Doreen Kyomugisha leads the finance function at SanlamAllianz General Insurance Uganda as Chief Financial Officer, helping steer one of the country’s most significant insurance integrations following the merger between Sanlam and Jubilee Allianz.
With more than 14 years of experience across insurance, professional services, and multinational business environments, she has built a reputation for strengthening financial governance, modernising reporting systems, and building finance operations that support both commercial stability and growth.
Her leadership comes at a time when the insurance industry is navigating consolidation, tighter regulatory expectations, and the growing need for stronger balance sheets capable of supporting large corporate risks and infrastructure projects.
As the company strengthens its balance sheet and investment capacity, her finance team is also driving operational efficiencies, optimising reinsurance structures, and ensuring the insurer remains comfortably above regulatory solvency thresholds while still investing in digital transformation and customer experience.
Her academic background reinforces the depth she brings to the finance function.
She holds an MBA from Edinburgh Business School, is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants, and has completed the Senior Management Development Program at Stellenbosch University. She also holds a Certificate of Insurance from the Insurance Training College and is a Certified Public Accountant in Uganda.
In this interview with CEO East Africa Magazine, Kyomugisha discusses the financial strategy behind the SanlamAllianz integration, the importance of strong governance in insurance, and how disciplined capital management will shape the next phase of industry growth in Uganda.
Can you break down how the merger changed your capital structure, liquidity position, and overall balance sheet strength compared to the pre-merger entities?
The merger improved the efficiency of our capital base by reducing the need for duplicated buffers and freeing capital to be deployed more strategically.
Our liquidity position strengthened because premium inflows and investment cash flows are now managed through a more coordinated approach, improving predictability and enhancing our ability to meet claims obligations smoothly.
The combined entity is inherently more diversified across customer segments and counterparties, which reduces earnings volatility and strengthens the balance sheet’s capacity to absorb shocks.
What were the biggest financial considerations and risks you had to manage during the integration of Sanlam and Jubilee Allianz?
Integration risk in insurance is heavily about control, data, and continuity. The major considerations were ensuring reserve and liability adequacy as actuarial methodologies and assumptions were aligned, while also protecting liquidity and cash conversion by keeping collections, claims, and commission processes stable throughout the transition. In parallel, careful attention was given to impairment assessment on assets, ensuring that financial positions remained accurately reflected during the integration process.
Equally important was maintaining the integrity of policy and claims data as systems and processes were harmonised across the organisation. This required tight controls around data management and operational oversight, while also ensuring that one-off integration costs were carefully managed. Throughout the process, maintaining full regulatory compliance and high-quality reporting remained a central priority to ensure stability and confidence during the transition.
Sanlam General posted strong profits while Jubilee Allianz suffered integration-related losses. What steps is the finance office taking to harmonise profitability across the group?
The first discipline is separating underlying performance from integration noise. We decompose results into core underwriting performance, transitional integration costs, and any legacy remediation items.
From there, harmonisation focuses on fundamentals such as underwriting controls, reducing claims leakage, data analytics, improving cash conversion and receivables discipline, and enforcing consistent expense management. The goal is to bring every line and channel onto one performance standard so profitability is driven by a healthy underwriting margin.
What early cost synergies have you realised since the merger, whether in operations, distribution, reinsurance, or technology, and what additional efficiencies do you expect over the next 12–18 months?
Early synergies were realised from removing duplication by streamlining overlapping functions, consolidating suppliers and centralising treasury processes.
The more meaningful efficiencies will materialise over 12-18 months, once operating models are redesigned, such as;
- rationalising and integrating technology platforms
- automating finance and operational workflows
- optimising reinsurance structures through consolidated placements and clearer treaty architecture.
The real measure of synergy will not only be “cost reduction,” but improved cost-to-serve and service turnaround times.
How do you balance the need for aggressive investments in digital transformation and rebranding with the need to maintain strong financial performance?
Digital and brand investment decisions are linked with measurable outcomes. Each initiative must have a clear business case tied to revenue uplift, cost reduction, risk reduction, or compliance resilience.
