Record attendance at InsureTalk19

InsureTalk19 kicked off the InsureTalk season for 2022. The online insurance seminar attracted close to 1500 delegates, who actively participated in all the presentations through the Zoom chat stream.

The first speaker was Good Things Guy Brent Lindeque. His talk, entitled Changing the Narrative, spoke about the “other” side of the news – the good news! Even during Covid!

Brent’s talk was sponsored by CIB in line with their #SAfacts campaign, which shares positive stories about South Africa.

Having a positive mind set is like hygiene. You have to shower every day to keep clean. Likewise, you have to practise a positive mind set every day to keep your thoughts optimistic.

A trio from Lombard Partnerships then discussed the changing face of insurance in a panel discussion entitled “Same Old, Different New”. Obakeng Moloisane, Caitlin Lancefield and Frans Prinsloo talked about diversity, innovation, creativity, analytical thinking, connections with the industry, failure, growth, values, regulation, partnerships, risk management, data and many more components of today’s complex insurance industry.

Thokozile Mahlangu, IISA CEO, relayed details about the upcoming African Insurance Exchange, which takes place on 25 and 26 July. There will be limited in-person attendance at Sun City, with a parallel live-stream of the event for those who prefer to attend online. The theme for the conference is “Resurgence. Resilience. Revival.” Thokozile outlined the themes that will be covered at the conference.

Cover magazine’s Tony van Niekerk discussed another online conference – Insurtech 2022, which will take place online on 12 and 13 April, followed by an in-person cocktail function. “We need tech when we need it but sometimes we want the human,” he said. Some people don’t want tech all the time, while some like to be “always on”. The trick is to find out where we are on the spectrum and serve up the right amount of tech for each individual. The conference will also examine how brokers are adopting technology in their businesses, discuss fintech in some detail and look at what’s happening in the insurtech revolution.

Next up was Zamani Ngidi of Aon, whose talk was entitled “Technology, Media and Telecommunications (TMT) Industry: A Focus on M&A”. The deal making space has increased tremendously in this area, he said. He spoke on tangible vs intangible assets and the insurability of intangible assets. Global risk management was another topic under discussion, with cyber attacks and data breaches being the main areas of concern. Zamani went on to discuss the finer details of M&A deals in the space and shared some case studies to illuminate M&A in action.

Jean Aymar Sahe of Munich Re shared a talk on usage-based insurance (UBI). He shared examples of UBI, discussed some challenges and opportunities for UBI in Africa and offered some recommendations on how Munich Re can assist.

These were some of the interesting slides shared by Jean:

Clifford de Wit of Netstar spoke on telematics and the future of insurance. When we talk about telematics, really what we’re talking about is the world of IoT, he said. A lot of our data today is about diagnostics. What happened and why did it happen? This is being done on a human level by reading reports and applying insight.

But with the advent of AI and ML, we’re moving into a “foresight world”. We’re able to ask questions about what will happen. This is where telematics is headed into the future.

Last up was Dale Nortje of the Winelands Fire Protection Association, who spoke on an amazing initiative between the insurance industry and the association that will result in improved ability to respond to fires in the Winelands region.