Investors
The broker is the customer. That is the whole thesis.
Most software sold into insurance distribution is built for the insurer and sold through the broker. Meridian is built for the broker and neutral about the insurer. That choice is what makes it defensible, and it is also the thing an insurer investor has to be comfortable with before we talk further.
Where this actually is. Meridian is early. The platform is built and running, the first brokerages are being onboarded, and we are not going to present a revenue chart that flatters a demo. What follows is the case, not a track record.
The case
Why this market, and why now.
Fragmented
The market is thousands of small FSPs
South African short term and life distribution runs through a long tail of independent brokerages, most of them under twenty brokers. They are too small for a policy administration system built for an insurer and too serious for a spreadsheet.
Multi insurer
Independence is the norm, not the exception
An independent broker places with several insurers by definition. Every tool that assumes one insurer is fighting the way its own users actually work.
Per broker
Revenue scales with seats, not with premium
Priced per broker per month in Rand. It does not take a share of commission, which keeps the incentive clean and the pricing conversation short.
If you are an insurer
The four questions, answered before you ask them.
Neutrality is the asset. These answers do not change based on who is on the cap table, which is exactly why they are written down here rather than negotiated later.
Would an insurer shareholder see broker data?
No. Not aggregated, not anonymised, not on request. The product has no mechanism for it and we will not build one. This is the term that makes the platform worth owning: a broker platform that leaks to a shareholder stops being a broker platform.
Would an insurer shareholder get preferential placement?
No. Insurers appear as rows in a list, ordered by what the brokerage actually places, never by who holds equity. There is no default insurer and no promoted product.
Then what does an insurer actually get?
Distribution reach into brokerages that run better, and a seat at a platform their competitors will also end up using. A well run broker places more business overall, and the insurer with the best product for a given risk wins it on the merits.
What happens if two competing insurers both invest?
Nothing changes, because neutrality was never conditional on there being one of them. That is the point of writing the rule down before the cap table exists rather than after.
Talk to us directly.
Investment conversations go to Malcom Miya directly. The data room, the architecture walkthrough and the current pipeline are available under NDA.
Meridian is built and operated by Zizian (Pty) Ltd.