JOHANNESBURG – South African life insurance company, AllLife beat the likes of PepsiCo, BBC and Deloitte last week to be named overall winner of the Unilever Global Development Award by UK charity, Business in the Community (BITC).
AllLife, in which profit-with-purpose company LeapFrog Investments is a minority shareholder, provides insurance to people living with HIV and diabetes, helping policyholders manage their health and improve life expectancy.
According to BITC, the awards recognise businesses “that can demonstrate positive impact against one or more of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDG)”.
These are businesses that put responsible behaviour at the heart of how they do business, according to Stephen Howard, CEO of BITC.
This year, all of the finalists targeted MDG 1: the eradication of poverty.
There were 13 category-specific awards, including the Bupa Employee Wellbeing Award, the Engaging Customers on Sustainability Award and the International Disaster Relief Award.
Other shortlisted companies included Shell UK, Heineken UK, Lloyds Banking Group, Accenture, DHL, Barclays, British Airways, Zurich Insurance and KPMG.
Sue Adkins, BITC international director says that AllLife is “inspiring on many levels”, enabling wider financial inclusion and linking insurance coverage with adherence to healthcare through ‘continuous underwriting’.
“AllLife supports the client in healthy lifestyle choices and in so doing creates a virtuous circle; a symbiotic link between the insured and the insurer as both parties benefit from the extended life of the policy holder with the quality and longevity of life for clients linking directly to their business performance,” Adkins says.
“This remarkable, successful and sustainable business model has huge potential in terms of scale and significance with great potential to expand and replicate both geographically and across other long term health condition,” she adds.
AllLife CEO, Ross Beerman describes the company he leads as “a social impact firm in the truest sense”.
“We cannot operate profitably without having an immense positive impact on our clients and society. It is nice to realise that when we do tell our story, others take notice, and recognise the positive effect that we are having on South African society, along with a real and material impact on our clients’ lives,” he says.
Howard congratulated AllLife “for being an inspirational example for others to learn from”.