Mexico agrees to reinforce its northern border with 10, national guard members to stop illegal drugs. Insurance business is often hidden behind policy wording and regulations, among mounds of data and complex actuarial formulas. Capitec has been making waves in the banking industry since inception in Capitec now rivals Standard Bank for the title of largest market capitalisation for an SA bank.
Capitec has rapidly expanded its branch network and ATM footprint, and is now the largest in SA by a meaningful margin — ensuring it can give personal service to those who are either unbanked or want an affordable alternative to the Big Four. The Capitec ethos of being efficient and customer focused has seen it make profits while having the lowest transaction costs. As a relatively new player that has been able to avoid legacy systems, scale means profits.
Data is seen as a valuable commodity, especially financial transaction data that can be used to develop a customer profile, credit score and financially underwrite potential insurance customers.
Capitec — with its large and growing customer base — has been able to apply this to its loan book, and more recently to its insurance book.
Life insurance products are a good fit for banks, with some sales being tied to loans so the banks can manage their repayment rates in the event of death, known as bancassurance. Capitec decided there were benefits to tighter integration and going it alone, and gave Sanlam notice in November The long-term nature of the contracts sold meant Capitec had to pay Sanlam for the future value of the in-force book transferred.
