Britam Brand Guidelines: A 1965 Nairobi Branch, a 2015 Name & a Prism-Shaped Tower

A foreign branch that became a Kenyan company.

Britam traces its start to 1965, when, the company says, it opened its first office in Nairobi as a foreign branch of British-American Insurance Company Limited, an insurer headquartered in the Bahamas. For more than four decades the longer name was the one on the door: the Kenyan business, its asset manager and its listed parent all carried the words British-American.

The branch became a local company on 14 November 1979, incorporated as British-American Insurance Company (Kenya) Limited. English Wikipedia ties the step to a government directive that branches of foreign-owned insurers be incorporated locally, and says the business had nine branches across Kenya by then. In 1984 Kenyan investors took a one-third shareholding, again in line with government directives, according to both the company and Wikipedia.

The modern group took shape in the 2000s. In 2004 it set up British-American Asset Managers to offer investment advice and fund management, and restructured under a non-operating holding company, the company says. English Wikipedia adds that the group took a stake in Equity Group Holdings the same year and a first stake in Housing Finance Company of Kenya in 2007; it raised that holding to 46.1 percent at the end of 2014 by buying the shares previously held by Equity Group.

Shares in the holding company, then called British-American Investments Company, were listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange in 2011 through an initial public offering that the company itself describes as undersubscribed. In June 2015 shareholders adopted a resolution to change the name to Britam Holdings Limited, putting the short name already used by its newer subsidiaries onto the parent company. English Wikipedia now styles it Britam Holding PLC, trading under the symbol BRIT.

Seven markets and a changing register of shareholders.

Expansion beyond Kenya began in Uganda, where Britam Insurance Company (Uganda) Limited started trading on 24 November 2010 after receiving a licence from the Uganda Insurance Commission. A South Sudan company followed in February 2012 and a Rwandan one, licensed by the National Bank of Rwanda, in 2013, the company says.

The largest step came through Real Insurance Company. On 9 December 2013 British-American Investments Company signed an agreement to buy 99 percent of Real Insurance from its holding company, and English Wikipedia says Britam’s shareholders approved the acquisition on 19 February 2014. Real Insurance, which Wikipedia says was founded in 1910 as a subsidiary of Royal Insurance, carried general insurance business in Kenya, Tanzania, Malawi and Mozambique, and so took Britam into three further countries. Its Malawi business, which Wikipedia dates to 1959, has been listed on the Malawi Stock Exchange since 29 September 2008. Today the group describes a seven-market footprint: Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, South Sudan, Malawi and Mozambique.

Ownership has shifted several times. In 2015 the Mauritian authorities appointed receivers at British American Investment Company (Mauritius), then Britam’s largest shareholder, and its holding was put up for sale; in June 2016 a 23.3 percent block was bought from the Government of Mauritius by an existing Kenyan shareholder, English Wikipedia says. The International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, agreed in January 2017 to take a 10.37 percent stake and concluded the purchase in September 2017, gaining a seat on the board, according to both the company and Wikipedia.

In June 2018 The Standard reported, citing a Britam statement, that a shareholder’s investment vehicle had agreed to sell its stake to Swiss Re Asset Management. English Wikipedia, citing Business Daily Africa in April 2019, says Swiss Re then held 15.79 percent, with the investment firm AfricInvest holding 16.2 percent.

Britam’s products run across life cover, health cover, general insurance, pensions and asset management. Its Kenyan website groups them under plain headings — insure, save and invest, pension — and gives many plans Swahili names, among them Milele Health, Bima Ya Mwananchi, Akiba Dhamana and the business range Britam Biashara. In October 2026 The Star reported that Britam Asset Managers had launched two special funds giving Kenyan investors access to global equities and to a mix of local and international assets, after approval by the Capital Markets Authority in August; the newspaper described the firm as one of Kenya’s five largest asset managers.

How African insurers present themselves.

Africa’s insurers often carry their history in their names. Some of the oldest were founded in Afrikaans or English and still trade under those words or their acronyms: Sanlam’s name is built from the Afrikaans title it was registered under in 1918, and Old Mutual’s comes from a nickname for a Cape Town society of 1845. Others work in Swahili- and French-speaking markets, and pan-African groups such as SanlamAllianz present their pages in both English and French.

The visual language is usually simple: a wordmark or a monogram, a shield or an emblem, and a small set of corporate colours, with greens, blues, reds and golds common across the sector. Few of these companies publish their colour codes or typefaces, so the palettes in these guides are our own interpretations rather than official values. Brand pages tend to lean on photography of families, workplaces and communities rather than on product images, because the products themselves are policies.

Those policies are organised in familiar ranges: life cover, health cover, motor and property cover, family cover, savings, retirement and investments, alongside business and corporate lines. Many groups sell through branches, tied agents and brokers as well as online, and several have moved into banking or mobile services; Old Mutual, for example, launched the digital-only OM Bank in 2025, and Sanlam announced a banking partnership in 2026. Mobile money and USSD menus are part of how some insurers reach customers who do not use apps.

Listed groups also speak through their reports. Integrated reports, results presentations and sustainability reports set out structure, ownership and strategy, and stock exchange listings in Johannesburg, Windhoek, Nairobi, Lagos and elsewhere keep a record of mergers and joint ventures. This guide sets out what those sources show for each company, and marks what rests only on a company’s own word.

A short name, four values and a tower.

The group’s public identity rests on a short list of words. Britam says its purpose is “safeguarding dreams and aspirations,” lists its values as accountability, trust, agility and customer centricity, and states its vision as “to be the leading diversified financial services company in our chosen markets across Africa.” Its websites are split by country, with the Kenyan site and those for the other markets reached from a strip of country codes at the top of the page, and a virtual assistant named Bella greets visitors.

The most visible piece of the brand is a building. Britam Tower, the group’s headquarters in the Upper Hill district of Nairobi, was completed in September 2017. The company gives its height as 195 metres with 32 usable floors, while English Wikipedia gives 200 metres and 31 storeys, with an adjacent 15-storey car park. Wikipedia describes its prism-like shape and notes wind turbines that generate power for parts of the building, and the group lists the tower’s opening as a milestone in its own published timeline, alongside its listing and its change of name.

On screen, the company’s Kenyan website sets its text in Outfit, a geometric sans, and arranges a long product menu under a handful of verbs rather than technical insurance terms. The site is in English, while many of the plan names it lists are in Swahili.

For a design guide, Britam shows how a regional insurer can carry a long legal name, a short brand and a physical landmark through several changes of shareholder and a move into seven markets. Compare Jubilee Insurance and Old Mutual, two more African insurers in this series. For this guide we use a harbour blue, ink and sand with a coral accent and a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Britam’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.