ASISA was formed earlier this year by members of the Association of Collective Investments (ACI), the Investment Management Association of South Africa (IMASA), the Linked Investment Service Providers Association (LISPA) and the Life Offices’...
More and more retirement funds are preferring to use so-called “life-stage investment portfolios”, but Foord Asset Managers does not think this is a good idea.
Life stage portfolios are predicated on the...
It is often said that less than 6% of South Africans can afford to retire comfortably. This is at least partly due to people taking their retirement fund assets in cash when changing jobs, and why legislation for...
According to press statements, the government is being urged to adopt a radical form of national health insurance (NHI) that makes medical insurance compulsory, outlaws private medical schemes, and places the...
Modern theory has for some time equated a business to a living life form:
• they seem to exhibit lives of their own;
• they require feeding to continue growing; and.
• they even develop their own...
Deneys Reitz on insurance case law: Minister of Transport NO v Du Toit 2007
The respondent and her husband were travelling south from Johannesburg on the N1 highway, a route with which neither was familiar...
They are a new breed of criminal who come in all shapes, sizes and guises and are found in large and small companies, schools, universities, our homes, government offices and just about anywhere. Annually they steel...
With steel prices still relatively high, members of South Africa’s equally buoyant crime industry have been helping themselves to every manhole cover - or any other scrap of metal not bolted down or electrified with...
Study after study has shown, together with observations of actual behaviour that investors are never as rational as standard finance theory would have us believe. One observed bias is Anchoring. “This is a concept that when developing a value,...
From a valuation perspective, there is a strong argument to be buying the local market at current levels, says Mark Seymour of Alphen Asset Management.
Based on historic returns the market is prone to...
It is tempting to try and time the stock market. Some investors believe it is possible to enter the market before an upturn and disinvest before a downturn, thereby crystallising large gains. “But,” says Anil Jugmohan...
While the banking system in most emerging economies is not directly poisoned by the ‘toxic’ debt, the sharp increase in global risk aversion is wreaking havoc with their stock markets.
The global...
The different components of employee benefits have traditionally operated independently. However, in today’s competitive corporate environment, some organisations are beginning to take a more holistic approach to...
With margins growing ever smaller in the South African fishing industry insuring against the possibility of sudden and unexpected loss or liability separates the winners from the losers in this high risk game....
At long last New York has signed a bill that prevents insurers from pleading late notification as a reason for chucking out claims. Until 23rd June 2008 all it took was for you to be one day late in notifying a claim...
Santam, the country’s largest short-term insurer, has introduced an SMS service to allow people to report any suspected insurance fraud. The service, which has a in-built guarantee of confidentiality, provides...
It is truly remarkable that four associations in the life assurance and investment sectors should even talk about merging, let alone go ahead with the idea. Yet, effective 1st October 2008, they achieved just that...
Once again, local investors have been caught on the back foot and started diversifying offshore — way, way too late and probably at the worst possible time.
Leon Campher, CEO of the Association for Savings...
Vulindlela Underwriting Managers (Pty) Ltd says it has just paid out its first cash-back benefits. Owned by Santam the company provides specialist insurance cover to the taxi industry.
Known as ‘Zuzumali’...
The amendments to the Road Accident Fund (RAF) introduced in August this year are both good and bad news for tour operators, says Mark Bush, deputy business unit manager at Alexander Forbes Risk Services. “The bad news is that the...
Recent forest fires in South Africa destroyed close to 10% of our timber reserves,” says Chris Austin, a Director of Working on Fire (WoF) and CEO of Forest Fire Association Operations. “Once a fire starts it is...
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