UP’s CE Index shows trust is doing heavy lifting in investment and life insurance

South Africa’s life insurance and investment industries delivered strong customer experience results in the latest University of Pretoria (UP) Customer Experience (CE) Index, with life insurance scoring 74.3 and the investment benchmark reaching 76.7 out of 100 against the international benchmark of 75.

According to Professor Adré Schreuder, Head of the Industry Chair in Customer Experience at UP, the investment industry was added to the CE Index following subscriber requests and the large overlap between companies operating in the life insurance and investment categories.

“The investment industry is already familiar with indices based on financial performance across products such as unit trusts and retirement annuities, but this benchmark adds a different layer by evaluating the customer experience behind the relationship, rather than returns alone,” he says.

The CE Index measures the full end-to-end customer experience that consumers have with brands, products, and service providers, looking beyond satisfaction or service-quality surveys to evaluate quality of experience, perceived value, problem resolution, satisfaction, loyalty, expectations, and emotional response.

The investment industry excels at engaging with customers

The investment category’s strongest performance came from Allan Gray, which was named overall winner, achieving a score of 80 out of 100 – the highest brand rating in the study. Discovery Invest and Old Mutual shared second place, while Liberty Invest, Momentum Wealth, and Sanlam Wealth shared third place.

The industry performed strongly across the CE Index model:

• Quality of Experience reached 81.9, placing the industry well above the international benchmark of 75 and showing strong customer engagement, service delivery, and front-end interaction.

• Satisfaction scored 78.1, showing that customers are generally content after dealing with their investment providers.

• Loyalty stood at 76.6, suggesting that most customers remain inclined to stay, although 23.4% may be open to churn.

• Value of Experience came in at 75.2, sitting close to the international benchmark and showing that customers’ sense of value remains a key area to strengthen against the 81.9 Quality of Experience score.

• The 6.7-point gap between Quality of Experience and Value of Experience shows that investment providers are delivering strong engagement but still need to make that experience feel more valuable.

Schreuder explains that the investment benchmark is particularly important because the industry typically judges itself on hard, quantifiable measures such as returns, risk, fees, product structures, and performance against financial targets, while customers also judge the relationship through clarity, confidence, responsiveness, accountability, reassurance, competence, and trust.

“The CE Index adds the customer relationship to the way investment providers understand performance,” he says. “It helps them see whether customers are staying because the relationship is genuinely strong, or because moving a portfolio feels complicated, risky, or poorly understood.”

The life insurance industry’s performance rests on channel depth

Liberty and Old Mutual share the overall win within the life insurance industry, with Discovery, Momentum and Sanlam sharing second place. Absa Life won the Life Product Category, Old Mutual won both the Broker/ Advisor and Tied Agent Channel categories, and Discovery and Liberty shared the Contact Centre Category win.

The industry recorded a solid CE Index, with several figures shaping the policyholder relationship:

• Quality of Experience reached 79.9, indicating that policyholders generally rate engagement, communication, and service delivery positively when dealing with their insurers.

• Satisfaction came in at 75.9, meaning that the industry is broadly meeting policyholder expectations after direct brand interaction.

• Loyalty sat at 73.6, which should be read through the long-term nature of life insurance, where customers may remain with a policy because the relationship is valued, but also because switching can become costly, complex, or impractical.

• Value of Experience registered 73.4, making perceived value one of the clearer areas for improvement in a category where customers weigh premiums, policy benefits, administration, and claims support over many years.

• The 6.5-point gap between Quality of Experience and Value of Experience showed that life insurers are delivering strong engagement but still need to make that experience feel more valuable across the full policyholder journey.

Schreuder notes that the channel results show why life insurers need to manage customer experience across the full operating model. “The strongest insurers are those that can carry the same standard across advice, service, administration, claims communication, and support over the life of the policy.”

Problem resolution and advocacy reveal the true strength of the relationship

Problem resolution was one of the clearest relationship tests in both benchmarks. While 29% of investment customers and 15% of life insurance customers reported an issue, investment providers completely resolved 70% of problems and life insurers resolved 68%, with unresolved cases remaining low at 7% and 8% respectively.

“These findings are especially relevant in sectors built on long-term financial confidence. When customers trust a provider with investments, retirement planning, protection needs or future claims, a problem rarely feels like a simple service failure. It tests whether the institution can respond when the relationship is under pressure.”

Advocacy also carried significant commercial weight. In life insurance, 57.4% of new customers joined through a recommendation or referral, compared with 13.2% through sales efforts.

The CE Index’s Intent-to-Behaviour Ratio showed which brands were best at converting stated willingness to recommend into actual recommendations. The investment industry recorded a 65.7% conversion rate, led by Discovery Invest at 75% and Allan Gray at 72.9%.

Life insurance recorded a significantly lower industry ratio of 47.7%, likely because life insurance recommendations depend less on visible short-term performance and more on long-term trust, policyholder confidence, and claims experience, which customers may only judge years after taking out a policy. Absa Life achieved the strongest life insurance ratio at 61.9%, followed by Old Mutual at 52.1%.

“The difficult question for boards and executive teams becomes whether customer experience receives the same commercial discipline as product performance, pricing, distribution, advertising, and sales. The numbers show that trust is doing significant acquisition work, because a trusted recommendation carries credibility that paid channels cannot easily match. The CE Index should therefore guide executives on where to focus in the year ahead, with customer experience treated as a direct driver of retention, advocacy, and growth,” Schreuder concludes.