Sanlam, Africa’s biggest insurer, back to pre-Covid profit level in 2021
SOUTH AFRICA BASED SANLAM, the biggest insurance group in Africa, returned to pre-Covid profit level in its strong 2021 financial performance, released recently.
According to the report, it made $649 million net from financial services, an 13 percent increase over 2020 and four percent over 2019 excluding one-off items. The positive performance was achieved despite a surge in excess mortality linked to the Covid-19 pandemic which had resulted in net excess claims of 4.2 billion South African rand.
The pandemic waves had been heavy in South Africa, across Africa and India, forcing Sanlam to pay out 22 billion rand in mortality claims in 2021. This payout was 76 percent higher than in 2020. Contingent business interruption claims amounted to 3.2 billion rand which it paid through short-term insurance subsidiary, Santam.
The Salam group saw turnover rise to 200 billion rand in 2021 as against 133 billion rand in 2020. This performance represents the insurer’s highest since the 2018 takeover of the Moroccan insurance giant, Saham.
The group also saw new business volumes exceed 350 billion rand for the first time, up 14 percent over 2020 and 43 percent over the amount recorded in 2019.
Information made available shows that Sanlam took a number of actions during the year under review such as risk-based repricing of all group schemes, redesigning of retail-risk products, using new underwriting protocols and strengthening the mortality basis.
Paul Hanratty, group chief executive officer said, “We managed to restore our metrics to 2019 levels which takes us to the base we had before the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. That creates a tremendous platform for us to operate off going forward.”