NobleOak Life Limited (NOL) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Nominated time for the meeting. On behalf of the Board of Directors, I am pleased to welcome you to the NobleOak 2022 Annual General Meeting, a second since listing on the ASX in July 2021. I've been informed by the Company Secretary that a quorum is present, so I am pleased to declare the meeting open. I'd like to introduce my fellow directors to our attendance. Anthony Brown, our CEO and Managing Director; Kevin Hamman, Deputy Chair; Ms. Inese Kingsmill; Andrew Boldeman; and Sarah Brennan. Also present are Scott Pearson, our Chief Financial Officer; Suzanne Barron; and [indiscernible], our Joint Company Secretaries; and Max Murray, our auditor partner from Deloitte, who will convey to ask -- answer any questions on the financial statements later in the meeting. This meeting is also being made available online by Automic's Online Meeting platform. This platform enables shareholders and property holders to participate in this live webcast of the meeting, as well as ask questions and submit votes. The business of today's meeting will begin with an address by myself, followed by our CEO, Anthony Brown. We'll then conduct the formal business of the meeting with a live vote by poll. There will be opportunity to ask questions after each item of business, as well as general Q&A before voting closes. As this meeting has been conducted as a hybrid meeting, I would like to welcome those shareholders that are joining us via Zoom and asking please submit any questions or comments via the Q&A function, which can be found at the bottom of your Zoom screen. Questions can be submitted at any time. If you have joined online to answer a question, press the Q&A icon. This will open a new screen. At the bottom of that screen, there is a section for you to type your question. Please state your question by typing the shareholder SRN or HIN. This will allow the moderator to identify you as a shareholder. If you have joined online, I would like to ask your question verbally, type your SRN and HIN and then type I'd like to speak. Once you have finished typing, please hit Enter on your keyboard to send. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until the relevant time in the meeting. Kindly include the agenda item number to which your questions relate. Please also note that your questions may be moderated or if we receive multiple questions on one topic, amalgamated. Due to time constraints, we may run out of time to answer all your questions, however we endeavor to get through as many questions as possible. If this happens, we'll answer them in due course by e-mail or post meeting response on our website. All questions will be addressed to me as Chair. I either deal with the question personally or ask someone who is better placed to respond. We will do our best to answer any relevant questions raised. I ask that you keep your questions brief and to the point so that as many shareholders as possible have a chance to ask a question. For those of you who are in attendance physically, we also give an opportunity to ask questions. At the relevant time, we'll ask that you please raise your hand. When we reach the formal business of the meeting, voting on all resolutions will be conducted by a poll. Shareholders attending virtually and wishing to vote on the resolutions being put to the meeting can do so through Automic's investor portal. If you are not already logged into the investor portal, instructions on how to do so can be found in the Notice of the Meeting. If you have already lodged a proxy vote, please note that you do not need to vote again through the online voting portal. Your votes will already be counted in the poll on each resolution as per your proxy instruction. If you had any problem voting or registering your shareholding with Automic, please call the support number shown on the screen. To allow shareholders time to log in, I now declare the poll open. Online voting is now open and remain open until I declare a close at the end of the formal business. Your votes must have been seen prior to the poll being closed for it to count. I'll move on to my Chairman's address. I'm pleased to report the NobleOak's full year as a listed company was a successful one. The company continued to outperform the market, delivering strong growth in premiums and profits and exceeding our prospectus forecast while continuing to make good strategic decisions and progress. As well as preparing for our successful IPO, our team led by Chief Executive Officer, Anthony Brown, did an excellent job to remain operationally resilient, manage the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 and regulatory change in the Australian life insurance industry. This include developing and rolling out new individual disability income insurance, IDII products in time for the 1st of October 2021 APRA deadline. The team did this while maintaining excellent customer service that has seen NobleOak become Australia's most awarded direct life insurer for the last 2 years, and we're very proud of that. Since the rollout of the IDII products, the market has been going through -- pretty difficult period of adjustment with new business volumes down materially. Green shoots, however, are appearing. However, sales across the market remained down by 20% from normal levels. The higher-priced new products are beginning to improve industry profitability, which benefits all insurers, including NobleOak. The team continues to execute our growth strategy in a disciplined way, and as Australia's fastest-growing life insurer, our strategy is working. We continue to take market share from the incumbents, while investing in our platform, people and building our brand. We are confident in the long-term prospects of our direct business where our ambition is to be a leading challenger brand in the $11 billion in Australian individual life risk market. With our market share at around 2%, there's still a lot of room to grow, and we are well capitalized and strongly positioned for growth as the market continues to improve. This year, we've made good progress in our environmental and social [ governance ] i.e. ESG efforts, so we've worked with a range of stakeholders to develop an ESG framework suitable for a business of our size, including targets and developing framework aligned to the UN sustainable development goals. We focus on areas that make sense for NobleOak including recycling, workplace diversity, human rights, ethics and governance, and broadly committing to reducing our CO2 output achieving net 0 emissions by 2030. We'll report back to the framework annually and look forward to discussing with shareholders. Following the retirement of [ Emery Fazzini ] at the AGM last November after 10 years as Director, Sarah Brennan, who has joined the Board in December 2021. And Sarah brings 25 years' experience in financial services, including life insurance and a high regard executive and public company director. She has proven to be an excellent addition to the Board in fresh insights and prospective. Thanks, Sarah. Board renewal has been a priority for us as a listed company, and we will continue to ensure we have the right depth of skills and experience to deliver on our strategic objectives, ensure we maintain strong governance. On behalf of my fellow directors, I would like to thank the NobleOak team who might -- [indiscernible] actually here in the back, for their hard work and results this year. Thanks also to you, our shareholders, for your continued support. As a nimble life insurer with a clear customer focus, a service-led value proposition and a prudent approach to risk management, we believe NobleOak is well-positioned with future growth and success and look forward to another successful year ahead. I'm going to hand now to Anthony to address the meeting and provide more detail on the company's performance this year, as well as some color on recent trading and our outlook for financial year '23. Thank you.

