Xolile Bhengu

Xolile Bhengu

Covision chief executive officer Thinyane 'Oupa' Leboea is planning to give local insurance companies a run for their money.

Last week Leboea launched Covision Life, a 100percent black-owned insurance company that already claims to have 40000 clients.

The company plans to capture about 6,5percent of the existing pure risk market by 2011 with a premium income of about R1billion and R900million per annum.

Covision Life is a joint venture with Wizzit Bank, a subsidiary of the Bank of Athens.

Leboea says the launch of Covision is the realisation of a more than three-decade-long dream.

He began his career working for his late father's QwaQwa Funeral parlour, which was later renamed SA Funeral Home.

This was after his suspen-sion and later expulsion from a teaching college, for allegedly leading a student protest march.

Leboea comments: "It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement, until I was able to find another college.

"My father was worried that I would probably get into more trouble if I did not have something to keep me occupied."

He says after increasing the parlour's clientele, his father asked him to manage the business on a full-time basis.

While running the funeral parlour he realised that many clients had funeral policies but very few had savings and cover for unpredictable events such as disability, loss of income and retirement.

"I recognised the gap in the market, and saw that even in cases where people had these savings it was straining their earnings."

Leboea says he wanted to create a product that focused on individual needs, and was affordable and flexible enough to accommodate people's changing incomes and circumstances.

He says Covision will do its bit to ensure that young people save more, and stop living for the moment but within their means.