South Africa: SA's Life Insurers See Claims Surge As Illness Hits Working Incomes

By Neesa Moodley

South Africans are not only dying. They are surviving cancer, strokes, disability, mental health conditions and long-term impairment, and the financial cost of living through these events is becoming harder for households to absorb.

This is the thread running through the latest claims statistics from Liberty, Momentum Life Insurance and the Professional Provident Society (PPS), which together paid out almost R24-billion in life-risk and related claims in 2025.

The figures offer a grim X-ray of the country's health and household finances. Death cover remains the largest payout category for life insurers, but the sharper story is the rising cost of illness while people are still alive, still working, still paying debt, still funding school fees and still expected to keep the household engine running.

Liberty paid R12.63-billion in claims in 2025, including R7.79-billion to 27,976 retail clients and their beneficiaries through its Lifestyle Protector product range. The retail payments worked out to about R31-million every working day. Its corporate benefits business paid out a further R2.6-billion.

Momentum Life Insurance paid R6.88-billion in claims in 2025, with R5.92-billion paid through its Myriad product range. That works out to about R26.3-million paid every working day.

PPS, which serves graduate professionals, paid R4.4-billion in life-risk claims, a 20% increase on 2024. PPS processed 23,016 claims, equal to about 92 claims a day, with about R17.6-million paid daily to members and beneficiaries.

The lesson here is that life...

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