Fidelity, South Sudanese company deal signed

Harare Bureau
FIDELITY Life Assurance of Zimbabwe has signed a joint venture deal with a South Sudanese short term insurance company. Fidelity Life is now waiting for the green light from relevant authorities to go ahead with their investment in the South Sudanese company, a senior company official has said. Fidelity Life managing director Mr Simon Chapereka yesterday confirmed signing the partnership agreement with National Insurance Company of South Sudan.

“I can confirm that we finally signed the partnership agreement with our South Sudanese partners about two-and-a- half weeks ago.
“We are now waiting to get clearance from relevant authorities to go ahead with the investment and in this case they are the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe as monetary authorities and the Commissioner of Insurance as our industry regulator,” he said.

Mr Chapereka expressed optimism that they were going to get the nod soon as they had already submitted the additional information as per the central bank’s request.

They are also in the process of liaising with the Commissioner of Insurance by arguing their business case on the viability of the partnership.
Addressing shareholders at the company’s 34th annual general meeting in June, Mr Chapereka said the National Insurance Company of South Sudan had expressed the desire to partner with Fidelity as they seek to tap into long-term insurance.

“The company expressed their desire to partner with us as they seek to tap into long term insurance and our initial investment into the company would be in terms of IT infrastructure, motor vehicles and the human resource aspect of operations,” he said.

The partnership will be on a 50-50 basis and if everything goes according to plan then the deal is likely to bring returns by next year although Mr Chapereka could not be drawn into divulging what the financial rewards would be.

Since breaking away from Sudan to become an independent state in 2011, South Sudan has presented many investment opportunities in the fields of banking, insurance, tourism and manufacturing sector.