Botswana Life Insurance Limited (BLIL), a market-leading provider of life insurance and advisory services, continues to play a significant role in determining how well the Botswana Insurance Holdings Limited (BIHL) Group performs financially.
This year, Botswana Life’s operating profits grew by 78% from P102 million to P182 million. The growth is mainly a result of lower COVID-19 related claims experience compared to the year 2021. Claims from the COVID-19 pandemic remain subdued potentially from increased immunity in the population and strain variability, however, there is still a future risk from virus mutation and its impact on virus transmissibility, disease severity and vaccine efficacy.
Adding on the excess mortality experienced during the period ended 30 June 2022 and subsequent increases in claims caused a number of shocks to performance in the first half of the period, and as a result, the performance of the period is noticeably lower, and this decline is due to low new business volumes on all income lines.
Net Insurance Premium Income for the first half of 2022 declined by 7% from P1.56 billion in 2021 to P1.45 billion. The Single premiums declined by 14% from P730 million in June 2021 to P616 million signalling the impact of inflationary pressures and increased interest rates on household income which saw reduced credit life premiums as the banks tightened their lending. Total new business declined by 7% year-on-year from P812 million to P755 million due to difficult economic conditions.
Said the BIHL Group CEO, Catherine Lesetedi, “Botswana Life which is an important subsidiary to the BIHL Group has this year seen an increase in its operating profits by 78% from P102 million to P182 million. The growth is mostly attributable to fewer COVID-19-related claims than in 2021. We remain hopeful that the other indicators will improve as time goes on and we will continue executing our digitisation strategy to achieve further top-line growth and margin expansions across all businesses.”
Ronald Samuels, the CEO of Botswana Life, believes that the company’s primary emphasis is on leveraging technology and innovation, and that the team is working diligently at every step to provide Batswana with the greatest possible experience as clients.
“After two years of disruption brought on by the COVID-19 outbreak, we are standing with Batswana by paying out claims in a timely and appropriate manner. We are continuing to speed up the process of digitisation and realising operational online streaming of sales distribution processes (end-to-end), client self-service, and collaborative e-payments platforms in addition to our already established distribution channels. One of the causes for the rise in our operational earnings is as a result of this, concluded Samuels
