Sanlam Limited (LA6S.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good afternoon, and a very warm welcome to the Sanlam 2025 Capital Markets Day. To our investors, analysts and colleagues, thank you for taking the time and interest in joining us today, both in person here in Cape Town and online via our live stream. My name is Asha Sookha from the Sanlam Group Strategy Office, and it gives me great pleasure to be your MC for the day. I'll be facilitating today's program, which includes presentations, Q&A sessions and a variety of multimedia collateral to help give you a better understanding of Sanlam's investment case and our growth trajectory over the next 5 years. Before we dive into the detail of today's program, I'm keen to get a few quick housekeeping matters out of the way. For those that are here with us in the room, please note that this is a nonsmoking venue. There is a designated smoking area which you can find when you exit the auditorium door to your left through the glass sliding door and keep left towards the back of the building. In the event of an emergency, a clear announcement will be made, so please follow all instructions promptly. Please use both exit doors left and right located at the back of the auditorium. The building emergency exit doors are located outside the auditorium door to your right down the passage. The evolution facilities are located outside the auditorium door to your right and down the passage. Please note that gender identities and pronouns are respectfully observed. And in the case of medical emergencies, if you witness or are experiencing any medical trouble, please notify our event support team who can be identified with the blue name tags, and we will arrange support for you immediately. In addition to the logistical housekeeping, do note that a recording of the event as well as detailed presentations and a pack of our planned disclosure enhancements will be made available on the Investor Relations website after the event. So back to the event at hand. Our Capital Markets Day is an important milestone in providing you with transparency, clarity and confidence in the road ahead. And while we're on the topic of transparency, I do need to let you know that if you're expecting any funny one liners from me today, you're going to be horribly disappointed. My friends and family are very quick to remind me that I'm the only one that laughs at my jokes. So I'm not going to put you or me through that today. Our event today has been carefully curated to cover some of the most pressing questions that you, our investor and shareholder community have raised over the past few months and more recently during our interim results roadshows. We have an exciting agenda lined up, and we do hope that you will find the content insightful. Our theme for the day is leveraging quality, accelerating growth. And today, you'll see how this plays out across the business. With that, I'd like to invite to the stage our Group CEO, Paul Hanratty, to tell us more about the theme, frame the day ahead and importantly, the next chapter of our growth to 2030.

