Eight black brokerages are set to graduate from Metropolitan’s Masithuthuke Broker Development Initiative – an 18-month long knowledge and skills empowerment programme that provides business development support to black financial planning practices.
This is the second year that the programme has been delivered by Metropolitan, in partnership with the Association of Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA) and EdgeGrowth.
Since March 2017, the brokers have been undergoing a combination of training sessions and biweekly one-on-one mentoring and coaching in areas such as B-BBEE Codes, attracting and identifying talent, digital marketing, succession planning and legal compliance. This has seen all eight businesses improve significantly on each of the Initiative’s four cornerstones - commercial, marketing, operations, and people management. As a result, they enjoyed a 155% improvement in revenue, a 50% decrease in policy lapses and have retained more business.
One of the participants, John Mathibhela of JLM Brokers, who has been in the industry for 30 years, believes that had he been given this type of training when he started out, he would have been able to build a sustainable business that is worth something today. He is in discussions with other brokers in the programme regarding the sharing of office space.
Fellow graduate, Casper Sithole, the Principal Broker at Africa Insurance Brokers, shares that he has derived great value from the Masithuthuke programme thanks to the practical training he has received on issues such as financial management, conducting a needs analysis and having compliant documents. He has also been able to share this knowledge with his staff members. Sithole too is planning on joining forces with other brokerages in the programme to share office space, along with other services.
“It has been incredibly rewarding to facilitate the personal and business development of the eight brokers through the programme, setting them up for African success and enabling them to rightfully take their places in the financial services industry as more professional advisers,” concludes Ally.
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