Article from Noseweek Magazine, November 2017. Extract from ‘Done’ by Jack Lundin.
Billionaire Douw Steyn’s 1 Life Insurance is tricking pensioners into paying their social grant money into policies they neither need, want, nor can afford.

Every month insurance billionaire Douw Steyn’s 1Life snatches R110 in funeral insurance premiums from the social grants of each of 190,300 – mostly impoverished – South Africans. This captured monthly revenue delivers a guaranteed R250m-plus annual income, that pours, year after year, into the magnate’s corporate coffers.
Pensioner Mrs Sanna Marinana 73, and her disabled 40-year-old daughter Latitia never wanted their funeral policies with 1Life in the first place. For six years they’d been paying R65 per month each into perfectly good ones with Doves. But 1Life’s agent would brook no argument: “She said she’d been sent by SASSA and all people who get social grants and pensions must take the policy,” recalls Mrs Marinana. “We thought all the people on grants had to do it and we didn’t want to get into trouble by refusing.”
It was in November 2013 that 1Life’s bluntly demanding agent knocked at their door in Khayalethu South, part of Nekkies township outside the Garden Route tourist town of Knysna. And ever since 1Life has been drawing R110 per month from each of the mother and daughter’s SASSA grants. In the last four years Douw Steyn’s long-term life insurer has made deductions totalling RIO,560 for funeral policies that Mrs Marinana and Latitia hadn’t asked for, didn’t want – and couldn’t stop.
1Life lies within the long-term insurance arm of Steyn’s Telesure Group, whose chairman is Douw Steyn’s long-serving second in command Stephen Klinkert. Telesure houses Steyn’s South
African interests include Auto & General, Budget Insurance, Dial Direct and Hippo, as well as his property holdings: Steyn City, The Saxon boutique hotel in Joburg’s Sandhurst and Steyn’s Shambala private game reserve in the Waterberg.
Mrs Marinana, a widow since her gardener husband died 11 years ago, is a respected elder at Pastor Vubu’s church and lives a quiet life with Latitia in their trim RDP house in Khayalethu South. Since Latitia was a baby she has suffered from hydrocephalus – water on the brain – and following neurosurgery at Groote Schuur hospital in Cape Town when she was 19 she has received a permanent disability grant.
Mother and disabled daughter pool their R1,610pm grants, which just about meets their food costs. They have no other source of income, so maintaining payments of R110pm a piece to 1Life for four years to keep SASSA happy, as they thought, has been a major sacrifice.
The Marinanas are not alone. Colleen Ryan, Black Sash’s regional manager in the Western Cape, tells Noseweek that on her visits to advice centres across the province she is besieged by pensioners battling unsuccessfully to cancel unwanted 1Life funeral policies. Many of these, like the Marinanas, was hooked by 1Life’s commission-hungry agents with the line that they were from SASSA and the policies were compulsory.
Black Sash took up the cudgels for 18 1Life victims in Franschhoek. “Then we had 45 cases which took over a year to cancel,” says Colleen Ryan. “Since then I’ve been working on 10 more. It’s disgraceful. When you see the poverty on the ground when you know how these people could use that R110 to buy 11 loaves of bread. The pensioners we’re helping in Mossel Bay already had funeral policies with funeral brokers they knew.”
The Financial Services Board is investigating Black Sash’s claims of misrepresentation by ILife’s agents. The board has called for affidavits for the 10 latest cases, which are in Mossel Bay, Beaufort West, Oudtshoorn and Paarl. Highlights from these:
Cylia Nteyi, aged 90, from Beaufort West: “I was given a policy by ILife without my consent in 2016. I tried to cancel it but it never stopped. It’s still deducting from my SASSA card.”
John Petrus Campell, aged 81, of Mossel Bay: “An agent from 1Life came to my house and said she was from SASSA and told me I must take a policy. When I asked her who pays for this policy she said it’s the state. I then noticed the money coming off from my SASSA card. I went to Child Welfare in Mossel Bay to ask for help. They asked Black Sash to assist and on 19 March 2016, it was cancelled. To date, I have not received my refunds.”
Mona Brinkhuis, aged 76, from Mossel Bay: “Two agents from 1Life came to my house and said they were from SASSA and that I must take a policy. I went to Child Welfare in Mossel Bay and tried to cancel it. I signed an affidavit on 3 March 2016. The policy is still being deducted.”
Somza Norman Tsolo, aged 68, of Wellington: “Since January 2015 they are deducting money from my SASSA card. I didn’t apply for this policy. I never signed any policy with ILife. I need my money back.”
Novakalisa Kahlana, aged 64, of Paarl: “I want to cancel the stop order for a 1Life funeral policy which is deducting R130 from my SASSA card every month. I never joined any policy. I need my money.”
As for Mrs Marinana and Latitia in Khayalethu South, at their request Noseweek entered the fray and on May 25 this year we sent a letter by registered post, on their behalf, to 1Life’s compliance officer, terminating both policies with immediate effect and withdrawing mother and daughter’s authority allowing 1Life to deduct premiums from their social grants. This letter was not even acknowledged. For five months the R110 deductions continued until Noseweek escalated the complaint to the office of Laurence Hillman, chief executive of Telesure’s long-term insurance business.
Within days Hillman was assuring us that both Mrs Marinana’s and Latitia’s funeral polices had now been cancelled “and we have refunded all premiums received since the cancellation request of 25 May and compensated them for interest lost and bank charges incurred due to this incident”. This grand gesture came to R700.40 each for mother and daughter.
Hillman added: “It is important to note that we are committed to processing all cancellation requests in less than two working days of being received. With regard to Mrs Marinana and her daughter’s policy, we can confirm that this was an administrative oversight and we are undertaking a full review to determine why the process failed in this instance, and why the policy was not cancelled when the instruction was received.”
Well, it is clear from the complaints gathered by Black Sash that ILife policies are not all processed within two working days. As for their agents’ lies, claiming to represent SASSA and that ILife’s funeral policies were compulsory, Hillman places the blame squarely on the shoulder of those agents, independent financial service providers Emerald Wealth. “They are not part of ILife and are liable for the advice that they offer as well as the manner in which they sell their products,” maintains Hillman. He adds: “Emerald Wealth is no longer contracted to enter into any new policy sales on behalf of 1Life.”