Bold Brand Shift for Mutual & Federal

Peter Todd

Vuyo Lee and Peter Todd

In a bold move, Mutual & Federal, a member of the Old Mutual group, has announced that it will be refreshing its brand to reflect the evolution of the company and the insurance market.

“Our brand refresh was a direct response to research which we had conducted into perceptions of the Mutual & Federal name and brand identity,” says Peter Todd, Managing Director of Mutual & Federal. "The research revealed that, while the Mutual & Federal brand was well-established and entrenched, we lacked recognition and relevance for the younger market and emerging markets. This was something which we were eager to change.”

The rejuvenation of the brand, which Mutual & Federal embarked on in November 2010, is an integral part of the company’s three-year strategic programme. The aim of this programme is to ensure that Mutual & Federal becomes the market leader in short-term insurance. One of the ways to achieve this goal, according to Todd, is to focus on partnerships.

“For Mutual & Federal, the most important part of our business is relationships. Relationships with our brokers, our customers, our reinsurers and our stakeholders. This is why trust is a core value for Mutual & Federal, which we build on a day-to-day basis, be it in settling claims or developing market-leading products.”

This emphasis on relationships and trust is clearly reflected in the brand’s repositioning around the broker. Todd elaborates, “Mutual & Federal recognises that the advice given by our brokers has become vitally important in an increasingly crowded insurance market space. Guidance from brokers is key to help enable our clients to navigate their way through South Africa’s changing insurance landscape. In our logo, we illustrate this broker-centric approach with an accentuated ampersand between ‘Mutual’ and ‘Federal’ to depict our relationship marketing thrust.”

Another relationship which Mutual & Federal highlights in their refreshed brand is their link to their parent company, Old Mutual. The distinctive green of the logo, along with its font, are now aligned to the group’s brand identity. Being 100% owned by the Old Mutual group, it was important for Mutual & Federal to acknowledge their connection to their parent company while still maintaining a distinctive identity.

A further significant change in the logo which supports the repositioning of the Mutual & Federal brand is the exclusion of Table Mountain in the background. “The Table Mountain icon recognised the history of Mutual & Federal, attesting to its beginnings in the mother city,” explains Todd. “However, as our company expanded into the rest of Africa, its relevance waned as it was too region specific. In order to ensure that the Mutual & Federal brand is seen as a unified offering across all of southern Africa, we believed that it was essential to have one visual identifier which could apply to all our regions.”

This does not mean, however, that Mutual & Federal is abandoning its heritage and current customer base. “The rebrand is all about building on our current offerings. Mutual & Federal has been a constant in the insurance industry for 180 years, which means we have secured the trust and confidence of millions of South Africans over the decades. We are not looking to change our core values.”

Perhaps the biggest testament to the shift in focus for Mutual & Federal is the addition of the payoff line, Protecting what’s important to you. “It is the ultimate acknowledgement of our promise to our customers and brokers and the fact that they all have different individual needs. What’s important to them is important to us,” emphasises Todd. “The repositioning of the Mutual & Federal brand reflects our renewed commitment to delivering unrivalled personal advice and service to each and every one of our customers, through fostering close relationships with our strategic partners.”

Mutual & Federal is one of the leading short-term insurers in southern Africa.