Asha, thank you very much. And also, Tava, we should thank you very much for making your facility available to us. So good day, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to our Capital Markets Day for the year. We really respect the time and effort that you put into being with us. So thank you very much. As Asha said, the theme for this year is leveraging quality -- yes, leveraging quality and accelerating growth. We've chosen this theme very specifically because we've had a fantastic business at Sanlam for many years, which has been built to really fulfill our promise to our customers and our purpose. But our platform is now at a point where we can grow faster. And of course, growing faster should translate into better returns for shareholders. Our purpose at Sanlam is to really provide an unparalleled degree of confidence for our clients in their financial futures and to do it not just for today's clients, but for future generations. We've built platforms across Africa and India to help us fulfill this purpose. And in the last few years, we've been consolidating and strengthening these platforms, and they're now at a point where they're ready to help us accelerate and drive our performance further forward. We've done this building through really a series of small acquisitions to create scale and quality. We've invested very reasonable and modest amounts of money in the way of fresh capital. We've recycled capital to superior return businesses. And we do believe that scale and quality really matter in our business. Firstly, they support margins and good margins that can be maintained. And we also see it as a prerequisite to deploy data analytics and AI. And we really do regard those as very important future sources of value creation for the company. I believe that at Sanlam, we've got tremendous underlying market forces that will sustain the organic growth of this organization for many years to come. But today, you're going to hear about some additional growth vectors that we've put in place and we're supporting and investing in to further drive our growth beyond what will come just from the normal market dynamics. The thing I've always admired about Sanlam is its ability to consistently deliver for customers and shareholders. And just as Sanlam compounds wealth for clients and protects that wealth from external events, so Sanlam also compounds returns consistently for shareholders, and we ensure that there's very solid protection in place for the business. I'm certainly not alone in that confidence. Our strategic and empowerment partner, Ubuntu-Botho, decided to renew their partnership with Sanlam earlier this year, meaning that they will have had a minimum of a 30-year commitment to Sanlam as investors. I'm sure many of you know, Charlie Munger said that a smart man goes broke from only 3 things, the 3 Ls. And at Sanlam, we believe that a smart person builds wealth from 3 things, the 3 Cs, though, not the 3 Ls. The first is compounding. The second is conservatism, building in a margin for error and finally, commitment. So at Sanlam, we compound returns for shareholders continuously. We are prudent and we build up buffers. And I know from time to time, we take criticism for that, but that is conservatism at work. And finally, we're committed to staying the course, and we're committed to the partners who will help us grow over time. Now when I think of returns, I think about dividends and the growth and the intrinsic value of our business. But of course, we need to track our financial performance and report on it, and we do that through our financial statements. And much has happened in the world of insurance accounting in particular. And so today, we're going to outline how we are simplifying our financial disclosures. We're introducing some new metrics to track shareholder value creation. As much as you're going to hear today about growth plans, new financial disclosures, ambitious new medium-term targets, I think it's really important to say that there are a lot of things that are actually not going to change. So we are not changing our group structure. We are not changing the management, and we are not changing our prudent approach to managing the business with really strong risk management at its heart. We're going to maintain a focus on managing the cash and what we do to reinvest the cash that gets generated from our business. Our capital allocation process remains sound and focused on long-term value creation. And we're not changing our dividend policy. So what this means is the confidence that our clients and shareholders have placed in our promises at Sanlam can remain steadfast for the future. I'm joined today by quite a number of my colleagues. We also have our Chairman, Temba Mvusi here. And quite a number of those colleagues are going to provide you with some information on 5 growth vectors that we're setting out to help drive our growth a bit more quickly. And then Abigail Mukhuba, our Group Finance Director, will cover off on the financial section of today's talk, including the new metrics and some of the targets. And I'm really hoping that you'll be able to see the link between the growth we have inherently in our underlying markets, the dynamics of these growth vectors and the new targets that we're setting out for our KPIs. For more than 100 years, we've been focused on helping people to grow their wealth to manage and protect their financial futures. And this remains as true now as ever. We've positively impacted the lives of almost 100 million people. And over 100 years, we've built an incredible business with the center of gravity traditionally right here in South Africa. Our products, technology, innovation have been incredible in South Africa, and we've built world-class skills and IP in our industry. For 20 years, we've had support from Ubuntu-Botho, who've helped us to become South Africa's leading player in this space. And 20 years ago, we began to leverage these skills into India with the formation of the partnership with Shriram. In the last 20 years, we've also gradually grown our coverage across the rest of Africa beyond our borders north, culminating in the formation of the SanlamAllianz joint venture in 2023. My apologies. Sorry, let's go back. So for the last 5 years -- I'm sorry, I might need. For the last 5 years, we've been consolidating the platforms that we have. In South Africa, we've created enviable scale and competitive advantage in most of our customer segments and product lines. This means that our businesses gradually grow their market share and our margins remain best-in-class. The South African macro has been challenging for the last decade, but we've managed to grow our earnings because of the strength of our platform and its competitiveness. Today, you're going to hear from Anton Gildenhuys, the CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings, from Karl Westvig , the CEO of TymeBank in South Africa, and Bongani Madikiza, who is the CEO of Sanlam Retail Mass, how we intend to move South Africa to be a higher growth engine for the Sanlam Group in the future and this really reaffirms our conviction and support for our business here in South Africa. In the rest of Africa, beyond South Africa, in partnership with Allianz, we've created the continent's leading insurance platform, and we intend to keep deepening and strengthening that platform. While in India, we've recently extended and deepened our platform in partnership with Shriram in the wealth and asset management space. Because we operate in emerging markets, it's really