One of the many issues with loadshedding is that the constant on-and-off nature of the power supply means that power surges in our wiring are far more frequent. When that happens, it can have dire consequences for our electrical appliances.

For our purposes, think of a power surge as a flood of electricity coming through your power lines when a loadshedding session ends and it’s just too much electricity for some or all of your appliances to handle.

A surge is typically very brief, just a fraction of a second, but when it happens it can literally burn out your appliances rendering them inoperable. This is an inconvenience if it happens to your toaster, but more of a calamity when it’s your box-freezer packed with meat.

No one want’s that, so here are three things you can do to protect yourself.

1. Unplug everything when loadshedding begins

This is the cheapest, but most labour intense thing you can do.

When the power goes off, go to all the plugs in your house, turn them off and unplug your appliances. It’s a schlep, but it’s 100% effective.

The downside of course is that you have to remember to plug everything back in when the power comes turns back on. Forgetting to do that might leave you with a box-freezer full of bad meat.

2. Get surge protection plugs

In a nutshell, these are plugs that have been hardened, against power surges. They are relatively inexpensive ranging from R100 to R300 and come in two types.

• The adaptor style one, which as the name suggests, takes the form of those multi-plug adaptors. You’ll plug your appliance into that and then plug that into your wall socket.

• The other surge protector plug will require a bit of DIY knowledge as it replaces the plug of your appliance completely. So you will need to cut the plugs off of your device and then connect the surge protection plug. If you have little DIY knowledge we suggest you get an electrician to do this.

3. Get an electrician to secure your DB board

This is the most expensive option and also the most intrusive.

Get an electrician into your home and have them install surge protection directly onto your DB board. What this costs is dependent on the specifics of your home, but it is a single solution that automatically secures all the sockets in your home.

Source: CapeTalk

Eskom has had its worst load shedding year on record.

• Driver education company Zutobi told TV channel eNCA that its recent study had found South Africa, with a safety score of just 3.41 out of 10, to be the world’s most dangerous country to drive in.
• But the report only covers 53 out of 197 countries, only includes three African countries, and is skewed towards wealthier countries where road traffic deaths tend to be fewer.
• It also doesn’t look at road infrastructure. An expert said when all factors were taken into account, South Africa’s road safety was “somewhere in the middle”.

Buckle up, South African TV channel eNCA told viewers in May 2022 as it reported a troubling statistic.

“South Africa is the most dangerous country to drive in,” the news anchor said, looking slightly unnerved. She attributed this claim to a study by Zutobi, an international driver’s education company.

According to the study, South Africa had a safety score of 3.41 out of 10, with alcohol and low seatbelt use contributing factors.

Zutobi co-founder Leo Waldenback did not hold back, telling eNCA that South Africa’s figures were “staggering”, frustrating and “too damn high”.

“Your roads really are dangerous when looking at the data and I think you have to have massive awareness campaigns, stricter education [and] stricter laws,” he said. Other news outlets also reported the claim.

Serious motor vehicle accidents often make headlines in South Africa. In 2020, there were 848 road traffic deaths in the country, according to the transport ministry. In 2021, this figure declined marginally to 822.

But does recent data show that South Africa is the most dangerous country in the world to drive in? We checked.

Data from the WHO and Wikipedia

Zutobi operates in the US, UK, Australia, Sweden, Germany and France. It provides learner drivers with materials to help them pass their driver’s test.

Every year, the company releases a report titled The World’s Safest Roads. The latest ranked 53 countries based on the following factors:

• • Estimated road traffic death rate per 100,000

• • Maximum motorway speed limit

• • Seat-belt wearing rate

• • Road traffic deaths attributed to alcohol

• • Blood-alcohol concentration (BAC) limit for drivers

An overall safety driving score out of 10 was then calculated.

According to Zutobi’s 2022 report, South Africa ranked at the bottom of the list. This was based primarily on its low seat-belt wearing rate – just 31% of people in front seats wore seatbelts. The country was also reported to have a high rate of road traffic deaths attributed to alcohol, at 57.5%.

