“Why I Love Change, even when it’s scary”
As BrightRock celebrates its 15th anniversary, co-founder Sean Hanlon looks back on a life-changing journey.
By happy coincidence, in the year that BrightRock celebrates its 15th anniversary — a crystal anniversary, it’s called — co-founder Sean Hanlon has celebrated his own milestone birthday.
Let’s just say it’s one of those birthdays with a big zero at the end, and a few too many candles to blow out in one go.
If you’re looking for a clue, Sean arrived at the office one morning to find a special gift from his colleagues: a senior citizen’s discount card.
He’s looking forward to using it wisely, even as he takes some time from his busy schedule to look back at what’s changed at BrightRock since the company launched in 2011.
From Dining Room Table to Distinctive Brand
Fifteen years is a significant landmark in business time. It’s long enough for a start-up’s early swagger to harden into systems, products, technologies, and compliance.
It’s long enough for an idea scribbled at a dining room table – life insurance that changes as your needs change, throughout your life – to evolve into a company with a recognisable brand, a growing customer base, and a global reputation for doing things differently.
“People often ask me, ‘Would you do it again?’” says Sean. “And honestly, my answer would be no! It was a gargantuan task. But am I glad we did it? Absolutely. It’s been an amazing journey.”
A Conversation at 30 000 Feet
It began some time before that brainstorm around the table, with fellow founders Schalk Malan and Suzanne Stevens. Sean remembers the seed being planted on a flight home from England in 2008, the year of the subprime lending crisis.
He was a senior executive with a big life insurer at the time, having worked his way up through sales from his previous life as a high school teacher in Benoni.
His fellow passenger also worked in the financial services industry, and they began talking about the FAIS Act, which regulates insurance brokers, advisers, and intermediaries.
Among other things, it’s designed to protect consumers, by ensuring they have a clear understanding of whether a product meets their unique needs and circumstances.
For Sean, there was a growing disconnect between the intentions of the Act and its application in the real world. He began wondering whether there was room in the marketplace for a life product built from the start around the actual, ever-changing needs of the consumer.
As it turned out, the answer was yes. The product was needs-matched life insurance, and the company would be called BrightRock.
The Backbone Beneath the Optimism
Sean pauses, with the benefit of hindsight, to offer a gentle warning to anyone else who might be thinking about starting a business.
Entrepreneurship is often powered by what he calls “a lofty optimism”, encouraging you to put your foot on the pedal before you understand the full weight of what you’re taking on. For BrightRock, he believes the optimism had a backbone.
“What mattered most was a deep belief in what we stood for,” he says. “We genuinely felt consumer behaviour was shifting away from commodity buying and towards individual, tailored solutions.”
In other words, people were tired of one-size-fits-all financial products, especially in an industry where the product has traditionally been sold, rather than bought.
Reimagining a Grudge Purchase
Sean is not one to romanticise life insurance.
“I’ve never met anyone who wakes up and thinks, ‘Yay, today I’m going to go out and buy some great life insurance!’”, he says. “It’s always been a grudge purchase.”
But that was exactly where BrightRock saw an opportunity: to build an insurance proposition shaped around real-life requirements, across time, rather than generic cover packaged with perks.
“We wanted to move away from commoditised sales,” says Sean. “Not selling something because it feels good, or because there’s an ancillary benefit, but focusing on building something that could match individual needs, and supporting advisers to do that properly.”
Burnt Orange, Black, and 56,600 Possibilities
Initially, in May 2011, BrightRock was launched to the independent broker community. Getting their buy-in and support, for a risk model offering 56,600 possible benefit and premium configurations – compared to an average of just 32 by other players in the South African life insurance marketplace – was crucial.
“Brokers would tease us,” recalls Sean. “They’d say, ‘BrightRock? What are you, a diamond mine?’ Or they’d joke about the palette of our brand, because we arrived with burnt orange on black, so different to all the other players.”
But the name and the colours were carefully considered and deliberate.
“Bright for something clean and fresh,” says Sean. “Rock for stability. Even the ‘I’ in the middle of the name was a small visual cue for individuality and bespoke design.”
Backing the Underdog
Back in those early days, everything was a risk, and not only for the founders.
“I look back on our early supporters with enormous appreciation,” says Sean. “They weren’t just putting their reputations on the line, they were putting their practices on the line.”
BrightRock was new. It had never paid a claim. Competitors were circling, many predicting that the new startup wouldn’t be around for longer than a year. That’s why the intermediaries who took a chance mattered so much.
“Those early days were really tough,” says Sean. “But you don’t forget who backed you when you were still proving you could stand.”
From Pariah to Proof Point
Being the outsider, the industry underdog, had its benefits for BrightRock.
“We challenged some of the worst structures in the life insurance industry. We quickly became a pariah. But it ultimately worked in our favour.”
Today, wholly owned by Sanlam, BrightRock is one of the fastest-growing life insurance companies in the country. More than that, it’s proof of the proposition that South Africa punches above its weight in the global financial services arena.
“I genuinely think, as a country, that we’re better than world-class,” says Sean. “I think many overseas markets are paralysed by regulation. I’m not saying you mustn’t comply – you must. But innovation is slower.”
South Africa, he believes, is different because the stakes are different.
“In our market, you have to be more self-sufficient. There isn’t the same institutional safety net. That pressure forces invention.”
Loving Change, Giving Back
And what of the next 15 years, and beyond? Love Change, says the BrightRock mantra. But change can be scary, admits Sean.
“Every day I wake up with a knot in my stomach. It’s nervous energy. It’s the fear of losing that edge.”
At the same time, that energy – and the excitement it sets in motion – is the rocket fuel that brought BrightRock to life in the first place.
As he looks ahead, Sean feels that his views and experience as a teacher are burning stronger than ever before.
“I'm really enjoying watching young people come through the system,” he says. “I’m loving imparting my knowledge, the stuff I learned and the mistakes I made. I think the catalyst for me has been approaching my 60th spin around the sun. I'm big now into wanting to give back, within my own family, within my business, but also elsewhere. I’m getting a tremendous sense of fulfilment from it.
Well, there goes the big secret. Happy 15th birthday, BrightRock, happy 60th, Sean, and here’s to many more years of Loving Change!