SAMBRA celebrates cream of the industry

The South African Motor Body Repairers’ Association (SAMBRA) jointly hosted its Awards Ceremony with Lightstone at Radisson Blu on 23 March, honouring top vehicle insurers and OEMs, as well as automotive Refinishing brands, for excellence in service provision to SAMBRA members.

ABSA has scooped top honours and for the first time won the prestigious SAMBRA Insurer of the Year award and was followed closely by both Bryte Insurance and OUTsurance in joint second place with a silver award each.

Volkswagen Group South Africa received joint top honours for all-round best OEM followed by Ford Motor Company SA and in third place BMW MINI South Africa. Glasurit triumphed as best Paint Brand followed by Duxone and R-M.

SAMBRA, a proud association of the Retail Motor Industry Organisation (RMI), represents the majority of motor body repairers in the country. SAMBRA focuses on creating and maintaining industry sustainability and development, and the annual awards are one of its flagship projects.

“This year, we were delighted to introduce a new venue and format for the awards as well as a new methodology on which the awards are structured. We completely revamped the criteria and questions for the 2022 survey, encouraging a much broader response from our motor body repair sector and really homing in on the top five suppliers they do the most business with. We believe this is a truer reflection of what is happening on the ground and we’re excited to see the results this year,” says Charles Canning, SAMBRA National Chairman.

The annual SAMBRA Survey on which these awards are based, was inaugurated in 2011, and each year since it has monitored the business relationship between the insurance and motor body repair industries. Over the years, it has been expanded and modified but this was the first big change in a number of years.

“The primary objective of this important annual initiative is to measure and track the overall satisfaction levels of SAMBRA members with Insurers, OEMs and Automotive Refinishing brands. As noted earlier, the remodelled survey has been shortened to reduce respondent fatigue, encourage participation and most importantly display cognisance of every SAMBRA member’s time investment in the completion of the survey, while operating in this fast-paced environment,” says Bernard De Vantier-Strydom, Head of Projects and Research at Lightstone, who independently collated and audited the research and is the headline sponsor of the awards.

The survey targets the eligible 677 SAMBRA members nationwide to rate the insurers, OEMs and Refinishing Partners. In the Insurer category, there were 7 questions and awards related to Service Excellence, Payment practices and the overall winner. In the OEM category there were 9 questions relating to Communication Excellence, Best Business Practices, Best Training and the overall winner, and finally in the Automotive Refinishing category there was just one question to determine the best paint brand relating to the quality of the product and value for money offered.

Canning emphasises that the Association’s focus has been, and remains, on fostering greater levels of cooperation and coordination between all players in the motor body repair industry, whether small and medium enterprises (SMEs) or large groups, insurance or other supply brands to increase collaboration between stakeholders and prepare the industry for new technologies.

“We would like to extend our congratulations to all our winners who continue to demonstrate excellence in their respective categories and who, together with SAMBRA, create a more robust and resilient industry,” concludes Canning.

SAMBRA 2022 Awards