Norway was ranked the safest country in the world to drive in with a seat-belt wearing rate of 95.2%. Just 13% of road traffic deaths there were attributed to alcohol, contributing to an overall score of 8.20 out of 10.

Where did the report get its data?

In its methodology section, Zutobi says the data for estimated road traffic deaths, seat-belt wearing rates, road traffic deaths attributed to alcohol, and BAC limits came from the World Health Organization’s Global Health Observatory database.

The data for maximum motorway speed limits came from Wikipedia, a free online encyclopaedia. But its entries can be written and edited by anyone, so it is generally not considered a reliable source of information.

Countries chosen based on data availability

Countries were included based on the availability of data, Leila Jones, a member of the team that compiled the report, told Africa Check.

“The original countries were chosen as those were the ones we could get full data for in every factor,” she said. Each country was given a “relative score” out of 10 in each category.

“For example, the country with the lowest rate of estimated road traffic fatalities scored 10 and the country with the highest rate would score 0 in this factor,” Jones said.

“To get the country score out of 10, we took the average score of each country across all factors.”

But a look at the WHO data shows that most of it is not recent.

Binta Sako is the technical officer for tobacco and other noncommunicable death risk factors at the WHO Africa regional office. She told Africa Check that the data on road traffic deaths was collected in 2016 for a report released in 2018.

Reported death rates versus WHO estimates

Sako said the organisation could not compile data yearly as it “is a very tedious task”. The WHO is currently compiling data for its next report, due in 2023.

“Countries have their own monitoring and reporting of traffic deaths and we know this to be inadequate in many countries as the data comes from various sources and does not always capture the full numbers of road fatalities,” Sako said.

She added that the WHO used statistical methods to estimate deaths based on many variables. As a result, the estimated numbers tend to be much higher than the reported numbers.

The WHO Global Health Observatory has road traffic death estimates for years up to 2019. But the most recent data that includes reported figures from countries was from 2016, she said.

Other indicators such as seat-belt wearing, alcohol-attributed road traffic deaths and BAC limits have estimates for years up to 2017.

Other countries have worse rates in key categories

The 2016 data shows that African countries had the highest road traffic death rates, at an average 26.6 deaths per 100,000 people. Europe had the lowest, with 9.3 deaths per 100,000.

South Africa’s estimated road traffic death rate was 25.8 per 100,000 people, higher than the global average of 18.2 per 100,000 people but lower than the continent’s average.

“South Africa has one of the highest rates according to our last estimations. However some countries in Africa have higher fatality rates than South Africa,” Sako said.

The WHO does not have statistics of alcohol-attributed road traffic deaths for every country, particularly many African countries. South Africa’s rate, as the Zutobi report points out, was one of the highest globally at 57.5% in 2017. In comparison, Uganda’s was 0.8%, Nigeria’s 0.5% and Ethiopia’s 4.3%.

But South Africa did not have the lowest scores in all key categories. For wearing seat belts, Bolivia (3.5%), India (7.3%), Peru 15.8% and Ecuador (26%) reported rates lower than South Africa’s 31%. And Thailand reported higher rates of road traffic deaths at 32.2 per 100,000 people.

South Africa’s road safety ‘somewhere in the middle’ – experts

Dr Lee Randall is a postdoctoral research consultant for the South African Medical Research Council Wits Centre for Health Economics and Decision Science (or Priceless SA).

In an article for the media and academic oriented online outlet the Conversation, Randall calls Zutobi’s 2021 report misleading, saying there are significant issues with the methods of research.

For example, the report only covers 53 out of 197 countries, and South Africa, Mauritius and Morocco are the only African countries included.

“The survey is strongly biased towards high-income countries, which make up 63% of the list,” she writes. She adds that no low income countries appear at all.

The 2018 WHO report found that the rate of road traffic deaths “generally decreases as income increases.”

