Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the African insurance industry rose significantly in 2024, with deal volumes up and deal values up by 400%. Insurers in Africa are increasingly targeting insurtech startups and micro insurers that have benefited from the continent’s rapid digitalisation.

A year of acquisition growth

In South Africa in particular, a trend towards lower inflation will continue to encourage more merger and acquisition activity.

Again, this year looks set to be a year of acquisition growth. Many firms are looking to acquire businesses that support their market position in specific regions. For others, the continued success of the MGA model means an easier route into new products or markets, making a merger tempting.

Insurance firms will always look to grow organically, but the use of mergers and acquisitions to accelerate development remains a popular route and will be for the foreseeable future. In our experience, bringing in new entities, with their own established culture, offers the chance to introduce new thinking and creates new opportunities. But it’s important to integrate new teams and make them cohere as part of a wider brand.

This can have significant consequences when it is not handled well. It can be easy to underestimate the difficulties involved in aligning very different corporate cultures, especially if the merging companies have very different risk appetites. Senior leaders should always be confident that any acquisition is culturally compatible and can be successfully integrated.

Beyond the deal: aligning values and vision

This is especially true when making acquisitions internationally. Misalignment between global offices can generate confusion about expectations, reduce productivity and create internal friction that leads to opportunities being missed. For the insurance industry, this is especially dangerous, as it can result in inconsistent client experiences and an erosion of trust.

A company’s brand is its most important asset, so it pays dividends to invest time and effort in protecting it. One effective approach is to establish a unified brand that integrates the group’s various functions, enabling a more consistent customer experience and allowing the group to speak with one voice in the marketplace.

Our experience of implementing this change produced lessons and practices that are replicable across the industry. A clear lesson has been the importance of corporate values that provide direction and instil good ethics in teams.

Strong, clear corporate values are vital to any firm, but particularly so for those with a global footprint. They help guide decision-making and underpin how teams interact with clients, which is vital in relationship-led industries such as insurance. Clients have to be able to trust their firm, and maintaining consistent values across locations helps a brand to maintain credibility.

It also helps new team members to adapt and settle in. When employees across global offices embrace the same ethos, it creates greater cohesion and strengthens both the brand’s identity and employees’ identification with the brand.

For any international firm, but particularly those in insurance, maintaining aligned values across diverse locations is a strategic imperative. By ensuring that everyone is pulling in the same direction, consistent, clear values help improve the customer experience, build trust and provide the basis for sustainable growth.

A significant competitive advantage

Those that do this successfully do it through attention to, and investment in, their culture. In an industry built on trust and relationships, an organisation that has successfully aligned and implemented its values across all of its offices will enjoy a significant competitive advantage.

This article first appeared in the June 2025 edition of the FA News