To safeguard the interests of existing and prospective policyholders, Smart Life Insurance Company Limited is prohibited from issuing new insurance policies, Dube Tshidi, the registrar for long-term insurance, has announced.
“Smart Life no longer has the organisation or management necessary for carrying on its long-term insurance business, and its current shareholding is contrary to the interests of policyholders,” Jonathan Dixon, the deputy registrar for long-term insurance, says in a media release issued by the Financial Services Board this week.
Dixon says in May 2010 the registrar approved a change in the shareholding of Smart Life, which resulted in Net 1 Applied Technologies South Africa – a wholly owned subsidiary of Net 1 Universal Electronic Payment Systems Technologies (UEPS) – “indirectly exercising control over Smart Life”.
It has been reported in the media that UEPS is being investigated by the Department of Justice in the United States for violating the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. One of Net1’s subsidiaries was awarded a R10-billion contract from the South African Security Agency to distribute social grants in a tender process that was found by the North Gauteng High Court to be “illegal and invalid”.
Smart Life sells a wide range of insurance products. It has 15 320 individual policies on its books and one group scheme.