Value creation through risk management

Since it started trading in 2005, Saxum Insurance has been building a name for itself as a company that offers unique solutions and an innovative approach to commercial and industrial insurance.

Saxum Insurance is a unique brand that represents stability, precision, professionalism, quality and constant innovation. Creativity is the name of their game and combined with their strong underwriting expertise and adaptable IT systems, the result is a perfect solution for your client's very specific needs.

Their offering to companies in the commercial, corporate, mining and industrial sectors focus strongly on a cooperative, tri-party approach where the client, broker and insurer work closely together to create specially packaged underwriting solutions, backed-up by reinsurance capacity from a panel of reinsurers that includes Munich Re, Swiss Re, Africa Re, Imperial Re and Everest Re.

"The establishment of long term relationships is the primary focus of our business development strategy. Saxum's value added offering extends beyond the boundaries of simply underwriting risks, and focuses on value creation through the risk management process," says Sangeeta Patel of Saxum.

Underwriting Manager approach

As part of Saxum's innovative approach to support unique products, they offer two new products through Underwriting Managers: HCV is the Goods In Transit Underwriting Manager, while Risk Guard Alliance is the Hospitality and Leisure Underwriting Manager. "This business is based on a completely outsourced model and we rely on the expertise of the people involved with this distribution channel," says Patel. "Two new products, Marine and Engineering, both via the underwriting management model, are in the pipeline."

Multinational pooling

Another unique feature of Saxum's offering is the multinational pooling facility available to South African multinational companies. "This is an underwriting approach where the group insurance benefits, such as death and income disability benefits, from more than one country, are combined for experience rating purposes and treated as if they were a single coverage," explains Patel.

The aim is to achieve economy of scale and overall optimisation of benefits and there is no additional cost. The insurance contracts of all the subsidiaries are combined into an International Pooling Instrument (IPI). The data from all the contracts is consolidated to produce an overall profit and loss account. The losses in one country are balanced against the gains made in other countries and in this manner the overall experience of a pool is calculated. If there is an overall positive balance, a dividend becomes payable. This is paid to the head office or distributed amongst the participating subsidiaries.

BEE

The company has added a BEE component to its structure and Patel says that the value add has been tremendous, in the sense that Saxum can now offer not only a traditional underwriting solution but also actuarial assessment. As a result of its management philosophy and reputation, Saxum also enjoys broad-based broker accreditation.

The underwriting team establishes and maintains the broker relationships, the main channel to Saxum Insurance's clients.

Creative culture

"Saxum's company culture is vibrant and dynamic. It is a focused, creative company that lends itself to endless opportunities for all its stakeholders," comments Patel.

For brokers and clients looking for a solid collaboration, Saxum Insurance believes in being part of the insurance process for the long term.