Overview

Our strategy remains relevant and focuses the business on providing best advice and innovative solutions. Our growth strategy is predicated on providing best advice for clients, together with measurable client benefits, pursue low-risk pan-Africa opportunities, implementing a focused business model, and maintaining a capital-light operation. The resolute focus of our leadership team in the execution of the strategy underpins our progress and acts as a demonstrable commitment to our clients.

Our five key deliverables:

Best advice for clients:
Providing holistic independent advice-led solutions to our clients, based on the depth and breadth of our expertise, research capability acts as our key differentiator. This deliverable is supported by the One Alexander Forbes model, which integrates our business lines and presents a ‘one company’ view and single point of entry for our clients. This includes South African clients and multinational clients with operations across Africa, served by our Arrive platform.

Measurable client benefits
The overarching goal of our advice-led approach is to provide superior and measurable benefits for our clients. Improved financial well-being is positively linked with improvements in productivity, and lower absenteeism and turnover rates.

Members are empowered to make better financial and healthcare decisions that compound over time.

Our success should be measured on the ability of our members to retire comfortably. The ability to retire comfortably is achieved through best advice and solutions

Pan African solution
Our advice-led approach allows us to better serve the needs of our multinational clients across Africa, without an in-country presence, while reducing our risk and capital investment.

The multinational consulting capability focuses on aligning and integrating with the group’s advice-led, solution-driven proposition to support clients or companies with their health, wealth and career requirements wherever they operate on the continent.

We have developed a capability across all countries on the continent to deliver advice and solutions to multinational companies that align with their global compliance, reporting standards and benefit objectives.

The Arrive platform, in partnership with Mercer, is the first solution of its kind to deliver comprehensive in-country employee benefit solutions across the continent through a single point of contact for clients.

Through this platform we have helped our clients to reduce complexity, ensure compliance, reduce costs and standardise benefits across borders. We continue to build traction with clients on the continent and grow the number of mandates. Our employee benefit solutions are now delivered to clients across 27 countries.

Focused business model
Our goal is to continually transition into a leaner, more coherent and integrated company.

By reducing complexity, we will offer a simplified service to our clients that is personalised and impactful. This deliverable underpins our advice-led approach and our ability to be capital-light.

The implementation of our new operating model has been a key enabler of our strategic shift to becoming a focused and advice-led business. The reorganisation has broken down silos in our business, enhanced collaboration internally and with external partners, improved our client experience and increased our operating efficiency.

One of our key advantages is our skilled employees, whom we continued to develop through training and by integrating learning across the business, while simultaneously aligning our transformation objectives to ensure that we maintain momentum in our transformation efforts.

Capital light
The strategy reaffirms our intent to remain capital-light. Our capital journey aims to release inefficient capital and reduce the surplus capital held.

We made significant progress towards this goal, delivering on the key objective of strengthening the balance sheet, which positions the business to withstand future uncertainty in the economic environment.