Cash is king – but digital payments are coming for the throne
Even with a high banked population and a multitude of electronic payment options available, the average South African still use cash for daily purchases and payments with an estimated 78% to 80% of transactions being in cash. Anton van der Merwe, the...
Predictions for SA’s payments landscape
The silver lining of the Covid pandemic for many businesses has been the acceleration of online shopping in South Africa. Faced with fewer choices, shoppers adopted new spending habits. They also embraced new payment options, like interest-free buy now pay later...
Insurers embrace disruption with reskilling of talent
Over the past 16 months, the ways people work and live have been fundamentally impacted. The expectations are that even following the Covid-19 pandemic, organisations across industry sectors can no longer revert to their traditional approaches. By Annalie Terblanche,...
Tech-led agri insurance will broaden inclusivity
Despite a myriad of setbacks caused by Covid-19, optimism in South Africa's agricultural value chain recently reached a six-year high. This suggests that the industry is bouncing back, although the full impact of the lockdown is still coming to the fore. Farmers have...
Intelligent automation drives operational insurance improvements
Insurers looking toward digital innovations to drive operational improvements in their processes would do well to consider the benefits of intelligent automation (IA). By Kelly Preston, data analytics manager at SilverBridge Holdings For example, the recent...
Can microinsurance close Africa’s insurance gap?
Africa has traditionally been the world's most uninsured, and underinsured, continent. That's rapidly changing, as the booming popularity of microinsurance gives millions of Africans access to life and hospital insurance for the first time. By Marius Botha, Group GEO...
SWIFT eliminates friction in international payments
SWIFT has announced the go-live of a service that will enable banks to verify payee account details before an international payment is sent, removing a key point of friction in cross-border transactions. The new Payment Pre-validation service is a core building block...
Digital crucial for bridging the insurance gap
In South Africa, the divide between rural and urban citizens is significant. By Greg Gatherer, account manager of Liferay According to research from the Treasury Department, rural areas have much lower GDP per capita levels and higher rates of unemployment. They also...
On the road to crypto-asset regulation
The recently-published Crypto Asset Policy Paper lays out the types of crypto asset service providers that will be subjected to regulatory oversight and how they will be supervised, writes Seshree Govender, senior associate at Webber Wentzel. On 11 June 2021, the...
How self-service helps insurers cut costs and time
Standing out in a competitive industry like insurance is a challenge. To remain competitive, insurers must understand how to successfully serve their customers while keeping costs low. It's for this reason that there is an increasing demand for self-service options....
How personalisation is shaping the future of banking
Industries around the world are moving towards the personalisation of services. Today, information is power, and big data collection allows organisations to personalise customer experiences, writes Andrew van der Hoven, head: digital and e-commerce consumer and high...
The future of hyper-personalised banking products and services
Retail banks are under increasing pressure to innovate and personalize their products and services for the benefit of their customers, yet at the same time they are subject to rapidly developing laws and regulations concerning the protection and processing of their...