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Dutch Development Bank FMO Extends USD 20 Million Facility to I&M Bank Uganda to Boost SME FinancingFunding is phased, so we protect profitability while still moving fast. At the same time, we maintain hard guardrails around liquidity, capital adequacy, and underwriting performance.
The principle is to invest aggressively, but only where value can be measured and captured.
With a significantly stronger balance sheet, how has your capacity changed in underwriting large corporate, infrastructure, and high-risk portfolios that require deeper capital backing?
A stronger balance sheet improves capacity, credibility, and flexibility. It allows us to structure larger limits and retain more risk, supported by a stronger reinsurance programme. It also strengthens market confidence with corporates and brokers because claims-paying ability and financial stability matter as much as price. Importantly, capacity doesn’t mean taking on any risk, but rather we can selectively underwrite larger, more complex opportunities with the right governance, controls, and risk engineering behind them.
How are you optimising your capital adequacy ratios to remain compliant with regulatory requirements while still investing for growth?
Capital adequacy is managed through both capital strength and risk efficiency. On the capital side, we protect earnings quality, maintain prudent reserving, control credit risk in receivables and reinsurance recoverables to avoid unnecessary volatility.
On the risk side, we shape the portfolio away from capital-intensive business and other inadmissible assets, optimise reinsurance to transfer risk efficiently, and enforce concentration limits and underwriting referral controls. The objective is to remain comfortably above regulatory minimum while ensuring capital is deployed into growth areas that generate strong risk-adjusted returns.
What is your strategy for negotiating more favourable reinsurance terms now that SanlamAllianz has a larger financial footprint in Uganda?
Scale improves negotiating leverage, but credibility wins the best terms. Our approach is to present reinsurers with a strong data portfolio, consistent reserving, disciplined underwriting governance, and evidence of claims control. We also analysed the existing treaties for both entities and negotiated for larger reinsurance capacity in line with our strategic growth plans. Reinsurance is treated as a strategic tool, not just a claims payment mechanism.
The combined investment income for the merged entity is one of the highest in the market. What is driving your investment strategy, and how diversified is your current portfolio?
The strategy is driven by three priorities: liquidity for claims-paying capacity and compliance with admissibility and concentration limits. For general insurance, that means strong liquidity and quality fixed income. We also rely on our experts in Sanlam Allianz Investments Limited to advise us on the issuers, tenors, and asset classes, so performance is not overly dependent on a single counterparty or interest rate scenario. Governance is equally important with clear limits, investment committee oversight, and stress testing.
How will you leverage investment returns to stabilise premiums, strengthen reserves, and sustain product innovation?
Investment returns create stability, but they are not a substitute for underwriting discipline. We prioritise balance sheet resilience through strengthening reserves when prudent and maintaining robust liquidity buffers. Once the core insurance engine is healthy, we can sustainably fund product innovation, especially innovations that improve customer experience, reduce unit costs, or enhance risk selection and fraud controls.
Are there new asset classes or investment opportunities you are exploring post-merger to better support long-term liabilities, especially on the life insurance side?
Yes, but with general insurance, we approach “new asset classes” differently from life. Our priority is always claims-paying liquidity and capital preservation, so we only expand into opportunities that strengthen returns without weakening our ability to pay claims quickly.
Post-merger, our larger balance sheet allows us to be more intentional in two areas:
- Longer tenor, high-quality fixed income (within liquidity limits)
- More diversified exposure to alternative investments, carefully structured within regulation to improve diversification beyond pure sovereign exposure.
We are expanding the opportunity set, but we are not compromising on safety, liquidity, or governance.
The Insurance Regulatory Authority has been pushing for consolidation. How does the CFO’s office ensure that SanlamAllianz remains compliant, well-capitalised, and resilient amid rising regulatory expectations?
We manage regulatory resilience proactively, not reactively. That includes forward-looking capital planning, frequent stress testing, strong liquidity management, and high-integrity financial reporting with disciplined reconciliations and audit trails.
Operational compliance is equally critical, such as claims controls, underwriting governance and investment limit compliance. Finally, we ensure board-level visibility on solvency, concentration risks, and integration progress. In a consolidation, compliance and capitalisation become a competitive advantage because they underpin trust, stability, and long-term growth.
