Mutual ambition in a volatile world
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There’s a particular kind of confidence you pick up in a room when business leaders have stopped pretending the future is predictable. It’s not bravado. It’s a calmer energy: people putting their shoulders to the wheel, making decisions anyway, and building capacity for what they can’t yet see clearly.
That was the tone when I caught up with Izak Smit, group CEO of PPS, as part of COVER’s leadership edition. We spoke about markets, mutuality, and the new wave of innovation reshaping financial services. But more than that, we spoke about the leadership discipline required to guide an organisation when the world is noisy, talent is anxious, and technology is moving faster than governance frameworks can comfortably absorb.
A year that shouldn’t have happened, but did - Looking back on 2025, Izak’s first reaction is disbelief. With tariff wars, “real” wars, and a steady stream of geopolitical surprises, most forecasters would have expected markets to stumble. Yet, against that backdrop, it was a strong year for investments.
His reflection is not a victory lap. It’s a reminder of humility: short-term market prediction remains brutally difficult. But for investors who were sensibly diversified, the year delivered.
“If you were heavily weighted to South Africa equities, you would have had a brilliant year,” he noted. Local bonds also surprised on the upside. Offshore equities did well in dollar terms too, although rand strength muted returns for South African investors. He adds an important nuance that many retail investors forget: the local market might have run even harder if the rand hadn’t strengthened.
For PPS, those market conditions matter in a specific way because the organisation carries a large balance sheet as a mutual. PPS cannot go to external shareholders for additional capital. It must remain structurally strong enough to fund strategic investments, withstand shocks, and continue returning value to members through the mechanisms that mutuals use.
The strong investment year will, in Izak’s words, “feed through to our members” when PPS announces results again in April, an example of how mutuality changes the way you interpret performance.
Even in that positive context, PPS saw some claims pressure relative to actuarial expectations, perhaps part of a lingering “COVID overhang,” as Izak put it. But again, mutuality shifts the framing. In a shareholder-owned insurer, claims overruns are often treated as money “away from dividends.” In a mutual, claims experience is simply another way value finds its way back to members. The leadership challenge is different: manage sustainability without losing the purpose of the model.
Taking mutuality offshore - One of the most interesting developments in PPS’s story is its expansion into Australia and, more recently, New Zealand, both built on mutual principles. These businesses, Izak explains, are not typical subsidiaries. PPS is a founder member with specific rights. There is a small royalty flowing back to PPS members, and most of the funding has been structured through loans, generating interest that also benefits members.
The point is not just growth for growth’s sake. It is the export of a business philosophy: mutuality as a credible, modern model, and one that regulators in those markets reportedly value because it aligns with long-term customer outcomes.
Izak’s reflection on mutuality is worth pausing on. Historically, many of the world’s long-standing insurance institutions began as mutuals, communities pooling resources to protect one another against catastrophe. In South African terms, he likened it to the logic of a “stokvel,” formalised through governance and actuarial discipline.
What’s changed is regulation. Today, it is extremely difficult for communities to start new mutuals. That reality creates an advantage, and responsibility, for established mutuals like PPS: to prove that the model still belongs at the heart of modern insurance and advice.
Where the opportunity sits in 2026 - Asked about industry opportunity in the year ahead, Izak immediately goes to what almost every CEO now has on their agenda: AI.
But his framing is notably practical. AI can help insurers serve clients better and reduce cost. More importantly, it can help advisers “get some of the admin out of their lives” and operate at a higher level. He acknowledges the fear of disintermediation, not just for advisers, but for almost every profession. Yet he sees the bigger prize: using the technology to work smarter and add more human value where it matters most.
He also points to a second-order opportunity: strong markets create capital, and capital can be deployed into new ventures, product development, and experimentation. That matters in an environment where technology is turning “blue-sky thinking” into executable strategy far faster than in previous cycles.
“In a world that keeps proving prediction wrong, the most reliable leadership strategy is not to forecast perfectly, but to build an organisation that can adapt intelligently, anchored to why it exists.”
