Junior Mlondobuzi, a digital mover with a disruptive mindset, drives new thinking to the insurance industry

Based in the north of Johannesburg, business owner Junior Mlondobuzi was exposed to an entrepreneurship mentality from a very young age. With a growth mindset ingrained into the foundations of his life, it's no surprise to anyone who knows him that changing the landscape of business opportunities by disrupting the status quo is what drives his ambitions.

Junior grew up in a household that was strongly influenced by entrepreneurial ideas and the business of insurance. His father started his own brokerage in 2003 and forged a very successful business himself. He later diversified into different products, establishing his second business by 2010. Junior, exposed to this, learned to think like a business owner as he grew up. Although, he admits, "I never really understood insurance. I wanted to become a chartered accountant. But the entrepreneurial bug bit me early on. And my dad always believed that I would end up in the insurance industry."

Junior started his first business when he was 16 years old

"I was printing and selling t-shirts in high school to make extra money for the weekend," says Junior. "Eventually, I moved on to doing embroidery on team kits for my high school."

Junior wrote his REs (insurance Regulatory Examination) by the age of 19

Junior's family business portfolio was always quite diverse. The insurance brokerage was just one of his family's business interests.

"I was working at one of the family supermarkets during the holidays. Insurance was the main line of business in my family. I wrote the REs, but I still didn't have a keen interest in insurance. I knew how it all works but I wasn't sure it was 'for me'.
"And then, towards the end of my university studies, I decided to take up fulltime work with my father and his insurance firm. I got bored very quickly," he chuckles. Junior started learning the commercial business of insurance in the claims division and was then moved to the public sector side of the brokerage, which was far more complex. "It was better experience," he admits. "I worked under my father and learned how claims are run. But I was bored."

Junior then made a call to switch things up and go overseas. His father encouraged him to remain in the industry, however. "My dad encouraged me to go and do a masters in insurance and risk management. I already had a BCom. So, I decided not to pursue accounting at that time. I went over to a small part of Italy I'd never heard of before - a small city called Trieste - to do the masters at age 23."

MIB-Italy only accepts about 30 students a year. Anyone from anywhere in the world can apply. "I was the youngest person in the class. The Italians made me fall in love with insurance. We even had an art class to help teach us about interpreting product design in an insurance context through the principles of different art techniques. We'd have to identify what makes a piece unique.

"So, it made me fall in love with the structuring of insurance products and the processes that go into it... the whole insurance supply value chain."

This fed into another passion of Junior's - technology

"I always believed that technology would disrupt the insurance industry. I also believed my journey would come together with technology." So, before he returned home, Junior combined his learnings with his passion for tech by founding a consulting firm with a digitalisation focus. "Safe to say, we didn't succeed. It was too early, and we were too young."

Yet, he didn't give up on the broader idea. He focused his master's thesis on "the survival of insurance intermediaries in the digital age." He theorised that brokers and intermediaries would become obsolete in the age of InsureTech and would need to switch and pivot to become something like an "in-between bridge".

Junior returned to South Africa with a head full of ideas that he saw as opportunities to pursue - his thesis idea being at the forefront of them all. And this was how his own insurance business, Entresure, was born.

Junior set to work on learning about regulations and licences to set up his business while once again working for his dad

"While working at my father's company, the idea dawned on me - let me prove my concept by making it a division of this company because it already has licensing." Junior already had some working experience, supervised by his father.

"So, we started the vision and then when we were looking for an underwriter, that's when I was introduced to Discovery Business Insurance. I think DBI was about two years old at the time. We signed with Discovery in December 2019 under my father's company. They gave us a chance when few others would. I was a young guy."

In early 2020, Junior (at 24 years of age) initiated applications for his own business licence. Then COVID-19 threw him a curveball

Junior plugged away at his business despite the challenges of the pandemic and its lockdowns. He marketed his new business almost entirely on social media with little budget and no advertising spend. "Even though it was COVID, we went from zero to R1 million API in that year alone," he reflects proudly. A notable accomplishment without massive financial backing alongside the understanding that technology takes time to evolve. "Everything that we paid for was through earned commission. That pushed us to get more clients in the early days. Today we don't have much bank debt."

