Adrian Gore is founder and CEO of South Africa’s leading medical insurer, Discovery Holdings, which provides health insurance for more than 200,000 companies and close to 2 million people.
In 1992, Adrian Gore raised seed funding from Laurie Dippenaar, a cofounder of Rand Merchant Bank, and founded the South African medical insurer after years of working with Liberty Life.
Gore founded Discovery in 1992, with a core purpose of making people healthier and enhancing and protecting their lives.
Discovery has grown its normalised profit from close to zero in 2000 to over R15 billion in its most recent financial year, with the company having plans to double this number by the end of 2029.
Moonstone Information Refinery reported Discovery grew its normalised profit from operations by 29% to R15.21 billion in the year to the end of June, with Vitality’s profit from operations up by 70% to R3.205bn and Discovery South Africa’s profit rising by 22% to R12bn.
Discovery SA comprises Discovery Health, Discovery Life, Discovery Invest, Discovery Insure, and Discovery Bank.
The Vitality composite consists of VitalityHealth, VitalityLife, Vitality Network, Ping An Health Insurance (PAHI) in China, and Vitality Health International.
The group’s headline earnings and normalised headline earnings increased by 30% to R9.625bn and R9.781bn, respectively, resulting in the normalised return on equity increasing to 15.4% from 13.5% in the previous year.
Basic normalised headline earnings per share were up by 29% at 1.470.4 cents.
The group declared a final dividend of 201 cents per share, up by 32% year on year.
The group’s total new business annual premium income (API) declined by 2% but increased by 8% when excluding the take-on of the Sasolmed closed medical scheme in the previous year.
Chief executive Gore said the group produced an all-round strong performance in an environment characterised by increased geo-political complexities and uncertainty around global policy shifts and trade tensions.
“The strong performance of Discovery South Africa over the year highlights the compelling contribution from each of our businesses. And in Vitality, the performance reflects the competitive dynamics of the Vitality shared-value insurance model, with excellent progress made in restructuring the global operations into a single focused business over the past nine months. With the positive contributions from each composite, we have seen an excellent start to the current growth phase.
“In the year under review, economic growth remained below potential in many regions where Discovery operates, although interest rate reductions provided a better backdrop for investment markets. Risks remain elevated. However, the acceleration of technological and demographic trends underpin the relevance of the Vitality shared-value insurance model and unique data.”
He said Discovery has emerged strongly from its cycle of significant investment, which focused on creating new avenues for long-term growth.
Although new business growth was impacted in some businesses, compounded by macro-economic challenges, Gore said the group has made an excellent start on its ambition to grow profit from operations by between 15% and 20% on a compound basis over the next five years.
