Standard Bank goes searching for the Holy Grail

Bancassurance is back, and it is here to stay, with Africa’s biggest lender by assets set to achieve the ‘Holy Grail’ of a fully integrated financial services offering across its platforms. 

Long seen as the logical endpoint of banks and insurers building out integrated financial services platforms, a unified platform for these offerings has perennially bubbled up. 

From telecommunications giants wanting a unified digital identity for their users, which can be used to cross-sell a near infinite number of products, to insurance and medical aid ecosystems, the Holy Grail has proved elusive so far. 

However, Standard Bank Insurance and Asset Management (IAM) CEO Yuresh Maharaj believes such a creation is imminent, with the bank now having all the building blocks in place. 

“It is imminent, but on a serious note, I think it is always a journey because it is easier to speak about the Holy Grail than to deliver it,” Maharaj told Daily Investor from Liberty’s Braamfontein head office. 

Maharaj knows the bank is not the only player in this space, noting the ambitions of Discovery and Old Mutual, alongside Standard Bank’s more traditional rivals, in particular FirstRand through FNB. 

However, he pointed out that Standard Bank is the only player in the space operating both a bank and an insurer, Liberty, at scale. 

“If you look in South Africa, none of our traditional banking competitors has the capability that we do to manufacture insurance products at scale across the spectrum,” Maharaj said. 

“We can sell the most simplistic products from funeral insurance through to the most complex life and business assurance of up to R200 million per single life.” 

These capabilities are now fully integrated within Standard Bank’s group operations following the buyout of Liberty’s minority shareholders in 2022. 

This time around, all of Standard Bank’s insurance and asset management offerings have been put under one umbrella, giving it all the assets to provide an integrated offering to its clients. 

Maharaj admitted that this required a bit of what he refers to as “plumbing” over the past few years to put the IAM business in the position to operate across the bank’s offering. 

“I think it is safe to say that a banking institution of 150 years and more comes with legacy systems and multiple versions of digital technology. So, converging all those becomes a lot more strenuous than if you are a newcomer,” Maharaj said. 

“Having said that, we have a clear roadmap to the point where we can offer all of the group’s products and services through a single platform.” 

Currently, ten insurance and investment products are available on the banking app, with personal and private banking (PPB) historically having a close relationship with Liberty. 

This is on top of the insurance products being bundled together with Standard Bank home loans, asset financing, and other products. 

The story is not all about how insurance and investment products are being cross-sold into the bank’s retail base, but also the inverse. 

Maharaj explained that Liberty’s 2,500-strong advisory network is being leveraged to sell banking products to existing insurance clients. 

So far, this experiment has resulted in R250 million worth of home loans being converted to Standard Bank. 

There is a significant opportunity for the bank in this regard, with around 65% of Liberty’s clients coming from outside Standard Bank’s ecosystem. 

Winning over businesses and corporates

Maharaj’s emphasis on the scale of the insurance operation overlaid with banking activities is clear in the business’s next growth vector – business banking clients and large corporates. 

Historically, Liberty has had a close relationship with Standard Bank’s PPB unit, with its insurance products enjoying success in selling to this segment’s client base. 

This relationship has deepened in recent years, with inter-business attribution up 11% in the 2025 financial year and worth around R2 billion for the personal banking unit.

Maharaj is now focusing on replicating this success in the business and commercial banking (BCB) and corporate and investment banking (CIB) units. 

Many of Standard Bank’s business banking clients are also private banking clients, so it is now not only about targeting these individuals but also their workforces. 

“It becomes more exciting as you go towards larger enterprises because they have large workforces who can become extended retail customers,” Maharaj said. 

“This can be through employee benefits and life insurance, or through pension and preservation fund management. We can take all of that to those clients alongside banking capabilities.” 

Standard Bank’s IAM business has an edge over competitors in this regard, in that these clients already have a business banker or a relationship manager, through which insurance and asset management products can be offered. 

In effect, the door is already open. The question is about presenting the holistic offering and being able to execute. 

“We have already started doing joint pitches at a limited scale with the CIB unit on holistic offerings, with the IAM products effectively becoming value-added services for these clients,” Maharaj explained. 

“This can be done across large or small institutions, from an entrepreneur through to a large corporate, which the BCB or CIB competitors are not able to offer.” 

The expansion into BCB and CIB is in its early days, with the initial focus being on PPB clients and fixing up the plumbing of the bank’s systems. 

Maharaj expects two new products to be launched in the BCB space in the next six months, with the joint pitches in the CIB space having some early successes. 

However, he is not blind to the fact that this will take time, particularly when it comes to transferring a pension or preservation fund. These switches have long lead times. 

The culmination of these efforts over the coming years will be an integrated financial services provider offering products across the length and breadth of Standard Bank’s operations. 

This means offering products from saving and lending through to insurance and pension funds across clients, including students and ultra-high-net-worth individuals. 

The challenge for Maharaj and his IAM team is immense, with an admission that Group CEO Sim Tshabalala is demanding much from the business unit. 

Its non-interest income is extremely cash-generative for the broader group, with it improving the overall quality of earnings and reducing sensitivity to interest rates. 

Maharaj is unbowed in the face of this challenge. “I want to win. I am competitive at heart, and that is the point I keep making to Sim and others,” he said.

“We have such an opportunity in South Africa to really win and to complement the bank. We must go and deliver it now and claim the Holy Grail. I think we can, so the next three to four years are going to be really powerful.”