Insurance solutions for South African risks that do not fit a template.

Where specialist insurance differs from a standard policy

South African commercial and personal insurance is written in sections, and every claim is decided under one specific section against that section's wording. A business does not hold business insurance; it holds a fire section, a business interruption section, a Sasria coupon, one or more liability sections and whatever else its operations require. The quality of a programme therefore has far less to do with the premium than with which sections were selected, how their sums insured were calculated and whether the facts the insurer relied on were accurately disclosed.

That is where most disappointing claims originate. Underinsurance triggers the average condition and reduces a settlement in proportion, including on partial losses. A Sasria coupon that was never attached leaves politically motivated riot and civil commotion entirely uninsured, because every commercial policy excludes those perils. A business interruption sum insured calculated on the accounting definition of gross profit rather than the insurance definition is short from the day it incepts. And a material fact that was never disclosed can entitle an insurer to avoid the policy altogether, no matter how long the premiums have been paid and accepted.

None of these is exotic. Each of them is discoverable in an hour of deliberate review, and each of them is far cheaper to find at renewal than after a loss.

How these insurance solution pages are organised

The solutions above are grouped by exposure rather than by product name, because that is how risk actually presents itself. Commercial and property risks - business and corporate insurance, commercial buildings, fuel retail forecourts, body corporate schemes, homeowners associations and share block companies - deal with physical assets, the income they produce and the third parties who come into contact with them. Liability risks - public liability, directors and officers, security liability and the professional indemnity family - deal with claims made against the insured by other people, and are governed as much by statute and case law as by policy wording.

The professional indemnity pages are separated by profession because the regulatory framework differs materially. An attorney's position begins with the Legal Practitioners Indemnity Insurance Fund and the top-up layer above it. A financial services provider's position is part of its FAIS licence record. An accountancy practice is assessed on its work mix rather than its designation. A healthcare practitioner's is shaped by the Health Professions Council indemnity requirements. Treating these as one product obscures the differences that decide whether cover responds.

Cyber insurance, business interruption and risk improvement cut across all of the above. Cyber is an operating risk rather than an information technology line item, and it sits alongside the POPIA duties that convert a technical incident into a regulatory one. Business interruption is where the largest uninsured losses usually sit, because the indemnity period is set by default rather than by analysis. Risk improvement is the discipline that turns insurer survey requirements into completed, evidenced controls before a claim tests them.

The guarantee and surety pages are separated from the insurance pages because they answer a different question. A policy indemnifies the insured for its own loss. A guarantee protects a third party - an employer, a customer, the South African Revenue Service, a fuel supplier or the Master of the High Court - against the failure of the applicant to perform an obligation, and if the guarantor pays it recovers from the applicant under a counter-indemnity. Guarantee is a licensed class of non-life insurance business in its own right, it is underwritten as a credit decision rather than against an asset, and the question of whether an instrument pays on demand or allows the underlying dispute to be raised has been decided by the Supreme Court of Appeal more than once. Treating it as part of the insurance programme obscures all of that.

Trade credit insurance sits between the two groups and is easily confused with both. It is insurance, not security: the policyholder is the supplier that is owed the money, and the insurer indemnifies it for loss on its own debtor book when a customer becomes insolvent or simply does not pay. It is written in two halves - domestic sales within South Africa and the Common Monetary Area, and export sales, where the risk attaching to the buyer's country has to be priced alongside the risk attaching to the buyer. For most trading businesses the debtor book is the largest asset carried without cover, which is why it is treated here as a discipline of its own rather than as an extension of a commercial policy.

What we do before insurance is arranged

insurance.net.za is a division of Mosaic Financial Solutions Pty Ltd, an authorised financial services provider, FSP number 46319. Our work begins with the risk record rather than with a quotation: the property and its current replacement values, the revenue that property supports, the dependencies that could interrupt it, the liabilities that could follow, the contracts that impose insurance requirements, and the controls and claims history that an underwriter will price.

That record is what allows an insurer to assess a known quantity rather than pricing uncertainty alongside risk. It is also, reliably, what surfaces the gaps - a sum insured that has drifted, a coupon that was never attached, an activity that was never disclosed, or a contractual limit the business does not actually hold.

Read our South African insurance case-law analysis →