Four candles for InsureTalk

InsureTalk celebrated its fourth birthday on 18 April 2024 with a special edition marking the franchise’s 41st instalment. 🎂

Anthony Miller is the CEO of Simply, our event partner for the day. Anthony’s talk on the democratisation of group risk cover appealed to brokers and intermediaries. He spoke about the alarming cover gap that exists in South Africa.

“This means that if someone dies, the family they leave behind are unlikely to have enough money to carry on living at the level that they would be living otherwise,” he said. “We need to make group life cover far more available and flexible in order to try and solve this problem.”

The gap is widest among lower income earners and funeral cover is disproportionately high.

“If we as an industry can find a way to shift people from retail funeral spend to group spend, we can really make a material impact on people’s ability to protect their families going forward,” he said. 

1. Penetrate the SMME sector, where 60% of the SA workforce is employed

2. Use technology and innovative product design to make group risk cover available to all employees

3. Give employees the flexibility of retail and the efficiencies of group, seamlessly and efficiently

“If we as an industry could shift 20% of retail funeral spend to group spend – and all that’s needed in order to do that is for employers to facilitate that; they don’t even have to pay for it – we could narrow the life cover gap by as much as R2-trillion,” he said. “And the shift is going to happen soon.”

Staying with the digital innovation theme, our next speaker, Warren Wheatley of Altvest Capital, unpacked the practical applications of AI, mainly ChatGPT, for small businesses and brokerages.

His talk focused on ways of using AI without having to invest in additional systems, with a specific focus on ChatGPT. Warren confessed that he had actually put his InsureTalk presentation together using ChatGPT, which he estimated saved him two to three hours. 

Here are some ways ChatGPT can help in a small insurance brokerage:

Warren went on to do a live demo and to explain the difference between the paid and free versions of ChatGPT. 

“I am not a ChatGPT expert,” he said, “but I am using it more and more as I figure it out. And that’s the best way to do it – just start! Give it a try and see what happens. You might surprise yourself.”

And yes, it can translate documents into any of SA’s official languages.

IISA CEO Thokozile Mahlangu provided a short overview of what’s happening at the institute. She spoke about the need to be resilient, determined and focused in the face of adversity before providing an update of the IISA’s 2023 financials, membership drive, the CPD cycle that’s about to end, and the upcoming 2024 African Insurance Exchange conference – the 50th conference!

FA News editor and founder of The Insurance Apprentice (TIA), Rianet Whitehead, spoke about the upcoming finale of TIA season 10, due to take place on the evening of InsureTalk41. She invited delegates to tune into the live broadcast on the TIA YouTube channel from 6pm. 

Rianet reminded delegates on the call that there are very few days left to fulfil their CPD requirements for 2024. The cycle ends on 31 May.

Following on from Warren’s talk on ChatGPT, Rianet shared a few of her own experiences with the platform and gave an example of how she uses it in her work. (And no, it’s not to write articles!) She also had some interaction with Amazon’s Alexa app while on a recent trip to the USA.

“I won’t say what I asked or what she responded, but it did give me a little glimpse into the future and it was scary!”

But despite all this fancy tech, Rianet said there are still companies whose basic computer systems don’t function adequately. She called for the industry to get the basics right before moving on to the more advanced platforms. 

Delegates were then treated to a video of insurance industry members wishing InsureTalk a happy fourth birthday! Check them out:

Our traditional entertainment slot was filled by Mpilo May, a South African writer/actor/musician based in Cape Town and London, who sang two original songs and one cover accompanied by his guitar. 

Kurt Groenewald of Tisco Systems discussed how an integrated workflow platform in an insurance administration application manages business processes. He shared the history behind the development of such a platform within an insurance management of line of business system. He went through the key modules of an insurance workflow platform, some design considerations, flow functions (including definition, examples, benefits, task execution, configuration and customisation, user interaction, communication), user workload factors, flow routing and other features. 

He gave an in-depth tour of a typical workflow system, which he referred to at the end of his presentation as “the magic bullet”.

CN&CO Events head, Llewellyn du Plessis, took a moment to celebrate four years of InsureTalk. He spoke about how the conference has improved over the years with the addition of the CPD portal, improved production facilities, elevated speakers and topics, ongoing support from our event partners and sponsors – which allows us to bring the webinar to thousands of insurance professionals 10 times a year.

“Thanks also to the IISA, who has been our CPD partner throughout the years, since the very first InsureTalk, and to our media partners Cover and FA News for bringing us media updates each month and sharing previews and content on social media.” He also thanked the production team for their ongoing efforts. 

The conference attracts around 4000 registrations each month, giving the industry the chance to get educated, entertained and earn CPD hours. 

Llewellyn invited delegates to visit www.cnandcoevents.com to register for the remaining InsureTalk session in 2024. And look out for InsureTalk Live in Johannesburg in October!

You can watch a recording of InsureTalk41 below:

The next instalment will be on 23 May at 10am. Book here.