FIA AWARDS
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FIA AWARDS 2018
31 July 2018
SA’s top brands toasted at FIA Awards
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n a celebration held at the Sandton Convention Centre last month, the Financial Intermediaries Association of Southern Africa (FIA) announced the winners of the 2018 FIA Awards. The awards celebrate the financial services brands that provide the best product, relationship and service to SA’s financial advisers and insurance brokers. The FIA Awards are hotly contested and the winners are not only recognised as companies that ‘go the extra mile’ but those that truly have consumers’ interests at heart.
The Winners
EMPLOYEE BENEFITS: Sanlam Employee Benefits MEDICAL SCHEMES: Discovery Health INVESTMENT PRODUCT LUMP SUM: Allan Gray LONG-TERM RISK: Old Mutual Life INVESTMENT PRODUCT SAVINGS: Allan Gray SHORT-TERM COMMERCIAL: Renasa SHORT-TERM CORPORATE: Hollard SHORT-TERM PERSONAL LINES: Renasa SHORT-TERM UNDERWRITING: ITOO Special Risks
CLOCKWISE FROM TOP LEFT: Lizelle van der Merwe (FIA), Nash Omar (Hollard), Peter Olyott (FIA); Discovery Health's Jonathan Broomberg; ITOO Special Risks team receives the award for short-term underwriting; the Renasa team with their two awards; Lizelle van der Merwe and Ray Mhere (Allan Gray).
Sanlam wins FIA’s Employee Benefits Product Supplier Award
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anlam has been named the 2018 Financial Intermediaries Association of Southern Africa’s (FIA) Employee Benefits Product Supplier of the Year. These awards take place to celebrate the role of advice and acknowledge the product providers who, in the opinion of the members of the FIA, have excelled over the past year in supplying exceptional products and service delivery. The FIA awards provide financial intermediaries the opportunity to recognise product suppliers that consistently deliver exceptional value to clients. Dawie de Villiers, Chief Executive Officer of Sanlam Employee Benefits, says that the company’s culture and business model is focussed on addressing changing client needs in partnership with intermediaries. “The way our clients want to interact is changing rapidly with technological and generational shifts driving this change,” he adds. “For this reason, we’ve
embedded innovation into our DNA and made a wide range of investments in technology to bring an always-improving offering to our clients and to enable intermediaries to provide informed advice. From the announcement of offering free retirement benefit counselling services to qualifying administration clients, to our class-leading Retire-Mate platform, to the Sanlam My Retirement App, we are able to share real-time information and data between the sponsor, fund, employer, intermediary and member.” De Villiers says the strategy has been to leverage synergies across Sanlam to develop what has been widely recognised as the market-leading offering. “Intermediaries have played a crucial role in executing this strategy as their input informs how we engage with members. This accolade, I believe, is a reflection of our partnership with intermediaries to help improve financial outcomes for
the members of Sanlam funds.” De Villiers notes: “We’ve won this award previously and are delighted that the 2018 win represents an affirmation from intermediaries that Sanlam is on the right track in empowering them to add even greater value to our shared clients through our engagement model, service proposition and technological suite.” The role of the intermediary has never been more important than in today’s very tough economic conditions, he points out, adding that “advice across various dimensions is critical to help employers, funds and members achieve better financial outcomes – and advice is what intermediaries do best.”
Dawie de Villiers, Chief Executive Officer of Sanlam Employee Benefits