InsureTalk63 addresses innovation, influence and the future of insurance

InsureTalk63 took place on 18 June 2026. Carel Nolte, CN&CO founder, welcomed over 2 000 guests to the webinar, thanking those who join every month to earn CPD hours, swap ideas and stay connected with the industry.

This session’s theme, “Insurance 2026: Innovation, influence and the future of the industry,” felt especially fitting given how much is shifting at once, from claims and customer expectations to talent, regulation and technology. “Insurance is real life,” said Carel, a reminder that the industry matters most in the moments when people, families and businesses need help.

Carel brought two personal stories into the session to set the tone. Having spent the weekend at the Comrades Marathon, he drew a parallel between running and insurance as ecosystems.

Making promises real

“The client may only see a policy, one claim, one premium, one broker, while a whole community works quietly behind the scenes to make those promises real,” he said. “The same is true for running. We see the athletes on the day without knowing how much goes on in the background to make sure the event happens.”

He also reflected on Youth Day, gently challenging the industry to listen harder to young professionals and make space for fresh thinking, a thread he picked up again later when introducing the Insurance Apprentice winner.

Carel thanked the day’s event partner True Aim, association partner the FIA and media partner FAnews, before handing over to the day’s first speaker, Reuben John of True Aim.

Reuben opened with a personal story from Switzerland that highlighted one of insurance’s most persistent frustrations. After a train journey was cancelled, he submitted a simple travel insurance claim and was struck by the disconnect between modern technology and the customer experience: although submission took less than two minutes, he still received the familiar response that the insurer would be in touch within 14 days.

That experience sparked an obsession with a simple question: why can insurers not assess, approve and pay straightforward claims instantly? For Reuben, the ideal future is one where “while it’s loading on their screen, we’ve already told them that your claim has been approved and payment has been made into your account.”

As founder and CEO of TrueAIM, a Swiss insurtech supported by Swiss government funding, Reuben argued that this future is no longer theoretical. He demonstrated how AI-driven claims systems can now ingest documents, extract and contextualise data, perform fraud checks, assess policy coverage, make decisions and create regulator-ready audit trails in minutes.

“The technology already exists to process many claims end-to-end in under two minutes,” he said. “The challenge is no longer technical capability, but ensuring that decisions are accurate, consistent, transparent and defensible in highly regulated environments.”

A key theme was the distinction between “black box AI” and governed AI. Reuben acknowledged concerns around trust, bias and hallucinations, but noted that humans are also subject to inconsistency, fatigue and error. He advocated for systems where every decision can be reconstructed, audited and explained.

“Insurers should combine AI’s ability to analyse vast amounts of information with deterministic business rules and comprehensive audit trails,” he said, calling this approach “scalable trust”.

Despite showcasing highly automated capabilities, Reuben believes humans remain essential: AI should handle repetitive administration, document analysis, fraud detection and compliance monitoring, while people focus on empathy, judgement and complex cases. The future, he argued, lies in “governed autonomy”, where intelligent systems operate within defined guardrails and human oversight remains in place when needed.

“The future of claims is not coming, it’s already here,” he concluded. “The real question for insurers is not whether AI can make decisions, but whether those decisions can be trusted, explained and defended.”

Debunking marketing myths

Christo Crafford of TWK Insurance opened by exploring how myths take hold in popular culture, from the belief that breakfast is the most important meal of the day to De Beers’ creation of “a diamond is forever”. Both, he explained, became widely accepted not through science but through decades of clever marketing.

He used these examples to introduce South Africa’s own enduring myth: that cutting out the broker saves consumers money.

“In reality, brokers save clients money and protect them from risk exposure,” he said. “Direct insurers’ heavy marketing spend is simply passed back to consumers through premiums.”

Christo traced the “cut out the middleman” message back to direct insurer campaigns of the late 1980s and early 1990s, which positioned brokers as an unnecessary cost. He rejected this firmly, noting that broker commission is regulated and already built into premiums, and that brokers undergo mandatory training to handle complex underwriting, policy wording and compliance.

He argued the myth has caused real harm by leaving people under-insured or without proper claims support.

“A broker is the insurance on your insurance,” he said.

Drawing on his own return to broking through TWK Insurance, Christo said the experience reinforced how much pressure brokers are under.

