Old Mutual Insure (OMI), the non-life insurance business within Old Mutual Group, delivered a resilient performance for the half year ended June 2026, achieving a net underwriting margin of 7.6% despite significant catastrophe and large-loss claims activity.
“The H1 result demonstrates the resilience of the Old Mutual Insure business. We maintained strong underwriting profitability in a tougher claims environment. Our focus on improved retention, new business acquisition and policy growth is showing encouraging signs, and we expect these initiatives to reflect more fully in premium growth in the second half of the year,” says Lerato Bacela, OMI Financial Director.
Gross written premium (GWP) increased by more than 5% compared with the prior half year to R12.1 billion, as OMI’s focus on customer retention and value creation began to deliver results. Growth under OMI’s core insurance licence remained subdued amid business and household affordability pressures, with the business continuing to prioritise disciplined risk selection, pricing and underwriting quality over volume.
Portfolio diversification provided a counterweight to subdued core growth. GWP from strategic acquisitions ONE Financial Services and GENRIC increased by 18%, while the insurance service result, which reflects profitability from underlying insurance activities, rose by 71%. OMART Insure, OMI’s cell captive and partnership business, also recorded an improved result.
The underwriting performance was achieved despite a marked shift in domestic loss experience. Following a relatively benign 2025, OMI incurred R376 million in net catastrophe losses, largely due to severe storms and flooding in the Eastern and Western Cape in May 2026.
Non-motor claims accounted for approximately 92% of projected gross catastrophe losses as at 24 June 2026, with agriculture the most affected segment and the source of the period’s largest claim. Motor claims represented a relatively small proportion of the total.
“We remain proud of our broader operational response to the catastrophe events, including the speed of claims mobilisation, customer support and claims settlement processes,” Bacela says.
The severity of the H1 flood events reinforces the growing volatility of severe weather. Bacela says this underscores the importance of disciplined underwriting, sophisticated exposure management and appropriate reinsurance protection, supported by continued investment in data, analytics and pricing capabilities.
While it is too early to attribute premium growth or underwriting margin gains directly to technology, analytics, automation and artificial intelligence are increasingly supporting operational efficiency across underwriting and claims. Applications include risk-exposure checks, underwriting decision support, repair-network optimisation, invoice processing, fraud detection and document classification.
These initiatives complement disciplined pricing, risk selection and claims management. Cost management also contributed to the result, with non-attributable expenses declining by 31% year on year on an IFRS 17 basis. OMI’s average complaint turnaround time improved from 5.5 days to 4.3 days, although the improvement is not attributable to technology alone.
OMI is focused on scaling technology use cases across the insurance value chain and ensuring that they deliver measurable improvements in cost, cycle times, decision quality and customer experience.
The business is confident that the premium growth and underwriting margin achieved in H1 can be sustained into the second half of the year. Conversion rates, customer numbers, new business activity, quote volumes and retention all improved during the first half, providing an encouraging base for the remainder of the year.
“We see the next phase as one of disciplined scale. Our priorities are to achieve sustainable organic growth without compromising underwriting quality, reduce the cost base, improve operating leverage and execute our technology, governance and strategic initiatives, including selective partnerships and M&A, with greater pace,” Bacela concludes.