The Imbalenhle Burial Society, named in May 2008 by the Stokvel Company as the best performing of South Africa's more than 8 000 stokvels and burial societies, uses an integrated SMS and accounting solution from Pastel to drive innovative and cost-saving member management and administrative activities.
So effective is Imbalenhle's use of the solution that it is able to manage the administration of 25 000 individual policies, R2 million's worth of monthly revenues and up to R700 000's worth of monthly payouts with only five members of staff.
These efficiencies are achieved in large measure because Imbalenhle enables its members to use SMS facilities to check what their balances are or verify policy numbers. The system generates SMSes for outstanding payments, and lapsed policies.
And when Imbalenhle CEO Eric Mathethwa is on membership drives away from the office, he can log on to Pastel Partner via his cellphone in order to allocate policy numbers and issue new policies on site.
The Wan has enabled Imbalenhle to open a branch in Durban.
“Because burial societies have been seen as more of a traditional, almost underground organisation than a formal business, the whole idea of using business tools to run them has taken time to sink in,” Mthethwa says.
“We adopted the idea early because what matters to us is providing tangible support to our members. Making it easy for them to work with us is one of the best ways we can do that - and IT gives us the most cost-effective means of achieving that.”
The 21-year old company changed two years ago from a manual administrative system to using Pastel Partner.
“We implemented Partner as an Imbalenhle membership database rather than just an accounting system,” says Jabulani Mabuza of Absolute Accounting. “That's because the package enabled us to simplify member and policy management by allowing us to categorise members by premium. So, Eric can see immediately what his income and expenditure is by category, and his admin staff can easily pick up whose premium payments are outstanding. Partner also automates the process of raising individual member premiums for accounting purposes.
“At the same time, unlike other burial societies - who pay out an average lump sum - Pastel allows Imbalenhle to give a detailed breakdown of monthly premiums to our current insurance partner, Sanlam.
“Members and their families can therefore see exactly how their money has worked for them. That transparency is just one of the things that puts Imbalenhle in a league of its own.”
Imbalenhle has achieved additional operational efficiencies by using Partner's ability to easily interface with third-party systems like SMS Portal, Easypay, and Absa Cash Focus. We download bank and Easypay files and the application does automatic reference matching, generates a Pastel receipt batch and sends an SMS to thank the client for paying premiums. Imbalenhle's focus is to manage the suspense account which has been reduced substantially.
Members are also able to pay their premiums via the Easypay system at supermarkets around the country. Partner was customised to be able to 'grab' those payments as well.
“Instead of days, bank reconciliation takes about 30 minutes now,” Mabuza says.
Mthethwa's future technology plans will improve his service to members still further and save Imbalenhle some R30 000 a month in bank cash handling charges.
The company is entering into a core branding arrangement with one of the leading banks whereby Imbalenhle members will be issued with a debit card that offers them loyalty points as well as enabling them to pay their premiums via their cellphones. The money will be paid directly into Imbalenhle's account, altogether eliminating cash collection fees.
“None of this would have been possible without Pastel Partner,” Mabuza says. “It allowed Imbalenhle to migrate with minimum effort and knowledge of accounting from a manually run business aimed at the unbanked to automated administration of a business at the cutting edge of technology that will effortlessly bring the unbanked into the formal economy.”
“The bottom line is that the solution has enabled the burial society to increase collection, improve communication with members and reduce unknown deposits by over 80%.Imbalenhle is now considered, and was voted by its peers, as the most progressive and better run burial society southern Africa,” says Mthethwa.
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