important to us that our business model involves providing a range of products across different lines of business to our customers. It's the way in which you can get the distribution economics to work by spreading the overheads over multiple products. And we know that, that means that often we appear more complex than more monoline businesses that tend to operate in some very developed markets. But we figured out over 100 years how to profitably serve the lower middle-income customer at modest premiums and how to grow with those customers all the way to them becoming high net worth customers. I think when we look at our markets and we think of 3 big buckets being South Africa, the rest of Africa and India, we're really typified by having a great underlying growth dynamic. We've got young populations. That, in turn, helps to support relatively high rates of growth in each of these markets. And outside of South Africa, we have very low penetration rates for our products as well. So there is plenty of underlying growth so that good, high-quality client-centered businesses are going to thrive in our industry in these markets. In addition to the natural growth support for Sanlam from the underlying market dynamics, we've worked on several growth vectors, as I mentioned, to enhance our long-term growth prospects. David Marshall will outline today how we've been developing an ecosystem in India, and we've expanded our product lines as our clients' needs have evolved. And we hope that, that will power up the underlying growth for our Indian operations. We've got some really unique aspects to our business in India, and we've created a competitive moat in a very attractive market segment. That moat allows us to operate an ecosystem that creates distinct and very sustainable competitive advantage. Tava Madzinga will then explain our entry strategy to the Lloyd's market with Syndicate 1918, which has been named to recognize that, that was the year in which Santam itself was founded. The name is appropriate because we are leveraging Santam's General Insurance specialist class of business expertise and portfolio to establish that syndicate right upfront on day 1. Heinie Werth will provide an update on the progress in building the SanlamAllianz business across the continent. The ongoing integration process is creating value for us, and we're solidifying a platform that's going to be truly competitive across the continent. And that, in turn, will create the opportunity to grow strongly and profitably for many years to come. South Africa is often seen by people as a mature market with relatively low growth prospects given the low GDP growth rate that we've experienced for the last decade and the high penetration rates, of course, in the insurance industry. But you're going to hear from the panel of Anton, Karl and Bongani, how we're going to make South Africa a very strong growth market for the group. We're building an ecosystem in South Africa now that creates a much better client experience and new revenue streams for the company. We're really excited to extend our partnership with TymeBank, taking banking services and credit to our customers in a way that transforms how financial services are delivered in South Africa. We really do believe that we can extend our reputation for client-centric advice and value for money to a new set of needs to be addressed for the customers of the group. We selected TymeBank very carefully as a partner. Tyme Group has been named in Time Magazine's 2025 list as the 100 most influential companies in the world, supporting our view that this partnership will enable us to really enhance financial inclusion and to deliver excellence and value for money in banking services to our customers. And finally, the completion of our transaction with Ninety One to shift our active asset management and global active asset management to Ninety One will now enable us to focus on our solutions model in asset management. So Sanlam is going to focus on really what we find to be the sweet spots of asset management, private wealth, multi-management, the passives business and alts. These have all been high-growth businesses for us. And I think the renewed focus on what we're good at as leaders will drive value creation for us. So Carl Roothman will take you through and describe how we'll be approaching [Audio Gap] Align in a consistent footing with global best practice for solvency reporting. And finally, as I mentioned earlier, we're introducing a sustainability index. The confidence in the platforms we operate and the underlying positioning of our businesses, the expectations we have for our growth vectors have allowed us to consider setting medium-term targets for each of these 6 performance metrics. [Audio Gap] Our dividend growth target has been increased. So we'll now be targeting a minimum growth of 4% per annum real. You will have noticed that this rate of growth is lower than our target for earnings growth, implying a decline in cash conversion of profits over time. This reflects that the higher growth rates we expect out of India and South Africa -- and Africa beyond the borders of South Africa are faster than we do have an expectation of growth from South Africa itself. And these faster-growing businesses are more capital-intensive than our South African businesses and in particular, the Shriram Finance business. So that these higher rates of growth outside of South Africa do, in fact, drag cash conversion at the group level. So that's why you see 6% on earnings and only 4% on dividend growth real. Our solvency target, as I mentioned earlier, has been amended to take cognizance of economic solvency rather than regulatory solvency, and that brings us in line with peers globally. We haven't yet set a target for the sustainability index. We want to be absolutely sure that the underlying data is completely reliable, and we'll publish a target early in the new year once we're sure that we can have full confidence in the underlying data. We will continue to report return on equity and return on group equity value on the actual basis, but we'll also pull out the effect of investment variances so that we eliminate short-term distortions. I really believe that these targets, which target real growth of above 6% for earnings, above 4% real for dividends, combined with a return on equity above 20%, our same traditional target for return on group equity value, together with an unchanged risk profile, which is really represented and summarized in the economic solvency ratio, represents a very compelling investment proposition for shareholders. This set of targets truly underpins our investment thesis. We think Sanlam is a quality growth stock. So these changes that we're making to key performance metrics and the associated medium-term targets do necessitate, of course, a revision to the management incentives. So our long-term incentive performance hurdles are going to be expanded to now include return on equity as well as return on group equity value and dividend growth. And in addition to that, the hurdles have been increased both for return on group equity value and for dividend growth. And this is, of course, applicable only to new share awards, not to historic share awards. I believe that this new set of incentive targets really reflects the confidence that the group has in our future returns that we're going to deliver to shareholders, and I believe that it underpins our investment thesis. So with that introduction, I'm going to hand back to Asha, who will introduce our first growth vector. Asha, thanks.

