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Old Mutual Shifts Entire IT Infrastructure to AWS

June 23, 2023

Financial services giant Old Mutual has moved its entire IT infrastructure to the cloud and closed its on-premises data centre facilities, becoming one of the first South African companies of its size to do so.

The move, to Amazon Web Services (AWS) – the world’s largest cloud computing provider – will allow Old Mutual to “accelerate innovation, reduce IT infrastructure costs and harness machine learning to deliver more personalised customer experiences”, AWS said in a recent statement.

Old Mutual has moved its banking, insurance and wealth management systems to AWS, in the process reducing the average time taken to process financial transactions by two-thirds.

The full migration to the cloud involved moving more than 2 000 on-premises servers.

The full migration to the cloud involved moving more than 2 000 on-premises servers, 215 applications, 1 786 databases and more than 500 websites.

“The move will accelerate innovation, at a time of global economic uncertainty, by reducing the time required for new application testing from months to minutes,” AWS said.

“Old Mutual will use AWS capabilities to better anticipate customer needs and develop the next generation of financial products and experiences. The company will leverage AWS ML and generative artificial intelligence (AI) services—including Amazon SageMaker, a fully managed service to build, train and deploy ML models—to generate real-time, personalised financial forecasting and recommendations for customers.”

Information Fabric

AWS said the personalisation services possible thanks to the expansion of Information Fabric, the data lake that Old Mutual established on AWS. “The single, consistent view of customers provided by Information Fabric enables individualised recommendations and more seamless, intuitive customer experiences, including combined client rewards programmes that enable points earned in one area of the business to be redeemed through another,” the company said.

“Daily server outages, disconnected financial products, ballooning on-premises costs – those are all challenges we leave behind as we go all-in on AWS,” said Old Mutual acting CIO May Govender.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

Old Mutual Plans to Launch Bank in South Africa

November 29, 2022

One of the world’s best recognized brands in the insurance industry, Old Mutual has announced that it received Prudential Authority approval to apply for a banking licence in South Africa, thus plans to launch in 2024, and break even in three years.

The financial service company announced the development in a voluntary trading update for the nine months from 1 January to 30 September 2022.

“The establishment of an entity in the Group with a banking licence is a natural progression of our core strategy, helping us to sustain our customers’ prosperity through an enhanced transactional banking capability,” Old Mutual informed shareholders.

“The Group has existing lending and transactional solutions which, in South Africa, consist of our Money Account and an unsecured lending product.”

Old Mutual said these services are offered mainly to its Mass and Foundation Cluster customer base.

It also noted that its unsecured lending product is already a strong contributor to group profitability.

“The current transactional solution is delivered through a commercial arrangement with a third-party bank.”

According to Old Mutual’s website, its third-party partner is Bidvest Bank.

Old Mutual said the partnership is being “reassessed”.

“While this commercial arrangement has allowed us to gain experience in transactional banking services, a divergence of aspiration requires us to reassess our future arrangement to deliver on our customer needs,” it stated.

“The establishment of a bank within the group will allow us to hold the primary relationship with our customers, driving greater regular interaction with them and enhancing the cross-sell opportunity across the group.”

Old Mutual said having an in-house bank will also enable it to accept retail deposits, providing a cheaper source of funding.

“We are building this transactional capability using the latest technology that will allow enhanced servicing and personalisation,” Old Mutual said.

“This, together with a cloud-based technology stack, will enable us to deliver cost-effective, flexible and scalable solutions to our customers.”

Old Mutual has approved R1.75 billion in expenditure to complete the build of its transactional capability.

“In line with the business case, we have incurred costs of R830 million for the current period and approximately 10% of these costs were capitalised,” it said.

“Once relevant Prudential Authority approvals are received, the launch is targeted for the second half of 2024. The entity is expected to break even three years after the launch.”

Old Mutual said that as the bank matures after breaking even, the return is expected to be significantly above the target return of 4% in excess of the cost of equity.

“We are currently working on our application under Section 16 of the Banks Act for the registration of the bank,” it said.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry

South African Insurtech Firm Genric Insurance Acquired By Old Mutual

September 7, 2022

With the acquisition of Genric Insurance Company in its entirety, Old Mutual is expanding its foray into the insurtech sector.

Genric is a licenced non-life insurer that works in partnership with a variety of specialised underwriting management agencies, start-up firms, and insurtech innovators, in which it also maintains ordinary stock interests. Genric is also an insurtech innovator.

