Online Reporter
Nelson Gahadza
Senior Business Reporter
Old Mutual Group’s new chief executive officer, Mr Jurie Strydom, has made Zimbabwe his first port of call since his appointment in June, after he jetted into the country on Tuesday to take stock of the group’s operations, underlining the pan-Africa financial services group’s high regard for the country as a premier investment destination.
Mr Strydom was appointed the Old Mutual Group CEO on June 1, 2025, replacing former boss, Mr Iain Williamson, who took early retirement and stepped down as group CEO and executive director of the company on August 31, 2025.
Mr Strydom, an MBA graduate from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT, 2011), first joined the financial services group in December 2023 as an independent director.
According to Old Mutual Group, Mr Strydom is a proven leader with outstanding experience in building and leading diverse teams at large and complex insurance and financial services companies.
As a board member, the group said he demonstrated exceptional strategic vision and clear focus on the critical business levers necessary to implement the company’s strategic priorities, enhance its market leadership position, and achieve growing profitability.
Mr Strydom’s visit comes at a time when Zimbabwe’s economy is showing strong signs of growth in 2025 (6 percent) and beyond, largely driven by improved macroeconomic stability and a rebound in agriculture, due to better weather conditions, as well as mining.
Despite only his very brief stay in the country, Mr Strydom said he was encouraged by the prevailing macroeconomic stability in Zimbabwe, pledging the group will continue to deepen investments that support the country’s rapid economic growth trajectory.
Old Mutual Group is a highly significant investor in Africa, operating as one of the continent’s largest asset managers with a presence in 12 countries and a wide range of financial services, including insurance, asset management, and digital banking.
Its impact is amplified through large-scale investments in equity, property, and interest-bearing assets, as well as initiatives focused on financial education, inclusion, and sustainability, demonstrating its long-term commitment to Africa’s economic development.
In Zimbabwe, the pan-African group operates through Old Mutual Zimbabwe, one of the largest financial services providers, offering a wide range of products, including life and short-term insurance, asset management, banking, and property development.
Mr Strydom told a media engagement in Harare yesterday that Zimbabwe is the first country that he has visited since assuming the new role.
The visit bears testimony to the significance of Zimbabwe and Old Mutual Zimbabwe to the Old Mutual Group. “We are grateful to have been given some time by His Excellency, President Mnangagwa, and we have also been to the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ) and the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange (ZSE), which are also important stakeholders in our business, and have been able to interact with clients.
“It has also been a fact-finding visit; it is important for any group chief executive to come to understand the markets in which the group operates and get up to speed with the latest developments in Zimbabwe,” he said.
He added that the engagements were fruitful, demonstrating the confidence that Old Mutual Group has in its business and in the future of Zimbabwe.
“We are also very much engaged with the strategic priorities that are set out in the National Development Strategy 1 (NDS1), and we also wait with eagerness to see the next strategy that will be unveiled shortly. “We are a significant investor as Old Mutual Zimbabwe, and we have a number of clients in a number of important projects in renewable energy, infrastructure, and student housing, as well as other areas in the leisure hotel sector.
The South-African-based CEO said Old Mutual had deep roots on the continent, operating in the financial services sectors of the different countries.
“We have many opportunities for growth because we operate in a number of different countries, and we also operate across the different business lines. One of the advantages of our scale as Old Mutual is that we do have opportunities across these different areas,” he said.
He added that there are also opportunities to empower the countries the group operates in through local innovation, products and services that compete locally and beyond.
Old Mutual Zimbabwe chief executive Mr Samuel Matsekete said one of the priorities for the group came from policymakers, which at the moment is stabilisation.
“This is to ensure that the level of inflation maintains the direction of decline to give the market confidence around the stability of prices and also stabilisation in terms of exchange rates, which is reflected in the monetary policy stance that we have seen.
“Now, we like stability as a base for everything that we would then do in the economy,” he said.
He added that the group expected policies under the National Development Strategy 2, Zimbabwe’s next medium-term development guiding framework for the period 2026-2030, to support the stability objective and trust.
“If we look at NDS2, we should seek to strike a balance between that stability and also promoting growth. Once stability is achieved, that gives the markets confidence,” he said.
Mr Matsekete said some sectors were growing while others were clearly beating even records, such as the agriculture sector.
“That direction of growth in the real economy has got to be supported, and that is the expectation that we have,” he said.
Old Mutual Zimbabwe chairman Mr Constantine Chikosi said promoting formalisation bodes well for an enhanced role of group financial services.
