25 Years of Adding to Life

In an increasingly digital world, businesses face mounting pressure to balance technology and efficiency with empathy. In the insurance and assistance space - where clients often face trauma, uncertainty and distress - the human element can make all the difference.

Global Choices was founded at the turn of the millennium with a simple but radical conviction: that assistance services should begin with genuine understanding of the people they serve. Over 25 years, that conviction has been tested, refined and vindicated - and it remains as central to the business today as it was on day one.

Founder Wimpie van der Merwe describes his generation as an “in-between generation” - one that experienced life before smartphones, apps and always-on connectivity. He recalls when having a satellite phone in a vehicle was a luxury status symbol, and when fax machines were transformative communication tools. That lived perspective across the analogue-to-digital divide has shaped the way Global Choices thinks about technology: not as an end in itself, but as a means of serving real people in real moments of need.

Company History

25 Years: The Journey

From fax machines and satellite phones to AI-driven digital ecosystems - each era brought new challenges, new pivots and a deepening commitment to the people Global Choices serves.

2001 – 2003  ·  Foundation: Travel, Tourism & Loyalty

Global Choices enters the market focused on the travel and tourism sector, developing loyalty programmes and value-added solutions for clients in travel, banking and medical schemes. The business begins in an era of landlines, fax machines and early satellite communication - analogue infrastructure, human-first service. From the outset, van der Merwe’s background in architecture and design thinking shapes the company’s instinct for empathy-led problem-solving.

2003 – 2008 ·  Reassessment: Questions of Sustainability

Major legislative and market shifts force Global Choices to reassess its model. “We started asking questions about the sustainability of the business model,” van der Merwe reflects. The company begins exploring adjacent opportunities in the emergency assistance and insurance support environment, laying the groundwork for a fundamental strategic pivot. Short-term insurance, life insurance and client support services emerge as the new focus.

2008 – 2015  ·  The Call Centre Decision: Owning the Experience

One of the most consequential decisions in Global Choices’ history: rather than outsourcing customer engagement, van der Merwe builds an in-house 24-hour call centre. The reasoning is straightforward: outsourcing creates a disconnect between a brand and its promises. “They are just a number on their books, but on our side, it is a little bit more important,” he says. This decision becomes the operational backbone of the company’s customer experience philosophy, and the foundation of what will become the “total experience strategy”.

2015 – 2018  ·  Born from Personal Experience: Crime Victim Assist

Some of the company’s most meaningful innovations are born from lived experience. After surviving a traumatic attack in Durban, van der Merwe channels the experience into product development. Crime Victim Assist is created - a comprehensive support package providing victims with a cell phone, prepaid airtime, access to the WeCare app, counselling support and emergency assistance services. The product embodies a core insight: when people face crisis, they need to know they are not alone.

2018 – 2024  ·  The Total Experience Strategy

Global Choices formalises what has always been intuitive: exceptional customer experience cannot be separated from exceptional employee experience. The “total experience strategy” aligns customer experience, employee experience, user experience and communication across every touchpoint. Van der Merwe articulates the driving question: “What is the customer experience through all these different touchpoints? And how seamless can it be? How automated can it be? And how real-time can it be as well?” EQ becomes a formal hiring criterion; empathy is embedded into recruitment and training.

2024 – 2026  ·  Milestone: 25 Years and the Next Chapter

Global Choices marks a quarter century of operations with plans to expand into employee benefits and critical illness support, extend services to whole-family care, and establish a dedicated training academy focused on customer experience, call centre support and insurance-related skills development. Curiosity and resilience remain the watchwords: “We remain curious about what we can get right, as quickly as possible.”

Philosophy

Three Pillars of 25 Years

Across a quarter century of evolution, three founding principles have remained constant.

I.  Empathy as a Business Framework

Design thinking begins with empathy - not as a soft aspiration, but as a practical methodology for understanding people and designing better solutions. Originally trained as an architect, van der Merwe has applied design thinking to every dimension of the business. Employees are regularly asked: “How did that make you feel if it was you?” The company places strong emphasis on emotional intelligence during recruitment, particularly in environments where staff support clients through trauma, emergencies and distress - identifying frustration, fear or anxiety through tone of voice alone.

