JOHANNESBURG – Friday , 16 July 2021: The recent widespread civil unrest looting and property that has happened in KwaZulu-Natal and Gauteng during the past few day has necessitated questions regarding how most of the negatively affected businesses would be covered for insurance purposes.
In its 42-year history, Sasria SOC Ltd (Sasria), the state-owned company and only short-term insurer that provides special risk cover to all individuals and businesses that own assets in South Africa, as well as government entities has never experienced riots, violence, looting of this magnitude.
Managing Director of Sasria, Mr Cedric Masondo: “We have been deeply concerned since the outbreak of these riots. We are hard at work attending to the concerns raised by our clients and are attending to the claims we have received to date.”
We would like to assure our clients, partners, and stakeholders that our internal systems are ready, and have been curated to respond with the necessary agility when we are contacted, doing so expediently and effectively. We are working very closely with other insurance companies to make sure that we fast-track the payment of claims that have started coming through especially from individuals and small businesses.
Together with our distribution partners, insurers, and brokers, we have already appointed Loss Adjustors and Assessors that have already started on assessing the extent of damages and we have started paying claims.
Though the assessing work has urgently begun, it must be noted it is still unsafe to travel to some of the hotspots. That means the assessments would take time for some claims especially the big ones, requiring the indulgence of patience from everyone.
We would like to encourage our clients to follow the normal claims process and submit their claims through their insurers via their brokers. We would also like to assure our clients that as of now, Sasria is liquid and ready to honour claims as they come in with the expectation of more claims being lodged.
We take note of the uncertainty around the quantification of the losses or damages that have resulted from the current unrest. At this stage we do not know the full value of Sasria claims as a result of these riots as most claims have not been reported and most are still being investigated by the Loss Adjusters. We anticipate that in about 2 months’ time, we will have a clearer picture once all claims have been reported and investigations and quantification have been completed.
Sasria Management has started engaging the National Treasury as well the Prudential Authority about possible solutions should the worst-case scenario in terms of the value of the damages materialises.
Sasria’s current efforts will largely be directed towards processing claims and consulting our various stakeholders, at an appropriate stage a statement will be issued.
Sasria is an authorised FSP registered under license number 39117.