It’s been a long six weeks and the life offices have finally ended their mid year reporting season. Like those of all the major banks, the share prices of the life insurers are all down year on year, with two exceptions: Sanlam and Rand Merchant Investment (RMI) Holdings were both up 2%.Otherwise the share price declines went from 6.2% for MMI up to 14.6% for Discovery. Both these businesses are key investments for RMI, but unlisted Outsurance gave it the edge. The direct insurer had a 43% increase in earnings and RMI’s portion was R1.66bn, about half of the parent’s normalised earnings.MMI might not have come under the same share price pressure as Discovery, but it has its share of fires to fight.In its African operations there was an 82% decline in headline earnings to R28m. And, unlike every other SA life office and banking group, it was not brought down by Nigeria but by Kenya, through short-term insurer Cannon.MMI CEO Nicolaas Kruger says the group is looking to focus on the mo...
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