Thank you, Paul. That was a great opening. And I think a great overview of what we can expect for the remainder of the day, particularly the high-level targets, which I'm sure most of the audience have been looking forward to. It's also really encouraging to hear about management incentives and the alignment to strategy. I know that your own compensation pool is tied almost exclusively to the company's stock. And I think this further demonstrates the conviction and confidence that you have in the long-term compounding story of the group. So from Cape Town to Chennai, our long-term growth story continues. Our first deep dive tells the story of how India is becoming a growth engine for Sanlam. Our next speaker is David Marshall, Group Executive for Strategy and M&A across the Sanlam Group and also takes care of the group's businesses in Asia. We've received a lot of interest around India in the run-up to this event with many of you asking for more information about our strategy in India as well as our track record to date. So we're really excited to have David share more on how Sanlam through its partnership with the Shriram Group is positioned to win in this massive underpenetrated market. Before David makes his way to the stage, let's hear a few words from Subashri Shriram, Managing Director and CEO of Shriram Capital. [Presentation]

Well, good afternoon to you all. Well, I hope that video clearly conveys to you the quality of the partnership that we've built over 20 years with the Shriram Group, a company that is deeply embedded in the lives of its customers Shriram are seen as the players for first-generation entrepreneurs, and they've proven their ability to then stay with these customers across family generations. And that is how the tangibly drive financial inclusion for millions of customers across India, and it underpins everything that I will talk about today. So for Sanlam then, our India growth vector is also underpinned by the enormous structural growth opportunity that the country itself presents. So what excites us most about the India market? Well, we're all familiar with the macroeconomic miracle that's currently unfolding in India, and Paul touched on some of this earlier in his introduction. It's one of the fastest-growing economies in the world, projected to be the second largest on the planet by 2050, if not earlier, a massive and youthful population, while most other regions in the world are aging, GDP growth of over 6% per annum. Or if you prefer more tangible metrics, consider that we have about 11 million vehicles on the roads in the whole of South Africa today, whereas in India, there are over 300 million vehicles. So these are all compelling stats in theory. But India is also a super competitive market. So at a business level, how exactly will we win in such a vast and diverse country? And why are we confident of succeeding? Well, the true potential of India lies in the less publicized but massive opportunity in rural India, where today, approximately 2/3 of the Indian population resides. That's over 900 million people, the equivalent of the entire sub-Saharan Africa population. It is also the fastest-growing segment of the market, outpacing that of urban areas. So it presents a unique opportunity for business that -- a business that can profitably operate there, which is a lot easier said than done. Second, there is a highly supportive trend in government policy and the regulatory environment. You may find that a surprising statement because stories of red tape in India are well known and indeed, bureaucratic processes can still often be lengthy. But there is an ambitious national vision, which includes insurance for all by 2047 with policies aimed at promoting digital uptake, advancing financial inclusion, specifically in these rural underserved markets and promoting foreign investment. And the third big driver is the increasing digital fluency of the population. This has been turbocharged by India's UPI digital payments network, which is now processing over -- transactions at over 600 million a day, overtaking Visa to become the world leader. This widespread adoption of mobile technology and Internet access has transformed the way that people live and work in India today and clearly has particularly strong implications for rural areas, where it can bridge the gap in access to information and opportunities. So how are we, as Sanlam positioned and Shriram positioned against this backdrop? Well, the thing to consider is that Shriram's business is specifically built for rural India and the elements that make up our competitive moat are incredibly difficult to replicate. As I said in my introduction, Shriram is deeply rooted in its communities. For example, they typically only lend where agents have personally known the customer for at least 6 years. The trust in the brand has been built over more than 50 years of serving these rural communities. Shriram specifically develops solutions tailored to the needs of this segment. They have the ability to assess credit in the secondhand vehicle market as opposed to banks who typically only lend against new vehicles. For instance, their agents are trained to value secondhand vehicles to personally drive the vehicle for at least 40 kilometers and to sit and go through the customers' business plans for that vehicle and so on. Then the distribution footprint is second to none in the rural market, spanning over 4,500 branches and more than 125,000 agents. And this, coupled with the integrated ecosystem that blends physical and digital distribution enables us to reach these customers across rural India. So all of that translates into market leadership in this segment. For example, Shriram Life is in the top 5 life insurers in India by number of policies sold in the rural market. And that all drives sector-leading performance metrics. Shriram has profitability ratios well ahead of its peers despite the lower