Old Mutual’s acquisition of Genric takes place during a period in which insurtech businesses are accelerating the transformation of the traditional insurance industry.

Traditional insurance businesses that wish to deliver digital goods and services are finding that these digital insurance companies are excellent partners.

Local insurtech firms like Simply Financial Services, Pineapple, and Naked have all witnessed significant growth over the past 18 months, which is an indication of the sector’s potential.

Old Mutual claims that this deal provides them with “access to a new customer base in accident and health, medical insurance, as well as other specialist insurance such as value-added products, cash in transit, equestrian, marine, travel, taxi, heavy commercial vehicles, and shack insurance.”

Old Mutual says in a notice to shareholders that the acquisition is likely to enhance its insurance’s customer service experience by including value-added services offerings offered by Genric, develop more innovative products, and give it access to new markets through low-cost products. Old Mutual also says the acquisition will give it access to new markets through low-cost products.

According to Old Mutual, Genric has “demonstrated its capacity to find and develop start-up businesses.” Genric was founded in 2005.

The deal is still contingent upon obtaining the necessary regulatory clearances, such as those from the Prudential Authority and the Competition Commission.

Genric insurance Genric insurance

Egyptian Enterprise Ecommerce Startup el-dokan Raises $550K Pre-Seed Round

Charles Rapulu Udoh

Charles Rapulu Udoh is a Lagos-based lawyer, who has several years of experience working in Africa’s burgeoning tech startup industry. He has closed multi-million dollar deals bordering on venture capital, private equity, intellectual property (trademark, patent or design, etc.), mergers and acquisitions, in countries such as in the Delaware, New York, UK, Singapore, British Virgin Islands, South Africa, Nigeria etc. He’s also a corporate governance and cross-border data privacy and tax expert.
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South Africa’s Old Mutual Acquires Natural Gas Pipeline in Nigeria

November 25, 2019

South Africa’s insurance and financial services giant, Old Mutual has bought a slice of Nigeria’s gas infrastructure with its acquisition of stakes from the takeover of Seven Energy by Savannah Petroleum. The transaction which saw Seven Energy acquired by Savannah Petroleum, the British independent oil & gas company after a court ruling last week ordered transfer of Seven Energy’s assets to group of companies controlled by Savannah and African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM).

As part of the transaction, African Infrastructure Investment Managers acquired 20% interests in Seven Uquo Gas Limited and Accugas in return for cash consideration to Savannah of US$54m which has now been received. With the conclusion of the takeover of Seven Assets, Old Mutual now owns a piece of a grid length, natural gas pipeline in Nigeria because African Infrastructure Investment Managers (AIIM) is a member of the Alternative Investments unit of the Old Mutual Group, the South African insurance company.

As part of the Transaction completion, AIIM acquired 20% interests in Seven Uquo Gas Limited (SUGL) which in turn holds a 40% participating interest in the Uquo field located in South East Nigeria and Accugas, a midstream business, comprising the 200MMscf/d Uquo gas processing facility, and a 260kilometre gas pipeline network.

Following completion of the Transaction, Savannah now owns the Seven Assets, which comprise an 80% interest in Seven Uquo Gas Limited which in turn holds a 40% participating interest in the Uquo field located in South East Nigeria with SUGL assuming responsibility for all operations of the gas project at the Uquo field following the occurrence of the Frontier Transaction. Also the transaction gives a 51% interest in the Stubb Creek field located in South East Nigeria through 100% ownership of Universal Energy Resources Limited; and 80% interest in the Accugas midstream business, comprising the 200 mmscfd Uquo gas processing facility, a c.260km pipeline network and long-term gas sales agreements with downstream customers.

The Old Mutual Alternative Investments is one of the largest private alternative investment managers in Africa, with over $4.2Billion under management in infrastructure assets, private equity and impact funding, according to its website. Its investment approach, it avers, goes “Beyond the Obvious” and “enables us to uncover opportunities others may overlook”.

AIIM says it has committed over $1.8Billion in equity investments over the last 19 years. It says its experience spans a range of infrastructure asset classes including toll roads, renewable energy, power generation, ports and communication infrastructure assets. The company has established local offices in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya and Cote d’Ivoire and its website says it is currently managing investments with operations spanning 17 countries across East, West and Southern Africa.

Kelechi Deca

Kelechi Deca has over two decades of media experience, he has traveled to over 77 countries reporting on multilateral development institutions, international business, trade, travels, culture, and diplomacy. He is also a petrol head with in-depth knowledge of automobiles and the auto industry.