Japie Mostert, Head of Channel at Metropolitan, answers some questions on Metropolitan’s outlook for 2023.
What will be the main areas of business strategy that you will focus on?
I think the major challenge is to align strategy with business execution (operational plan) as this is where most strategies fail.
- Face distribution remains important in our chosen markets, but we must diversify our revenue streams.
- Ensuring that we offer needs based advice instead of just offering a product.
- Persistency remains critical as our clients are under severe economic strain and lapsing policies are not helping clients. They need to clearly understand, and in simple language, what the benefits are that are built into products to help them manage through difficult times.
- Staff development and retention will also be a significant contributor to our success
Your expectations for the various industry segments you are involved in?
Although National and Local Government remains an important market for us, we must investigate tapping more into the private market, but we need to clearly understand which sectors are under pressure to ensure we generate sustainable business to the benefit of our clients, staff, and shareholder.
- There is still untapped opportunity in the market, and we must ensure that we fully understand the segment and how they operate, we cannot just apply our traditional model into these markets, our offering must be fit for purpose.
- Various segments are just treading water and not appointing new staff, salary negotiations are adding pressure, to increase focus on these segments will not add significant value to all stakeholders
What are the distribution opportunities to be exploited?
Digital marketing is gaining traction so we must ensure we are at the forefront of capitalizing on this trend but there are also some lessons to be learned to ensure sustainability and value add to clients. I do feel that there is still some scope in our current distribution channels, but we need to serve and support our clients, existing and new in these turbulent times.