What Old Mutual Rewards Is Actually Worth

Start with the most basic question: what is an Old Mutual Rewards point actually worth? The answer is disclosed in the FAQ, though not in the headline marketing. Ten points equal one rand. That is the conversion for cash redemption via the OM Bank app – the highest‑value channel. If you want airtime instead, the rate changes: eleven points equal one rand. The programme quietly extracts a 10% penalty simply by redirecting you from cash to airtime, and many members make that choice without realising the rate has shifted.

The cash redemption route, at ten points per rand, sounds reasonable until you work out what those points cost to earn in the first place. Consider a member on Tier 1, the entry tier for someone with zero to one Old Mutual product categories. That member pays a life insurance premium of R500 per month, R6 000 per year. The earn rate for insurance premiums at Tier 1 is 5% of the premium in points. Five percent of 6 000 points would be 300 points. At ten points per rand, 300 points equal R30. The member paid R6 000 in premiums and received R30 in redeemable value. The real return on premiums paid is 0.5%.

To put that in perspective: the interest rate on a basic savings account in South Africa is between 5% and 7% annually on amounts of that size. The Old Mutual Rewards loyalty return on insurance premiums at Tier 1 is one‑tenth of what a savings account earns on the equivalent cash. This is not a flaw in the programme. It is the programme.

Ten points equal one rand. That sounds like a simple, fair conversion. But the conversion is only one half of the equation; the other half is how those points are earned. At Tier 1, insurance premiums earn 5% in points. That means every rand of premium yields 0.05 points. Converted at 10 points per rand, that gives you R0.005 back for every R1 paid. Half a cent. The gap between the marketing language – “earn points for responsible financial behaviour” – and the actual yield is where the programme lives.

Old Mutual does not hide the earn rate or the conversion. Both are available in the tier table and the FAQ. But they are presented separately, on separate pages, with no worked example that shows the member exactly what R500 a month in premiums actually returns over a year. If that number appeared in a promotional banner, the opt‑in rate would almost certainly be lower. The separation of the two numbers – earn rate on one page, conversion on another – is not an accident. It is a choice, and it is the same choice made by virtually every loyalty programme in financial services.

Old Mutual Rewards has five tiers. Your tier is not determined by how long you have been a member, or by the total value of your premiums, or by your loyalty over time. It is determined by how many distinct product categories you hold. The categories are: protection and life insurance, savings and investments, lending, healthcare, and everyday banking. Holding three investment products from the same category counts as one category, not three. To move from Tier 1 to Tier 2, you need products in at least two separate categories. Tier 3 requires three. Tier 4 requires four, or investments worth R25 million or more. Tier 5 requires five.

The implication is direct. A member with a large, long‑standing investment portfolio but no insurance, no loan, and no banking product sits at Tier 2 at best, regardless of how much money they have invested or for how long. To access meaningfully better earn rates, that member must buy an Old Mutual insurance policy, or take an Old Mutual loan, or open an OM Bank account. The rewards programme is not simply a loyalty tool. It is a product acquisition funnel with points attached.

For investment products, members earn points as an annual percentage of their investment value, credited monthly. At Tier 1, the earn rate on Old Mutual funds is 0.05% of investment value per year. A member with R100 000 invested earns 0.05% of that – 50 points, which equals R5. Five rand per year on a R100 000 investment. At Tier 5, the maximum earn rate is 0.5% of investment value annually. R100 000 at Tier 5 earns 500 points, which is R50.

Old Mutual unit trust products carry a total expense ratio (TER) typically ranging from 0.5% to 1.5% per year. At the median 1%, a member with R100 000 invested pays R1 000 per year in fees. At Tier 5, that member receives back R50 in points. The rewards programme returns approximately 5% of what the member pays in fees, at the highest possible earn rate, for members who hold five product categories with Old Mutual.

The T&Cs state: “Your earned points will remain valid for a period of three (3) years from the earn activity date on which you earned such points.” Points do not expire three years from today. Each batch of points expires three years from the date it was earned. A member who earns 100 points in January 2022 and another 100 in January 2024 has two separate expiry clocks running. The January 2022 points expire in January 2025. The January 2024 points expire in January 2027. Members who accumulate points over several years intending to save them for a large redemption lose the oldest points silently while the newer ones accumulate.

Old Mutual undertakes to notify members before expiry, but those notifications rely on up‑to‑date contact details and email addresses that members actively monitor. The T&Cs also confirm that vouchers obtained through point redemption carry their own separate expiry dates, distinct from point expiry. A member who redeems points for a voucher and does not use that voucher in time loses it without being able to recover the points. “Once points have been spent and a voucher has been issued, the transaction cannot be reversed.” The programme contains two expiry layers: points expire first, then vouchers expire separately.

This clause deserves to be read in full: “When you die, your account will be stopped. Any points that you may have earned at that point will be cancelled. Your deceased estate will have no claim to any earned points.” Points are not an asset. They are not transferable. They cannot be bequeathed. They cannot be claimed by a spouse, a child, or any beneficiary. The moment a member dies, all accumulated points are cancelled.