II.  Technology That Serves Humanity

Modern consumers carry what van der Merwe calls “digital trust” - a conditioned expectation that technology will simply work, delivering convenience, speed and instant results. Global Choices has embraced digital ecosystems and AI-driven solutions while holding firm to a guiding principle: technology must solve problems, not create new ones. “All these solutions we have developed are to find solutions for challenges or problems,” he says. “But sometimes by striving for it, we also create some new ones.” Automation is a tool. The human touch is the product.

III.  People at the Centre - Inside and Out

The decision to build an in-house call centre was a statement of values as much as a business choice: clients deserve to speak to someone who understands the promise that was made to them. Equally, van der Merwe believes businesses can only deliver exceptional customer experiences when employees themselves are supported and empowered. “You have to treat the employee experience the same as the customer experience,” he says. Both are considered equal responsibilities, reflected equally in investment, tools, training and culture.

Defining Moments

The Stories That Shaped the Company

Behind every product and every process is a human moment that made it necessary. Global Choices’ most meaningful innovations were not born in strategy sessions - they were born from experience.

The Attack That Became a Product

More than nine years ago, van der Merwe survived a traumatic attack in Durban. Rather than keeping the experience private, he channelled it into innovation. “The whole focus on that is, when a person is a victim of crime, what solutions can you provide?” The resulting product, Crime Victim Assist, includes a cell phone, prepaid airtime, access to the WeCare app, counselling and emergency assistance - a package built on the firsthand understanding that people in crisis need to know they are not alone.

The Phone Call That Defined the Business

After a Global Choices team delivered a Crime Victim Assist pack to a family following a traumatic home invasion, van der Merwe received a phone call from the husband. He was not calling about the phone the airtime,  or the assistance. He was calling because someone had cared enough to show up. For van der Merwe, that call remains the clearest articulation of why Global Choices exists: “assistance services are ultimately about helping people navigate some of life’s most difficult moments with dignity and support.”

The Decision to Own the Customer Relationship

Early in the company’s evolution, van der Merwe took the decision to build an in-house 24-hour call centre rather than outsourcing it. The insight was simple but consequential: when you outsource the customer interaction, you outsource the promise. Keeping it internal meant that every person who called Global Choices was speaking to someone who understood the brand’s commitment to them — someone for whom that caller was not just a number.

The Five-Minute Daily Practice

Van der Merwe practices — and encourages throughout the organisation — a simple daily habit: before closing the laptop, spend five minutes asking what could have been done better today. “When I close my computer or switch off my laptop, I think for five minutes — what could I have done better today that I can try tomorrow?” Small daily improvements compound over time. This principle of intentional, incremental growth has quietly underpinned Global Choices’ culture of continuous improvement.

 

“When you’re in trouble, the biggest thing is — you want to know that you’re not alone.”

— Wimpie van der Merwe — on the founding insight behind Crime Victim Assist

The Next Chapter

Remaining Curious, Always

Twenty-five years is not a destination — it is a vantage point. Global Choices enters its next chapter with the same restless curiosity that has driven every pivot, every product and every decision since the beginning.

Van der Merwe believes curiosity and resilience remain essential drivers of progress. “We remain curious about what we can get right, as quickly as possible,” he says. For Global Choices, that curiosity — combined with empathy and human connection — appears set to remain at the centre of the business for years to come.

• Employee Benefits & Critical Illness Support

• Extending the company’s assistance philosophy into workplace wellness and critical illness support, serving not only individuals but the families around them.

• Global Choices Training Academy

• A dedicated institution focused on building skills in customer experience, call centre support and insurance-related disciplines — investing in the next generation of empathy-led insurance professionals.

• Continued Digital Integration

• Deepening AI-assisted workflows while maintaining the human touchpoints that define the brand — ensuring technology serves people rather than replacing them.

• Whole-Family Care

• Recognising that illness, trauma and crisis affect not just the individual but entire households, and building solutions that reflect that understanding.