In this Q&A Brandon speaks about his future plans and reveals how Liberty’s unique position in the marketplace can help the insurer grow from strength to strength.

Tell us a bit about your background?

I’ve got over 20 years of distribution and sales experience in various capacities - from coalface experience as a broker consultant through to sales leadership roles both for Liberty and Discovery. For the past 8 years I’ve been a shareholder and Managing Director of the Capital Legacy executive team, building the business from a small start-up, to one of the fastest growing life insurance businesses in SA. This culminated ultimately in us concluding a successful partial sale of the business to Sanlam. I’m an entrepreneur by nature and really enjoy seeing ideas grow and develop into things that changes either people’s lives or entire industries.

What are your plans for this new position?

With the team I am looking to build on the great work done so far. I’ll be looking to enhance business propositions to our Liberty Advisory Partners, as well as bring something meaningful to their clients that will have a positive impact on them and their families. My vision is for Liberty to be the number one place for advisers to choose, and for their clients to want Liberty to be their product provider of choice.

In your view what makes Liberty’s proposition unique in the current marketplace?

With a strong and distinguished heritage, the integration of Liberty into the Standard Bank group is already yielding positive results. We are already seeing great opportunities that give us a competitive edge. For example, Lifestyle Protector policyholders who are also Standard Bank UCount rewards members may now receive UCount tiering points.  And then there’s also our newly launched mortgage/bond cross selling offering. The group has always been known as a trusted brand with great integrity, so clients can have complete peace of mind when choosing Liberty.

What synergies can Liberty add following its amalgamation with Standard Bank?

A lot of this comes from realising the true value of financial advice in that we can offer clients a more personalised financial lifestyle with a broader range of products to enhance their aspirations. We can now incorporate a clients’ full financial analysis, including not just insurance and investment products, but also their banking needs. We will see more of this collaboration and clients themselves can get the products they need backed up by advice to suit their individual plans.