Bidvest Life plans to launch a new version of its insurance product, which provides life, disability, critical illness and income protection cover.
Unlike the existing product, which requires policyholders to go through a full medical underwriting process involving everything from a doctor’s visit to blood tests, the new insurance offering will allow clients to sign up via a questionnaire-based process.
Clients are likely to answer the questionnaire online in their own time or do so via an app or call centre, though Bidvest Life has not yet finalised the envisaged process.
“We are busy developing a new product, we are presenting the business case to the board in the next couple of weeks,” CEO Lulu Rasebotsa said in an interview. “This product will be more consumer facing such that people are able to [sign up] without having to go through an intermediary. Very few South Africans have got financial advisers.”
Bidvest Life rebranded from its previous moniker FMI in early 2022 not long after Rasebotsa was appointed in October 2021. She had previously been MD of Liberty Life Botswana since August 2011.
Under Rasebotsa’s leadership Bidvest Life has signalled its intention to boost its appeal among younger clients who are more digitally savvy and have lower risk profiles due to them typically being less likely to suffer from ill health or disabilities.
The Durban-headquartered insurer, which under its previous guise as FMI was one of the first in SA to specialise in income protection for business owners and the self-employed has been a division of Bidvest since 2016.
While premiums for Bidvest Life’s standard product depend on a policymaker’s individual income, health and personal characteristics it typically costs between R1,000 and R1,200 a month. Rasebotsa says the firm’s proposed new product, which will essentially be a simplified and more accessible version of the existing offering, may actually have higher premiums due to it not requiring full medical underwriting.
“The existing product is fully medically underwritten — you would go for your bloods, nicotine tests, all those things,” said Rasebotsa. “If we have a concern with your BMI [body mass index] ... we might send you for an ECG [electrocardiogram].”
The new product, which Bidvest Life plans to introduce in the next 12 months, will target the young and upwardly mobile. Examples of likely clients would be first-time job entrants or first-time parents who require income protection cover.
The new product also will not have to be distributed through intermediaries such as independent financial advisers (IFAs).
“It’s going to be more questionnaire based so none of that invasive medical underwriting,” said Rasebotsa. “It could be call centre based, it could also be where you go online and do everything yourself. It might be a case where you go online, fill out the questionnaire and request that we call you back. Those are some of the things that we are trying to decide on but the plan is for it to be that easy.”
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