Delivering shared value in an age of digital disruption
Did you know what you wanted to do career-wise when you left school or varsity? I certainly did not. Leaving school, the idea was to go and study something to open up a ‘big money’ career, so engineering seemed a sensible choice. But after tripping up over the applied mathematics and physics hurdles and making an early exit from a four-year course, I ended up entering the job market sooner than planned.
Any job will do
The main consideration of finding an awesome job with long-term prospects gave way to finding any job that might chip away at the monthly expenses. It took over a decade before editing and writing came into focus, and two more decades to become an expert in insurance and investment reporting.
Today’s reminiscing was triggered by an Insurance Institute of Gauteng (IIG) CEO Round Table held in Johannesburg recently, an event I have been privileged to attend a number of times. The 2026 version unfolded as an industry think-tank on how brokers and underwriters can infuse shared value through their businesses and deliver positive outcomes for the communities they operate in.
As the author of Everything you need to know about non-life insurance in South Africa, now in its fifth edition, I remain in awe of the contribution made by the non-life or general insurance sector to economies and society. It was comforting, therefore, to have this view reinforced by Justin Naylor, the CEO of event sponsor iTOO Special Risks. “The insurance industry is one of the world’s largest and most successful partnerships,” he said. “It involves the coming together of insurance brokers, insurers, reinsurers and underwriting managers on a global scale.”
One of the event’s sub-themes explored collaboration and partnership in the context of regulation that often severely limits such practices. Naylor called out the irony, saying that the global insurance industry’s success hinged on collaboration on capital, data and shared underwriting skills across brokers and underwriters.
Decades of business and leadership expertise
Naylor, who was the third act in a three-person panel discussion, was preceded by business heavyweights Dr Reuel Khoza and Gareth Ackerman. The former, who boasts a decades-long list of board and executive-level experience, was invited to reflect on shared value from a board, governance and shareholder perspective; the latter, who only recently stepped down as chair of Pick ‘n Pay Stores, brought some retail flavour to the room.
Dr Khoza’s opening remarks focused on the near impossibility of modern organisations ‘going it alone’ in today’s complex operating environment. “We are dealing with complexity that is perplexing, and the only way you can succeed is if you collaborate,” he said. Collaboration and partnerships become essential in navigating a global environment where blind spots often outweigh what business strategists can clearly see.
The former director at Liberty, Norwich and Old Mutual called insurance a promise and a “covenant of truth”. He said: “The future belongs to organisations and leaders who move beyond transactions; insurance partnerships must transcend short-term contracts, embrace long-term covenants of trust, and unlock innovation,” before calling on the audience to imagine an industry where insurance is activism and leadership legacy.
Referring to his work as chair of Discovery Bank, he declared that the power of partnership lay in pervasive philosophy, not strategy. The important caveat is that partnerships must deliver positive synergy, especially in complex scenarios. His rallying call was for the leaders in the room “to move beyond transactions to embrace partnerships and to catalyse people through collaboration; in doing so, the insurance industry … will create a shared destiny of resilience, trust, sustainability and real impact”.
Addressing persistent misperceptions?
Ackerman said the insurance industry still had work to do to address persistent consumer perceptions about whether their promise would be met at claim stage. His introduction was more general, with a key observation being that artificial intelligence (AI) and other emerging technologies were turning conventional business wisdom on its head. In the past, you would design and build a business and then focus on delivering organic growth; nowadays, you figure out what your customer wants and use technology to design that solution.
This change is evident in the banking sector, where legacy brands are “petrified of change because they might lose their data”, whereas digital newcomers like Capitec and Discovery Bank “are taking new technology and investing backwards”. Ackerman singled out changes in the advertising world as a significant challenge for traditional retailers that rely heavily on print publications, notably newspapers, with a secondary focus on online marketing via Facebook and Google to reach customers. AI and AI search are chipping away at both channels.
“If you search in AI, you do not get adverts,” he said, posing the rhetorical question: how will you reach your future customer? Ackerman said that emerging challenges demanded a fundamental change in how partnerships within industries developed and played out. And he was critical of competition regulation that prevented common sense collaboration or discussion, while spawning a raft of unintended consequences. Notably, this included the competition board ruling on retailer exclusivity at shopping centres.
Solving for wicked problems
He framed various overlapping challenges discussed during the morning session as a “wicked problem”, meaning one for which there is no clear or established solution. Unlike simple or complex problems that can be solved by following known steps, wicked problems demand collaboration, experimentation and the ability to think several moves ahead.
The challenges facing retailers and shopping centre owners will filter through to insurers too. Retailers face the erosion of revenues and profits as foot traffic through shopping centres reduces; the shop owners face pressure in terms of rental renegotiations; and insurers will have to reprice for the evolving operational footprints of both the retail and real estate sectors.
Ackerman left the audience with advice from his father and founder of Pick ‘n Pay, Raymond Ackerman, who always said that “leaders deal in hope”. In uncertain times, he said, business leaders had to offer a vision of a better future and give others a reason to believe that change was possible.
As businesses reflect on how to deliver shared value in an uncertain future, you and I are left wondering whether our careers, however we stumbled into them, will endure the disruption of an ‘everything AI’ world. The best advice I can think of for those just embarking on their career journey is to take a page from Elon Musk’s book, namely identifying and staying true to a central vision.
Solving humanity’s wicked problems
During a 2012 commencement address at the California Institute of Technology, Musk explained how he had considered which problems were most likely to affect humanity’s future, including sustainable energy and making humanity multi-planetary, before making them central to his business ventures. And these themes or visions come through in virtually every interview he gives.
My closing premise is that the earlier you decide on a personal vision, the easier it becomes to set the goals and objectives that will see you through your career and life journey. It seems so simple in hindsight; but knowing where you intend to go is 99% of the battle already won. The other 1% is figure out how you get there.
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