The Power of Your Life

The Sanlam Century of Insurance Empowerment, 1918-2018

Bibliographic Data

ID5810312
AuthorsGrietjie Verhoef (0000-0001-7273-5135, Professor in Economic and Business History, University of Johannesburg, corresponding author)
Year2018
Pages448
Publication date2018-10-25
Open AccessYes
TypeBOOK
VenueThe Power of Your Life (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198817758.001.0001
OpenAlexW4211162839
Open LibraryOL28354389M
ISBN9780198817758
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

This book explores a century of business development in The South African Life Assurance Company, from a specific local focus to a national conglomerate expanding into global insurance markets. Established as a strategic vehicle to address Afrikaner economic marginalization and abject poverty at the beginning of the twentieth century, Sanlam has displayed both path dependence and a dynamic adaptability to complex changing contexts to become a global player. The strategic convergence of economic empowerment through the mobilization of savings into insurance products, as well as Afrikaner nationalism, assisted this growth. Sanlam has played an a-typical role in the economic empowerment of an ethnic entity through extensive investments into the industrializing South African economy. This strategic diversion created operational limitations that were only resolved early in the twenty-first century. As globalization, financial deregulation, and weakened Afrikaner political and social hegemony manifested, strategic change management relied on the path dependence of empowerment strategies to address new markets with similar needs to those of the early stakeholder market of 1918. The former mutual life office demutualized operations to become a diversified financial services group of companies operating across almost the entire African continent, as well as in India, Malaysia, and the UK. This volume presents a business history of strategic management of an insurance enterprise, and its transformation from a defined cultural context into an international empowerment strategy through innovation on all levels of business operation and organization

Business · Context (archaeology) · Economic growth · Economic system · Economics · Empowerment · Globalization · Hegemony · Market economy · Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · African studies and sociopolitical issues · South African History and Culture · Business & Management · corporate history · History Of Specific Companies · Insurance & actuarial studies · Life insurance · Political oppression & persecution

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