Guardrisk Life chosen to partner with global fintech provider, YuLife

Herman Schoeman, CEO of Guardrisk Life

UK-based, tech-driven financial services provider, YuLife, is expanding to other markets, including the US, and has chosen – via an extremely competitive bidding process – to partner with Guardrisk Life in South Africa.

“Being chosen to collaborate with a company like YuLife is no small achievement for Guardrisk Life” said Herman Schoeman, CEO of Guardrisk Life. “It’s also a feather in the South African insurance industry’s cap, and could entice other fintechs to enter the local market to test their global capabilities, expand their offerings and develop new service lines.”

Notably, for the first time, YuLife is changing its business model as it ventures into the local market; from being an intermediary to taking risk and underwriting its own products, using Guardrisk Life’s cell captive licence.

“The cornerstone of this new partnership is Guardrisk Life’s agility and appetite for invention. It’s not just about Guardrisk Life being South Africa’s largest life cell captive company. The two companies share a passion for bringing groundbreaking new products to market and this meeting of minds now gives us a formidable presence in the local employee benefits/group risk protection market,” said Schoeman.

At the heart of YuLife’s Group Risk Protection (life, income protection, lump sum disability, and funeral cover) is its globally award-winning wellbeing app, which uses the latest trends in behavioral science and game mechanics to encourage employees to make proactive lifestyle changes, while also prioritising prevention by de-risking individuals through healthy activities.

“South Africa has the second highest insurance penetration globally, making it a perfect market for YuLife to expand into and showcase its innovative approach to insurance,” said Jaco Oosthuizen, YuLife Co-founder and Managing Director of YuLife South Africa. “There has been a big shift toward health and wellbeing in the workplace, with more and more companies adding new initiatives and resources to their employee benefits packages. YuLife is launching in South Africa to offer companies an easy way to provide extra protection – we’re looking forward to providing South African businesses and employees tangible value on an everyday basis in an accessible, engaging, and deliverable manner.”

YuLife’s approach to health and wellbeing in the workplace dovetails with the Guardrisk Life’s approach to employee benefits programmes, whereby employers can tailor their EB offering according to their employees’ specific risk profiles and the employer’s mitigating efforts.

“Guardrisk revolutionised South Africa’s insurance landscape in 1993 when it pioneered the cell captive structure in non-life insurance, and extended it to life insurance in 1999. That we have been chosen by a global tech-driven financial services giant as its partner in South Africa, is testimony not only to the longevity of the cell captive concept but, above all, its seemingly endless capacity to create new and exciting solutions,” says Schoeman.