SA insurance sector seeks BRICS partners

The South African insurance market has pinned its hopes on the BRICS nations as more western reinsurance companies have shown little appetite for local risk. The 2021 July uprising has resulted in some local companies unable to fully insure their assets.

South African insurance companies rely on western reinsurance companies to cover risk if the risk is too high.

Kgodiso Mokonyane, chair of the BRICS Re-Insurance Committee says, “We have to rely on the west for reinsurance. And we are not getting reinsurance from, we are not really getting reinsurance from the African countries or from BRICS. So, what we need to do then based on the discussion that we had with the panel is we need to find Afrocentric solutions to this reassurance capacity issue. For example, we had the riots and strikes in July 2021. And after that, luckily, Santeria was able to pay our claims. But the challenge now is when Zacharias went back to the market to say, we need to get more insurance to help us reassure us are not comfortable. They see it has been very risky.” 

Meanwhile, the Minister of Trade, Industry and Competition Ebrahim Patel, says BRICS countries have grown dramatically economically over the last two decades. 

 This is because these countries already account for 27 percent of the global output.  And because of this milestone, many countries have already shown interest in joining, trading and even investing with them. South Africa has also seen the benefits of trading with the BRICS countries. 

 “Our trade with other BRICS countries amount to R1.3 trillion. That’s the level of two-way trade between South Africa and other BRICS countries. That is 80 billion U.S. dollars of trade that we have with other BRICS countries.”