Page 124 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 11 - THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY AND SOUTH AFRICA
One area that was moving forward quickly in South Africa was the banking sector. ATMs were introduced in South Africa in 1981 by the Standard Bank group. Years before, in fact in 1972, South Africa introduced the ACB or Automated Clearing Bureau which Bankserv speaks of in the following terms.
“established on 21 June, 1972 to meet the needs of South Africa’s growing economy and find a way of implementing a system that would allow the flow of information verification and the reliable transferring and balancing of funds between the four major banks at the time... based on a set of standards, the resultant settlement can be verified and distributed on a daily basis by the South African Reserve Bank.”
Whilst this might seem insignificant now it was one of the key reasons why we were able to introduce monthly policies paid by direct debit into South Africa and one of the reasons why they became so popular.
Many of the things we learned and we tried in South Africa stood us in very good stead when I came to Australia. When I arrived in Melbourne in October 1980 I found that in many ways the Australian insurance industry was well behind the development of the industry in South Africa; conditions were very similar and they were ripe for change. In Australia in those days Melbourne was were dominated by British owned insurance companies and their subsidiaries which had British attitudes towards business and life generally. The Australian owned insurance companies were, for the most part, headquartered in Sydney.
Development –Schemes
L&G and later Aegis led the way in South Africa with the development of monthly personal lines policies. These were truly innovative and brought affordable but packaged insurance policies to the masses, covering the full product range for the normal household. Over a very short period of time they became the norm in South Africa
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