(Bloomberg) — Old Mutual Group Ltd. is doubling down on a strategic reset started last year to sustain market-share gains as Africa’s largest insurer by assets seeks to boost earnings growth for the next three years.
The company, which was founded in 1845 in Cape Town, has struggled with client retention in South Africa amid increased competition on products such as credit insurance and funeral plans from new fintech entrants and from more established lenders including Capitec Bank Holdings Ltd.
To counter the market-share losses, Old Mutual in August announced a plan to drive competitiveness in South Africa and pivot into growth markets on rest the continent.
“We are geared to really accelerate execution this year,” Chief Executive Officer Jurie Strydom said in an interview with Bloomberg on Tuesday.
Financial-services firms in the continent’s most industrialized nation are competing for business in an economy that has expanded at an average of less than 1% annually for more than a decade, leaving households and businesses highly price-sensitive while they juggle high living costs and borrowing expenses.
Old Mutual has also made leadership changes, including Strydom’s appointment as CEO at the insurer in June. On Tuesday, it said Roger Jardine will become chairman designate to replace Trevor Manuel, who is set to retire after turning 70 in January.
Other tweaks included a restructure that resulted in a new life and savings segment that includes the Old Mutual SuperFund — South Africa’s largest commercial multi-employer retirement fund, with more than 5,700 firms participating and 187 billion rand ($11.1 billion) in assets under management — and the wealth-management business overseeing 468.5 billion rand as at Dec. 31, 11% more than a year earlier.
It seeks to lift profit on new insurance policies — known as the value of new business margin — to between 2% to 3% in the medium term from 1.2%, and drive its return on group equity value to as much as 16% from the current 10%.
Old Mutual opened OM Bank to the public late last year, spending 4.3 billion rand to build it and another 1.6 billion rand to fund its rollout in 2025. It plans to invest a another 2 billion rand this year and next.
The country’s newest lender posted a loss of 1.2 billion rand last year and will likely break even by 2028. It has 284,000 customers with deposits of 272 million rand, the insurer said.
“The strategy there really is to drive growth in combination with the rest of Old Mutual’s assets,” Strydom said. “Customer numbers are growing at about 3,000 a day.”
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Beyond South Africa, Old Mutual plans to prioritize resources in markets with the greatest potential. It has already closed life and general insurance operations in Nigeria and Tanzania and has started winding down its South Sudan operations.
Earlier, Old Mutual reported record profit for a second year in 2025, thanks to gains in its general insurance and wealth businesses as well as elevated returns from its Malawian unit.
The Johannesburg-based company’s adjusted headline earnings climbed 24% to 8.26 billion rand. That trailed the median estimate of 8.31 billion rand in a Bloomberg survey of analysts.
Higher shareholder returns in South Africa boosted earnings, as did high levels of inflation and forex shortages in Malawi.
Old Mutual’s headline earnings per share climbed 26%, boosted by a 700 million-rand stock-repurchase program in 2025, which contributed to a reduction in the weighted average number of ordinary shares.
The company proposed a final dividend of 0.56 rand per share, bringing its total payout for the year to 0.93 rand.
Its share fell as much as 4.2% before trading 2.1% lower by 11:02 a.m. in Johannesburg, while the city’s benchmark gauge was little changed.
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(Updates with comments from CEO in fourth paragraph.)
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