Page 125 - Be Reasonable – Do It My Way , Peter E. Daly AM, My Story

CHAPTER 11 - THE INSURANCE INDUSTRY AND SOUTH AFRICA
and conventional individual policies virtually disappeared from view. To this day we still haven’t got to that position in Australia, notwithstanding that everybody talks about cross selling and up selling.
The concepts were quite simple:
Firstly, it was a monthly policy paid monthly. If you didn’t pay you had no cover but there were no short period premiums, time on risk, cancellation fees etc.
Secondly you bought a unitised product. You typically had a choice of units which covered:
• one car comprehensively,
• a fixed amount of home contents
• a fixed amount of personal effects
• a standard personal liability cover
• and a standard set of personal accident and sickness units
You could then upgrade the unit by buying units with higher household sums insured and personal accident benefits. You could add more cars and home buildings cover. Proposal forms and questions were cut to a minimum. Everything was about making it easy for consumers.
In the early days, the monthly policies were sold through Brokers to employers as payroll deduction schemes. Indeed, one of the earliest schemes we developed was for the Underground Mine Officials Association. The miners could not obtain death or personal accident cover from any underwriters in South Africa, but we agreed to do it as part of their monthly scheme. Whilst we paid a few death claims over the years it wasn’t unprofitable and it built the greatest customer loyalty you could imagine in that large group of people.
The Home Plus schemes developed further using direct debits and also we picked up all the schemes run by a computer company
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