Old Mutual, one of South Africa's oldest financial services companies, says Africa remains central to its strategy, even as one of its key markets, Malawi, grapples with hyperinflation and currency turmoil in 2025.
CEO Juri Strydom told the Business Times after the release of the group's 2025 results that Malawi remains a long-term market despite the challenging, high-inflation macroeconomic environment, which has increased volatility in investment returns.
“When you invest in many different markets, you obviously work through cycles. This is the period with increased inflation in Malawi; this is one of those cycles,” he said.
Malawi faced an economic crisis from 2025 to 2026, when inflation rose to 28% as the kwacha weakened, increasing imports and resulting in food shortages.
Old Mutual's Africa region operates in 10 countries across three regions: Southern Africa, Eastern Africa and Western Africa.
Strydom said that while the group had a strong presence in Southern Africa with a strong market position, it was deepening scale and leadership in those markets while the focus was on developing Eastern and West African markets.
“East and West Africa are different in that they are growing markets for us. We see opportunity there, but we need to improve margins and returns in some of those businesses to take advantage of the market opportunity,” he said.
Commenting on the results, Keegan Higgins, investment analyst at Anchor, said the group's growth story is being shaped by factors that may not necessarily be replicable.
“Malawi is a good example: it is contributing meaningfully to reported growth, but it also brings instability and distorts the underlying trajectory of the rest of Africa's business. So, while Africa remains an important part of the story, the quality of that growth is uneven,” he said.
old mutualIt also aims to appeal to the passive investment market through last year's R2.2bn acquisition of a majority stake in 10X Investments, a low-cost, technology-driven platform that serves mostly younger and more tech-savvy clients.
Strydom said the plan going forward was for 10X to take advantage of the group's scale.
“We will bring our distribution to grow that business, and obviously it's a highly scalable platform, and we're also obviously looking at where we can gain efficiencies,” Strydom said.
Competitors keep us awake. We're constantly thinking about our competitors, but we believe we have a good business that's not just about products; It's also about your ability to provide quality advice
— Juri Strydom, Old Mutual CEO
old mutual has dominance over service The lower to middle market segment caters to customers earning between R5,000 and R30,000 per month through life and funeral cover, but competition is increasing with challengers including Capitec and Assupol taking over the mass market.
Strydom said that despite increasing competition, Old Mutual had a competitive advantage in the sector; However, competitors kept the group under their control. He said that Old Mutual's large, extensive advice network was the key to its competitive advantage in that area.
He said, “Competitors keep us awake. We're constantly thinking about our competitors, but we believe we have a great business that's not just about products; it's also about your ability to provide quality advice.”
Old Mutual's operating results rose 13% to R9.8 billion, supported by improved operating performance at Old Mutual Life & Savings and Old Mutual Insure.
Old Mutual, who opened it Om Bank In November the public was told that by the end of December, 284,000 customers had joined the bank, that is, about 3,000 customers were joining the bank a day.
Strydom said 46% of customers came through the Old Mutual Finance branch network, and Old Mutual was looking to build a comprehensive ecosystem for mass-market customers by integrating banking, insurance and advice.
“Banking is a contested area. What we bring to banking is a little different from what others have brought. We are effectively bringing together the existing banking operations along with our lending business as well as our old mutual finance branch network.”
Old Mutual has over 300 branches where customers can access credit and this will be enhanced through OM Bank's new technology stack.
OM Bank CEO Clarence Nethangwe said, despite new customers coming to OM Bank, more customers were using vouchers for gambling at the bank.
“We have seen that we provide value-added services, and one of them is vouchers. We have seen that vouchers have really taken off on such a large scale,” he told OM Bank exclusively.
“We understand that people are using those vouchers for gambling purposes. It impacts customers from a disposable income perspective. We have seen some of our customers who would normally, you know, fail our credit assessment this time.
“We've taken precautions to make sure that, you know, we bring in additional data or alternative data to make sure that we're assessing that type of risk when it comes to credit,” he said.
Higgins said that strategically the bank is beginning to show early signs of traction, which is encouraging given the importance being placed on it by management as a future growth lever.
“It is still in the investment phase and impacting earnings, so the debate is moving towards execution. In particular, how fast can it grow and can it generate acceptable returns relative to the capital deployed,” he said.