Prepaid Insurance Benefits Consumers

Hollard and Pep sell prepaid insurance Many South Africans have benefited from these 'off the shelf' insurance policies

This week, Hollard Insurance and the giant South African retail chain, Pep Stores came out with a joint statement to explain the advantages of prepaid insurance policies.

Both Hollard Insurance and Pep said that those who benefited from 'off the shelf' insurance policies the most were definitely South Africans who don't have the luxury of owning a bank account, for whatever reason.

These consumers were traditionally excluded from taking out insurance policies and Hollard's prepaid insurance packages, purchased in a similar way as one would cell phone starter packages, now put these policies within their reach.

"In 2006, roughly 15 million people didn't have bank accounts," pointed out the Divisional Managing Director of Hollard Insurance, Mandla Shezi. "They were excluded from buying insurance that required debit order payment, designed in Europe for consumers with different preferences."

"They were also excluded from policies with legal guarantees and official documents," said Shezi.

However, since Hollard Insurance and Pep Stores joined up two years ago to offer prepaid starter-pack type insurance policies off shop shelves, nearly 370,000 people have taken advantage of this service.

Shezi points out that the prepaid insurance policies were not only purchased by what he terms 'unbanked consumers'. "An unexpected development was that some people who bought their insurance policy off the shelf while doing their shopping in Pep stores do also operate bank accounts and requested debit order payment for convenience," he said.