{"id":840719,"date":"2025-10-23T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-10-23T07:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=840719"},"modified":"2025-10-23T08:22:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-23T06:22:29","slug":"discovery-bank-ceo-scores-r60-million-payday-over-r20-million-more-than-his-boss","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/840719\/discovery-bank-ceo-scores-r60-million-payday-over-r20-million-more-than-his-boss\/","title":{"rendered":"Discovery Bank CEO scores R60 million payday – over R20 million more than his boss"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Discovery Bank CEO Hylton Kallner has received R61 million in remuneration, over R20 million more than his boss, Adrian Gore, the Group CEO. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kallner, who is also the CEO of Discovery South Africa, received a base salary of R8.7 million, as well as R25.8 million in performance bonuses and long-term incentives.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This brought his total single-figure remuneration to R61.1 million for the financial year ended June 30, 2025, significantly higher than Gore\u2019s R37.2 million.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was also higher than Group CFO Dein Viljoen\u2019s R29.7 million and co-founder Barry Swartzberg\u2019s R26.1 million. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, Neville Koopowitz, the CEO of UK-based Vitality UK, earned \u00a34.5 million. This works out to R105 million in rand terms.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The large amounts for Kallner and Koopowitz come as both massively outperformed their targets.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Gore, Viljoen and Swartzberg all met or partially met their targets, Kallner and Koopowitz both exceeded their targets by a minimum of 110%. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kallner\u2019s outperformance was seen in Discovery Bank\u2019s financial outcomes, business growth and strategic outcomes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kallner\u2019s personal score stood at 272.46%, hence his massive bonus. Koopowitz\u2019s score of 125.6% saw him earn a bonus of 1.7 million pounds (R40 million).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

With Gore, Swartzberg and Viljoen all scoring around 102% in their personal scores, their bonuses trailed those of their colleagues.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Discovery Bank shines<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Kallner\u2019s remuneration comes after the Discovery Group saw a massive profit rise, with Discovery Bank breaking even for the first time. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery Bank saw its total number of clients rise by 30%, advances increase by 39%, and deposits rise by 26%.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The bank also saw its first profitable period during the second half of the financial year, which was ahead of plan. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, the bank still declared a R68 million loss for the full financial year, but this was an 85% improvement from the 2024 financial year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Discovery Health (7%), Discovery Life (14%), Discovery Invest (29%) and Discovery Insure (229%) saw rises in their normalised profit. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With this, Discovery SA, of which Kallner is also the CEO, saw normalised profit growth of 22% to R12 billion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The strong performance of Discovery has drawn investors to the stock, with\u00a0PSG Wealth Equity Analyst Marnus Piekaar<\/a>\u00a0issuing a buy recommendation for<\/span> Discovery.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PSG Wealth noted that Discovery\u2019s focus on affluent consumers who value rewards which allows for higher pricing while maintaining strong customer loyalty and brand strength.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The data-driven Vitality platform in South Africa also drives deeper engagement and cross-selling opportunities. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The business’s cash flows are also predictable, with earnings well spread across health, life, banking and other fee-based services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The product suite also enables Discovery to increase its value per client by cross-selling health, life, banking and investment products. This increases revenue without incurring acquisition costs.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Piekaar added that there is long-term upside from further International Vitality partnerships, new product extensions, and Discovery Bank\u2019s continued expansion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

That said, Discovery does face the risk of increased competition, especially in the digital banking space. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanlam and TymeBank have recently announced a joint venture where they will offer personal loans. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old Mutual has also recently launched its own bank, which will operate digitally and will not have any physical branches, similar to Discovery Bank.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n

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Discovery Bank CEO Hylton Kallner received a R60 million payday, over R20 million more than Group CEO Adrian Gore. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":95,"featured_media":840737,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[4883,12923,11232],"class_list":["post-840719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-discovery","tag-discovery-bank","tag-psg-wealth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840719","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=840719"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840719\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":840740,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/840719\/revisions\/840740"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/840737"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=840719"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=840719"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=840719"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}