“Consumers still don’t understand the value brokers provide, largely because of inconsistent industry messaging rather than any failure on brokers’ part,” he said.

This is what led him to launch BrokerEdge, offering brokers compliant, ready-to-use content for websites, social media and newsletters to help them communicate their value consistently. He closed by introducing Riya, a tool that generates a compliant record of advice within minutes from a voice note, document or email.

Brokers are valuable

“Brokers have never been the expensive part of insurance,” he said. “They have always been the valuable part.”

BrokerEdge officially launches in July, with brokers invited to register their interest now at www.brokeredge.co.za.

Lizelle van der Merwe of the FIA opened by revisiting last year’s FIA advertising campaign, which had imagined a world without the organisation by stripping letters from its name to illustrate what would be lost.

“Financial advisers and brokers are absent. Clients lose trusted advice, businesses lose guidance,” she said.

This year’s theme builds on that foundation with a different emphasis: “a proven past, a powerful future.” Lizelle argued that the FIA’s decades of championing professional advice and supporting intermediaries through change form the basis for what comes next, particularly as client expectations shift and technology transforms the industry, while one thing remains constant: the need for trusted professionals who put clients first.

“Our proven past gives us the credibility, experience and resilience to shape a powerful future,” she said. “The future of advice is not something that happens to us. It’s something we continuously create.”

CoFI update

On current priorities, Lizelle confirmed that Cabinet approved submission of the CoFI Bill to Parliament in March, with public comment expected to open in July.

“The FIA has pushed for a minimum 90-day comment window because we require time to respond meaningfully to legislation that will reshape this entire industry.”

She also highlighted a broker development programme launched with Sasria and the IISA, placing unemployed young people into real industry environments to earn accredited qualifications and build a skills pipeline for the profession.

Lizelle closed by congratulating Karabo Mashego on winning The Insurance Apprentice 2026, saying her message that “the future of risk advisory lies entirely on the trust we build” had resonated with her, and praising Rianet Whitehead and her production team for the show’s continued growth.

That led nicely into a conversation between the 2025 and 2026 winners of The Insurance Apprentice. Khaya Mashologu, winner in 2025, congratulated 2026 winner Karabo Mashego before turning the interview into a reflective exchange on what the platform offers its winners.

Asked what the win has meant for him, Khaya described it as “such a phenomenal kind of moment that marked both recognition and a personal milestone.” He credited the show with mentorship that unearthed potential he had not previously had the chance to develop, pointing to opportunities to sit under the wisdom of industry leaders with decades of experience.

Looking back, he said his advice to his past self would be to make the tough calls and stay resolute about his direction.

“The sudden attention that comes with winning almost pulls you back into a recluse if you are not clear on what you want,” he said.

Karabo reflected on what set her apart during a season she called “mind-blowing”, attributing her win largely to her emotional intelligence and her refusal to be drawn into drama.

“It was always about the end goal for me,” she said, comparing the experience to driving a car: “If you focus on the other cars… it’s gonna derail you so much that you’re gonna lose sight of where you’re going.”

Listen to understand

She said the competition taught her the value of listening to understand rather than listening to respond.

“There’s a time to speak, and when you speak, you add value,” she said. “People now look forward to what you’re going to say once they sense a response has been properly considered.”

Looking ahead to her year as title holder, Karabo said she is most excited about educating clients in plainer language, recalling a client who told her, “Don’t speak to me in Harvard English.” Simplifying jargon and communicating with empathy, she argued, builds the kind of trust that keeps clients loyal: “It’s not about the best price… but about the relationship that they have with you.”

Asked what she would say to prospective contestants who doubt themselves, she offered a striking image: “A diamond doesn’t know that it’s a diamond until it’s put through fire.”

Khaya closed by thanking the show’s sponsors and mentors for investing in the industry’s future leaders.

Robyn Carter of the Insurance Institute of the Western Cape (IIWC) was up next. She introduced the organisation as the oldest regional insurance institute in the country, marking 128 years, with this year’s work guided by the theme “igniting impact”.

IIWC’s three pillars

The institute’s 21-strong council is built around three pillars: education, networking and charity. On education, Robyn pointed to practical, interactive learning across the full value chain, including a recent classroom session on interpreting risk survey reports, with all sessions CPD accredited.

