Billionaire Douw Steyn’s 1Life 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.”
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