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Cape Town - Santam has reassured the public that its insurance application is not a customer acquisition tool, but rather software to help people stay safe.
The short-term insurer launched its free app in Cape Town on Tuesday after being in the works for three years.
"The purpose of the app is really not for us to get people to ask us for quotes or use it as an acquisition tool," Nathan van Rooyen, Santam head of Digital Marketing, told Fin24 about the application.
The app is intended to allow people to keep safe via a 'Be Safe' feature built into the application. It allows you to select users who will be informed of your movements and the tracking ends when you finish your journey.
Like other insurance apps, the Santam app also features an accident reporter where users can easily record all details from a collision to facilitate the claims process.
Personal data
But the Be Safe feature is also a part social network; part safety feature that allows a better use case for an insurance application.
"It's really there to support our claims ability and capability and it's also to support our brand position around helping people by giving them a platform where they can connect with each other in a meaningful way," said Van Rooyen.
He said that the data - especially from non-Santam subscribers would be scrubbed to ensure that the company did not exploit user information to sell insurance products.
"We don't keep data of where you were," he said, though he conceded that some personal data is necessary to ensure the app's functionality.
Beyond your mobile identity and location, the app requires access to your contacts, microphone, photos and media, as well as camera on your smartphone.
This is mainly to facilitate taking pictures of an accident scene, as well as a scanning feature for licence disks that reads information for the application.
The app records your location so that you can notify the company where the collision took place, and also so that you can be informed of where the nearest police station might be.
Watch Nathan van Rooyen explain the data privacy policy in the application:
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