Thanks, Stephen. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for coming along. I'm hoping it's a good thing, but it's so full today. It's definitely been the fullest AGM we've ever had in NobleOak's history, I believe, so thanks very much. Look, we are really pleased. We had a good year in 2022. We've got some of the numbers on the board there. But our number of in-force policies increased by 33% to 103,000. And that was backed by some lower lapse rates across the industry, but in particular, across our own direct channels and our strategic partner channels, resulting in our in-force premium going up by 40%, which is a really substantial increase in what is the real value driver of the business. In-force premium is that annuity stream of income that really creates value in a life insurer. So it's lovely to see that increase to almost $255 million, and that is 9% ahead of what our prospectus target was. So really pleased with that. As Stephen mentioned, new business sales have definitely been impacted across the industry. We had the new IDII products launched in October last year, and they were more expensive products and less featured, and they were required by APRA that all insurers had to launch this range of products. What that meant was that sales went down across the industry. We did expect that to happen. It's still recovering. There are green shoots, but sales across the industry had dropped. But really pleasingly, we're still taking more market share, and we are sort of [ batting ] above our weight, which we're particularly pleased about. We also continue to invest. This isn't just about short-term targets. We are growing a really strong business for the future as well. So we continue to invest in our direct business with brands and digital technology. Our strategic partners, we had to launch these new products, and we've refined them to make them more competitive over the year. And our Genus administration business, where we onboarded the auto and general book of business that we purchased about a year ago, and that's -- Genus is our administration business. So that's offset a lot of the reduction in the Freedom portfolio that is the previous main driver of value in Genus. So a lot of work in all 3 of those streams and it has been a good year. And therefore, it's lovely to see that the profit also went up by 35%, 9.5 -- impact was $9.5 million, which is about 5% ahead of Prospectus targets. So hopefully, you're pleased overall for what was a relatively challenging year in the market, we're really happy with how we finished off. I suppose just as important for us. So on the next slide is, as I mentioned, we are building a great business for now and the future. So implementing strategic and operational initiatives is just so important to us. Stephen mentioned our awards. We are the most awarded direct life insurer for the second year in a row. We're the smallest, but we're also the most awarded. And there are a couple of real signature awards that we achieved. One is the Platinum Trusted Service Award from FIFO. And I don't know if many of you are aware of FIFO, it's a little bit like TripAdvisor, where anyone can get on. They can rate you -- you have no control over the reviews. We have consistently got more than 4.5 out of 5. In fact, we're close to 4.8 at the moment, and we've won the Platinum Trusted Service Award from FIFO because we had the right number of reviews and the scoring is excellent. And the other one was a one-off, which was a bit of a surprise, was from GRIST Consulting that do shadow shopping across many industries, and we won the best call center in Australia across all industries. It was a signature award for us. The team were very proud of that achievement. And I think it's a real endorsement to them because we didn't even know were in the award in the first place. So the team is really happy with that. It does give a lot of credibility and confidence to us that the products that we're delivering a great value. We're backed by great service, and we're doing the right thing by our customers, which is the backbone of NobleOak. The second point is we launched those new IDII products or income protection products ahead of the APRA deadline, which was 30 October last year. which took a lot of resource and a lot of time. And importantly, we developed a new white label capability. So it was only within the 12-month period that we signed RAC WA that has more than 1.1 million members and Budget Direct that has over 1 million customers. As alliance partners, where we white label our products to sell to their customer and their membership base. So we have to actually build the white label capability as well as onboard those partners. Wonderful achievement for the team during a busy year. And we've now got over 30 alliance partners allowing us to distribute our products to many channels, plus a pipeline of other potential partners that we're looking at. But we're all about the team. I mean, NobleOak is basically a team of people. So having a good engaged, great quality, passionate team gets us to where we want to be. And we do a survey each year when we had 86% engagement on our staff survey during a year when we're in the middle of obviously COVID and hybrid working arrangements and so on. So we're really pleased that people kept that connection and the culture during a tough year, [indiscernible] a real credit to the NobleOak team that they're so engaged. Now we have been, I believe, punching above our weight in the industry, and we are a small and nimble player I mean that does come with advantages as well as the regulations change and consumer behavior changes and so on, it does allow us to adapt probably more quickly than some of the larger competitors of ours. But we have seen market reduction, as Stephen said. It's probably been down about 30% from last year, but we're still taking market share. And we will also enjoy the increase in industry profitability that all insurers will enjoy now that these new products, more higher-priced products, have come into the market. There has been a lot of market consolidation. There is changing behavior in the consumer behavior. People do seem to be going a bit more direct. So we really believe we are well-placed as we look to the future as well. The chart on the bottom right there just shows you a picture of what our in-force premium market share was 2 years ago in 2020. It's about 0.8%, not quite 1%, and we move forward 2 years to 2022 and it's 2.1%. So we're -- that's really impressive market growth in a pretty challenging relatively flat market. Now that we've talked about the market. It is improving, though. The new IDII products came about a year ago. We are seeing green shoots. So we are expecting a bit of a pickup across the market. And we remain very tight with the way we underwrite and write business. So we do think we're well-positioned as that recoups. Lapse rates will increase across the market. There was a reduction in lapse rate market-wide during COVID-19. Of course, now there's more inflation pressures across the market, there's more cost of living pressures. So we do expect lapse rates to increase across the industry that will impact NobleOak. But we still believe that we will remain under the market lapse rate. We remain under now and we still remain under our prospectus forecast. Rising interest rates, we all know about and we're all experiencing. Fortunately, NobleOak's investment portfolio is really in short duration, fixed interest investments. So we can only see upside as interest rates go up as far as our returns go at the moment, which we do believe will offset any cost inflationary pressures that we face in the business. So I suppose, in short, we do expect to continue to outperform. We do expect to continue to increase our market share going forward. Over the first 4 months of 2023, so from July to October, our in-force premium grew by 7%. So looking ahead, we do expect to deliver material in-force premium growth of around 20% in 2023 in a market that's probably expected to grow by less than 5%. And with our disciplined approach to keeping our margins stable, we will continue to obviously invest in capability in the business as well going forward. The team is highly engaged. It's a wonderful team. We're all very excited to also move into a new location. Currently, we're on 1.5 floors. We've taken out new floors, which we negotiated during COVID due to a very attractive rate, but we'll all be on 1 floor together. And it's -- we're looking to further really encourage people to come back in permanently into the office and collaborate together while we continue to refine our flexible work environment. So I would like to thank the team. The NobleOak team is just -- as I said, they have batted well and truly above their average this year. It's an amazing team. The capabilities only got stronger and stronger. So I just wanted to thank you all so much for your involvement. There's quite a few people here today. Of course, thank the Board for their amazing support during a very eventful year as well. And thank you all fellow shareholders, for your support. It's greatly appreciated, and I really hope that you're comfortable with the results. Thank you very much, and I'll pass back to Stephen.

