Alexander Mukasa leads SanlamAllianz Life Insurance Uganda as Chief Executive Officer, guiding the life insurance arm of Africa’s largest non-banking financial services partnership at a pivotal moment for Uganda’s insurance industry.
With more than 17 years of experience across underwriting, broking, and executive leadership, Mukasa brings a perspective shaped by both the technical and commercial sides of the insurance business.
Mukasa joined SanlamAllianz Life Insurance Uganda in December 2025, after more than eight years as Managing Director of Marsh McLennan Uganda, where he led the local subsidiary of the world’s largest insurance brokerage firm.
His career journey from being a student trainee and underwriting roles to customer-facing positions, sales leadership, and executive management has given him first-hand insight into the operational realities of the industry and the evolving expectations of clients.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science from Makerere University and an MBA from Heriot-Watt University, and is a Member of the Chartered Insurance Institute (UK) as well as the Insurance Training College of Uganda.
Beyond corporate leadership, Mukasa contributes to industry development through his service as a Technical Committee Member of the Insurance Brokers Association of Uganda and as a Board Member of the Rotary Club of Kiwatule.
Now at the helm of SanlamAllianz Life Insurance Uganda, Mukasa believes the country’s insurance sector stands on the brink of significant expansion.
While the industry is growing at 10–13 per cent annually, insurance penetration remains relatively low, leaving vast opportunities to expand coverage and strengthen financial resilience.
In this interview with CEO East Africa Magazine, Mukasa reflects on his leadership journey and shares his vision for building a more inclusive, trusted, and resilient insurance industry in Uganda.
Tell us about your leadership journey and how you rose to head this organisation.
I believe my leadership journey started back home with my upbringing, which was strict and religious-based. My first deployment in the insurance industry was 18 years ago as a student trainee with filing as my first assignment. I then moved into underwriting, and with that came front office duties of direct customer service.
These interactions with customers played a big role in the development of my career as I experienced first-hand the pain points of customers and, at the same time, noticed how disconnected back-office staff can be from the realities of customers’ needs.
From the front office, I moved the back end into deeper underwriting, which effectively involved risk analytics. My front office experience made me a better underwriter because I had a customer-centric view whenever I analysed the risk at hand.
This ensured that not only was I focused on organisational profit, but I also balanced that with meeting the customers’ needs as much as possible.
After a while in underwriting, I got bored with the back end and volunteered to support the sales team to achieve their objectives. I enjoyed interacting with and making presentations to clients, and this is what really drew me into a sales-focused career.
After 8 years in direct insurance, I took the bold step to make a 90-degree career shift and move into insurance brokerage.
This presented probably the biggest challenge of my career so far, given the cutthroat nature of the brokerage world. Despite how tough it was, it proved to be exciting and addictive; Every time you closed a big deal as a broker, you felt like the world was at your feet. I was privileged and LUCKY to lead a subsidiary of the world’s largest brokerage firm successfully for over 8 years.
After a decade and 25 days in the broking world, I took my boldest step to date by not only returning to direct underwriting but also on the life side in order to help deepen Uganda’s insurance agenda. I believe life insurance is a cornerstone of our nation’s growth and prosperity, as it provides the financial foundation that empowers our citizens to live with confidence.
What leadership values guide your decision-making?
Honestly, when I first encountered SanlamAllianz’s values of Care, Collaboration, Integrity, and Innovation, it was instant recognition, as I have always tried to live by these principles throughout my life and leadership journey.
From my lens;
Care means having a genuine obsession about clients’ experience, my colleagues’ wellness and growth, in that I genuinely cannot switch off most times, it follows me home. Empathy drives a lot of my decisions around culture.
Collaboration is about unlocking our ‘Winning As One’ spirit through open-minded partnerships that ensure our teams, agents, brokers and partners all achieve a better outcome together.
-Integrity: Strong personal and corporate ethics, transparency, and honesty are strong pillars for sustainability in everything we do.
Innovation: I have a resolute commitment to continuous innovation and improvement to create lasting value for our stakeholders. This serves as the foundation for our resilience, allowing us to face market changes head-on with decisive action and stoic composure.
What has been your biggest professional challenge as CEO, and how did you overcome it?
In a previous assignment, I stepped into a CEO role for a business that was undergoing extreme uncertainty; with no executive team, I had to rebuild from scratch while convincing our clients to stay committed during the period of uncertainty. Transitioning the organisation fast enough to stay relevant was critical, and if we didn’t earn clients’ trust, the business would have collapsed.
We overcame this through radical transparency. We didn’t hide the challenges; we invited our clients into the ‘fixing’ process. That period proved that trust is the only currency that matters in insurance. I am forever grateful to those who believed and stood by us, as well as those who left us when the blueprints were still being redrawn, and I carry those lessons with me on my leadership journey.
How do you measure organisational success beyond profits?