average premiums that they operate at. So let's take a closer look at this -- at the powerful ecosystem that we've built together with Shriram. So the initial entry point in India was through credit and lending solutions. Shriram Finance is a leading player in the pre-owned commercial vehicle and 2-wheeler or motorbike market with a loan book of around ZAR 550 billion and nearly 10 million customers. The logical next customer need was general insurance, initially, which we built with Shriram over the last 20 years. And initially, it catered specifically to motor insurance for the same credit customers, although the business has expanded into -- significantly expanded into other channels since then. And the general insurance business is showing significant growth, consistently outgrowing the market by a factor of nearly 4x in the last financial year. The next stage in the customer life cycle is life insurance, which we also built together with Shriram from scratch over the last 20 years. And our competitive advantages here are superior agent productivity and the ability to offer lower premiums. So our ticket size is about 1/4 that of the industry average. and also this unrivaled market penetration. And again, this business is growing really fast with individual APE up over 35% per annum over the last 4 financial years, making it one of the fastest-growing life businesses in India. And lastly, the newest addition to our ecosystem, which we announced in the last 12 months or so, is Asset and Wealth Management. So we and Shriram saw that the needs of our customers have evolved in the last 20 years. As India has prospered, so have they, and they're now focused on wealth creation and long-term financial security. So we agreed with Shriram about a year ago to tackle this opportunity seriously on a 50-50 basis with Shriram bringing its strong brand and its existing customer footprint and Sanlam bringing world-class investment expertise and capital. And this is proving to be another great example of collaboration with several professionals from Sanlam Investment Group now actively engaged alongside our Shriram colleagues in India to harness the huge opportunity that we see in this space. So as a coherent ecosystem, together, these businesses form a quality base of which we will continue to drive growth. Now all of this is further underpinned and augmented by the Shriram One app, which is a single front door to the group. It's a true one-stop solution for daily lifestyle and financial needs. Customer engagement is assured because the app is embedded into the everyday lives of the Indian consumer, offering everything from flight bookings, shopping and of course, this being India live cricket score tracking. The financial needs are also catered to and are seamlessly and intuitively accessible from bill payments using that UPI system that I spoke to earlier to investments, personal loans, gold and business loans and, of course, insurance. Today, one might say that many of these features are par for the course for a financial services super app. But a crucial differentiator here is that the technology that underpins the app experience is proprietary. Some of you may be aware that Shriram owns and develops its own technology via a subsidiary called Novac, which also serves a number of major third-party corporate clients in India, meaning it stays sharp and remains cutting edge. And that's a key advantage in sustaining a superior customer experience. For example, this app operates in 7 regional dialects, allowing it to be relevant across India in the rural areas. And the results speak for themselves. The app has been downloaded over 19 million times. And remember, that's in the space of just under 2 years, of which a staggering 2/3 of those are new to Shriram customers. Now a clear benefit of having a single front door like this is a lower cost of customer acquisition and continued relevance in a fast-changing landscape through data-driven insights and cross-sell opportunities. And all of that adds up to -- leads to higher customer lifetime value. And as for hard business outcomes, we've seen exponential growth in direct sales of fixed deposits and loans via this app over the past year alone. So we can clearly see that customer engagement is, in fact, happening. So in summary, Shriram are a bit ahead of us in South Africa on this journey that we are now also undertaking in South Africa with our Sanlam Group app. And so these 2 core markets for Sanlam are converging, as you can see on a common -- well, as you will see, on a common strategy, but from different starting points. In India, Shriram started from a deep credit background, while in South Africa, Sanlam obviously starts from a deep insurance and asset management background. So it goes without saying that my colleagues in South Africa are in close dialogue with Shriram about what works well and what doesn't. And it will be no surprise to you that you will hear many of the same themes resonate through the points that Anton, Bongani and Karl will speak about a bit later today. A great example of 2-way learning between our India and South Africa businesses. So let's take a step back and look at the India journey over the last 20 years. Together with Shriram, we have driven quality growth through strategic actions across 3 broad dimensions. We've jointly built the life and general insurance business from scratch. And as you know, we announced a further moderate increase in our economic exposure to these businesses as a capital allocation decision, the rationale for which I'll expand on in a second. We are now also building the asset management and wealth management businesses, which have, as I said, enormous potential. For instance, we expect industry AUM in India to double by 2030, driven by the increasing adoption of systematic investment plans or SIPs, which are becoming a backbone of retail investment flows in India. These involve