Assets managed by SA life insurers top R5 TRILLION for the first time

Assets managed by South Africa’s long-term insurance industry exceeded R5 trillion for the first time in 2025.

Life insurers that are members of the Association for Savings and Investment South Africa (ASISA) concluded the year with R5.2 trillion in assets under management, says the body that represents most of the country's life insurance companies, asset managers, and management companies in various sectors.

ASISA says this growth in assets under management was buoyed by strong stock market performance.

Just released long-term insurance statistics show that members managed 46.2 million risk and savings policies on behalf of policyholders at the end of December 2025. The number of in-force policies increased by 4% over the 12 months from 44.4 million at the end of December 2024.

Life insurers paid claims and benefits worth R626 billion in 2025 following tragic life events such as death or disability, and significant life-stage changes such as retirement.

Stephen Grootes interviews Gareth Friedlander, a member of the ASISA Life and Risk Board Committee.

Considering the total number of 46.2 million policies involving risk and savings, one could be misled into thinking this represents quite a big number of South Africa's 62-million-strong population.

The reality is that consumers are still under-insured, with many of those insured hold a number of policies each.

While they don't have exact stats at an entity level, Friedlander says, they do know that the 46.2 million is made up of a wide range of policies including long-term risk insurance, savings policies and a host of funeral policies, of which many clients tend to have multiple policies.

"It is a big number, but along with that there is a big insurance gap in South Africa of 61%... so people do remain significantly under-insured from a population perspective."

In fact the 2025 ASISA Life and Disability Insurance Gap Study, published towards the end of last year, showed that SA's 16.1 million formally employed income earners collectively had enough life and disability insurance cover at the end of December 2024 to provide only 39% of the income needed by their families in the event of death or disability.

"It is just so important that consumers try and reduce that insurance gap to give them some resilience against these life-changing events because it is just so much more difficult once you've had a death, or an illness, or a disability in the family to then try and adapt to these new circumstances... Insurance is the best way to do that, so you need to try and keep closing that gap."

Scroll up to the audio player to hear more detail from ASISA's Gareth Friedlander