Growth investing has gained the upper hand over value investing in recent years; but entering 2023 there are signs that the return from growth strategies will falter and be replaced by return from SA-based value opportunities. How do you respond to the value versus growth debate?

Bitcoin to the moon (12%)

Growth stocks or bust (4%)

Let the portfolio manager decide (36%)

Trick question, everything stays offshore (16%)

Value, but beware the value traps (32%)

The year 2022 was a painful year for insurers, and some of the challenges still linger today. These are…

The disruption to business activity (25%)

The subsequent impact on claims profiles and policyholder behaviour (28.57%)

Challenges in both the property and casualty (P&C) and life industries (8.93%)

The effects on emerging claims and new business activity (37.5%)

Many parts of South Africa have been affected by extreme weather and flooding since the start of the New Year with social media images of cars submerged ‘up to their windshields’ quite common. Is there anything that insurance brokers and / or their clients can do to reduce flood-related damage?

Building maintenance and weatherproofing (17.36%)

Limit vehicle use during extreme weather (16.53%)

Lobby government to fix stormwater infrastructure (40.5%)

Not much: acts of God are unstoppable (14.05%)

Why worry? The insurer will pay (11.57%)

The SARB has hiked interest rates 7 times since November 2021, increasing the prime rate to 10.5% and adding ZAR2 200,00 per month to a million-rand home loan repayment. What should homeowners expect in 2023?

12% or higher is possible (30.13%)

11% will be the ‘top’ of this cycle (19.87%)

10.5% is as bad as it gets (11.54%)

Too much uncertainty to say (38.46%)

What are your thoughts on the case studies from OSTI’s briefcase?

It’s no surprise where policyholders’ claims are rejected. They breach policy rules because they don’t read the documents thoroughly, to understand the policy provisions, terms and definitions. We, as intermediaries, can only do so much (50%)

Insurers always find reasons to reject claims (5.26%)

These days insurers seem to have the onus of proving their grounds for rejection, and still end up having to settle the claims. It’s a noticeable trend (44.74%)

Members of medical schemes are often shocked by how much their scheme expects them to pay ‘out-of-pocket’ following a hospitalisation or surgery. How can healthcare brokers address the co-payment issue for clients?

Choose comprehensive medical aids (8.2%)

Co-payments are inevitable, plan for them (6.56%)

Ensure that adequate Gap cover is in place (50.82%)

Lobby regulators and schemes to resolve the issue (22.95%)

NHI will fix everything (11.48%)

Treasury’s two-pot retirement system

There are administrative complexities, benefits and challenges that the industry will face through its implementation (21.88%)

Questions centre on the complexity and cost of administering three pots of retirement capital for each fund member (9.38%)

Some concerns have been raised about the number of regulatory changes, historic and pending, that affect retirement funds, members and administrators (3.13%)

Stakeholders are playing a bit of a wait-and-see game (0%)

Whatever happens, we cannot lose sight of the initial policy intent, which was to preserve retirement savings rather than allowing funds to be treated as bank accounts (65.63%)

SA’s retirement dilemma

Is worsening, as savers focus their attention on overcoming more immediate financial pressures (70.31%)

Retirement still holds the prospect of deprivation and disempowerment for most South Africans (10.94%)

Expanding access to and affordability of financial advice will prove the best medicine for SA’s retirement provisioning shortcomings (18.75%)

The liquidation of CICL…

Was in the best interest of all policyholders of CICL, regardless of that decision ‘ending’ a substantial insurance business and putting hundreds of people out of work (8%)

Why would they push for a curator just as the business was showing signs of recovery, which recovery would surely assist the business in restoring its solvency (20%)

CICL was provided with adequate opportunity, but ultimately failed to recapitalise the business, and the PA had to take the appropriate regulatory action (52%)

The outcome, being the business’ final liquidation, was fait accompli the moment that court action was pursued (20%)

The COVID-19 pandemic brought about several disruptions… The overall state of health in the region…

We still experience service delivery failures (10.34%)

The disease burden is extremely high (0%)

The impact of reduced access to healthcare services during COVID-19 may expose us to downstream complications and deepen the burden of disease (6.9%)

We are deeply concerned that the healthcare challenges that we had pre-covid may be worse now, in terms of burden of disease (82.76%)