a recurring monthly contribution, so a lot like unit trusts. We have so far recruited 140 wealth management professionals in 11 cities. And once that business is established, ultimately, we intend to, as we call it, democratize wealth management with a tech-driven advice-led proposition that will go across the whole broader Shriram footprint, and that will be very powerful. Second, simplifying the group structure is an ongoing process. So after the last 3 or 4 years or so, we've merged SCUF, which was the largest financier of 2-wheelers and STFC, the largest in commercial vehicles. to create what you now know is Shriram Finance, which is India's second largest retail NBFC. We also removed a holdco layer, which improved dividend flows and removed some tax inefficiencies. And these changes weren't just structural. They unlocked real operational synergies. And the merged entity, Shriram Finance has outperformed expectations. So I'm sure you will have all seen for yourself the success of the share price since it listed early last year and entered the NIFTY 50 Index. And we've also made some exits. For example, Shriram Housing Finance was sold for around $470 million, delivering an IRR of about 30%. The capital from that disposal also strengthened Shriram Finance's balance sheet whilst also sharpening its focus on short tenure small ticket retail lending, which is actually where we see the most opportunity going forward. So as you can see, there's been and there is a lot of entrepreneurial action to drive value. So what value have we created so far in Sanlam from India. So over the last 5 years, we've grown equity value of Sanlam's India interest from ZAR 10 billion in 2020 to over ZAR 25 billion in 2024. That's if you adjust for some cash we took off the table, which is over 2.5x in 4 years. But of course, we are not just a financial investor. We think very long term, as do our partners at Shriram. And the key point is the foundation here is in place for quality growth for years to come. So how will we drive this success and measure it? Well, the first thing to say is that you can be sure it will be measured. Shriram are entrepreneurs, and they're committed to careful capital allocation and to results, just as you know Sanlam to be. Progress is carefully monitored and action will be taken quickly when needed. We expect operating profit from our India businesses to grow by at least 10% in real terms through to 2030, which supports that overall group target that Paul spoke to a moment ago. Why are we confident of achieving this? Given that we are really building for future potential still, we're still scaling these businesses. I will focus for now on volume metrics. In the credit business, Shriram Finance, we expect ongoing loan book growth through 2030, more or less consistent with the past. And as you will know, it's been growing at around 15%, 16% per annum in the past few years. I won't venture any other targets for Shriram Finance, given it's a separate listed company and the track record is there for all to see. But for purposes of this discussion, let's just say we are comfortable that Shriram Finance will provide a strong and growing platform for the rest of this ecosystem. In General Insurance, we see new business volume growth at 15% to 20% through to 2030 and in life insurance, a bit faster still at 20% to 25%. Of course, as the legendary South African golfer, Bobby Locke, once said, you drive for show, but you putt for dough. And what I mean in this instance is clearly, it is not all about top line growth ultimately. As Paul indicated earlier, at group level, we are focused on superior and improving ROE and cash generation. Now today, the credit part of the business is by far the largest component of the business in India. It's around 90% by profit. And as we all know, any credit business, you can typically expect an ROE of around 16% and also typically much lower dividend payout ratios than more capital-light businesses like insurance and asset management or wealth management. But as we grow around that ecosystem circle I spoke to earlier, we are fast scaling up these other noncredit businesses, which generate higher ROEs and much higher -- have much higher cash generation profiles, like you're used to seeing in our typical South African business mix. And in Sanlam's case, this will be further accentuated by our much higher weighting in these noncredit businesses. So whereas we have an effective see-through interest of around 10% in the credit business, we own over 40% and potentially soon 50% in the insurance businesses, as I mentioned earlier, as well as obviously 50% in the Asset Management and Wealth Management businesses. So you should be able to see that our trajectory in India will steadily be to improve the overall ROE and cash generation profile of the portfolio. So in conclusion then, the key messages that I would like to leave you with today are: first, the fundamental growth drivers in this market and our differentiated rural strategy are why we expect top line growth in India to outpace Sanlam's other regions for years to come. Second, the ecosystem model is mature and proven in India, and it's delivering results. And as it does so, ROE and cash generation will steadily improve over time. Third, there are many opportunities to learn both ways between India and South Africa, and we are becoming, as an organization, better and more deliberate about doing just that. And last, what we've realized is that in India, you play the long game. There will be twists and turns in the road as there have been many already over the last 20 years. There's a reason why so many -- why successful foreign joint ventures in India are so few and far between. It's a market that requires strong local partnerships, a differentiated strategy and patience, but we are confident that the foundation that we have in place is set for quality growth well into the future. Thank you.

