South African insurance giant set to shoot the lights out

OUTsurance is set to report strong results for its 2025 financial year, despite losses in its Irish division and a major hit through its Australian subsidiary, Youi.

OUTsurance Holdings is one of South Africa’s largest insurance companies, operating in South Africa, Australia and Ireland.

In South Africa, OUTsurance offers car, home, business, life, funeral and pet insurance. In Australia, its Youi subsidiary provides car, home, business and compulsory third-party insurance, while OUTsurance Ireland offers car and home insurance.

On Wednesday, 27 August, OUTsurance released a trading statement outlining its expected performance for the year ended 30 June 2025.

The insurer expects its normalised group earnings to grow by between 27% and 32%, largely driven by a strong performance from Youi and its operations in South Africa.

OUTsurance Life also performed very well, with expected normalised earnings growth of between 63% and 69%.

One drag on the company’s performance was OUTsurance Ireland, a more recent addition to the insurer’s staple, which saw its earnings decline by between 120% and 126%, resulting in a loss.

Despite this hit, OUTsurance expects its earnings per share to grow by between 12% and 18%, which was boosted by a R540 million profit from selling some of its assets during the period.

The company explained that several factors influenced its earnings over the 2025 financial year.

This includes good organic premium growth delivered by the major operating segments, which is attributed to new business growth and in-force premium inflation.

The insurer also benefited from favourable weather and lower natural perils claims incurred across the group’s operations, as well as a favourable trend in working claims observed by OUTsurance South Africa.

However, the company took a significant hit from Youi’s retained loss from Cyclone Alfred, which is estimated at AUS$5.1 million (R58.57 million).

Cyclone Alfred was a severe tropical cyclone that earlier this year ravaged South East Queensland and the New South Wales North Coast in Australia.

Unrelated to this loss, OUTsurance also provided an update on Youi’s underwriting activities in Australia.

Previously, Youi was selling insurance through brokers in partnership with Blue Zebra Insurance, in which OUTsurance also had a stake.

However, during the reporting period, the company decided to exit this broker channel to allow Youi to focus on its core direct-to-consumer channel.

Therefore, from 1 July 2025, You stopped writing new policies via thsi channel, with the in-force book expected to substantillat run-off by 30 June 2026.

OUTsurance also sold its equity stake in Blue Zebra Insurance on 30 June 2025.

The insurer will release its full results for the 2025 financial year on Monday, 15 September 2025.