New bank taking on Capitec with full public launch near
OM Bank has told investors during Old Mutual’s capital markets day this past week that its full public launch is scheduled for November 2025.
In its presentation, the challenger bank said it already had over 140,000 clients and was signing up 5,000 new customers per day.
However, during the presentation, Old Mutual Bank CEO Clarence Nethengwe said that they now have 150,000 customers, nearly a third of whom were younger than 25.
Nethengwe said OM Bank expected to reach its breakeven level of 2.8 million customers by 2028 by appealing to Gen Z clients.
OM Bank will target people earning between R8,000 and R80,000 per month, which it said reflects its current customer base.
These customers fall into the same category as many of those who helped South Africa’s disruptor bank, Capitec, surpass the Big Four banks in customer numbers.
Nethengwe said Old Mutual’s existing investment and insurance customer base of over 7 million South African clients gives them a strong starting position.
“We are not naïve, we know the 7 million within our South African customer base are already banked by someone else,” he said.
“However, the most interesting thing is that South Africans are multi-banked, and this provides an opportunity to bank those who already trust us.”
In its presentation, Old Mutual said it will win against its competitors (Capitec) by focusing on a customer base it already knows with a distinctive value proposition.
Old Mutual has spent around R2.8 billion in building the bank and securing a deposit-taking retail banking licence for the venture. It expects this to widen to R5 billion by 2027.
However, while it forecasts initial annual losses of between R1.1 billion and R1.3 billion, these are expected to gradually decrease until it reaches break-even by 2028.
OM Bank’s running start
The bank is well-positioned for success, with a strong starting point of 400,000 Old Mutual Money Account users and a R16-billion lending book.
Old Mutual also has significant banking experience. It was the majority shareholder of Nedbank for nearly three decades before a managed separation.
OM Bank was initially planned to launch before the end of 2024, but it revised its public rollout to the first quarter of 2025.
The company quietly added the app to the Google Play Store and Apple App Store for testing by a group of roughly 600 internal staff and select Old Mutual clients in April and May 2025, respectively.
In the following months, it gradually started opening up to a limited number of users who had pre-registered their interest in signing up for an account.
The bank officially went live in late August 2025 with a “soft launch,” which it has revealed would transition to a full public launch in the coming month.
In its financial results for the first half of the year, Old Mutual said that it was leveraging its existing banking capabilities for OM Bank. This includes R1.5 billion in deposits and R15.5 billion in lending operations.
Despite being digital-first, Old Mutual uses its 346 branch network and FAIS-accredited in-branch advisor force to help grow the bank.
“This allows us to expand current relationships with our mass-market customers while attracting new customers through a compelling banking proposition.”
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