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THERE is a well-worn adage that you are much better off buying Liberty’s shares than its policies. This was particularly popular before 1998, when Old Mutual and Sanlam were both mutual societies without "rapacious" shareholders.What they didn’t tell is that they might not have been paying dividends to shareholders but they were extracting capital from shareholders to build up industrial empires that made up large chunks of the JSE.But policyholder or shareholder was always a false distinction. Buying the shares will always be higher risk, higher return.If you know with hindsight that a life office is going to grow successfully, then you would always buy its shares rather than its policies, but then you are risking buying an insurer destined to collapse, such as IGI or Crusader Life.Besides, it is not clear that the old adage applies now that Liberty is slowing down a bit in its late middle age. On a risk-adjusted basis, many Liberty policies, which can access a wide spread of inves...
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