The South African CEO going back to school 

Outgoing Old Mutual CEO Iain Williamson is headed back to business school after having held various positions at the company since he was 18 years old. 

Williamson has led the implementation of the insurer’s broad strategy to become an integrated financial services provider by building out its own bank. 

He has described the bank as the final piece of the integrated financial services puzzle, creating a one-stop shop of solutions from insurance to lending. 

“As a company, we have pinned our colours to the mast of integrated financial services. This means we show up as a one-stop shop with a wide range of solutions,” Williamson said. 

“After five years at the helm, I am incredibly pleased that these solutions are largely in place. When I take early retirement in August, the wheels will be in motion for this model to be humming and unlocking long-term value.”

Williamson has been CEO of Old Mutual since 2020. He will take early retirement at the end of August and will focus on his passion projects for the rest of his working career. 

From November, he plans to study non-executive directorship at France’s INSEAD Business School before returning to South Africa to drive innovation in areas of interest, such as education, healthcare, and financial services. 

Born in Bulawayo, Zimbabwe, in 1970, Williamson began his education at Falcon College in Zimbabwe before moving to Selborne College in East London for high school. 

Williamson has spent his entire adult life with Old Mutual in some form after he received a bursary from the company to study actuarial science. 

During his studies, Williamson picked up his first job at the company as a clerk in the East London branch of Old Mutual. 

After completing his actuarial science degree at the University of Cape Town, he joined the insurer’s fledgling mass market business as an actuarial assistant, earning R3,000 a month. 

This business segment has grown rapidly during Williamson’s tenure at the company to become the insurer’s largest and most profitable segment. 

Williamson’s path to CEO was not straightforward. He was moved around Old Mutual’s various operating divisions, which included its business in the United Kingdom. 

Becoming Old Mutual CEO

Williamson was quickly thrown into the deep end, being moved to London to take on a corporate development role at Old Mutual plc. 

On paper, this seemed like a relatively ordinary job, but Williamson was part of the team that prepared the company for demutualisation in 1999. 

This was a significant overhaul for the company, with Old Mutual transitioning from a society owned by its policyholders to a listed company owned by shareholders. 

With a life assurance mutual, the members effectively got together, deciding that they would all contribute cash to a central fund, which a member’s family could draw on if a member died.

The club did not show any profits, as any money held was for the benefit of members. 

When Old Mutual was established in Cape Town in 1845, with 166 people, such a model was viable, but with over 3.2 million members in 1999, it no longer made commercial sense. 

Williamson worked on the demutualisation as an internal analyst, valuing the company itself and any businesses it was set to acquire. 

After staying on at Old Mutual plc following the demutualisation, Williamson was caught up in the unit’s poor performance, which he still considers his biggest disappointment. 

Williamson returned to South Africa and worked at Old Mutual’s Cape Town head office as a finance actuary for the retail affluent division, later becoming its CFO. 

Here, he would work under a young Ralph Mupita, who was then Old Mutual Emerging Markets CEO. Mupita later became MTN Group CEO, a position he holds to this day.

Williamson followed Mupita closely, rising to become the CEO of Old Mutual Emerging Markets. This business would later become Old Mutual Limited, which is separately listed. 

In 2018, Williamson joined the executive team as Chief Operating Officer and quickly gained a reputation as an effective manager, leader, and organiser. 

Despite this and everything he had been through with Old Mutual, nothing would prepare Williamson for what came next when a spat between CEO Peter Moyo and the board burst into the public eye. 

According to Old Mutual, the situation arose because the former CEO “violated the terms of his employment contract” by allegedly placing his private financial interests ahead of the company.

“In flagrant disregard of the provisions in his employment contract designed to manage conflicts of interest between NMT Capital (a company Moyo co-founded) and Old Mutual, Moyo chaired a meeting of the NMT Capital Board on 4 July 2018, at which it was decided to pay an ordinary dividend of R105 million.

“Moyo and his partners thus shared R84 million, while omitting to pay preference share dividends, valued at R65.4 million at the time, due to Old Mutual,” it said.

The group said that its board engaged Moyo for months on the matter, but it became clear that he and the board had different opinions about his transgressions and how to resolve them.

The company fired him three weeks later, a decision that Moyo repeatedly challenged in court until the Constitutional Court refused his leave to appeal one more time in September 2023. 

During this three-year period, Williamson served as acting CEO and then full-time as chief executive from July 2020 onwards. 

Building a financial giant 

Williamson’s first order of business as CEO was to stabilise the company during the COVID-19 pandemic and transition it from crisis management to strategic growth. 

When such a time came, it was clear that both Williamson and Old Mutual had pinned their colours to the mast of integrated financial services. 

This model has become increasingly popular in recent years in South Africa, with the traditional bancassurance model making way for a more data-heavy and technology-driven iteration. 

Such a strategy, in theory, would enable Old Mutual to drive better cross-selling of its insurance and asset management products while also giving it access to more client data to build better products and services. 

The cornerstone of this strategy for Old Mutual is the launch of its own bank, called OM Bank, which is currently undergoing an internal trial with 600 employees. 

Old Mutual already has an existing 400,000 Money Account customers who utilise its banking products. This offering is administered through Bidvest Bank. 

Williamson has ensured the development of the bank would be extremely efficient, with it only spending R2.8 billion building out the bank and acquiring a retail banking licence. 

The insurer anticipates an annual loss run rate of between R1.1 billion and R1.3 billion for the first few years of the bank’s operation. 

Crucially, the launch of a banking app will enable Old Mutual to cross-sell its existing insurance products to new clients. 

Traditional insurance apps, although costly to set up, are used significantly less by clients than banking apps, rendering them ineffective platforms for cross-selling products.

Some analysts have suggested that this is the primary reason for Old Mutual to launch a bank, viewing it as a defensive move to protect its insurance business rather than competing with South Africa’s largest banks.

Williamson will not be at the helm to drive the bank’s future growth as he opted for early retirement effective from the end of August. 

Old Mutual has tapped industry stalwart Jurie Strydom to take over the reins to utilise his expertise in fintech to drive the company’s integrated financial services strategy.