Old Mutual is massive. They have a huge core business, and hold shares in many other businesses.
For a long time, they held a majority share in Nedbank before OM split into various smaller self-sufficient operations.
At present, they are primarily making use of Bidvest Bank’s licence to assist their money account clients. This has (supposedly) been a strong earner for OM. OM has around 6 million customers, and has 1.1 million digitally active clients. The banking app has over 1 million downloads on Google Play (for whatever that is worth). Which probably means they have a large number of these banking clients.
‘But Old Mutual is not a bank…or at least they weren’t’
But Old Mutual is not a bank…or at least they weren’t. This status is about to change, as Old Mutual has received the go ahead to apply for a banking licence. It is said they have already spent around R830 million developing their transactional banking engine, so they are very ready to formally enter the market.
The banking licence will also allow them to accept retail deposits (a nice way for them to get in some money to use) and be able to closely control their banking services to consumers. It will also allow for broader competition with some of the large banks, which have recently entered the insurance space.