.2 million \u2018quality clients\u2019 that make use of the group\u2019s range of products in particular – alongside the roughly 10.8 fully digital customers to offer new services.<\/p>\n
This is what customers can expect in the coming months:<\/p>\n
Increased lending\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n Looking ahead, one of the new avenues that the company wants to explore is focusing on its lending business \u2013 specifically \u2018purpose lending products<\/strong>\u2018, which are part of its current road map.<\/p>\n Fourie said that there is a lot happening in the housing, education and solar space, which may become points of interest for the bank.<\/p>\n \u201cYou will start seeing products becoming more and more prominent through our credit space,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Capitec Business changes<\/strong><\/p>\n Capitec said it will be rebranding Mercantile Bank to Capitec Business in the first quarter of 2023.<\/p>\n The group acquired the bank in 2019 and has since been aligning its systems and products within the Capitec environment.<\/p>\n Fourie said that the business banking segment is making good progress with the re-engineering of systems and processes and the migration to cloud computing.<\/p>\n Testing of the new online banking system and the\u00a0remote onboarding process<\/strong>\u00a0will start soon, he said.<\/p>\n New digital products and value adds<\/strong><\/p>\n During the reporting period, Capitec implemented several digital payment solutions, including Samsung Pay and Google Pay for contactless mobile payments.<\/p>\n The group also launched its Live Better rewards programme, with partners including Bolt, Dis-Chem, Shell and Cashbuild.<\/p>\n
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