Randall adds that the Zutobi report largely concentrates on drivers’ behaviour and, other than looking at motorway speed limits, does not consider other factors such as road infrastructure, “a key road safety metric”.

The report therefore creates the false impression that South Africa is the worst in the world in terms of road safety when it is actually “somewhere in the middle”, she argues.

“Compared with many other African countries, South Africa has at least the beginnings of an institutional framework for road safety, with a lead agency, the Road Traffic Management Corporation, which is missing in many other countries. It also has some degree of government funding for road safety interventions,” she writes.

Randall told Africa Check that her comments on Zutobi’s 2021 report also applied to the 2022 report. The Road Traffic Management Corporation released statistics inconsistently, she said, making it difficult to measure the country’s progress. But the data that has been released shows South Africa has made “limited progress” in improving road safety.

“The figures I’ve seen imply that we’ve managed to save the equivalent of about 100 lives per year since 2015, representing a decrease of less than 1% per annum and very far short of the 4% per annum target set in our own National Road Safety Strategy 2016-2030,” she said.

Conclusion: Limited report with uneven methodology doesn’t support claim that South Africa is world’s most dangerous country for drivers

US-based drivers’ education company Zutobi recently claimed that South Africa was the most dangerous country in the world to drive in.

Zutobi’s 2022 study based its findings largely on data from the WHO. But the health agency’s data was in turn compiled in 2016. And the study only looked at 53 countries, only three of them African.

According to WHO data, South Africa has recorded higher than average road traffic death rates, relatively low rates of seatbelt wearing, and one of the world’s highest percentages of road traffic deaths attributed to alcohol.

But experts warn that monitoring and reporting can be “inadequate” in many countries. The Zutobi report is also biased towards high-income countries – low-income countries generally report higher rates of road traffic deaths.

An expert told us that when data from low-income countries and other safety factors were taken into account, South Africa’s road traffic safety was “somewhere in the middle”.

We therefore rate the claim as incorrect.

This article appeared on AfricaCheck.org, a non-partisan organisation which promotes accuracy in public debate and the media. Follow them on Twitter: @AfricaCheck

Source: EWN

Getting to grips with our financial world

The findings of the report are relevant to all stakeholders in the broader financial services sector and of specific interest to FAnews readers, who often work at the frontline of consumer and financial product interactions. Insurance brokers and financial advisers are, after all, expected to have an extensive understanding of all matters financial, from clients’ FNAs to household budgeting to product provider solvency assessments and on to the regulatory environment. This is no easy task… According to FSCA, South Africa “has a sophisticated and large financial sector with an asset-to-GDP ratio well above that of most emerging markets”. The bulk of these financial sector assets are tied up in the banking sector, followed by pension funds and insurers…

It is common knowledge that our country boasts a well-developed and well-run financial sector. For example, we feature prominently in the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Competitiveness Report on the Pillar 9: Financial Systems measure. And in the 2019 International Monetary Fund (IMF) Article IV Staff Consultations our country was commended for having a highly developed and resilient financial sector. We will take these introductory remarks as early positives but refrain from popping the champagne corks just yet. Instead, let us delve a bit further into the FSCA report findings.

Much access, not so much money

The first plus point mentioned in the executive summary is that South Africa has made significant progress on the financial inclusion front. It was estimated that more than 81% of the country’s over-16s had access to bank services through formal bank accounts, though account usage remained low. According to the report: “The 2021 Finscope survey found that 40% of dormant accounts were held by individuals from low-income households and that within this segment, another 19% withdrew all funds as soon as they were deposited”. It should come as no surprise to the financially savvy that bank account utilisation is linked to financial means. And with more than 35% of the country’s jobseekers currently unemployed, these utilisation statistics are unlikely to improve soon.

