The Sunday News
Chrispen Gumunyu, Business Reporter
FIRST Mutual Holdings Limited (FMHL) has set sights at acquiring more stake into Mozambique’s short-term insurance company, Diamond Seguros as it forges ahead to ascertain itself as a major regional player in the insurance sector.
Speaking at a Bulawayo launch of a merger between Nicoz Diamond Insurance Limited (NDIL) and Tristar Insurance last Friday, FMHL group chief executive officer Mr Douglas Hoto said the financial management group plans are underway to pour investment towards acquiring more shares into Diamond Seguros buoyed by the performance of its Botswana investment.
“By acquiring NDIL we attained two investments namely Diamond Seguros in Mozambique and United General Insurance Company in Malawi where we are associates but there is an exercise to raise more capital for Mozambique (business), which we have agreed to underwrite and it will result in us becoming a majority shareholder before the end of June 2019. We have First Mutual Insurance in Botswana, which we established seven years ago and it is now a thriving business because it is exceeding US$10 million per year as of 2018,” he said.
Mr Hoto said the merger of NDIL and Tristar Insurance was part of FMHL’s ambition of becoming the biggest short-term insurer in the country and the region as a whole.
“The merger was driven by one of our strategic ambitions as a group where in each area we operate we want to be either first or fast second.
So we saw the opportunity to acquire an already bigger short-term insurance company and combine it with one, which we already had to create the biggest short term insurance in the market. The merger has taken a couple of years to materialise because there were processes such as the buying of the shares, engaging with Competition Tariff Commission, Insurance and Pensions Commission (IPEC) as well as the Ministry of Finance which then approved on the 31st of January 2019,” said Mr Hoto.
In the year ended 31 December 2018, before the United States dollar adjustment income into RTGS dollar, FMHL had total returns of $180,6 million with NDIL contributing US$41 million. The group’s profit also went up by 37 percent and the investment income for the group was $34 million compared to $32 million from the previous year.