Thank you, Anthony. Thank you very much. Okay. Before we start the formal business of the meeting, may I remind you that if you have any questions on my or Anthony's address or the auditor in relation to the financial report. For those online, please raise them through the Q&A function you find at the bottom of your screen. Please note these questions as general business. We will collect any questions received and respond to them after the completion of the formal business. We'll also take questions from the floor at that time. We now move to the formal business as set out in the notice of meeting. Notice of the Annual General Meeting was made available to all registered members by the ASX platform and also dispatched either electronically or in hard copy on the 21st of October 2022 and has been taken as read. Voting on all resolutions will be conducted by poll. For the purpose of the poll, I appoint an officer from Automic. The company's share registry has examined and prepared summaries of the proxy forms received to act as returning officer and to conduct the poll. Shareholders in attendance virtually that have already submitted a vote by proxy should note that your votes will already be counted towards whole. You do not need to lodge another vote, unless you wish to change your proxy instruction. Shareholders in attendance virtually who have not submitted a vote by proxy and wish to vote on the resolutions being put to the meeting they can do so by registering your shareholding with Automic. Instructions of how to register your holding were provided in the notice of meeting. As mentioned earlier, online voting is open and remain open until the poll is declared closed. Your votes must have been submitted prior to the poll being closed for them to count. Those shareholders and tenants that are entitled to vote on the poll out all shareholders representative [ attorneys ] of shareholders and proxy holders who hold the yellow voting cap. Hope you've all got one. If you're attending more than 1 of those capacities, you will have an issue with as many voting cards as you have separate capacities. If anyone believes they are entitled to vote on this poll with any capacity and does not have a yellow voting card in respect thereof, please raise your hands now and a member of our share registry team will assist you. Nobody? It's good. At the appropriate time, I will ask that you mark your vote for the resolutions on a yellow voting card. If you are a shareholder wish to all your votes for resolution, please place your mark in either for, against or abstain box. If you wish to split your vote, please write the number of -- or the proportion of your votes, you wish to cast in the corresponding for, against, abstain boxes. Please note that some of the split votes must not exceed your total holding. If you are a proxy holder, some of the other votes to which you are entitled has been attached to the voting card. If the summary of votes, you include discretionary votes, these are yours to cast at your discretion. If you wish to cast the discretionary votes, please place that mark in the corresponding for, against, abstain boxes. If your summary of votes does not have any discretionary votes, you do not need to mark your voting card and we'll simply need to hand it to a returning office at the end of the resolutions. After all resolutions have been read and voted upon, place it in one of the ballot boxes that will be circulated throughout the room. Any questions on the voting process? No? Thank you, no questions. Proxies have been inspected and all validly lodged have been accepted. Proxies have been received representing 46,453,533 shares at 54.04% of the issued capital of the company. Please note all undirected proxies or open votes that have nominated the Chairman of the meeting as their proxy will be cast in favor of each resolution and notice of the meeting, subject to voting exclusions as contained in the notice of meeting. The first item of business is to receive the company's financial report, directors' report and auditor's report for the company and its controlled entities for the year [ 30 June ] 2022. The financial reports are now laid before the meeting. Please note, there is no requirement for shareholders to actually approve the annual financial reports. The company's Chief Financial Officer, Mr. Scott Pearson and the company's auditor for 2022 financial year, Mr. Max Murray of Deloitte are present to take relevant questions on the financial statements, the conduct of our audit and preparation and content of the independent auditor's report. Any questions on the financial statements? Nothing, okay. Thank you, no questions. So we now have to see the resolutions in the meeting for the meeting. Resolution 1 on as follows, to consider and, if thought fit, pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. After the purpose of Section 250R2 of the Corporations Act and for all other purposes, the remuneration report of the company for the year ended 30 of June 2022 be adopted. If you wish to discuss the resolution, please submit your questions via Q&A or raise your hand. Are there any questions? No questions. Thank you. The proxies received in relation to this resolution are on the screen, it's pretty clear who are for. I now put the motion. Those physically in attendance, please mark your voting instruction on your yellow voting cards Shareholders can vote via the online portal, I'll remind not to click on the next until you finalize discussing and you'll select your votes for all resolutions, not just this one. Resolution 2, the election of director Sarah Brennan. Resolution 2 is as follows: to consider and, if thought fit, pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that Sarah Brennan, a Non-Executive Director of the company, who having been appointed to the Office of Director since the last Annual General Meeting in accordance with Rule 63 of the constitution and ASX listing rule 14.4, being eligible and offering herself for reelection be reelected as a director of the company. If you should discuss this resolution, please submit your questions now. No questions? The proxy received in relationship -- sorry?

