On a humid November afternoon in Lagos, Nigeria, Marnus van Heerden stands on stage for the Google Launchpad graduation, wearing Springbok rugby shorts, a T-shirt and running shoes. Even 7,000km from home, he’s still proudly South African, and, if his attire is anything to go by, he’s in a winning mood. This is, after all,…
Due to past economic growth, urbanisation and popular education the insurance industry has expanded considerably over the past few decades, resulting in acute competitiveness and rivalry between companies. The impact of this competitiveness is felt amongst employees in the insurance industry by engendering general feelings of distrust, tension, strain in interpersonal relations, interpersonal conflicts and…
“Our mantra is that we ‘invest in people and not fancy business plans’.” Valerie Hayter, managing director of Lireas Holdings has told us some interesting things in this interview about investing and entrepreneurship in South Africa. What was the best advice someone gave you, that really stuck with you and helped along your path in…
SA insurtech InvestSure announced today that the company has completed their first funding round – securing R9.6-million from Hannover Re Africa subsidiaries Lireas Holdings and Compass Insure, and venture capital firm 4Di Capital. The funding announcement follows two years of incubation that the startup received from Compass Insure. Investsure has created what it claims is…
More than a year and a month after insurance tech startup Pineapple raised R5.2m from Lireas Holdings, the strategic investment arm of Hannover-Re Group Africa, the startup has now been accepted into The Hartford Insurtech Hub. The Johannesburg-based startup will get to work with top Insurance companies in the US such as Travellers, Aetna, USAA,…
After just a few weeks of calling for nominations, close to 1,000 total entries and 141 unique entries were received for the Nedgroup Investments and Heavy Chef ‘SA’s Top 5 Most Exciting Startups’ event on the 4th December 2018. Entries were closed on Friday 23 November, and yesterday a shortlist of 12 startups were announced.…
The 15 regional winners of the inaugural Southern African Startup Awards have been announced, with SA companies having taken home just short of half of the awards. The 15, who hail from 14 countries in the Southern African Development Community (SADC) economic bloc, were announced last Thursday (23 November) at the awards grand finale held at an…
A few months ago we reported on the partnership between InvestSure, Compass Insure and our partner EasyEquities. InvestSure is a world-first, one-click insurance product that initially launched exclusively with EasyEquities. The product is now expanding and will soon be available on multiple trading platforms in South Africa, and hopefully soon after that, throughout the world. InvestSure…
Smart fire detection devices provide safety for vulnerable people in South Africa Families living in informal settlements in South Africa will now be better protected against devastating fires thanks to a newly announced partnership between Johnson Controls and Lumkani. The collaboration will provide networked, early warning fire detection technology for these communities. For the 800…
South African startups Aerobotics, IoT.nxt and LifeQ are among the 10 selected by Nedbank, which is connecting innovative startups with major corporates and business leaders in partnership with Silicon Valley’s Plug and Play. Nedbank last month announced the expansion of its US partnership with innovation platform Plug and Play to include South Africa for the first time, with…
South African company Pineapple Insurance has been accepted into Google’s Launchpad accelerator. “Pineapple is the first ever insurance startup accepted into Google’s accelerator. A significant achievement if you consider that there has been $5.6 billion invested in insure-tech in the last three years alone,” said the company. Pineapple Insurance offers a decentralised insurance service, which allows…
Leading high net worth underwriter, MUA Insurance Acceptances (Pty) Ltd has announced the appointment of Michelle Ashen-Abrahams as Head of Brand and Marketing. The position was recently created by the MUA Board as part of the company’s new brand and marketing strategy. “We were tasked with finding an experienced person who embodied the principles of…
South African insurtech startup InvestSure and insurance partner Compass Insure recently settled their very first claim in what could be a new world record time of less than 45 seconds, end to end. This means from the time the client incurred an insured loss, to when the money reflected in the customer’s account, the process…
Sometimes in the SA tech ecosystem all it takes is two words to get someone’s attention. Sometimes those words are someone’s name — someone called Michael Jordaan. At least this was the case for one of the founders of insurtech startup Investsure. The Johannesburg based startup last month launched what it claims is the “world’s first”…
Cape Town-based startup Lumkani is set to service more communities in Johannesburg, this after it announced yesterday (7 June) that it had closed a seed round with 4Di Capital, Accion Venture Lab and Lireas. The social enterprise startup has developed an early-warning device for fires in informal settlements and an insurance product it launched in 2016. “We…
EasyEquities is launching an epic new feature in partnership with InvestSure that allows the investor to insure their investment capital. Think back to late last year when the news on Steinhoff broke and its share price plummeted in a matter of minutes. The InvestSure facility would have protected the investor from that sharp share price movement,…
