Celebrating my 35 years in the insurance industry

Continued from T6

At about the same time, Old Mutual announced the launch of a 100-million dollar small to medium scale businesses fund and I thought I stood a good chance of accessing the funds since I had worked well and hard for them.

I made my application hoping to get the one million dollars minimum capital required for licensing by IPEC. At that point I was prepared to cede majority shareholding to them for the million dollar capital I needed.

Like what happened when I gave management feedback about what the market wanted, funeral policies, they didn't see merit in my proposal.

In 1993, I had bought a house in Marlborough for 400k which with inflation was now valued at 1.4million. One Ambrose Matika assistant general manager mortgages at CABS would facilitate the remortgaging of our family home giving us the princely sum of a million dollars needed for licensing, I was ecstatic.

On March 1, 2001, I would walk into 9th floor, Livingstone House, an Old Mutual property, not as an Old Mutual employee but a tenant marking the beginning of my Nyaradzo journey.

Today I celebrate thirty-five years in the insurance industry, thankful to Old Mutual for giving me the opportunity to work for them and exposing me to the insurance industry. It was from them also that we got our first office shelter, the iconic Livingstone House.

While my Nyaradzo journey could have been easier with their support at the formative stages of Nyaradzo, I am thankful for the training and exposure they gave me.

A number of times during our 20 years of service excellence, we have turned to Old Mutual for assistance, hitting a brick wall with most attempts.

For instance, in 2004 we were desperate for a financial bailout after we bought our first funeral parlour, 120 Herbert Chitepo on debt, sold to me by my good friend Newton Madzika who had bought Doves from the Hammer-Nel family.

I will forever be grateful to Newton for breathing life into Nyaradzo when he sold us this very important asset. Soon after we did the 120 Herbert

Chitepo transaction there would be a new sheriff in town in the name of the RBZ

Governor Doctor

Gideon Gono.

As part of his efforts to stabilise

Continued on T8 markets, he said, he allowed interest rates to rise to a 1000% within a few months, resulting in our initial debt of 800million dollars ballooning to 8billion dollars, unintended consequences, he used to say, we would soon become insolvent, if we didn't take action.

I sought refuge again to who else? You guessed it, Old Mutual. We went knocking at their door bowl in hand and on our knees begging.

By now we had ten buses, and we thought rather than beg, we would put a deal beneficial to both parties on the table.

Because burials in Zimbabwe are done from 11am to 3pm, we used our buses to ferry Old Mutual staff from town to their head office in Emerald Hill and they would pay us monthly in arrears.

We proposed that we sign an annual bus provision contract so they could pay us a discounted annual fee upfront which would help us settle the ballooning debt. Our buses had helped Old Mutual staff get to work on time for months if not years, helping management to plan their work schedules without interruption, from the time they had contracted us to be their transporter.

For months they stringed me along, requesting for this and that security including title deeds to the few properties we had by now acquired and I obliged. Right at the dearth, they would tell me that it wasn't possible, I was distraught.

I went down on my knees in tears as I knew that I stood to lose all I had worked hard to establish up to that point. That was possibly the lowest point in my life. Instead of being shattered and putting my hands up in surrender, it strengthened my resolve to succeed.

A few months later, I would structure a deal that got us out of trouble and clear the multi-billion dollar debt we had, giving us another chance to not only survive, but experience phenomenal growth. My appetite to dance with Old Mutual was not finished.

In 2009 Old Mutual would launch their own funeral policy, the FlexiPlan, a cash paying product.

They asked some of their senior executives to arrange a meeting with my team so we

could