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Vat in numbers

ARTICLE BY

  • Genasys

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FIA Partner 2018, Genasys Technologies is an industry leading, technology-inspired software company which develops and supports world-class software and services for its partners in the insurance industry. Below, Genasys shares how it quickly managed to adapt its core system to make real and relevant changes to the VAT rate in time to meet the 1 April deadline.

Genasys Technologies is an industry leading, technology-inspired software company which develops and supports world-class software and services for its partners in the insurance industry.

Back in February this year, South Africa’s then Finance Minister Malusi Gigaba announced the first increase in the rate of Value Added Tax in the country’s democratic era in a bid to raise billions to help turn around state finances. 

Putting the not-insignificant impact of the 1% increase on ordinary South Africans to one side, the challenge it posed to IT system providers was enormous given the effective date of 1 April 2018 – a mere 5 weeks after Mr Gigaba’s announcement.

Some providers simply weren’t up to the work needed to change and adapt systems across all sectors of the market. A few retailers cleverly bought time by announcing that they would cover the extra 1% for a period of time.

I’m proud to say that Genasys was able to quickly adapt its core system to make real and relevant changes to the VAT rate in time to meet the 1 April deadline, not just create exception reports and additional transactions on the platform. It was a huge job. We updated almost 2.5 million risks, over 300,000 policies and 80 reports – and we did it all within an impressive three weeks, giving us breathing space to test and ensure there was as little business impact on our clients as possible.

But that wasn’t the best part. The most significant aspect of this achievement was that the effort illustrated in the infographic, did not cost our clients a single cent.

Why? Well unlike some IT system providers, we at Genasys believe that regulatory and generic core changes like the VAT increase or POPI or GDPR should be budgeted for by system providers and form part and parcel of license payments. Regulatory changes create significant challenges to the markets we support so the last thing we need to do is to add to that challenge by burdening insurers, MGAs and brokers with further price hikes or passing on the costs for generic changes.

This is just part of our founding ethos of creating true partnerships with our clients and building systems to help them succeed. If you’re interested in finding out more, have a look at this infographic or email us at info@genasys.co.za.

 

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