South Africans are highly satisfied with their life insurers, according to the 2024/25 Life Insurance Customer Experience (CE) Index report released by the University of Pretoria (UP).
With an overall CE score of 74.1 out of 100, the industry outperformed many other sectors, indicated the inaugural report on customer experience in the country’s life insurance industry. The Index was based on 2,987 comprehensive, audited interviews and focused on the five largest local life insurers by market share.
Professor Adré Schreuder, head of the Industry Chair in CE at the university, said, “Life insurance customer satisfaction in South Africa across the sector is generally very high, especially when it comes to overall service delivery quality, staff competency, process efficiency, and the reliability of digital tools.”
The findings of the survey depict an industry that pays claims promptly, resolves problems decisively, and has generated strong goodwill. Notably, only 6.6% of customers reported problems with their insurers, beating out the global best practice norm of 10%.
Value
However, the study also shows that many South Africans are dissatisfied with their insurance premiums and perceived value for money, wasted time and administrative inefficiencies in dealing with insurers.
The Value of Experience Index only scored 73.3 points – a 6.7-point difference from the Quality score. The three most common complaint areas were payment and premiums, service, and policy and product concerns.
Loyalty
In terms of loyalty, life insurers scored 73.9 points out of 100, short of the desired 80 points by international benchmarks. In addition, although many respondents expressed willingness to recommend a brand, with 50.3% being described as promoters on the basis of the “net promoter score” often utilised within the industry, only 16.5% actually do so.