POPIA stops protecting a client at death; your duty of confidentiality does not. Who may instruct you, which policies lapse, and what the Master requires.
The message usually arrives from the client’s own number. “Hi, this is Nomsa, I’m using my father’s phone. He passed away on Sunday.” What the brokerage does in the next ten minutes decides whether the file helps the family or becomes the thing an executor’s attorney writes to you about. Two questions have to be separated immediately, because firms routinely answer the second as though it were the first: what may you tell this person, and what may this person tell you to do?
POPIA defines personal information as information relating to an identifiable, living natural person — and, where applicable, an identifiable existing juristic person. A deceased individual is not a data subject, so the rights that attached to your client while he was alive fall away: access, correction, deletion, objection. A request made “on behalf of” the deceased under POPIA has nothing left to attach to. Our definition of POPIA sets out the framework it sits in.
That is a narrow point and it gets badly over-read. Three things survive the death:
Authority over a deceased person’s affairs comes from the Master of the High Court, not from the family. Under the Administration of Estates Act 66 of 1965 the surviving spouse, or the nearest relative living in the district where the death occurred, must give notice of the death to the Master within 14 days. Where the estate is worth more than R250 000, the Master issues letters of executorship and the full administration process applies. Below that, the Master may dispense with letters of executorship and issue letters of authority under section 18(3) — which is how most estates in an ordinary personal-lines book are wound up.
Until the Master has appointed someone, nobody can cancel a policy, amend a schedule, redirect a claim payment or demand the file as of right. A grieving daughter on her father’s phone is not the estate. In a larger estate the reporting pack includes the death notice (form J294), the next-of-kin affidavit (J192), an inventory (J243) and the executor’s nomination, acceptance and security bond (J262) — worth knowing, because “we are waiting for the Master” is a real answer to give a family, and it lands better with a sense of what they are waiting for.
| Who is asking | What they can do now | What belongs on file |
|---|---|---|
| Spouse or child, no appointment yet | Tell you about the death, ask about their own cover, be told the process | Note of the call, who they said they were, what you did and did not disclose |
| Nominated beneficiary of a life or funeral policy | Claim directly against the insurer | The nomination on the policy, the insurer’s requirements list, proof of identity |
| Executor (letters of executorship) | Instruct on any policy in the estate, request the file, cancel or continue cover | Certified copy of the letters, executor recorded as a separate contact |
| Representative under section 18(3) | The same, within the limits the Master set | Certified copy of the letters of authority |
| Employer, another broker, a “family friend” | Nothing | A polite refusal, recorded |
The distinction families most need explained is between money that goes through the estate and money that does not. A life or funeral policy with a nominated beneficiary pays that beneficiary directly and does not wait for letters of executorship, which is why funeral cover is the one benefit that can reach a family in days rather than months — the rules and the document pack are in our guide to funeral claims and premiums on WhatsApp. Where no beneficiary was nominated, or the nominated beneficiary died first, the proceeds fall into the estate and join the queue.
Two cautions. Bypassing the estate is not bypassing tax: SARS levies estate duty on the property and deemed property of a person ordinarily resident in South Africa, with an abatement of R3.5 million and rates of 20% on the first R30 million of dutiable value and 25% above it — and where a policy is payable directly to a beneficiary, the estate duty attributable to that policy is payable by that beneficiary rather than by the estate. A family that receives a large payout and spends all of it has a problem your file should show you flagged. Second, do not do the arithmetic yourself. Point to the nomination, the insurer’s claim requirements and the estate’s attorney; never estimate a payout or a duty in a chat.
This is where brokerages actually lose money and clients. Administration takes months, and throughout it the house, the vehicle and the business premises still burn, flood and get stolen — with the estate now carrying the loss.
The mechanical failure is nearly always the same. The bank freezes the deceased’s account once it is notified of the death, every debit order against it fails, and the policies lapse in silence. Nothing was cancelled and nobody decided anything. Our note on disputed debit orders and the mandate trail covers the collection side; the estate version is worse, because there is no unhappy client to phone you — only an executor discovering in month four that cover ended in month one. A workable first week:
Every automation you have ever set up is now pointed at a dead man’s phone. A birthday message in March. A renewal reminder in June. An overdue premium chase three days after the funeral. Each one arrives on a handset the family is still using, and each one is remembered.
So the first operational act, before any paperwork, is to stop the machine. In ORIS that is a short sequence: flag the customer record, record the service and marketing opt-outs so that messages already queued are dropped rather than merely unscheduled, and switch off the lifecycle triggers — renewal reminder, birthday, policy anniversary, lapsed engagement — that would otherwise fire on their own. Opt-outs are re-checked at the moment of sending, not only when an audience is built, which is what actually prevents the March birthday message.
Then separate the people. Create the executor as their own record, with their own number and their own consent, and run the estate conversation there instead of in the deceased’s thread. It keeps the audit trail legible, it stops you disclosing a client’s history to whoever happens to be holding the phone, and it survives the moment — six or eighteen months later — when the network recycles the number and hands it to a stranger. The wider framework a South African brokerage works inside is summarised on our South Africa page.
You can listen, take the details of the death, explain the process and tell them what the insurers will need. What you should not do is treat the message as an instruction or disclose the client’s policy history, because possession of the handset proves nothing about authority. Record who you spoke to and what you withheld, and ask for the appointment documents before you act on anything.
POPIA protects living natural persons, so the deceased’s own rights under it end at death. That does not make the file public: it still contains the personal information of living relatives, beneficiaries and co-insured parties, and your contractual and common-law duties of confidence continue. Treat the change as removing one basis for a request, not as removing the need for authority.
An appointed executor steps into the deceased’s position for the purposes of administering the estate, so what relates to the estate’s assets and liabilities is properly theirs to see. Information that belongs to living third parties — a spouse’s separate policy, another person’s claim details — is not, and should be redacted or withheld. Ask for the certified letters first and record what you released.
The estate does, in practice through the executor’s estate account, and insurers will usually accept a family member’s payment where the executor agrees. What matters is that somebody makes the arrangement deliberately and in writing, because the default outcome — a frozen account, failed debit orders and a silent lapse — leaves the estate carrying an uninsured loss.
Not on the deceased’s record or number. Consent does not transfer to a relative, and a marketing message to a dead person’s phone is the single most damaging thing an automated system can do to a brokerage’s name. If the spouse or an adult child is a client in their own right, market to their own record on their own opt-in, after a decent interval.
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