{"id":874729,"date":"2026-09-10T11:30:43","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:30:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=874729"},"modified":"2026-09-10T11:30:46","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T09:30:46","slug":"new-bank-launching-in-south-africa-in-two-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/banking\/874729\/new-bank-launching-in-south-africa-in-two-months\/","title":{"rendered":"New bank launching in South Africa in two months"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Sanlam has announced it will soft-launch its new banking services in South Africa on 1 November 2026,<\/strong> with a broader rollout planned for the first quarter of 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The group announced in its latest interim financial results that it had received regulatory approval to introduce transactional services to its offerings.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Approval clears the path to bring transactional banking services into the Sanlam ecosystem,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company first announced plans to enter the banking sector in September 2025, saying at the time that the move would occur in 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The move came on the back of a partnership between Sanlam and TymeBank, which focused on providing unsecured personal loans bundled with credit life cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanlam’s entry into transactional banking will start with a soft launch, where it will offer the services to staff, intermediaries, and select clients.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This will help the company assess the system before it is introduced nationwide, which the company plans to do at the start of 2027.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Currently, Sanlam is waiting for key deliverables before it proceeds, including support for Apple Pay functionality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Following a few key deliverables, including Apple Pay functionality and a phased rollout, the group intends to gradually introduce these services during the first quarter of 2027,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its interim results, Sanlam said that the rollout of transactional banking services is a priority for the group, along with the growth of the retail credit business.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The rollout has been slower than the group initially discussed, with initial plans placing the bank’s rollout in the middle of 2026.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2025, Sanlam CEO Paul Hanratty said, “We are hoping to test with family and friends later this year and then by the middle of 2026, we should be in the market.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The introduction of banking services followed Old Mutual’s venture into the same market with its OM bank.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Old Mutual, another major insurer in South Africa, has since introduced its banking services in the country.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Slow growth for Sanlam<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the last six months, Sanlam saw muted growth in its core earnings, with the figure only rising 1% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company also saw a slight decline in operating profit, down approximately 7% to R7.3 billion from R7.9 billion, which the company attributed to lower positive investment variances.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Excluding investment variances, the operating profit was 1% lower than the prior period,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanlam’s headline earnings declined “due to market conditions,” the company said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The impact of weaker equity markets and higher interest rates on bond valuations, particularly in Morocco and India, respectively, following strong gains in the previous period, weighed on performance.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Investment returns were further impacted by adverse unrealised mark-to-market movements on the group\u2019s investment in Ninety One subsequent to the closing of this transaction in February 2026.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sanlam also said its earnings were negatively impacted by weather-related claims in South Africa over the past year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Earnings were negatively impacted by elevated weather-related general insurance claims across South Africa and parts of Africa, as well as rand strength, which reduced the translated value of earnings from businesses outside South Africa,” it said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Going forward, the group will focus its earnings analysis on core earnings as it provides the best indication of the group\u2019s underlying earnings performance and cash-generating capacity.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Both Headline Earnings Per Share (HEPS) and diluted HEPS dropped by 15% between the 2025 and 2026 interim periods.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While Sanlam’s earnings fell, the group saw an increase in new business volume, which rose by 22% to R224 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

Sanlam interim financial results<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
<\/td>2026 interim period<\/strong><\/td>2025 interim period<\/strong><\/td>Change %<\/strong><\/td><\/tr>
Insurance revenue<\/strong><\/td>R51.7 billion<\/td>R51.2 billion<\/td>1%<\/td><\/tr>
Operating Profit<\/strong><\/td>R7.3 billion<\/td>R7.9 billion<\/td>\u20137%<\/td><\/tr>
Core earnings<\/strong><\/td>R7.4 billion<\/td>R7.7 billion<\/td>\u20134%<\/td><\/tr>
Headline earnings<\/strong><\/td>R8.3 billion<\/td>R9.7 billion<\/td>\u201315%<\/td><\/tr>
HEPS (cents)<\/strong><\/td>396<\/td>465<\/td>\u201315%<\/td><\/tr><\/tbody><\/table><\/div><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sanlam is moving ahead with its plans to launch a new bank and has received regulatory approval.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":131,"featured_media":812736,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"failed","_sma_x_autopost_error":"Instagram publishing failed: The request to Instagram failed: cURL error 28: Operation timed out after 20001 milliseconds with 0 bytes received","_sma_x_post_id":"2097981168339616140","_sma_facebook_post_id":"191437357620492_2201277200692679","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[961],"tags":[1110,20634,2880],"class_list":["post-874729","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-banking","tag-old-mutual","tag-om-bank","tag-sanlam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874729","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\/131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=874729"}],"version-history":[{"count":26,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874729\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":874776,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874729\/revisions\/874776"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/812736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874729"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874729"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874729"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}