Investment Insights | 4 min read

Glacier Life Covered Investment Summit 2025 webinar

Your life. Your investments. Covered.

1 August 2025

Linda Blom, National Business Manager at Glacier by Sanlam, opened the Summit and explained why the word ‘covered’ has been added to the title.

Life Solutions no longer focuses on life solutions as was the case in 2018 when the single premium business was moved from Sanlam to Glacier. Now, Life Investments includes life and living annuities and combinations. It incorporates endowments as well as offshore solutions, full-spectrum solutions for clients that ensures robust, diversified, successful investment portfolios. Life investments, covered from all angles within Glacier.

Jeremy Gardiner, Director, Ninety One

Weathering the storm
Surviving the crosswinds of global and domestic disruption

Jeremy Gardiner

Jeremy presented a bird’s eye view of the global events that move markets and the tension that President Trump’s tariffs and his broader foreign policy have caused globally. 

Some key takeaways from his presentation:

Interesting to note is that tariffs will hit the US the hardest. They are designed to protect American labour. However, American labour is expensive and its workers too fussy to do the work that immigrants have done for so long. For example, Apple faces a dilemma as 80% of its phones are made in China. With 65 million phones imported to the US and subject to a 25% tariff, production costs would be 75%.

  • As a result of tariffs, US growth forecasts are falling.
  • Furthermore, tension between Donald Trump and Elon Musk reached boiling point as a result of Musk’s criticism of the Big Beautiful Bill and his alluding to the Epstein files which implicate Trump.
  • Trump’s deregulation of the oil industry has led to increased drilling but also has raised old challenges around sustainability and all of the material environmental concerns that regulation addresses.
  • US growth flatlining.
  • In the UK, there is a marked increase in millionaires emigrating, but where are they travelling to? One of the more attractive destinations in terms of living tax-free, would be the UAE.   
  • The future of Gaza is bleak.
  • Get ahead of the AI curve and use it to enable your business to become more efficient, no matter what industry you are in.
  • The tariffs that Trump has imposed on SA are relatively high. This was always going to be the case as our foreign policy has challenged Israel, and by proxy, the US, as it is Israel’s primary supporter.

Panel discussion

The lighthouse approach
Navigating asset management in a sea of volatility

Panel discussion

Moderated by Jaco-Chris Koorts (Glacier Invest), and with panellists Erik Nel (Terebinth Capital), Nico Katzke (Satrix Invetsments) and Sumesh Chetty (Ninety One), the discussion centred on what measures different asset managers take to manage risk.

 Some take-outs from this interesting discussion:

  1. Lighthouses warn of danger and light a safe path in times of rough seas. Asset management fulfils a similar role in investing. However, before charting a course, we need to understand the storm. Global and local geo-political and socio-economic risk factors add to the storm. For example, Trump is perpetuating populism, a risk that has existed since his first term. Another trend is the risk regarding globalisation.
  2. We cannot talk about investments without talking about risk and a big part of that is the investment term. If an investment horizon is 20 to 30 years, a big investment risk could be for investors to be too defensive and not taking on enough risk.
  3. Lighthouses are useless if they are ignored by the captain of the ship.

Anton Swanepoel, CEO at Trust Advisors, author and practice management expert

Anchored in trust
Accelerating trust during the client engagement process | View presentation

Anton-Swanepoel

Anton pointed out that for an adviser to be anchored in trust is to recognise that trust changes everything in business.

Some of an intermediary’s priorities include:

  • Allowing sufficient time to look after all clients
  • Adherence to legislation and compliance,
  • Keeping up with technology and industry changes
  • Succession planning

Here are some key takeaways from his presentation:

  • Every practice needs to have an FSP Operational Framework which represents the blueprint for the operations in a functioning practice. However, trust is the most important element in your business. While we operate in a volatile economic environment and one of profound change, the elements that don’t ever need to change and that are in an adviser’s control are their operating framework and the trust relationship that they have built with clients.
  • Technology can be used to enhance the client experience which also helps to build trust.
  • Accelerating trust can happen at any and every point of the client engagement process and helps expand an intermediary’s competitive advantage. It’s one of the critical questions in the mind of a client – “Can I trust you?”
  • Trust starts with human connection, empathy, consistency and care, and care is personal.

Where’s the balance between technology and human connection?

Technology cannot replace the necessary engagement between an adviser and their client.

The one thing an adviser can do to accelerate trust is invest in client relationships more.

Dean Furman, AI Revolutionary and global thought leader

AI unleashed
Finsing calm, clarity and the course as an AI-powered intermediary

Dean Furman

How do we use AI effectively as individuals? There are many ways to embrace this technology.

  • People use AI in many ways and platforms like ChatGPT for different things. Generative AI is giving a programme an instruction and then it creates something for you. But it’s important to know how to give the instruction. It’s not any different to giving a request or instruction to another person. For example, on Platform Suno, you can give a simple instruction, and a song is created for you.
  • There are also AI platforms that can solve more in-depth, complex challenges that can create greater efficiencies in your business and that free you up in your business to focus on the more ‘human-related’ tasks like prospecting and building relationships with your clients.

Bite-sized knowledge with big impact

View the presentation

National Business Development Manager, Linda Blom facilitated a panel discussion where Business Development Managers, Ilza Lotter, Khanyisa Rangwanasha, Cindy De Kock and, shared some informative snacks about Glacier’s solutions and tools that will go a long way in building robust portfolios.

Watch the webinar recording

Glacier Financial Solutions (Pty) Ltd is a licensed financial services provider.
Sanlam Life Insurance Ltd is a licensed life insurer, financial services and registered credit provider (NCRCP43).
The Glacier Investment-Linked Living Annuity is underwritten by Sanlam Life Insurance Ltd.

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