What happens to your financial plan if your income stops? |
If your client’s income stops tomorrow, does their financial plan survive?
South Africa’s R50.4 trillion protection gap is not simply an insurance statistic. It asks a far more uncomfortable question of the advice profession: are we building financial plans that can survive real life?
We know how to talk about wealth. We talk about portfolios, retirement projections, investment returns, tax efficiency and long-term growth. But there is a question that should come before all of them: What happens to the plan if the income funding it disappears tomorrow?
Because without income, the carefully constructed financial plan can unravel remarkably quickly. The home loan remains. School fees remain. Medical costs remain. Retirement still needs to be funded. The family still needs to live. And that is what makes South Africa's latest protection-gap numbers so difficult to dismiss.
The 2025 ASISA Insurance Gap Study estimates that South Africa's 16.1 million formally employed income earners face a combined life and disability insurance shortfall of R50.4 trillion. That number is enormous. But the more important story is what sits behind it.