Alpha Direct to offer employees 20% ownership
Kabelo Boranabi | Wednesday March 26, 2025 06:00
The company's co-founder and CEO, Arun Iyer, told MonitorBusiness that the decision was taken and approved two years ago by the board.
'We have employees who have been with the company since inception and these would be the first to be offered stock options,” he said. “This process will solely be guided by the employees' performances. “We have a performance management system and the idea is that as the organisation grows, performs, and generates returns, then we allocate stake options to all the employees.”
Locally, Alpha Direct Insurance has 220 employees. Regionally, it has a branch in Zambia with plans to penetrate the South African market.
'As a group, we opened some branches a couple of years ago and we are busy working on expanding into South Africa. “We launched in South Africa this month and that means we will have three country operations, which was part of our vision five years ago,' Iyer added.
It has been an extraordinary rise for the company since acquiring an operation license on April 19, 2014.
Iyer said Alpha Direct prides itself in being the go-to insurance company for low-risk customers. He said the company is the first insurance outfit to develop its rating algorithm where they individually price list.
'That is going to apply to about 15% of the population where we are going to be far cheaper than the competition. “For another 30% of the population somewhat cheaper but for the high-risk customers, we are not going to be cheaper unfortunately and we are going to be more expensive than our competitors,' he said.
He further said the company in its decade-long existence has been successful in servicing over 100,000 consumers in the last couple of years and aims for further growth after reaching the P350 million mark in paid claims.
'Insurance is a business of trust and it takes time to earn trust,” he said. “The first three to four years were very hard and we had to convince people that we were worthy to be trusted. “I think the real turning point came for us by just servicing claims. “I remember when we crossed over a P100 million in claims and that was a big milestone for us. “We have now serviced over P350 million in claims.”