King Price is here to stay

STAFF REPORTER Justinus van der Westhuyzen, the chief executive officer of the newly formed short-term insurance company King Price, goes to work dressed in shorts and a casual shirt.The atmosphere at the company’s offices in Windhoek’s Klein Windhoek suburb is informal, with both the senior executives and junior staff casually dressed. The office is painted in bright colours.Van Der Westhuyzen says his casual dressing represents a new approach to the rigid nature of the insurance industry, which he says King Price plans to shake up.‘’We have shaken up the industry. Everybody has said so,’’ he says of the company formed late last year.The company started operating on 1 September last year with a start-up capital of N$35 million and has so far written 1 500 policies.Van Der Westhuyzen was born in Windhoek in 1983 but moved to South Africa at a young age, where he grew up on a wheat farm in the Western Cape. He matriculated from Paul Roos Gymnasium in Stellenbosch.He studied for a bachelor’s degree in accounting at the University of Stellenbosch and later obtained an honours degree in accounting from the University of South Africa (Unisa).He returned to Namibia in 2007, where he worked for one of the country’s biggest auditing firms before getting into the insurance business, where he was employed as a financial director.He later moved on to a larger insurance company, where he became chief operations officer and a board member. Despite achieving success at a young age, Van der Westhuyzen says he wanted to achieve more. He says the slow ways of the corporate world frustrated him.“There was always something missing. I wanted something better. There is lack of innovation in the market. Insurers are always these slow-moving dinosaurs,” he says.He says consumers are not well looked after by the industry.“The rest of the companies are not as consumer focused as they should be.”Van der Westhuyzen says King Price wants Namibians to pay less for insurance than they do at the moment.“Insurance has always been a grudge purchase. I want to evolve it. I want to take it to the next level.”Namibian shareholders own 26% of shares in King Price, while the rest of the shares are owned by Munich Re and the Mertech Group, whose owner, Francois van Niekerk, co-founded the Atterbury Property Group. The company is reinsured with Munich Re and NamibRe.Van Der Westhuyzen claims that King Price has disrupted the industry with its pricing model. While most insurance companies increase car premiums every year, his company’s premiums decrease every month as the car value depreciates.“We adjust the premiums every month to the retail value. We don’t give bogus out-bonuses. We give the best price upfront. We reward you for not claiming.”Giving an example of a car insurance premium that starts at N$900, he says over 36 months, the client would have paid 20% less and saved N$5 829 compared to other insurers.Talking about future plans, he says King Price plans to introduce services like car towing and chauffeur services. “This is just the beginning. I am going to complete the whole insurance chain in the future.”With 47 000 visits to its website and 7 700 Facebook likes in six months, Van der Westhuyzen says the company is growing rapidly.

King Price is here to stay

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-16

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King Price is here to stay

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Namibian Sun 2025-07-16

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