ACE Insurance South Africa (ACE SA) has just concluded a month-long series of industry road shows during September aimed at introducing the ACE team to a wide audience of the top brokerage firms in the South African market.
 
Companies visited included the Johannesburg head offices of major industry players: Alexander Forbes, Glenrand M.I.B, Willis, Marsh and AON. The road show also covered companies based in other key centres of the country: Cape Town, Durban and Port Elizabeth.

The success of this initiative is underscored by the broad range of questions that were posed by attendees during the presentations. This effort has already started to yield positive results, with a stream of submissions and new business enquiries, as well as queries about ACE’s product range, handled by the office.

ACE SA’s CEO Scott Pickering comments “I’m delighted with the enthusiastic response we’ve received from the South African market. The recently completed road shows have been an excellent forum for us to communicate our value proposition, whilst at the same time giving us a great opportunity to interact face to face with our key producers”

The road shows highlighted organisational strengths and efficiencies particularly in the areas of property coverage, large general liability, export products liability, professional indemnity, directors and officers’ liability and accident and health product offerrings.

ACE SA’s market entry strategy is to drive new business by focusing on its primary products. In addition to this, the road shows were aimed at creating strategic industry alliances.

The well-timed, recent A credit rating awarded to ACE SA by international Global Credit Ratings (GCR) coincided with the launch of the road shows. FA News, a monthly business magazine targeted at the South African financial advisor market, published an article on ACE SA’s credit rating in which the managing director of the rating agency, Global Credit Rating, Melanie Brown said: “…ACE South Africa has a capable management team with both a track record from past experiences and well thought out strategies. The breadth and depth of the management team is also considered appropriate, with plans in place to broaden and deepen the team as the company grows.” Operationally, GCR is of the opinion that opportunities exist for ACE SA, where choice for highly rated security (with significant available capacity) is currently limited to a handful of local players, with the majority of the balance insured offshore. Risk will be managed in line with the group’s conservative guidelines, whilst a further level of comfort was provided by the ACE group’s vast technical support. In this regard, the group’s global IT platform could be viewed as a significant competitive advantage to ACE SA “.

Denis Ternent, Glenrand M.I.B. National Managing Director for Corporate Risk Services, is one of the industry role-players who are happy about the new entrant: “Glenmib welcomes the arrival of ACE in South Africa, its presence in the market brings with it much-needed capacity and the international footprint is a great added benefit.”

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