About Us

Insurance Times is a South African printed magazine distributed monthly by: paid subscription; free to business Channel Partners; and, free Online as an electronic edition. All articles are also published individually Online, together with additional 'news extra' stories. The magazine was started in 1988 to inform and educate the consumer on a wide range of financial services and products. To fulfill this mission it provides business and consumer oriented information about short term insurance, life assurance, healthcare, retirement, education and savings; taxation, wills and estates; financial planning; and, investment strategy covering a wide range of assets, such as shares, property and money market accounts. It seeks thereby to educate and inform financial advisers working in the insurance and investment sectors and their clients whom they are serving.

Archive Project

Articles from the current edition of the magazine are published online during the course of the month and can be accessed through our Home Page. The issue is then archived to the library at the end of each month. In addition, as of 27th July 2015, the whole of the back catalogue of Insurance Times is now archived to our library (from 1st August 1988, when we started publishing, through to the present).

Search Service

The library now carries over 6 500 articles listed under the specific issue in which they were published. On the right of the 'About Us' TAB is a search bar providing fast and complete access to all the articles. As you work on the search results we suggest, when you click on a topic, that you do so using the Control key so that a new browser window is opened for each article. This keeps the original search results listed in your first window.  

History of Insurance Times

The magazine is officially registered in terms of the Newspaper and Imprint Registration Act 1971 as “Insurance Times”. In addition, its first issue was printed 1st August 1988. While it was intended as a monthly publication, the early years saw a bit of disruption to this frequency due to various factors, typical of a small start-up business. There was also a period it became an alternate monthly product when advertising was handled by a third party. The table below gives an overview of this.
In response to developments in the short term insurance and life assurance industry the official title was augmented with the tag “& Investments” from 1st February 1992 to emphasise the fact that the magazine – self-evident by many previous issues  - covered, not only insurance per se but many areas of investing and saving for the future in the broader financial services sector. Right up till today the product is still generally known as “Insurance Times & Investments” – though its registered name has never changed.
The continuing development of the world-wide web (‘the Internet’) expanded the distribution of information to such an extent that references to ‘Insurance Times’ sometimes called up titles from other countries, for example, the United Kingdom and India. So, from the 1st May 1998, a prefix tag “South African” was added to distinguish the local title from overseas publications.
The magazine has, for many years, been represented on its web site: www.insurance-times.net, first registered on 29th January 2001, when posting of selected articles and marketing material commenced. In more recent years, a wider range of articles has been published together with a full electronic version of the product. To create a cleaner reading experience on the web (both as a PFD and full ‘FlipBook’ style) the magazine had its first major re-design for many years as from 1st January 2014. Its title was also simplified to: “South Africa’s Insurance Times”.