Business

South Africa beats Australia and Ireland for OUTsurance

Luke Fraser

 ·27 Feb 2026

OUTsurance Holdings Limited’s (OHL’s) South African operations saw massive normalised earnings growth for the six months ended 31 December 2025.

In a trading update, the group said that it saw substantial gross written premiums and annualised new business growth across its core direct short-term insurance operations.

“A strong claims and expense efficiency performance delivered by the South African short-term insurance operations, despite marginally higher natural perils exposure,” said the group.

“The large reduction in the share-based payments expense, which bolstered the results of the South African operations.”

The reduction in share-based payments was due to replacing the Employee Share Option Scheme with the Conditional Share Plan, which is less sensitive to share price movements.

The group’s overall normalised earnings, including South Africa and international operations, are expected to grow by 10% to 15% over the period.

However, the group’s core South African short-term insurance operations are expected to grow by between 66% and 72%. The difference comes amid weaker performances in other subsidiaries.

The group’s Australian venture, Youi, is expecting a weakened financial performance, with its natural peril exposure more than doubling in the comparable period.

This came off the back of catastrophic events in Australia and higher storm frequency. Outside of the high retained natural peril losses, the group said that Youi delivered a strong performance.

“Youi delivered a strong performance in terms of its working (non-natural perils) claims ratio and cost to-income ratio and remained on track in respect of its ‘long-term organic growth strategy,” it said.

However, Youi is expected to see its normalised earnings decline by between 40% and 46% from the R1.2 billion seen at the end of 2024.

The group’s new business, OUTsurance Ireland, also continued its incremental scale-up strategy over the current period.

The group said that the Irish business’s monthly loss profile is expected to reduce over the second half of the current financial year in line with the forecast break-even profile.

Returning to South Africa, the group said that OUTsurance Life delivered a pleasing performance marked by new business growth and improved cost efficiency.

However, the group said that the impact of the extraordinary reduction in the South African yield curve following positive macro-economic developments in South Africa offset the strong performance.

The OUTsurance Life business is thus expected to have normalised earnings ranging from a 2% decrease to a 4% increase.

The group, however, noted that the lower interest rate environment and the strong performance of the South African equity market continued to support earnings.

Outsurance Group

The latest trading statement highlights OUTsurance’s relatively complex ownership structure.

OUTsurance Holdings Limited owns the group’s operating businesses and is 92.8%-owned by OUTsurance Group Limited, the listed entity, with the remaining stake owned by employees.

OUTsurance Group Limited (OGL) was previously a subsidiary of Rand Merchant Investment Holdings (RMI).

After being directly listed, OGL still holds non-core assets from the old RMI Treasury Company structure.

In the latest results, the group said that the RMI Treasury Company’s associate income delivered a strong performance in the past comparable period, which did not recur in the current period.

This outcome resulted in normalised earnings growth differences between the OHL and OGL group.s

Thus, OGL expects normalised earnings per share to increase by between 4% and 10%, to a range of 145.6 to 154.0 cents per share.

The group’s earnings and headline earnings per share are expected to be between 11% and 17% higher compared to the prior period, in a range of 147.5 to 155.5 cents.

OGL’s financial results for the six months ended 31 December 2025 will be released on Wednesday, 11 March 2026.