Thank you, David. Time to be on the hot seat. We are going to take a few minutes of Q&A, starting with questions in the room. There are 2 roving mics on the floor. So if there are any questions in the room, please raise your hand. We'll get a mic through to you, and we'll then shift to a few questions from the online live stream.

It's Warwick Bam from RMB Morgan Stanley. One question. Just in terms of M&A in India and outside India, how do you think about it? Does it need to be complementary? Will it always be with Shriram? Could it be without Shriram?

Thanks for the question. In India, we are committed to our partnership with Shriram. So we will always look to do things in partnership with them. And I think you will have seen that there is strong organic growth in the business. So we won't be pursuing M&A for the sake of it. But as ever, we will look at situations where opportunistically where the terms make sense and where the returns meet our hurdles. So there's nothing that we need to do, I would say, in India. This is an organic growth story that we just discussed. But it is true that there are other areas for opportunity, and we'll look at them together with other product lines. So for example, the GI business is very centered on motor today. There are other areas in the general insurance space that are attractive in India. We'll discuss those with our partners, and we regularly do. And where we feel that we could be better served or get there more certainly or faster with some inorganic activity, we'd look at that in terms of our normal metrics. But again, I'd say it's organic, organic, organic. There's a lot of fish to fry there in that space.

Mario [indiscernible] ALG, also about the general insurance, a couple of questions. How much of your business do you get from outside the SFL group? What's your penetration into the SFL vehicle lending -- roughly vehicle lending business? And then your expense ratio, should we expect that to increase as you invest more? Or is there room for your expense ratio to reduce over time?

Thank you. So today, the general insurance business, roughly half of it is generated through other channels. So it's diversified away from the ecosystem. But the ecosystem, the Shriram Finance distribution remains really core to the business. In terms of penetration, we think we can always do better. I don't have the exact stats on that, but we can get those to you. But it's certainly something we drive kind of month in, month out. I'm looking at Thian Fick over there, who spends all his time on India. This is a key KPI for Sanlam and for Shriram. So there's more to be done, but the business is actively opening up other channels as well. On the expenses ratio side, you can definitely expect that to actually come down over time. There are specific regulatory reasons why we would like that to be -- need that to be under 30% in due course. And a lot of that will be around -- lot of achieving that will be around expanding further into some of these non-motor business lines, which the business is actively looking at. I think it's fair to say Shriram General is one of the most profitable general insurance businesses in India because it specializes so much in this third-party motor space and is very, very good at that. So there's been perhaps a bit of a reluctance historically to move into other business lines, which wouldn't be as profitable early on. But that is now happening. And as that happens, the expenses ratio will improve.

We have a few questions from the online stream, David. The first question is from Michael Christelis at UBS. Why have you along with Shriram, not considered health insurance as a big opportunity in India? I think you may have touched on it a bit in your previous answer, but I think it would be good just to expand the thinking there.

Thanks for the question, Michael. I think I partially answered it. So there is an initiative -- some initiative and traction in the health space. The reasons why we haven't gone big in there, I think what I've just touched on, but it is certainly being actively progressed now. And also in the SME space, that's a very natural strength for this ecosystem. And so Shriram General is actively developing products in that space, too.

The next question is from Daniel. Can you confirm the exact percentage interest in insurance and in Shriram Finance Wealth which you say is 50%. I'm not sure, yes.

So in the insurance businesses we have today, I can't give it to the decimal point off the top of my head, but around 42% of the Life business and 43% in the GI. And Asset Management and Wealth Management, as I said, we've done it on a 50-50 basis. But Actually, in Wealth Management, it is 50% Sanlam, 50% Shriram. In Asset Management, it's 50-50 as between Sanlam and Shriram, but there is a third minority investor in there with around 20 -- low 20% stake. So the balance is split 50-50 between Sanlam and Shriram.

Okay. Are there any more questions in the room?

[indiscernible] from Investec, my question is very similar to the one you've answered before. So I just wanted to understand like the customer journey from the customer taking the loan and how you sell insurance to them. Why should they take insurance with Shriram? How does it work? Are they forced to take insurance? Just how sticky is that customer to stick with Shriram's insurance?