Could Museveni’s Election as EAC Chair Renew Push for Accelerated East African Integration?Profitability is vital, but the heartbeat that guides me is the value we create for our people, partners and the Ugandans we serve. If my team is evolving and thriving, if our clients feel heard and more confident about the future, if our actions make our partners more resilient and if we are contributing to the Ugandan social fabric, then we are winning. We are building a high-performance culture where ‘Shared Value’ means everyone from the shareholder to the rural farmer prospers.
How would you assess the current state of the insurance industry in Uganda?
The industry is growing 10-13% annually, with Health insurance and Life insurance leading the charge. Bancassurance and Micro insurance are the fastest-growing channels. The IRA has been actively encouraging consolidation, and the market structure makes it inevitable. These are signals of customer preference, consolidation and what’s to come. Penetration remains low, and there is an enormous opportunity to grow.
The IRA deserves genuine acknowledgement for strong and progressive stewardship, the move toward risk-based supervision, the push for actuarial and professional talent development and localisation, the framework for inclusive insurance products and the adaptation of global standards. They reflect a regulatory body that understands the sector and is willing to do the less glamorous structural work required to build it sustainably.
What major trends are shaping the future of insurance in the country?
Uganda’s insurance sector is undergoing a structural pivot where future market dominance depends on speed – speed to market, claims settlement and client feedback; Digital transformation and data analytics are a big part of this as they enable us to access, efficiency and a nuanced understanding of customer and market dynamics to serve them better.
Micro insurance and inclusive products like Takaful and climate-responsive parametric innovation are on the rise, and given the size of Uganda’s informal sector, they will have a significant impact on the insurance industry.
Emerging technologies like AI and ML can’t be ignored as they are anticipated to have broad applications and impact across all industries.
The regulatory landscape is also evolving to mirror global standards like IFRS, sustainability reporting, AML, data protection laws, etc. These require mindfulness and readiness for the business to fully incorporate.
Opportunities from economic drivers like Oil&Gas, Infrastructure investment and agriculture by both government and private sector present a growth frontier for life insurance.
Why do you think insurance penetration in Uganda remains relatively low?
The need is there, but the awareness gap is real. Most Ugandans have never received a plain-language explanation of what life insurance does for their family, yet millions remain one emergency away from financial catastrophe. Some of the trust deficits are remnants of legacy issues of disputed claims, unexplained delays and unclear policy explanations.
Word travels, and these issues linger for years. All this is solvable with a fundamental reorientation around one truth: the policy document is not the product. The claim experience is the product. Everything else follows from that.
In attendance were Mr. Bongo Joseph, District Police Commander; Mr. Kato, Officer in Charge of the Station; and Mr. Kalimbano, Regional Police Commander CID.
What can be done to increase public trust and uptake of insurance products?
We ought to start with the core promise: to pay all valid claims fast, fairly, and without making the claimant feel like a suspect. No literacy campaign closes the trust gap the way a family’s genuine testimony that we showed up when it mattered does. That testimony travels further than any advertisement.
This is why we are investing heavily in systems optimisation, to ensure smoother, trackable customer experiences across all touchpoints from onboarding, payments, policy administration, client statements, to claims settlement. The 48-hour commitment is public and intentional.
From there, financial literacy is embedded in everyday life – simple, familiar language, community-level that is continuous rather than episodic.
Distribution innovation through Partnerships like Telcom’s, banks, associations, and employers to reach people who would ordinarily never walk into an insurance office, but who absolutely need what we offer. And radical product simplicity: if a client cannot explain their cover to their spouse in a few minutes, the product has failed regardless of its actuarial elegance.
Where do you see Uganda’s insurance sector in the next 10 years?
This sector is growing threefold, which is the conservative outcome if the industry continues to execute well, with life insurance positioned to outpace non-life. Kenya’s digital-enabled transformation happened within a single generation. With South Africa as the benchmark of what a mature African insurance market looks like, Uganda has every structural ingredient to chart its own compelling trajectory.
Consolidation is coming. As capital requirements tighten and technology investment becomes non-negotiable, economics will force market rationalisation. The companies that emerge strongest will be those with genuine scale, trusted brands, and client relationships built to survive turbulence.
The product landscape will transform from imported templates into products designed around how Ugandans actually live – flexible, affordable, bundled and personalised. I anticipate seeing the first generation of Ugandans who plan their retirement around a life insurance product as naturally as a savings account.
Most importantly, I see an industry that has finally earned something it currently struggles with – the trust of ordinary Ugandans, not through campaigns or slogans, but simply by showing up, paying claims, and being accessible to everyone.
What keeps you optimistic about the future of insurance in Uganda?
The people- and I want to be specific.
The young mother who took out her first life policy not because a salesperson was persuasive but because she genuinely understood what it meant for her children if something happened to her. The colleague at Sanlam Allianz Life Uganda who arrives energised by the idea that they are building financial safety nets, not processing paperwork. Those people are everywhere once you start looking.
Then there is the arithmetic. A median age of 17 years. GDP growth is above 5%. Behind us, Sanlam’s century of African financial services expertise and Allianz’s presence across 70 countries serving 125 million clients globally, knowledge, technology, and risk capability are now available to Ugandan policyholders in a way they never have been before.