Market concentration remains top-of-mind at both the FSCA and the Prudential Authority (PA). The regulators acknowledged newcomers such as Bank Zero, Discovery Bank and Tyme Bank to the banking sector, but lamented that the largest banks still held over 85% of the industry’s deposits. They offered a similar assessment of the life insurance sector, where the top five firms accounted for 82% of the industry’s total assets… The non-life sector is less concentrated, with around 73% of assets held by the 10 largest firms. This does not, however, mean that there are no dominant names insofar market share.

We know, for example, that a single non-life insurance, Santam, accounts for just over a quarter of the country’s annual gross written premium. This writer wonders whether concerns over market concentration are somewhat over-hyped given the many, many other challenges we face.

Digital adoption in full swing

Themes and trends are important when assessing the financial industry. The first theme mentioned in the Financial Sector Outlook 2022 report was that of digital adoption. “More customers [are] using banking apps and online banking platforms to perform transactions … banks have introduced banking apps, improved digital payment options and next-generation ATMs that allow customers to do a wider range of transactions, with the aim to reduce the dependency on bank branches,” it states. And there is plenty of evidence that digital platforms are dominating product distribution innovation in other sectors too.

The Covid-19 pandemic was singled out as a main driver for the increased uptake of digital financial services. On the flipside, this theme introduces additional risks to the banking and insurance construct including cybercrime and fraud: “The pandemic saw a large-scale move to remote working, accompanied by a rise in technical vulnerabilities related to network security and the uptake of digital banking channels by individuals … as a result, 2020 saw a sharp increase in digital fraud incidents relative to previous years”. Conventional fraudsters and cyber criminals are salivating as greater portions of financial services infrastructure migrate entirely into the digital world. And they should be, given there are trillions of rand at state.

The report suggests that South Africa’s financial institutions hold assets totalling 3.33 times the country’s GDP, or around ZAR18.5 trillion. Our rough calculation based on a GDP estimate for 2019 of ZAR5.6 trillion puts assets held by banks at ZAR6.7 trillion); by pension funds at ZAR3 trillion; and by insurers at ZAR3.8 trillion. It was quite interesting to see differences in sectoral asset values within the FSCA report, with the executive summary reflecting assets in the pension funds industry at a significantly higher ZAR4.6 trillion. There are many factors that could have contributed to such variances, which we will not delve into in this piece.

Insurers under the spotlight

Since we often report on life and non-life insurers, we thought to end this quick overview with some insurer-related facts and figures. According to the FSCA, insurers’ assets under management have been increasing at 4% CAGR between 2015 and 2020, reaching around ZAR3.36 trillion at the end of 2020. The impact of insurers on broader society reflects in the ZAR12.3 billion in insurance premium payments made each month, giving us a total insurer premium as percentage of GDP of 13.7%, among the highest in the world. South Africa is also said to account for 70% of Africa’s insurance premiums.

The impact of pandemic on the insurance sector came through in a comparison of claims ratios for 2019 and 2020. According to the FSCA, the claims ratio for primary life insurers increased from 94.4 in December 2019 to 102.2 in December 2020, with non-life insurers jumping from 62.5 in 2019 to 74.8 in 2020. The former statistic was due “the increase in the value of claims paid out in the life insurance industry, mainly driven by pay-outs for funeral cover policies”; and the latter resulted from “a rise in the number of business interruption claims processed in 2020 as a result of the Covid-19 national lockdowns”.

What happens next?

The “what happens next” question is skewed by two emerging global themes, namely climate change and cyber risk. “Financial institutions across the world are playing an increasingly critical role in environmental, social and governance (ESG) initiatives,” notes the report. “With the growing interest in sustainable financing, regulatory bodies in South Africa have been adapting the regulatory landscape to include the ESG standards in the financial sector”. This writer has frequently mentioned COP26 and ESG in his reporting of asset manager activities, and we can expect this theme to persist, informed by National Treasury’s Draft Green Finance Taxonomy paper.

As for cyber risks, many of the non-life insurers and insurance brokers we have spoken to recently point to this as the next potential black swan event. PS, we appreciate that if they already identify it as such, it cannot be. The bottom line is that the combination of crypto assets and digital adoption are introducing massive risks to all firms across all industries while non-life insurers stand alone in transferring the financial losses these risks may cause.

