Discovery Health grows profits and earnings for the financial year ended 30 June 2018.
In a challenging economic environment, Discovery Health Medical Scheme (DHMS) has grown profits and headlines earnings, while on its journey to become the lowest cost administrator.
Discovery Group’s Chief Executive Adrian Gore credited the group’s strong performance and the evolution of the group’s Shared-Value Insurance model to its transformative framework Ambition 2018.
Discovery's CFO, Deon Viljoen, is a member of the CFO Awards panel of judges and a former CFO Of The Year for his tenure at Alexander Forbes.
Four years ago, Discovery established clear performance measures for Ambition 2018, which resulted in normalised headline earnings increasing by 16 percent to R5,401 million and normalised headline earnings per share increased to 836.9c.
New business Annualised Premium Income (excluding new closed medical schemes Discovery Health takes on and the gross revenue of the Vitality Group) has increased by 10 percent, to R16,137 million. Despite considerable investment in new businesses during the year, the return on equity exceeded the risk free +9 percent.
Gore commented:
“Our business model is more relevant than ever and allows us to proactively react to industry and market trends. Financial services businesses have to fulfil a societal function, technology will continue to play an increasingly significant role, and there is a greater realisation that insurance risk is strongly associated with behaviour, be it your health, safety on the road or financial security. We have seen remarkable results in behaviour change to create safer drivers and to lower healthcare costs, and we remain on track to make an even greater impact on the wellbeing of more people through our strong portfolio of businesses and our global platform technology, Vitality One. Each of our businesses are at different maturity levels; however, all of them confidently meet stringent actuarial, financial, market competitiveness and customer service metrics.”
