/ 14 February 2008

Insurers warn South Africans to mind the gap

South African families are grossly underinsured, by an estimated R10-billion, according to an independent study commissioned by the Life Offices’ Association (LOA).

The Insurance Gap Study is aimed at measuring the life and disability insurance shortfall for South African households.

Releasing the results at a media conference in Johannesburg on Thursday, Gerhard Joubert, chief executive officer of the LOA, said the findings of the study were of grave concern.

”We knew that South Africans are underinsured when it comes to death and disability cover, but until we were presented with the final outcome of this study, we did not realise the extent of the insurance gap in this country.”

Joubert said the reality was that if the main earner of a household died or became disabled, the average family would have little choice but to cut their living expenses by half.

”Unfortunately, this often involves selling the family home, because bond repayments can no longer be met. And children often have to give up on their hopes for a decent tertiary education.”

He said for the average earner, the cost of closing the life and disability insurance gap would require between R1 330 and R2 322 a year.

The study showed that the death insurance gap was highest for households earning less than R3 800 a month.

However, the reverse was true for disability insurance, but only because of the government disability income grant which, due to the fact that it was a fixed amount, was much more effective at replacing lost income in the lower income bracket.

Joubert said it was for this reason that the LOA had focused strongly over the past two years on putting in place the Financial Sector Charter (FSC) Council approved Zimele product standards.

The Zimele initiative, which was launched by the LOA in February, aims to ensure that South Africa’s estimated 17,5-million low-income earners are given access to appropriate life-insurance products.

”The approval last week of the LOA’s new set of Zimele product standards for credit life insurance, life cover and physical impairment cover by the FSC Council, will ensure that low-income earners will soon have access to a comprehensive range of affordable and appropriate long-term insurance products.”

In order to maintain their standards of living after the death of a breadwinner, South African families across the board would require total life insurance cover of about R7,9-billion. But the Gap Study shows that South African households had life cover amounting to only R3,5-billion last year, leaving a shortfall of more than R4-billion.

Similar levels of underinsurance were also true for disability cover.

Households would require about R12,3-billion to maintain their standards of living should one of the breadwinners become disabled. In reality, however, actual cover only amounts to about R6,5-billion, leaving a disability insurance gap of about R6-billion.

These figures were conservative estimates of how much cover would be required to enable families to maintain their current standards of living after a breadwinner can no longer contribute as a result of death or disability.

Joubert said that in order to close this significant insurance gap, households would need to spend about R34,4-billion (3,9% of annual household expenditure) a year.

”The only group of people who have sufficient life cover are high income earners older than 55. Generally this group has saved sufficient money and has also benefited from group life and disability cover through years of membership of an employer’s pension fund. On the disability side, however, this group also remains underinsured.” – Sapa