Old Mutual deepens digital native products bouquet

PHILIMON MHLANGA

Old Mutual Zimbabwe Limited, the country’s largest financial services
group,  has expanded its bouquet of digital native products across
asset management, short-term insurance, life assurance, lending and
saving, as it intensifies efforts to harness the innovative
capabilities and strengths of its customers across investment models.

In an exclusive interview yesterday, Old Mutual chief executive
officer Sam Matsekete told Business Times that the digitalisation
drive is enabling the group to deliver solutions more effectively to a
broader base of customers, including new segments previously beyond
its reach.

“We are deepening the bouquet of digital native products across asset
management, short-term insurance, life assurance, lending, saving. You
now see a fuller range of products being available on the digital
channels, which means we can be accessed 24/7 for those products. We
have also embraced innovation, which is one of our values as an
organisation, alongside keeping the customer at the center of what we
do, alongside accountability, diversity, integrity, and the value of
respect,” Matsekete said.

He added that innovation, as a core value, has seen Old Mutual
deliberately set aside resources to nurture a culture of innovation
among its workforce, while also creating platforms to tap into the
strengths and creativity of its customers.

Looking ahead, Matsekete revealed that the group is finalising the
upgrade of its core banking and pensions administration systems to
improve efficiency, enhance customer experience, and strengthen its
digital footprint.

“And you will see us having invested in all of the major core systems
that we use in the banking, investment space, and life assurance. But
this is to support the enhanced digital channels at the front end. And
then we’ve continued to broaden the products that are available on our
digital channels. So as we would call them, digital native products,
to ensure that we are able to give our customers access to the full
range of what we offer over those digital channels,” he said.

Old Mutual, Matsekete explained, sits in a unique position where
digitalisation enables it to deliver more solutions, more effectively,
to both its existing base and new customer segments.

“Over this period, we are actually upgrading our core banking system.
We are upgrading our core asset management system. We are upgrading
our core life assurance and pension administration system. These are
in order to anchor enhanced service levels when we think about digital
channels in the front end and digital native products that are
available from our digital channels,” Matsekete said.
“That’s an area of effort we will continue to drive.”

He stressed that Old Mutual has gone beyond its traditional core
propositions to invest in new, innovative offerings designed to
respond to the evolving demands of the market.

“We are going into new innovative propositions and ensuring that those
new innovative propositions allow us to adapt faster to the fast
evolving demands of our customers. So it’s a conscious area of effort
to continue to grow the agenda of digitalisation across our service
delivery value chain,” he said.

As part of this strategy, the group has embraced greater participation
from both colleagues and customers in order to co-create tailored
solutions.

This collaborative approach has also manifested in strategic
partnerships, which Matsekete said have been established to ensure
that Old Mutual’s digitalisation agenda delivers maximum impact.