Old Mutual CEO Jurie Strydom talks results, new bank and board moves

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JIMMY MOYAHA: What we are going to get into now is the latest from the team at the Old Mutual Group, which provided us with an update on the performance of the company for the year that was [the year to 31 December 2025].

I’m joined on the line by the chief executive officer at the Old Mutual Group, Jurie Strydom, to look at the performance and see what to make of it. Jurie, lovely having you on the show, as always. Thanks so much for taking the time.

A mixed set of updates from an annual perspective, but at a group level the group is doing exceptionally well, increasing from a revenue and a growth perspective. How did you find the year?

JURIE STRYDOM: Thanks, Jimmy. Good to be with you. I think we would classify it as a sort of steady operating performance – the results from operations up 13%, adjusted headline earnings up 24%.

And that’s the sort of big earnings metric that we tend to reference, of course cautioning that that’s significantly supported, like all of our peers, by a market with financial market performance.

But we are pleased with an 8% dividend increase.

Our shareholders are going to be pleased with an 8% increase in the dividend.

And then importantly the group equity value – which is the sort of value that we place on the business – up to R19.80 per share.

Read: Old Mutual earnings up 13%, dividend rises 8%

JIMMY MOYAHA: Speaking of value, Jurie, let’s look at some of the updates within the business. The Old Mutual Bank business – perhaps you can give us an update on that. We saw that the carrying value of that had to be impaired under IAS 36 by half of what we initially had it there. Give us a sense of what’s happening in that business – the reason and the rationale behind the impairment and perhaps how that business is coming along.

JURIE STRYDOM: We’re actually very comfortable with the performance of the business.

We went live with the business in September last year. We’ve got significant customer attraction.

We’re still signing up 3 000 customers a day. The deposit book has built nicely and the whole proposition around that business is actually an integration with our existing Old Mutual distribution and bricks and mortar infrastructure.

Almost half the customers actually signed up through our Old Mutual Finance branches.

So this is a year of significant execution in that business. It’s not just about acquiring customers but also about transaction activity, credit extension and the like.

And of course, the integration of the Old Mutual Rewards, which is also proving a significant catalyst.

I think the point of the impairment was sort of a technical matter. If you look through to the group equity value that we reference, that kind of reflects the value that we place on the bank in the context of the overall value of Old Mutual – and I quoted that number of R19.80 per share.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Jurie, the business that is the Old Mutual Group – over the more than a century it has been around – has built up many different parts in the form of the insurance business, the life business, now the banking business and the other operating entities.

Take us through perhaps the standout performers from a divisional perspective, if any – or if there are any divisions that might have you a bit worried at this stage.

JURIE STRYDOM: I think it is a portfolio of businesses, Jimmy, as you say. So there are always different cycles.

I think we’d call out the Old Mutual Insure business in this year, with a normalised underwriting margin of 8.3%, which we are very pleased with.

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And we think that that business now is a platform that we’ve turned around operationally. We think it’s at the cutting edge in many ways of claims management and actual pricing, the use of data and AI.

So we’re very comfortable with that as a growth platform going forward.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Jurie, let’s take a look at the buyback announced towards the latter part of 2025 – September or so – a R3 billion share buyback there. How is that moving along from a business perspective?

JURIE STRYDOM: We’d executed R700 million of that by the end of December. As of yesterday, that’s R1.3 billion. And so we’re R1.3 billion through the R3 billion that we set up. That programme will carry on for the rest of the year.

We execute according to where the share price is relative to group equity value, and so that’s got to be value-accretive for shareholders as we execute.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Jurie, let’s take a look at the board changes that have been announced or that are said to be coming into effect.

We know we’ve got a chair designate, with the current chair in the form of Trevor Manuel set to step down. We know that there’s a new Old Mutual Insure CEO coming into the fold. Take us through some of the corporate and board adjustments and how they will impact the business’s management.

JURIE STRYDOM: Obviously the big news is the announcement of the chair designate as Roger Jardine.

Read: Roger Jardine to chair Old Mutual upon Trevor Manuel’s retirement

Roger joined the board in September, and we’ve been working with him since then, but of course he comes with extraordinary credentials and a track record for his time both as a chief executive and as a non-executive chairman at some of South Africa’s leading companies. So we’re really delighted.

Of course, those are very big shoes to fill.

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Trevor Manuel – I’ve had the great privilege of working with him as a non-executive and then as a chief executive. So certainly there’ll be a time to pay tribute to the indelible impact that he’s made on the group over the last decade.

It has been an extraordinary impact.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Jurie, let’s look ahead to the new financial year, the business finally getting over the hurdles well in time, of course, with that Old Mutual Bank launch. I imagine that would have taken a bit of resource to get over the line and get all the relevant licensing in place. That is done. The business is on a good footing there. Other business units are performing well.

How are you approaching the new year from a strategic point of view, and what are you looking forward to?

JURIE STRYDOM: Jimmy, I came in as group chief executive midway through last year.

In the second half of last year, we had that strategic reset and we set ourselves five really important medium-term targets, three-to-five-year targets on the most important measures in our group.

So 2026 really is the first year of really moving from where we are to where we need to be in terms of those targets.

So it’s a year of execution, it’s a year of the management team putting runs on the board on those key measures.

JIMMY MOYAHA: Executing and making sure that runs get on the board from an old Mutual perspective, a business that has been in South African lives for well over a century has been having a good year and hoping that that will continue.

We’ll leave the conversation on that note. Thanks so much to group chief executive officer Jurie Strydom for joining us to look at the year that was – the year that ended 31^st December 2025.