PPS was established in South Africa in 1941. The mutual serves graduate professionals – doctors, engineers, lawyers and anyone with a post-graduate qualification.
In South Africa unemployment is at 38% and stands at 68% for young people. PPS believe professionals helps grow the economy and are its lifeblood. They see professional people’s reliance as underpinning their country’s resilience.
In South Africa, cooperatives and mutuals are more known as a social model for saving for burial, lending, and household purchases. It is a fragmented market. Mutuals that operate as businesses include PPS and AVBOB. South African people generally don’t trust that businesses can be purpose-driven as well as being a successful business. Old Mutual has demutualised, but is still named Old Mutual, which is also confusing.
PPS began life as a group of dentists at the height of second world war. Originally just a life insurer, it grew into the health insurance space and has grown in terms of product lines and as well as an investment business. Today it is a fully fledged asset manager, P&C business and offers many other services. PPS also has a business in Namibia and has a business in Australia (focused on life-only).
As a niche player, PPS realised that they must break through the noise as it doesn’t want to be a ‘me too’ player. For them that means marketing PPS’s distinct focus on the power of shared success, being designed for difference and clear brand alignment.
The power of shared success
Mutuality is at the heart of everything. They believe that success is better shared and to achieve that they operate within an ecosystem – the member, the intermediary and PPS.
Intermediaries don’t explain the full proposition or mutuality and therefore PPS have Member Socialisation Specialists who explain the full proposition to new members once they come into the business. They send them an audio-visual brochure to assist their socialisation and explain the service channels.
Profit-Share is front and centre when they release their annual results. It’s a crucial indicator of their success.
Design for difference
This element of the proposition is driven by the needs of this specific cohort. They are time-starved, working long hours and appreciate efficiencies.
- Critical illness – members can access immune therapy and experimental cancer treatment that is not available from other insurers;
- Extending the family – some members are not married to professionals so PPS aggregate their investments into a family network, offering discounted fees overall and the opportunity to increase their Profit-Share;
- On P&C side – vehicle licence renewal and traffic fine payment queues are extremely long. PPS members don’t have time for this and so they get a concierge renewal and chauffer drive service;
- Cross-Holdings Booster – this is additional profit share for members who have more than one product to encourage more products per member;
- Naturing intermediaries – SA intermediaries have specialisms eg. life or investments. PPS staff partners with the intermediary to support them to give the best possible advice. The PPS Academy is opened up for intermediaries for CPD development specialist training;
- Social – Inequality issues are concerning to SA people. PPS sponsor bright young people via bursaries and promote crowd funding by highlighting the profiles of individuals that donors can support;
- Psycho social support – During COVID the need for psycho social support grew. PPS members get support over the phone and also face to face and solutions are also available to members and their families to access without charge;
- Healthy Weigh Challenge – This started with employees but opened to members. It is an eight week programme working with dieticians to help people create a healthy lifestyle.
Brand Alignment
All parts of the PPS business are engaged to help develop an aligned PPS brand. This approach has been hugely successful and enabled unified communications across the organisations.
