Sanlam launching its own bank built by billionaire Patrice Motsepe’s GoTyme

The fight for banking customers in Africa’s biggest economy is set to heat up even further as the continent’s biggest insurer prepares to venture into the space by the first quarter of 2027.

Sanlam says it has received approval from regulators, clearing the way for the Cape Town-based company to roll out transactional banking services.

“We know from all the work we’ve done that we can save our own customers a huge amount of fees — we can give them much better rates, and deposit rates,” CEO Paul Hanratty said in an interview Thursday. 

Sanlam rival Old Mutual began its bank in 2025 and has already amassed 742,000 customers by June. It’s on track to reach 1 million by the end of August and break even by 2028.

Discovery, meanwhile, started its lender in 2019, with the operation posting its first full-year profit in the 12 months ended June. 

Unlike its peers, Sanlam is not building the bank itself and will instead leverage an agreement with GoTyme Bank, a digital lender backed by billionaire Patrice Motsepe, to distribute and take deposits, provide unsecured personal loans, and offer life cover as soon as next year. 

GoTyme “is doing what we regard as banking business, and we are doing the distribution of the banking products to our customers,” Hanratty said.

“But there is a profit share involved, and so getting the regulators comfortable that actually we’re not doing the work of a bank is quite critical.”

The lender is beta-testing the offering with friends and family and plans to open it further to some customers and intermediaries to ensure the systems are ready for launch in the first quarter of 2027. 

“Factually, we’ve probably got more products and a bigger basket, so we can reward people in total really well,” Hanratty said.

“You may continue using your private bank for certain things, but you may well use us as a place to do your deposits, for example.”

The announcement came after the insurer reported that so-called adjusted headline earnings fell 22% to R7.7 billion in the six months through June.

This was as weather-related claims in South Africa grew, and a stronger rand trimmed the translated value of earnings from its businesses outside its home market. 

The impact of weaker equity markets and higher interest rates on bond valuations, particularly in Morocco and India, weighed on performance, the report said.

Adverse unrealised mark-to-market movements on the group’s investment in Ninety One, as well as losses on an Indian rupee hedge for insurance transactions in that nation, also affected profit.

Sanlam has grappled with an increasingly volatile operating environment as conflict in the Middle East raised energy prices and interest rates. Severe weather-related events across parts of Africa increased catastrophe claims in the group’s general-insurance operations.

Despite this, Sanlam raised new-business volumes by 22% to R224 billion, and net client cash flows increased 42% to R78 billion, reflecting the strong customer focus and competitiveness of the group’s operating businesses.

The insurer is banking on an even better second half as conditions improve. 

“We do anticipate better earnings, basically because we’ve taken a few actions to counteract the first half impacts of weather and other general insurance losses, and we also think that the environment is easing up a little bit,” Hanratty said.