The past several years has demonstrated just how quickly separate risks can combine and amplify one another. In relatively close succession, South African businesses have had to contend with a global health pandemic, periods of widespread socio-political unrest, infrastructure failure, extreme weather events, persistent economic stagnation and growing cyber exposure.
Andrew Nkgare, executive head of broker solutions at Santam, explores how insurance intermediaries are helping businesses move beyond risk transfer towards a more proactive approach to resilience
Rising operating costs and machinery or systems failures have also become increasingly important concerns. Yet the most significant change is not the growing number of risks businesses face. It is the fact that these risks are increasingly interconnected. A single power outage, for example, can trigger machinery damage, data loss, product deterioration, missed deliveries and lost revenue, all within the same event.
As a result, businesses can no longer view risk through a narrow or siloed lens. They require a broader understanding of how vulnerabilities interact and the potential consequences when one disruption cascades into another.
This shift is fundamentally reshaping the role of the insurance broker.
To help businesses identify vulnerabilities before they result in significant financial losses, brokers are increasingly moving beyond their traditional role as intermediaries to become trusted risk advisors. According to the Barometer, 78% of South African businesses have come to rely on intermediaries, while nearly 90% of brokers identify risk advice as a core component of their value proposition.
Today, skilled brokers do far more than arrange insurance cover. They help clients uncover hidden exposures through structured risk reviews, assess the adequacy of existing cover and risk controls, identify gaps and underinsurance, challenge unrealistic recovery assumptions and quantify potential losses. They also connect businesses to specialist expertise, monitor emerging risks and regulatory developments, and help ensure that risk management keeps pace with a changing operating environment. Their value increasingly lies in helping organisations anticipate potential disruption and make informed decisions before losses occur.
This advisory role takes many forms. When infrastructure failures threaten operations, brokers can help businesses assess how long they can function independently by evaluating backup power and water requirements, telecommunications redundancy, fuel arrangements and maintenance responsibilities. In the case of supply-chain disruption, they can assist in identifying critical suppliers, assessing contingent business interruption risks, reviewing contractual obligations and exploring alternative sourcing strategies before a crisis exposes weaknesses.
Similarly, cyber resilience requires coordination across multiple stakeholders. Brokers can facilitate discussions between management, IT teams, legal advisers and specialist cyber providers, while helping organisations understand coverage requirements, notification obligations and incident-response expectations.
For extreme weather exposures, they can support assessments of flood, storm, hail, lightning and fire risks, while encouraging practical measures such as improved maintenance, early-warning systems and emergency-response planning. Importantly, brokers help test whether continuity plans are genuinely workable.
A real Santam example illustrates the value of this approach. When a hardware store was severely damaged by fire and repairs were expected to take at least six months, temporary premises and targeted advertising enabled the business to continue serving customers while the property was restored. While this intervention occurred after the loss, alternative operating arrangements and adequate business interruption cover had been well considered beforehand.
Importantly, these interventions are not always costly or complex. Their greatest value often lies in identifying a vulnerability early enough for the business to have meaningful choices. Small adjustments made before a disruption can prevent much larger financial and operational consequences later down the line.
In today’s business environment, real commercial resilience is not achieved by transferring every risk to an insurer. It is achieved by understanding what could go wrong, reducing preventable exposures, preparing for disruption and insuring against the losses a business cannot afford to absorb.
The broker’s evolving role is central to that process. By combining deep knowledge of the client, insurance expertise and practical risk advice, brokers are helping South African businesses move beyond reactive protection towards proactive resilience. In an increasingly uncertain and interconnected world, advice has never been more valuable.