South African Satire
Issue 19, June 2005
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Insurance Companies' New Policy Is Honesty
JOHANNESBURG - The shake-up of insurance companies by government is
finally being taken seriously. Several recent rulings against Sanlam and other big South
African companies have given the management of these companies a serious wake-up call.
Liberty Life have been running an extensive PR campaign ringing out the message that
they're 'turning over a new leaf'. It now looks as though that this may actually happen.
So are South African insurance companies now going to offer more service and actually pay
out on the occasional claim? "Hell, no!", says Liberty CEO Myles Ruck, "If
we started paying out on claims, we'd have to sell our timeshares in the Bahamas".
So what's the deal? "We're just going to be more
honest about the kind of business we're in", says Ruck.
"From now on, we will no longer be referred to as life assurers, or short-term
insurance brokers, but as 'Rich-White-Guy Charities'. Of course, this is exactly what
we've been all along; we just assumed people knew that. But apparently this was not the
case. The recent spate of cases against Sanlam highlighted the fact that certain sectors
of the public actually think insurance companies would live up to their promises! We had
quite a few chuckles in the boardroom about that, let me tell you. If we had to pay for
every Tom, Dick or Harry that has his house burnt down, car stolen, or livelihood lost
because of a broken leg we'd be up shit creek! You know how much it costs to run and
maintain a private helicopter? It's Joe Average's monthly donations – we used to call
them premiums – that keeps Li'l Betty in the air!"
"We used to sell belief. It was a false belief, but belief nonetheless. We let the
impoverished millions give us a significant portion of their disposable income so that
they could sleep soundly at night with the belief that if they were to die, their family
would have something to live on. That peace of mind is all we sell. If stuff hits the fan
and Joe Blogg actually pegs it, well then, that's unfortunate – death is tough for us
all, but don't look to your insurance company to make things okay. That's not what
we’re here for".
This was the business model that worked well for so long in the South African context,
according to Ruck. But the recent government rulings changed all that.
"The government has basically robbed the South African consumer of one of his most
cherished products – false security. Because we can no longer lie about our promises,
we [the insurance industry] had a choice: Actually start to offer the products we sell, or
force the consumer to confront the insurance myths that they buy into. I'd like to tell
you that we agonised over the decision, but that wouldn't be in line with our new policy
of being completely honest with the public".
Apparently the decision to continue with business as usual under the new
"Rich-White-Guy Charity" label was taken in under 30 seconds, a feat that will
enter the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest Board decision by any company in
Post-Industrial civilisation.
"Hylton Appelbaum [Executive Director] has just bought a new Ferrari, and several
other members of the Board are trying to get into that Space Tourism thing, so the
decision was really a no-brainer. And besides, we'd already spent all that money on a
whole press campaign saying 'we're working on it'. That was originally intended to enhance
the false-security lie by adding a whole post-modern twist to the thing, but we found that
we could use the same campaign to promote our new line of products. So we saved a couple
of million there, which we could distribute as huge bonuses to upper management. It all
worked out rather well in the end", said Ruck smugly.
"Our new policy is honesty. And for a few hundred Rand every month, we'll even tell
our clients exactly how we're spending their money. Customer focus is becoming important
to us. Without our customers, we're really nowhere. Consumers shouldn't be surprised if
they receive the occasional note saying, 'The last 36 of your monthly contributions of
R240 with automatic annual increases of 10% paid for 0.5% of my new boat. Thanks.',
although we're not promising anything – communication costs are exorbitant in this
country".
When asked whether South African consumers would buy into this new angle of Insurance vs.
White-Guy Charity scheme, Ruck said, "Our research has found that the average South
African consumer is as dumb as bean curd. We just need to convince them that functionally,
the new products are identical to the old, minus the only thing of value they were
actually paying for – a good night's sleep.
"We're following up the current PR effort with a new billion Rand ad-campaign to
address that very issue. We even go so far as suggesting alternative avenues for regaining
that false sense of security, such as religion, or the justice system, which we really
weren't obligated to do, but we wanted to show that, at the end of the day, we're also
really nice guys".
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