“It was a pitch we went into knowing that the client’s cornerstone of strength is its ability to strategise successfully to give its members the best risk cover and ownership opportunities, so we knew Professional Provident Society (PPS) was looking for strategic excellence first and foremost.”
So says Promise Group’s Managing Director Craig du Preez, adding that winning the pitch for his company’s integrated services had a fair amount to do with chemistry, too. “We pitched to members of the PPS Exco, as well as its CEO and heads of various divisions. It felt to us like a good fit from the start. We were excited about working with a progressive company that has created a unique offering within such a competitive market.”
PPS is a unique insurance company that caters to the various needs of graduate professionals. ”While maintaining its core focus on this group, PPS has embarked on a number of new opportunities over the last few years, such as PPS Investments, PPS Short-Term Insurance, PPS Financial Planning and PPS Mutual in Australia. All these new businesses were funded from its own capital,” says Izak Smit, Group CEO of PPS.
Unlike most financial services providers in South Africa, PPS is not listed on the stock exchange and has no external shareholders – instead, PPS operates under the ethos of mutuality and all PPS’ profits are allocated to PPS members with qualifying products on an annual basis by way of allocations to their PPS Profit-Share Accounts.
Du Preez says the fact that PPS has distributed a cumulative amount of over 22.5 billion to its members in the last decade, creating more than 4 000 profit share millionaire accounts in the process, which gives the Promise Group a lot to work with. “We looked at the PPS 353 502-plus membership base and their risk profile, along with all the permutations of risk cover offered to them, and realised the importance of strategy over ‘pretty’ in our pitch. Where many clients are won over by creativity in the artistic sense, I think PPS saw our willingness to understand its business at a far deeper level.”
The Promise Group will be undergoing an onboarding process with PPS to take the understanding of its new client’s business to the level of a partnership. “In providing the complete package of integrated services, PPS is assured of having a single point of accountability for all its requirements – digital, ATL, media and videography. For a highly focused and specific company like PPS, our agility and readiness to have a key member of Promise on the other end of the line means they focus on their core business while we focus on their brand,” du Preez says.