Thank you for the question. So my history, I started my career at MLC Life and with the MLC Group, actually started in a call center, which is a fantastic way of sort of learning about customers and customer needs for insurance. I operated as a product manager for MLC Life. I then moved to Citicorp, and I was actually the principal officer of Citicorp Life. So worked around that life business for a number of years. I then had a brief setback at MLC, and then went to Deutsche Bank. And at Deutsche Bank, I operated the retail financial services business, the Deutsche Bank in Australia, as well as for Asia Pacific. And while I was there, I actually started a life company. So I was at the time, I think we're about the sort of 50th life insurance license ever issued in Australia. So I had the benefit of not only running a life insurance company but starting one as well, which is a fantastic experience. Subsequent to my corporate life, I have operated as a consultant in the industry and working with both funds management groups and life insurance groups as a consultant and providing research services to those businesses. And I'm also a Director of AMP superannuation. So I sit on the board of AMP superannuation, and then I'm also an advisory Board member of a business called Investment trends, which is a research business and also of a nonbank lender as well. So that's sort of -- I'm married with 2 children and 2 dogs and a cat. And a cat, you've got to remember that. Yes, so I think hopefully, that gives you a good sense of my background. So deeply steeped in financial services, and hopefully bring a new perspective, having recently joined the Board, which is fantastic.

