{"id":836713,"date":"2025-09-03T10:47:22","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T08:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=836713"},"modified":"2025-09-03T10:47:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T08:47:28","slug":"great-news-for-discovery-bank","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/836713\/great-news-for-discovery-bank\/","title":{"rendered":"Great news for Discovery Bank"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Discovery Bank has seen its first profitable period following years of investment in the digital bank. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a trading statement for the financial year ended 30 June 2025, the group noted that Discovery Bank generated its first profitable period during the second half of the financial year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although the bank broke even for the first time in December 2024, reporting periods in South Africa are typically done in half-year internals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said the bank is now profitable ahead of plan, while acquiring quality clients has accelerated. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, the bank still made an overall loss during the financial year, but this loss was reduced by 82% to 87% over the period.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Looking at the group\u2019s other business segments, Discovery Health saw solid earnings growth of between 4% to 9% amid further investment into technology and AI.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery Life saw profit growth by 11% to 16%, mainly driven by what Discovery describes as exceptional claims experience.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery Invest saw profit growth of between 27% and 32%, which was mainly driven by profit growth due to the value of assets under management and certain one-off benefits. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery Insure executed pricing and claims management initiatives which, combined with benign weather conditions, significantly improved its claims ratio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This led to a massive rise in profit of between 225% and 230% for Discovery Insure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The international Vitality composite\u2019s result showed substantial progress in restructuring all the global operations into a focused single business over the last nine months.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

VitalityHealth\u2019s performance was boosted by effective pricing actions, a stabilising claims environment and rigorous claims and expense management, with profit up by between 170% and 175%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group said that VitalityLife delivered strong earnings growth amid new business growth, driven by the effective execution of the Shared-value Insurance model. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

China-based Ping An Health Insurance also saw a strong performance following the prior year\u2019s strong growth that benefited from both a COVID-19 reserve release and a tax gain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Vitality Healthy Insurance Network saw losses reduce by between 23% and 27% as the group is underway to build greater, longer-term scale and value.<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n

Overall, the group expects earnings per share to increase by between 23% and 28% to between 1,365.7 cents and 1,421.2 cents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Headline earnings per share are expected to increase by between 27% and 32% to between 1,418.6 cents and 1,474.4 cents.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Normalised HEPS are also expected to increase by between 27% and 32% to between 1,443.0 cents and 1,499.8 cents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Further details of the above will be provided in the groups annual financial statements that will come out on 11 September 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Metric<\/th>Expected Increase<\/th>Expected Range (cents)<\/th>Restated Prior Year (cents)<\/th><\/tr><\/thead>
EPS (basic)<\/td>23% \u2013 28%<\/td>1,365.7 \u2013 1,421.2<\/td>1,110.3<\/td><\/tr>
HEPS (basic)<\/td>27% \u2013 32%<\/td>1,418.6 \u2013 1,474.4<\/td>1,117.0<\/td><\/tr>
Normalised HEPS (NHEPS, basic)<\/td>27% \u2013 32%<\/td>1,443.0 \u2013 1,499.8<\/td>1,136.2<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Discovery expects a large increase in earnings, with Discovery Bank reaching its first-ever profitable period. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":812771,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[4883,12923],"class_list":["post-836713","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-discovery","tag-discovery-bank"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836713","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/95"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=836713"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836713\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836722,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/836713\/revisions\/836722"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812771"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=836713"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=836713"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=836713"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}