The man behind OUTsurance and MiWay 

René Otto is the common link between two of South Africa’s most successful insurance businesses that have launched in the past thirty years – OUTsurance and MiWay.

These two companies have been highly disruptive to incumbent insurers, offering new products in different ways than previously done. 

In particular, they have leveraged technology to increase the efficiency of their businesses while enhancing client experience. 

MiWay, under Otto, was the first South African insurer to offer the purchase and administration of short-term insurance policies online. 

He is also credited with creating the innovative OUTbonus concept during his time at OUTsurance. 

However, when Otto started his career as a state advocate in the 1980s, it was not clear that he would be the brain behind two insurance giants. 

Otto studied to be a lawyer at the University of Pretoria, qualifying with an LLB in 1981, after which he began practising and gained his Master of Laws after studying part-time at UNISA in 1991. 

While studying for his Master of Laws, he transitioned to the private sector and joined Douw Steyn’s Auto & General insurance company – his first exposure to the industry. 

Crucially for his later career, Auto & General was the only direct short-term insurance company in South Africa at the time. 

Otto’s work at the company began to attract the attention of some of South Africa’s largest insurers and other financial services providers looking to enter the space. 

Chief among these was RMB Holdings, which asked Otto to create a blueprint for a new short-term insurer that could take on Auto & General and disrupt established insurance giants such as Old Mutual, Sanlam, and Santam. 

This blueprint was brought to life in 1998 as OUTsurance, with Otto founding the company alongside Willem Roos and Howard Aron.

The company offered car and household insurance directly to South Africans, with the famous slogan and promise that “you always get something out”. 

OUTsurance 

Otto was the first CEO of OUTsurance and led the company’s innovative charge into the South African insurance space. 

The revolutionary concept of an OUTbonus was a world first for an insurance company and laid the foundation for many of the incentive-led strategies seen in financial services today.

OUTbonus was the first reward system in South Africa to return cash to clients who remain claim-free. To date, OUTsurance has paid out more than R3 billion in cash to clients as part of this initiative.  

This is based on highly sophisticated underwriting systems. Premiums are calculated according to a client’s unique risk profile, meaning low-risk clients would not subsidise high-risk clients. 

This means that if you’re a low-risk client, you could get insured by OUTsurance for much less than what you’re currently paying somewhere else.

It also enables the company to give clients cash back if they are claim-free rather than using the excess generated to cover riskier parts of its business. 

OUTsurance, backed by the firepower of RMB Holdings, began to grow rapidly. In 2000, the company quickly snapped up rival businesses such as First National Insurance Group (FNI) from FirstRand. 

Crucially, this deal gave OUTsurance access to the extremely deep pockets of one of South Africa’s premier financial services providers, with FirstRand gaining a 47.5% interest in the business as part of the deal. 

Strong organic growth followed, with the company expanding its product range and entering other areas of financial services, such as asset management. 

In 2003, Business OUTsurance was launched to cater to the unique business insurance needs of companies of all types and sizes.

Otto’s next move would become a feature of his career – leaving a company once it had reached profitability. 

After OUTsurance reached critical mass and had enjoyed 18 months of profitability, Otto left to become CEO of Sanlam and PSG-subsidiary Channel Life in September 2004. 

Here, Otto showed that the success he had in building a sustainable business from the ground up was not an accident. 

MiWay

Otto again found himself in high demand among South Africa’s premier financial institutions in the late 2000s. 

This time, it was not a bank looking to disrupt the insurance industry. It was incumbent insurers looking to future-proof themselves from technological developments. 

Sanlam, Santam, and PSG approached Otto in 2007, asking if he would be interested in launching a digital-first short-term insurance company. 

Launched in 2008, MiWay flew out the gates with a whole string of industry firsts. It was the first to offer the purchase and administration of short-term insurance online. 

Similar to his OUTbonus concept, Otto pioneered the first insurance rewards programme where a claim does not invalidate the rewards payout. 

Santam bought MiWay in 2010, making it a wholly-owned subsidiary of the company. 

Again, Otto benefitted from building partnerships with companies that could easily provide the scale necessary to grow quickly and the capital needed to build an insurance business from the ground up. 

In just a handful of years, he made MiWay a profitable medium-sized insurer with over 220,000 clients. 

In 2021, the company launched MiWay Blink, which allows clients to sign up within minutes on its app. 

After 15 years at the company, Otto announced he was leaving MiWay and retiring, handing the reins to former OUTsurance COO Burton Naicker. 

When he left MiWay in 2022, the company employed over 1,500 people and collected around R3 billion in premiums per year.