Old Mutual Life Assurance Kenya has changed four of its savings plans. The Lengo Savings Plan and the Lengo Education Plan now run for up to 20 years. If you keep either one until it ends, you’ll get back at least what you paid in, even if the investments lose money. Old Mutual says the Hakika Savings Plan now pays a bigger guaranteed amount, and the Elimika Education Plan has a higher minimum and new payout timing. Old Mutual announced the changes on 25th September 2026.
All four plans are life insurance with savings attached. You pay a premium every month for a fixed number of years. Old Mutual invests that money, and when the term ends, a date called maturity, you get a lump sum or a series of payments. If you die before maturity, the plan pays out to your family.
If you stop paying and cash out early, that’s called surrendering the policy. You get the surrender value, which is your savings minus Old Mutual’s charges. Early on, that can be nothing. In May, an Elimika policy only built up a cash value after two years.
We compared Old Mutual’s product pages today with the same pages as they read in May 2026.
| Plan | May 2026 | Now |
|---|---|---|
| Lengo Savings | From KES 7,000 a month, term not stated. At maturity you got the fund value | From KES 7,000 a month, for up to 20 years. At maturity you get at least your total premiums back |
| Lengo Education | From KES 7,000 a month, term not stated. At maturity you got the fund value | From KES 7,000 a month, for up to 20 years. At maturity you get at least your total premiums back |
| Hakika | From KES 2,500 a month, for 5 to 43 years. A guaranteed lump sum at maturity | A higher guaranteed maturity benefit. Old Mutual hasn’t published the new figures |
| Elimika | From KES 2,500 a month, for 5 to 21 years | From KES 3,000 a month. You save for 5 to 15 years, then get guaranteed fee payments over 1 to 4 years |
The fund value is whatever your invested money is worth on maturity day, and that can be less than you put in. The new Lengo guarantee sets a floor at your total premiums. Both Lengo plans also now come with an automatic premium holiday of up to six months. You can stop paying for that long without losing the policy. You can still take out part of your savings before maturity. In May, that was capped at 15% of the fund. The new pages don’t give a percentage.
Hakika already guaranteed its payout at maturity, whatever the markets did. Old Mutual says your premiums now buy a higher guaranteed amount. It hasn’t said how much higher.
Elimika already paid school fees in instalments. The structure is what changed. You now save for 5 to 15 years, then collect guaranteed payouts over one to four years, monthly, quarterly, half-yearly or annually, so the money arrives as the school terms come. The minimum premium has gone up from KES 2,500 to KES 3,000. The death cover works differently too. In May, if you died during the term, Old Mutual paid your remaining premiums and your child still got the fees. The new page lists a guaranteed death benefit instead, with waiver of premium as an add-on you can choose.
Old Mutual says it has revised its charges and surrender terms in the customer’s favour. It doesn’t give the old or new charges, the new surrender values, or Hakika’s new maturity figures. It also doesn’t say whether the new terms cover people who already hold these policies or only new buyers.
Before signing, ask your Old Mutual adviser for two numbers. The first is what you’d get if you surrendered in year three. The second is the guaranteed amount at maturity. If you already hold one of these plans, don’t surrender it to buy the new version until someone has put both sets of numbers in front of you.
The 2024 FinAccess Household Survey, run by the Central Bank of Kenya, the Kenya National Bureau of Statistics and FSD Kenya, puts formal access at 84.8%, up from 83.7% in 2021. The share of adults who save went the other way. It fell to 68.1% from 74.0%, the first drop since 2009. The main reasons people gave for stopping were money problems and lost income.
Old Mutual’s own 2025 Financial Wellness Monitor shows the same gap. It surveyed 650 working Kenyans aged 20 to 59 earning KES 12,000 a month or more, in October 2025. 91% have a savings goal, and children’s education is the most common one at 37%. But 40% dipped into their savings to make ends meet over the past year, up from 35% in 2024.
The Lengo premium holiday and partial withdrawals speak to that 40%. A saver who hits a bad month can pause or take some money out without surrendering the whole policy. Martin Karenju, managing director of Old Mutual Life Assurance Kenya, said the plans have to handle today’s bills and tomorrow’s goals at once. Arthur Oginga, Old Mutual Kenya’s group CEO, said customers start from a goal such as school fees, a home or retirement, and Old Mutual wants to pick the product from there.
This is Old Mutual’s second product announcement this month. Last week, we covered Motor-Rahisi, which splits comprehensive car insurance into three payments. Both come during the financial wellness campaign Old Mutual started in Thika in May. A guarantee moves the investment risk from you to Old Mutual, and Old Mutual Holdings is in better shape to carry it than it was a year ago. It made more profit in the first half of 2026 than in all of 2025.
If you’re saving for a child’s school fees, the choice is now Elimika’s guaranteed fee payments from KES 3,000 a month or Lengo’s floor on your premiums from KES 7,000. Ask for the surrender values on either one before you sign.
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