A story of innovation, shared value and healthy clients
25 years ago, Discovery Life disrupted the life insurance industry with a bold idea: life insurance should help people live longer, healthier lives, not just pay out when they become ill or die. That idea has since reshaped the market, increasing the efficiency of life cover in South Africa and abroad.
Today, Discovery Life covers more than 450,000 lives and has paid over R60 billion in claims since launch. But the real story is how the business has changed when and how value is delivered, which has become known as the Shared-value Insurance model. More than 60% of payouts now go to clients while they are alive – through both living benefits and rewards for managing their health and wellness – supporting customers throughout their lives.
“It’s been a 25-year journey of proving that life insurance can improve health, reduce risk and deliver meaningful value throughout a client’s life,” says Discovery Life CEO, Riaan van Reenen. “That’s the model we’ve built. It’s life insurance that works when life is being lived.”
The bold disruption that changed everything
When Discovery Life launched in 2000, most life insurance products bundled risk cover with investment savings. This made premiums high, and policies opaque and inflexible. Discovery Life broke this tradition by separating risk and investment – a first in South Africa. The shift dropped the cost of risk premiums by an estimated 30% and created an estimated R1.1 billion in annual consumer savings. Within three years, most of the industry had followed suit.
“It was a bold move,” van Reenen reflects. “But we knew if we could design more efficiently, we could offer more value to clients. The core purpose of making people healthier has guided us ever since.”
The business also pioneered objective medical disability definitions and whole-body severe illness cover. Over the decade that followed, the industry saw a 67% drop in disability-claim complaints – a testament to how structural innovation improves fairness.
Shared value: The engine behind longer, healthier lives
Everything Discovery Life has built since is anchored in the Shared-value model. When clients engage in healthier behaviour, their risk decreases. When risk decreases, fewer claims arise. The resulting surplus is returned to clients through lower premiums and richer benefits.
The impact is measurable:
- Highly engaged clients (on Gold or Diamond Vitality status) have 57% lower mortality risk and 47% lower disability risk
- Clients received R2.4 billion in shared-value rewards in 2024 alone
- Over R13.2 billion in PayBacks for living healthy has been returned to clients to date
“Our model doesn’t only pay claims when clients suffer life-changing events,” says van Reenen. “It improves health and reduces risk. If you can influence lifestyle behaviours like exercise, diet, smoking, and alcohol usage, you can reduce non-communicable diseases, which account for more than 60% of deaths worldwide,” explains van Reenen. “That’s what Vitality and Shared-value insurance do.”
Leading through COVID-19
Van Reenen became CEO in 2020, during a global pandemic that tested every assumption about risk, leadership and resilience.
“It was an extraordinary time,” he says. “Almost overnight, we moved the whole business to service our customers remotely. We were working through many nights modelling COVID-19 scenarios, trying to understand a risk the world hadn’t seen, and how best to support our customers through this uncertainty.”
The environment was intense. Sadly, COVID-19 deaths surged. Families faced uncertainty and tragedy. Discovery Life paid out more than R7-billion in COVID-19-related claims, with 2021 seeing 53% of all death claims linked to the virus.
Yet the business remained financially stable and kept clients protected. R40 billion in cover was kept active through premium relief offered, clients were rewarded for vaccination through unique benefits, and Vitality’s highest-engaged clients showed 85% lower mortality risk.
“That period showed the power of shared value in real time, and that it works not only for reducing the risk of communicable disease but also infectious disease,” van Reenen notes. “Incentivising healthy behaviour saves lives.”
Innovations that protect families today and tomorrow
Over 25 years, Discovery Life has built an ecosystem of benefits designed for modern risks, including:
The Global Education Protector that funds children’s education locally or abroad if a parent dies, has a disability or suffers a severe illness. It paid out R67 million in 2024, with R594 million in future education costs expected for families currently claiming.
The Cash Conversion benefit, which allows unused life cover to be turned into a tax-free lump sum at retirement, with more than R3.1 billion already paid out and more than R7 billion to be paid out in the next five years.
The Dollar Life Plan is South Africa’s first offshore life insurance policy. Clients have earned $70 million in PayBacks, with another $60 million projected in Cash Conversions.
“These innovations exist because real families face real risks,” says van Reenen. “Our job is to design protection that stays relevant as the world changes.”
The next 25 years: precision, personalisation and prevention
Looking ahead, Discovery Life envisions a future where AI, richer health data, and precision risk modelling accelerate the shift toward hyper-personalisation and prevention-led insurance.
“The next 25 years will be defined by precision,” says van Reenen. “Precision in understanding risk, in improving health and in delivering value. We now have tools we didn’t have before to guide people to live longer, healthier lives.”
For van Reenen, the purpose remains simple: “When healthy people thrive, society prospers. That principle has guided us for 25 years, and it will guide us for the next 25.”