A strong performance from investment markets and growth in new business volumes in the 10 months to October maintained Sanlam’s strong financial performance achieved in the first half of the year.
All of the group’s business clusters, apart from short-term insurer Santam, posted strong earnings growth with overall normalised headline earnings increasing by 33 percent.
Sanlam increased its new business volumes by 26 percent to R128 billion. The volumes reported excluded “white label” business, constituting the products of other companies that Sanlam markets.
Sanlam’s net value of new life business was up 13 percent.
Sanlam Personal Finance recorded a 33 percent increase in new business volumes, boosted mainly by the entry-level and affluent market segments in South Africa, in which new business volumes rose by 24 percent and 40 percent, respectively.
Sales volumes from the middle-income market increased by 15 percent.
The group’s investments cluster increased new business volumes by 35 percent, with wealth management, investment services and international operations all growing by more than 50 percent during the 10 month period.
New business volumes at Sanlam’s emerging markets unit increased by 18 percent.
The asset management business only grew by 4 percent as three major institutions restructured their portfolios earlier this year, resulting in R14bn in net fund outflows. Sanlam said excluding this and white labels, the business’s net fund inflows grew to R13.5bn from R7.7bn.
The shares fell 1.1 percent to R49.40. – Londiwe Buthelezi