The programme’s own FAQ confirms: “No, points are not transferable to another person for any reason, including divorce or inheritance.” For a member who has built a meaningful points balance over several years of premiums, that balance disappears entirely upon death. The logic is that points are a discretionary loyalty benefit, not a monetary asset. That logic is legally defensible. It is also worth knowing before a member spends years building a balance under the assumption it holds value for their family.

The T&Cs grant Old Mutual the right to cancel the Rewards programme completely if, “in our view, it is no longer financially or practically viable to keep it in operation.” The only obligation is to “honour all points and vouchers earned by members up to that point unless the law or the regulator instructs us otherwise.” The carve‑out – “unless the law or regulator instructs us otherwise” – means even that obligation can be overridden by a regulatory directive.

Separately, Old Mutual reserves the right to terminate any competition or promotion immediately and without notice. In that event, “participants agree to waive any rights they may have in this competition, and acknowledge that they will have no recourse against Old Mutual or its agents.” These clauses are not unusual in loyalty programme design. Most programmes globally contain similar language. But the cumulative effect is that the member’s entire balance exists at the discretion of the programme operator, subject to change or cancellation at any time.

Old Mutual Rewards offers health bonus points to members who complete annual health assessments and submit a Health Questionnaire every 12 months. The assessments cover BMI, blood pressure, cholesterol, and other biometric markers. Members must also submit results from endurance events or fitness assessments every six months to continue earning the associated points.

The T&Cs note: “Your latest new business Old Mutual Protect underwriting assessment results after 13 August 2022 will be used to determine whether you qualify for the health bonus points.” The underwriting assessment is the same one used to price life and disability insurance premiums. Old Mutual’s privacy policy states that personal data is processed for “risk evaluation, underwriting” and “developing, assessing and improving our products and services.” Members are incentivised with points to submit detailed health data, and that data sits in the same ecosystem as their insurance underwriting file. The points represent a form of compensation for that disclosure. Whether members understand this relationship is a question the programme design does not address directly.

The T&Cs state: “You are fully responsible for any tax implications arising from or associated with any rewards, benefits, discounts or points received … We recommend that you obtain independent professional advice.” SARS guidance on loyalty programme benefits is not uniformly clear. Points redeemed for cash equivalents by individuals in personal capacity are generally not treated as taxable income in typical scenarios. However, where a member redeems substantial point balances, or where the employer contributes to a member’s rewards earning through group insurance arrangements, the tax treatment becomes less straightforward. The T&Cs transfer the responsibility to the member and recommend professional advice – a recommendation that appears in the terms, not the promotional materials.

Old Mutual states that over 1.8 million members have collectively earned over 5 billion points in four years. Five billion points at 10 points per rand represents R500 million in points earned, across 1.8 million members, over four years. That averages R277 per member per year, or approximately R23 per member per month. R23 per month is the average reward across the entire active membership base, including members at every tier and including high‑premium members who generate substantial points relative to low earners.

Old Mutual collects premiums from those same 1.8 million members and holds investments for many of them. The programme’s aggregate reward to members represents a small fraction of the revenue those members collectively generate. The loyalty programme is not expensive to run relative to the revenue it protects and the cross‑selling it enables. This is not unique to Old Mutual. It is the universal design of financial services loyalty programmes: enough perceived value to reduce churn and drive cross‑selling, at a cost significantly lower than the revenue at stake.

For members who are already Old Mutual customers and already hold multiple product categories, the points accumulate passively. A Tier 3 member with life insurance, a unit trust, and an OM Bank account earns points on premiums, on investment value, and on card swipes without taking any additional action. Over several years, a meaningful points balance can build – sufficient for useful redemptions at grocery voucher partners or airtime top‑ups.

The financial education content – Moneyversity courses, budget calculators, financial wellness assessments – is genuinely useful independent of the points it generates. The OM Bank integration at 2.5% back on debit card spend is the programme’s strongest actual earning mechanism, and for active bankers it delivers real value on everyday spending. The programme is not a scam. The T&Cs are publicly available. The earn rates are disclosed. The conversion is stated. What the programme does is present those facts in a sequence and with an emphasis that makes the aggregate proposition sound more generous than the mathematics behind it actually are.

For a comparable deep dive into another seemingly generous financial ecosystem where the surface story differs from the structural mechanics, see our investigation into How Safaricom and M‑Pesa Actually Make Money.

If you are already an Old Mutual customer with multiple products, the Rewards programme is free to join and earns you something for what you are already paying. Use it. Redeem points regularly rather than accumulating them toward a distant future redemption, because the three‑year expiry clock is running on every batch. Redeem for cash via the OM Bank app where possible, not for airtime, because the cash rate is better. Do not let health questionnaire submission become routine without understanding that the data feeds the same system that prices your insurance.

If you are considering taking on additional Old Mutual products primarily to move up a tier, do the calculation. Moving from Tier 1 to Tier 3 on life insurance earn rates improves your cashback from 0.5% to 2.5% of premiums paid. Whether the cost of the additional products required to unlock that tier improvement is justified by the marginal points gain depends entirely on whether those products are suitable and competitively priced independent of the rewards they generate. Any decision to buy a financial product should be made on the merits of that product. The points that come with it are a secondary benefit at a yield too small to drive the primary decision.