I first met Sarah when she was at MLC a long time. Yes, I now put the motion. Those physically in attendance, please mark your voting instruction on your yellow card. Shareholders can now vote online. A reminder not to click the next until all resolutions are passed. Thank you. Resolution 3, reelection of director, Andrew Boldeman as follows: to consider a thought fit, pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution. Andrew Boldeman, a non-Executive Director of the company, who retires from the office of Director by rotation in accordance with Rule 64.1 of the constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4, being eligible and offering himself for reelection to be reelected as a director of the company. Any questions? No questions. Thank you. Proxies were received in relation to this resolution are also on the screen. I will now put the motion. Those physically in attendance, please mark your voting instruction on your yellow voting card. Again, shareholders can also vote, but please don't click next until all the resolutions have been read through. Resolution 4, reelection of another director, Inese Kingsmill, to consider and, thought fit, pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that Inese Kingsmill, a non-Executive Director of the company who retires from the office of director by rotation according to Rule 64.1 of the constitution and ASX Listing Rule 14.4 being eligible and offering herself for reelection, be reelected as a director of the company. Any questions, please, on this resolution. No? Thank you. Again, on the screen, and I now put the motion. Those physically in attendance, please mark your voting instructions on your yellow voting cards. Again, shareholders can vote via the online portal have reminded not to click on next until we finish all resolutions. Resolution 5 is as follows, to consider and, thought fit, pass the following resolution as an ordinary resolution that for the purpose of Exception 8 of ASX Listing Rule 10-12, ASX Listing Rule 10-14 and all other purposes approvals to given for the company to grant awards to an Executive Director of the company under the LTIP plan, long-term incentive plan, on the terms and conditions are set up in the explanatory notes, which the company has form part of this notice. Do you wish to discuss this resolution? Are there any questions? No questions. Thank you. I'll now put the motion. Those physically in attendance again, please mark your yellow voting cards, and [indiscernible] can vote via the online portal have remind not to click on next until we have finished discussing all resolutions. That concludes the resolution to be voted on today and as noted, we are conducting a poll on all resolutions, and I note the poll is already open. Can all shareholders voting online please now ensure they have submitted their votes. I will allow another minute before the poll is closed. If you have any questions related to the submission of the online votes, please send them through the Q&A function now. For those shareholders attending physically, I now invite the start of Automic to collect your voting cards. [Voting]

