SA’s largest short-term insurer Santam, which is entangled in a lawsuit related to business interruption claims, said it has, to date, paid out more than R500m in relief to leisure, hospitality and non-essential retail businesses.Santam CEO Lizé Lambrechts said the company has ensured that all the necessary resources are being mobilised to make quick relief payments to policyholders.
The company said the relief payments “equate to 70% of two months’ value of the sum insured for Santam’s policyholders in the hospitality, leisure and non-essential retail services industries”. “The 70% is based on a view that the businesses would have experienced variable expense savings during the lockdown,” Santam said.