Out with the old: Zurich rebrands to Bryte

Nicholas Francis, Chief Marketing Officer at Bryte Insurance

Following the acquisition of Zurich South Africa and Botswana by the Canadian-based Fairfax Financial Holdings last year, the businesses rebranded to Bryte Insurance.

We caught up with Nicholas Francis, Chief Marketing Officer, Bryte Insurance to find out more about the rebrand and what’s in store for the future

Q: Share with us the context of the rebranding, a bit of history and what the future holds?
A: Fairfax Financial Holdings acquired the Zurich South Africa and Botswana businesses in December 2016. This gave us a tremendous opportunity to develop a new localised brand and corporate identity. Bryte Insurance aims to be the premier, proactive business risk specialist in Southern Africa. Applying our unparalleled sector insights, proven expertise and foresight, we will partner with customers and brokers to proactively protect their businesses and improve their risk profiles across the continent.

Q: What will remain the same and what will change?
A: All policies and agreements under Zurich remain in place and the senior leadership team will continue to be instrumental in driving the growth and sustainability of the business under its new identity. The biggest change is the opportunity to invest in approaching risk with purpose.

Q: What opportunities come with this rebrand?
A: The biggest opportunity is to run our business independently, whilst still having the financial support and expertise of a strong global player. Thus far, we have successfully incorporated several niche products into our business insurance offering which has helped us differentiate ourselves from our competitors.

Q: With the rebrand are there any other exciting developments brokers can look forward to?
A: From an operations perspective we are better placed to make decisions more swiftly than ever before. From a communications perspective, Bryte Insurance is now on Twitter (@BryteInsurance) and LinkedIn which we believe will help support our business’ objectives. Brokers are now able to engage with us online and keep abreast of all activities and developments via social media.

Q: What lies ahead in terms of client engagement to ensure clients are comfortable with the new name and what it brings?
A: During this transition our priority was to ensure the continuation of top quality customer service as well as consistent and regular communication to all our stakeholders about each step of the process.

Q: Share your strategy on the process around the name change.
A: Any change in brand identity is a process and great care has been taken to ensure that the transition from Zurich to Bryte Insurance is as smooth and effective as possible. All relevant branding has been changed across all our sites, our new email addresses are active and our site and social media accounts are live. The next step in the process will be the rebrand of all policies, contracts, and remaining documentation to Bryte Insurance.

Q: What is the most exciting part about the new brand?
A: A significant one is what our brand represents: Bryte Insurance is based on light – shining the light on customer risk and understanding risk from the smallest detail to the biggest picture. This can only happen through partnerships - partnerships with Bryte and brokers and Bryte and business. Our logo design (based on two B’s interlinking) reflects that.

Q: What is the most challenging part of the rebrand?
A: The rollout was quite extensive. Rolling out the rebrand to employees in various locations, consistently and simultaneously, while keeping the brand identity confidential, made the scale of the project quite substantial. All in all, our launch day experience of the rebranded business was shared with more than 1 000 people across three countries (including Canada – home to Fairfax).

Q: Your message to brokers
A: The success of our business is underpinned by our relationships and strong partnerships. The golden thread within our partnership seal brings together our new focus on Brokers and Bryte – Bryte and Business. We remain committed to the broker channel and will continue working with them to help our customers mitigate risk.