Okay. Are there any questions? No more further questions -- okay.

Anthony talked about...

Do you want to take it at the end after we finish this -- that's okay, we'll take it don't worry. The staff of Automic now process the poll, and the results will be made available by the ASX platform and our website surely will show the details after the close of the meeting. We will now address any general questions raised on the floor via the Q&A function. Can you please ask your questions now, Alan? Alan might be our longest shareholder here. I think probably right that any question.

Anthony, talked about reinvesting and most of the capital that we said was in short-term [indiscernible]. Is there an idea that in future years, you might look at blue chip invest -- in blue chip shares as well, and there's some in blue chip [indiscernible].

It's a good question. I mean, the answer is no, really. The blue chip because the way that your capital charging is managed by APRA, the higher the risk of the asset, the more capital you need to hold. So we'll probably always remain in pretty blue chip fixed interest type investments. And at the moment, the short duration as the market sort of works itself out with interest rates. But we would certainly move to longer duration investments once we're confident that interest rates are close to peaking. Scott, I don't know if there's anything you wanted to add.

As an insurance company, it's important that our assets are held in safe hands to ensure that they're there to pay claims when the time comes. So generally speaking, those assets were held in fixed interest income rather than more volatile potential equity type investments.

We also do limit yourself by having a majority in that from investment.

We do -- we're very -- again, we're conservative right the nature of the business that we're conservative. I mean, look, down the track, number of years the portfolio grows, we're much, much bigger here. You can put proportion into equities. Thank you. Any other questions?

Can you explain the discrepancy between company owners and share price?

I always wondered about that question. Look, our focus is just on the business at the moment and building the best business we can in the medium- to long-term. Of course, that you keep an eye on the share price, it has been a bit volatile. The number of shares have been very small trades. And clearly, there's a market dynamic with small caps. I'm sure you're well and truly aware of the market dynamics. Trading is very, very limited and very volatile at the moment. We just believe we've been caught up in that market dynamic. It has gone up again today. So our aim is just to focus on building the business, focus on the team, focus on our customers, and we think the market will just correct itself later on and the share price will look after itself.

There's a correlation to the team share price [indiscernible] the shares are held by some [ optimum ] shareholders.

Yes, it's a good question. We are looking next year at increasing the number of shareholders. So we're -- we will be actively engaging with potential new investors to increase that footprint of shareholders as well.

But also market awareness. It is still a small business, and we're talking to our advisers and help us get out there and just continue to talk to people. And just do we do -- our business is growing, and we've done really well. But absolutely, I mean, it's disappointing to see our share price where it is. But again, it should be going up, not going down, but I can't predict that of course.

Is there any prospects for getting dividends going forward?