Networking remains a major draw too, with the gala dinner and golf day already sold out for the year, alongside newer additions such as a Women’s Day event, an under-35s programme featuring a silent disco, and the six-year-old RISE mentorship programme, which Robyn described as “a passion project… very close to my heart”. RISE, which stands for Redefining Individual Skills and Education, now runs as a nine-month mentorship journey, and she encouraged both prospective mentees and willing mentors to get in touch via the council.

On the charity pillar, Robyn detailed partnerships with the Saartjie Baartman Centre for Women and Children, Mdzananda Animal Clinic, The Message Trust and Percy Bartley House, alongside support from the Gangstar Cafe coffee truck at events. These relationships range from toiletry and pet food drives to working directly with at-risk youth in Nyanga and Parkwood, with members going beyond formal initiatives to take boys from the Percy Bartley home on hikes or assist with clothing.

Robyn closed by thanking members and sponsors for making the institute’s work possible, summing up its purpose as “creating opportunities for connection because when people connect and insights are shared, innovation is sparked and the industry moves forward together.” Those interested in getting involved can visit www.iiwc.co.za.

And don’t forget to book for The Insurance Conference Western Cape on 20 and 21 August 2026. Here are more details.

Our last speaker was Kieren Vels of Olea, who offered a broker’s view on the current state and future of insurance in South Africa. He opened by framing risk as something that must be understood across time, arguing that without an appreciation of past events it becomes far harder to interpret the present or anticipate the future.

He invoked Alvin Toffler’s Future Shock and its observation that “the illiterate of the twenty-first century will not be those who cannot read or write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn,” using it to argue that brokers must remain nimble.

Central to his talk was the idea that imagination is essential to the profession.

“Without imagination, we can’t begin to think about the quantity and velocity of things that could happen,” he said, describing brokers as the “ham in the sandwich”, the link between insured and insurer who must translate complex risk into language clients can understand and act on.

Kieren argued that brokers should aim to depersonalise risk, taking a more objective and at times deliberately contrarian view rather than following groupthink, using the global response to Covid-19 as an example of how consensus thinking does not always produce the best outcome.

“This objectivity needs to be paired with old-fashioned principles of insurance,” he said, “particularly utmost good faith and the duty to act as a prudent insured, since clients who withhold material information risk a voidable policy when it matters most.”

Turning to regulation, he questioned whether decades of legislation have truly achieved their stated aim of protecting consumers, suggesting that qualities such as honesty and integrity cannot be legislated into existence.

South Africa’s upcoming Conduct of Financial Institutions Bill, he said, is a “behemoth” the industry will need to grapple with, though the country avoided some of the turmoil that followed the UK’s Retail Distribution Review by not adopting an equivalent.

Looking continentally, he pointed to low but rapidly growing insurance penetration across Africa, alongside real risks of political instability and expropriation in markets some might assume to be stable, such as Ghana.

On risk mitigation, Kieren highlighted the growing use of captive insurance, even in soft market conditions, with South Africa, Mauritius and several offshore domiciles emerging as popular bases. He also addressed the soft market directly, observing that insurers face a self-defeating cycle of rate reductions in pursuit of growth, while brokers have an opportunity to use softer rates to broaden cover or reduce deductibles for clients rather than simply compete on price.

On artificial intelligence, he called it “probably the biggest risk and opportunity that the industry faces”, referencing predictions that AI and humanoid robots could perform most industry functions within 10 to 15 years, and even raised the speculative question of AI-driven life extension and what that might mean for human purpose.

Kieren closed by returning to skills transfer and mentorship, welcoming the work being done by local institutes, the FIA and Inseta to develop the next generation of professionals, stressing that what is passed on should go beyond technical skills to include culture, ethics and professional identity.

“We need to give back as much as we get,” he said. “The scope for talent in insurance is unusually broad, spanning engineering, law, medicine and actuarial science.”

He ended by summing up the theme of his talk: that imagining risks before they occur, rather than reacting to them, is what will determine whether Africa’s insurance gap is treated as an opportunity or a threat.

In closing, Carel summed up the common thread that ran through the webinar: “Innovation matters, but people matter more.”

You can watch the recording of InsureTalk 63 by clicking the video link below. And don’t forget to book for the remaining editions of InsureTalk 2026!