Reimagining risk advice in a digital everything future
One of the big questions up for discussion at the 51st African Insurance Exchange (AIE 2025) was whether short-term insurance intermediaries could weather the digital storm, and retain their place as vital links in the insurance value chain.
“We operate in a world where clients, data, platforms and technology are all tightly intertwined, and the real risk is no longer digital disruption, but disintermediation,” said said panel moderator, Patience Marwiro, CEO of Emeritus Re Botswana, introducing a discussion titled ‘Reinventing the broker role in a digitally entangled world’. The discussion played out on the second day of the conference, held at Sun City from 27 to 29 July.
A digitally connected world
Selven Govender, Executive: Affinity and Digital Leader at Marsh, kicked off the panel by observing that everyone in the audience was digitally connected, unable to go about their daily lives without some or other form of digital enhancement. “As an industry and as brokers, if we are not consciously aware of what digital is doing and the impact it is having, we will not survive,” he said. Brokers must embrace digital to connect and communicate with clients, while taking care to fit digital solutions to operating models, not the other way around.
“We gather here in a moment of immense change, not just because of economic pressure or the tech evolution, but because the very fabric of how insurance is consumed, distributed and valued is being redefined across the value chain,” said Darryl Grater, Chief Growth Officer at Discovery Insure, setting a somewhat philosophical tone. He suggested the panel consider how the broker’s role would evolve in a digitally entangled world. The Discovery executive then offered five themes that would influence the industry over the coming years.
The first, labelled the digital enablement of the intermediary, centres on the transformation of every aspect of insurance broking. “For the broker, this means moving from the digital assistance offered by basic CRMs or quoting systems to a true augmentation level, where technology frees up your time to advise better rather than just process fasted,” Grater said.
Digital adoption is non-negotiable in an environment where financial services consumers expect quick, seamless transactions. Grater observed that intentional digital enablement benefited brokers by boosting efficiency and improving client outcomes.
Servicing four generational segments at once
The second theme to keep note of is the generational shift in clients, with brokers challenged to understand the customer of tomorrow as well as the customer of today. Grater pointed out that the industry was servicing four generational client segments, each expecting different things. As part of this shift, many clients are spending on experience rather than assets. “As clients demand immediacy, we have no choice but to optimise journeys using integrated digitalisation,” Grater said. He envisioned a future where insurers enable intermediaries with best of breed technology to deepen the level and quality of advice.
Embedded insurance and competition for platforms stood out as the third trend. Grater acknowledged embedded insurance as a distribution revolution involving cover being sold at point of need. “The traditional legacy broker environment is being squeezed, but this does not mean disintermediation [so much as] reintermediation and finding new ways to insert value in the digital chain,” he said. “Brokers have the advantage of client relationships, expertise and trust.” The differentiator is to curate experiences, not sell products.
Themes four and five were summarised as purpose-led advice in the context of a stakeholder-wide alignment to environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors and the rise of advice-led distribution and behavioural risk models. “Brokers are being called to a higher standard, to be purpose driven and not transactional intermediaries,” Grater said. Future-fit is about building resilient, sustainable portfolios and helping clients navigate the risks of a changing world.
Leveraging behavioural science and data insights
Advice-led distribution, meanwhile, will depend heavily on rich data. “In a world of increasing complexity, advice matters … but it must be augmented by behavioural data; usage based models; and proactive risk management,” Grater concluded. The Holy Grail is for brokers to team up with insurers that allow them to couple behavioural science and data insights with broker advice.
Fanus Coetzee, CEO of Santam Broker Solutions, was the final panel member to take to the podium. He spent a few minutes reflecting on the evolution of intermediation, going back to 1750 BC, when the Babylonian king Hammurabi first codified something resembling marine insurance in his laws. Coetzee spun the narrative from fire insurance in London around 1660, to the first meeting at Lloyd’s coffee house in 1680, through the rise of asset insurance during the Industrial Revolution in the 1800s, and into the era of call centres in the late 20th century.
“The first contact centre was probably the biggest revolution for our industry,” Coetzee said, “And that was followed by the web, where the broker and the intermediated model began feeling a bit of a threat for the first time.” This sense of foreboding has escalated through the digital age that we live in today. “The digital age, and the direct-to-consumer attacks that it brings, put pressure on the intermediated model,” he said. It is, however, the failure of intermediaries to evolve, rather than disintermediation, that stands out as the biggest risk.
An evolving risk landscape
“The risk landscape has also changed quite radically, and it will require a fairly significant evolution on our behalf, as an intermediated fraternity, to match it,” Coetzee said. He added that digital experiences were setting the tone for how consumers wanted to conduct business, including in financial services. Intermediaries have had to adapt their game to shift from product differentiation, to experience differentiation, to a world where their advice must contend with embedded and modular products as well as direct insurers.
Brokers will have to lean on advice and client relationships to prosper through the digital age. “Advice is all that is truly left for us in the intermediary environment,” Coetzee said. “I represent one of the largest broker-dependent insurers in South Africa, and it is to our benefit for brokers to survive in the long-run.” His introduction opened the way for a probing question from the panel facilitator, who asked whether brokers or insurers should take the lead to digitise their businesses?
“Insurers and the brokers are interconnected, and we are part of one ecosystem … we cannot operate in vacuums,” Govender said. He suggested that brokers and insurers would have to take the lead in aspects that had the greatest impact on their respective functions. Insurers will continue to leverage technology to assess risk and ensure they price for this risk correctly. Digital innovation will also play a huge role in insurer-side client servicing, especially expedited claims settlement.
Fast-track adoption of AI
Brokers, meanwhile, could leverage technology to determine their appetite for certain sectors, and for lead generation, to name a few. According to Govender, the focus would be two-fold. On the one side, brokers can introduce digital to enhance the client experience, and on the other to make broker operating models more efficient. The discussion then turned to the future of intermediation in the context of the fast-track adoption and integration of artificial intelligence (AI) backed technologies across the non-life insurance value chain.
“AI and digital do not do trauma; you need people to do trauma,” said Coetzee. He added that commoditised insurance classes were far easier to disrupt through digital technology than complex risks. “As we go down the risk complexity spectrum, the need for advice escalates,” he said, “not only because it is complicated, but because of the factors that we deal with in the changing risk landscape.” Insurers and their intermediary partners need to be flexible to accommodate evolving climate change related risks, and emerging risks in the cyber realm.
Insurer versus intermediary
Insurers, thanks to their actuarial teams, capital bases and systems, are often seen as better positioned to lead the digital journey. The challenge is for insurers to bring the broker along for the ride. According to Grater, retail brokers that lack the resources to independently fund digital infrastructure should be receptive to partnering with insurers, to move them from being policy sellers to risk coaches. “We will continue to enable brokers through rich data, dashboards and fostering personalised engagement for our broker partners,” Grater concluded.
Writer’s thoughts:
The role of financial and risk advice is being rewritten as clients and product providers accelerate their tech adoption. Is your practice evolving fast enough to stay relevant in a digital everything world? Please comment below, interact with us on X at @fanews_online or email us your thoughts [email protected].