The regulators are also concerned with the increasing popularity of crypto trading, with daily crypto asset trading in South Africa exceeding USD145 million in January 2021. We conclude with an FSCA waring and promise: “Many South African investors have been attracted to the high publicised returns, however crypto assets remain highly volatile and inherently risky given their decentralised and disintermediate nature… In June 2021, The Intergovernmental Fintech Working Group, a collaboration of regulators including the FSCA, published a position paper on crypto assets and made the decision to regulate crypto assets to promote responsible innovation”. Enough said, crypto assets will soon become another component in South Africa’s financial institutions landscape.

Source: FA News

08 April 2022
Gareth Stokes

The Ombudsman for Short-term Insurance (Osti) quotes two case studies. In the first, the insurer was ordered to pay a claim after the Osti found that the conclusions put forward by an accident reconstruction expert were not based on accurate facts.

Interestingly, the Osti says that data from an on-board computer and vehicle tracking reports indicating the speed at which the vehicle was travelling when the accident occurred are generally accepted.

In the second case, the insured contested the calculation of the speed by the insurer’s expert but requested that the office decide on the issue of recklessness. The insured said that he was not familiar with the road, that visibility was poor because it was night-time, and the streetlights were not working. The insurer’s accident reconstruction expert calculated that the insured was travelling at 104km/h at the time in a built-up area where the speed limit was probably 60km/h. The Osti found in favour of the insurer.

Loyalty rewards

Discovery’s Vitality Drive rewards is possibly the most comprehensive programme aimed at assessing driving behaviour. Apart from a fuel cash back, it offers several safety features, including impact alert, weather warnings, a panic button and real time feedback on your driving behaviour. It even provides emergency roadside assistance when a vehicle breaks down within the borders of South Africa.

Driving behaviour is measured by installing a smartphone-enabled DQ-Track, which is made up of two components: the Discovery Insure smartphone app and the Vitality Drive Sensor. The app offers state-of-the-art safety features and measures driver behaviour, including sticking to the speed limit. Or not.

Discovery Vitality also offers a Standalone DQ-Track for an additional premium. Features include stolen vehicle tracking and recovery, driver DNA, which can detect whether someone else is driving the vehicle, and Geozones, which allows clients to set a safety perimeter for their vehicles.

Is Big Brother watching you?

Now, while it may sound as if I am punting this product, I have personally not made use of the facility, simply because of privacy concerns, and a few personal traits. When I am on the open road, and Bruce Springsteen is belting out Thunder Road, I tend to conveniently forget for a minute or two about things such as speed limits, only to be reminded a few months later when the summons arrives.

When I read the Osti newsletter, my first concern was that all the information stored on that nifty little gadget could well be highly incriminating should a claim arise, or, even worse, should a certain Minister of Transport cotton on to the idea that this may be yet another way of controlling the nation. Expect anything from a man who thinks reducing the “driving under the influence” limit to zero will stop that practice.

A broker that I spoke to assured me that Discovery had indicated very clearly that this would never happen, and I can understand why. Nothing could be more damaging to an insurer’s reputation than punting a product for one reason and then using it to refute claims.

Discovery has also confirmed that they are contractually bound NOT to use such information for any other purpose, including the assessment of claims. Due to time constraints we were unable to get their full response, but will publish it next week.

Other difficult to assess situations

The Osti’s briefcase contains several cases where claims were refuted as a result of the insured driving under the influence. In some instances, where the police did not conduct the obligatory testing, the insurer relied on testimony from witnesses, which can hardly be regarded as scientific.

We covered this topic extensively in an article titled Clarifying the OSTI’s role – It’s all about a balance of probabilities.

In view of the increase in claims being declined because of the insured breaching the contractual duty of care, it is important for advisers to revisit this important material condition contained in the contract when conducting annual updates.

Source: Moonstone
By Paul Kruger