I mean we do have a dividend policy that's based on us being positively cash flow and -- cash flow positive and also generating enough profits that we feel like it's the best result for shareholders to provide dividends. At the moment, we believe the best outcome for shareholders to continue to invest in the business and grow that in-force premium, which is the value pool of the business. But that may change in the future.

And unfortunately, the more successful we are, the big our book gets more reserves, we have to take the capital and put in the reserves. That's the nature, this is why this insurance business is different from a lot of other businesses. Certainly, I think all of us shareholders would love to get a dividend, don't worry about that.

Anthony, obviously, companies are now providing quarterly cash flow update. Is that something that with NobleOak will be doing soon.

Can I hand that over to Scott.

It hasn't been a question being raised for us, to be fair. So it's not something that we've been considering doing. As an insurance company, obviously, we're most or longer-term proposition. And for us, we talk about in-force as being the value driver and as that grows, you'll find that our cash flows are much more stable over the longer-term. So you don't have a volatility for that quarterly metrics. You probably didn't see as greater value you see in quarterly stats in that regard anyway. So if that helps answer your question.

Comment on the question. First is representing a lot of shareholders [indiscernible] into this company is a belief that NobleOak has for the next few years. opportunities to invest -- and as in what you expect dividends you both will go on investing our capital at a return. Question, Anthony, you mentioned that you're planning on bringing new shareholders next year is that we're going to market the stock to new people or are you paying to into equity raise?

Just marketing to. There's no planned equity raise.

We've got really good institutional support. We just don't have the retail support. We've only got a lot of tiny small shareholders or more of the institution. So we need to get that sort of retail mix, and answer going back what you said before, our value is our in-force premium. You're exactly right. That's what our true value is. The net present value of our future cash flows, like funds management. So and we believe that by investing in it's exactly right by investing that capital, we should get a better return, paying a dividend. Any other questions?

My final question. This is not directly exactly a [indiscernible] question because rest the audience to be reminded. If admin or somebody else can remind the people in the room why it is that you generate above market growth in your business. And why you believe, hopefully, that the company does, in fact, have some sort of sustainable advantages just a blip that will go away in the next year or so.

Yes, that's a really good question. I suppose why we think we'll continue with above market growth. When I think about the 3 products that we're selling, one is our direct NobleOak product, got PPS and we have NEOS. All 3 of them have very unique selling propositions. The direct product is the lower cost far better service than what you can get externally. PPS has a unique bonus account where you -- the more you keep the policy, the longer you get the policy for, the greater amount of money you end up drawing out of that particular product. It's a very attractive product, very successful in South Africa. And Neos has an amazing proposition of fantastic online ability and service to their adviser base, similar to what we do on our direct side than else does on the adviser side. We can't really see any major changes where competitors are able to compete on that basis. And I think being smaller and more nimble than the other players with a lower cost base does allow us to continue to adapt and not have to build the same expenses into our premiums as a lot of our larger competitors. So we do really believe it's sustainable. But we have to grow carefully. We're going to be very disciplined with our growth and our cost management and we've got always make sure we're ahead of the market when it comes to product design and service. So we're very aware of that.

I also think the people, Fred, I think -- we've got to conduct from the Board right down to the key management people with a lot of experience and knowledge, and they will challenge each other, and they're also really good people. I'm not being the flip [indiscernible] it is true to the team we actually have in place that I think help grow this business.

The other thing which is very relevant, and we see ongoing and which we rely on is our low -- relatively low lapse rates, which have remained low. Of course, that is a product of being relatively new with a lot of our book. A lot of our book is quite recent because of our growth. But nevertheless, because of our service levels and satisfaction from our audience, the tendency is that our book is a lot more sticky. And that is something which is superior to any other insurance company. So that helps and that will just it distinctions us and separates us from many of the others.

Thanks for the question, Fred. Anybody else? Any more questions? Okay, with no further questions. I'd like to thank all shareholders, all of you who have come today and are in attendance. And we now end the formal part of today's meeting. I declare the meeting closed. Thank you, everyone, for coming.