Finally, in 2021, Junior officially received his own business licence. The pandemic had delayed the normal process of about a month to just over a year for his application process to be approved. He accumulated clients despite lockdown conditions. "They were surprised at how we operated and how agile we were. We incorporated cloud servers in our processes to make sure that even if I'm out of office, at any given moment if a client calls, I can access their information and data to assist them.

"A lot of traditional competitors are heavily reliant on manual filing on computers etc. but are not on the cloud, leveraging its power." Junior's operations are almost entirely on the cloud and remote, making business accessible anytime, and from any place. "We work remotely 90% of the time but we go into an office environment on occasion to meet with underwriting partners and some clients."

Junior ran the business on his own initially and began to expand his team in 2022

"We are about to go into year three and it's safe to say that we are establishing ourselves as a brand in the market."

Entresure's mission and vision? As stated on his company website, the business aims to:

• Build a digitally powered insurance intermediary that serves as an entry point for all small and medium businesses looking to cover themselves from ever evolving risks.
• Create an integrated insurance environment for small and medium businesses across Africa and assist them in effectively managing their exposure to ever evolving risks.

"In the early days, we were pushing quotes out within two to three hours. Turnaround times for our clients were key in the early days because our concept was heavily reliant on efficiency. And Discovery Business Insurance was very supportive of that. It's been a great partnership. We work very closely together."

Junior is proud that his concept could indeed disrupt the market and alongside his convictions, COVID allowed him to accelerate his theory and prove it in a short timeframe too. He believed that brokers and intermediaries could become digital-first movers and as such would then become valuable partners in the insurance space. He saw his business as an InsureTech disruptor and while still in its early stages, it is already shifting the landscape into new efficiencies.

"I believe my business has disrupted the industry in a way where people can now see that you can digitalise the commercial side of insurance using the same underwriting models as personal lines," he explains. "I've also created employment as a young guy who employs young people." This year he is working on employing a full marketing team and bolstering his IT division. "We're going to grow to a team of at least 10."

On the importance of business insurance cover

"We can't quantify it exactly but having comprehensive cover, regardless of how small your business is, is important. If you don't, there's a thin line between surviving a crisis and not surviving at all," Junior says. Insurance covers the heavy cost of crisis when you can't. It's the cost difference between monthly premiums and going out of business because of the expense one incident can bring about.

"Insurance cover complements a business because you cannot run it without a risk management strategy. The business is a risk in itself. So, you want to transfer as much risk away from it as you possibly can. And you do that by having proper insurance in place."

"I believe my story should serve as an inspiration to others"

"I'm two years away from 30 and built a legitimate business, despite a lack of role models in the industry. It doesn't matter what age you are; if you want to start a business, you really can. You're not too young to enter a particular industry."

Junior believes that doing something differently can still attract success as it gives new generations options for what works best for them. Experience counts for much, but so too does hard work to achieve something new and fresh.

"Believe in yourself, first and foremost. You need to believe in yourself even when things look like they're not going to work out. Also acknowledge that just because something has always been done a certain way doesn't mean it always has to be that way. So, don't be afraid to be the first one to do things differently. Never be afraid to be a 'first mover'. Believe in your ideas and always be willing to learn. Be teachable because nobody knows everything.

"Also, don't wait for money or the 'right time'. You shouldn't wait for anything. Don't focus on money. When you're doing something right, the money will come. When you're doing something properly for the right reasons, the people will come and will support you and your business. It will grow. So, believe in yourself and think about what difference you're going to bring to an industry. Have a solid vision. When you do, people see your value."

Junior acknowledges that his business is not entirely unique and that there is "room enough for different philosophies on how things can be done."

"Get to your point of disruption and then push it as far as you can, as many times as you can to keep growing. That's how you keep disrupting. You continue to break the norm."

"My dad is not only my mentor but a role model too"

"He instilled in me good principles and a good business acumen. He taught me to nurture relationships with clients. He never handed anything to me." Instead, Junior's dad taught him to earn it through hard work.

"My dad believed in me when I didn't quite believe in myself. He's somewhat of an executive producer in my life because he saw my story before it became my story. He is my biggest role model."

Unfortunately, when Junior's father launched himself in the industry, there weren't many people of colour running their own brokerages. "He went out there as a disruptor himself" and became very successful at it and highly respected among his peers. "This is the guy I look up to." No wonder that Junior is inspired by his father, both in life and in business.

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