The short answer is it's very sticky because of this relationship that is so deeply rooted in the communities. So the they're not obviously obliged to take insurance from Shriram, but particularly in the general insurance because that is such a hands-on discussion, as I described, around the business plan, what the customer intends to do with the vehicle, maybe their first vehicle or maybe they're expanding to 2, 3, actually building a business. The Shriram lending agent is so deeply rooted in that customer relationship that with a competitive offering on the general insurance side as well, it's a very warm lead, shall we say. So no obligation, but it tends to be -- tends to very often lead to Shriram General Insurance as a product. And then on the life side, there is the credit policy as well, which is part and parcel of that lending very often. So that's also a warm lead on the Life side. But both Shriram General and Shriram Life have very actively built their own agents force. So it's not just at all relying on the credit agents in the branches.

Okay. I think we had one more hand over here. We'll take this as the last question.

Francois Du Toit from Anchor Stockbrokers. You've announced, I think, about 18 months ago or so, the additional stake you are intending to purchase and pricing around that's been announced as well. Can you just explain why it's taking so long to conclude when you expect it to conclude, whether the delay has an impact on the pricing and what you're doing with the capital that's waiting for the transaction as well?

Yes. Thanks for the question. So we are still waiting for regulatory approval for those transactions, not because of the transactions themselves. So what's going on is that one of the prior restructurings that I alluded to which Shriram undertook earlier had to do with collapsing insurance holdco and opco, taking out a layer. That is being -- that has been in a court process in India for well, for all the time since we announced those transactions. And that is ongoing. It's a bit of an anomaly. If this was in the bank space, the regulations are clear, that would have been straightforward. But in the insurance space, it's the first of its kind. And the court discussion is really -- so it's unrelated to our transactions. It has to do with clarifying the interpretation of the insurance regulations in India. And not setting the wrong precedent. So that has to play out. But there was also the Chairman of the insurance regulator actually his term ended earlier this year. So the post was vacant for a few months. That has now been filled. So there is a new Chairman of the regulator in place, and the legal processes are able to move again. So that will take as long as it takes. There is no reason with respect to -- so our insurance transactions can only be considered for regulatory approval once that has played out. There's no reason that we are aware of why there would be any concern with the transaction itself per se. It's very much in line with the trend in both the government policy and regulatory policy around financial inclusion around further foreign investment. But of course, you can never predict a regulatory process. But again, it doesn't -- it won't change the way we operate in any way in terms of day-to-day influence the way we operate the company. So it's purely a capital allocation, upweighting decision. And the prices, like all of our dealings with Shriram, it's very much what you say is what you mean and what you mean is what you say. So the price is what the price was. There'll be some time value of money implications potentially but not -- those transactions are still waiting to go through as they were struck over a year ago. It's in discretionary capital and it's ring-fenced for those transactions. I think we've been quite specific about that.

Thanks, Francois. Thanks, David. We're going to bring this to a close. So India is proof that a Sanlam can partner, scale and thrive abroad. It shows that Sanlam knows how to diversify beyond borders. Now we shift to global specialty markets with Sanlam through its short-term insurance business, Santam is breaking new ground at Lloyd's. I'd like to invite to the stage, Tavaziva Madzinga, CEO of Santam who will explain how Syndicate 1918 will drive the next chapter of growth and diversification for Santam.

Thank you, Asha. Good afternoon, everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to share what we think is a really exciting chapter in our general insurance journey as we look to expand our specialty capability globally. I must say that we are really at the humble beginnings of a journey that we believe will be adding value to the group over the long term. So let me start by saying that I think most of you would have seen the announcement that we made that we have in principle approval to enter the Lloyd's market and we will go into a bit more detail around those plans in this session this afternoon. But before I get into that, I would like to take a step back and provide you with a very high-level overview of our general insurance business at Santam, what we do, how we operate and we'll also touch briefly on how we operate. Now Santam is a 107-year-old business, that is today, South Africa's leading general insurance business, and we've maintained a market share of over 22% over the last decade. We are listed on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange with a market capitalization of approximately ZAR 50 billion or roughly USD 2.6 billion. Santam is a subsidiary of the Sanlam Group, where Sanlam has a 62% ownership within Santam. Across the group, we serve over 3.8 million policyholders ranging from personal lines, commercial lines and corporate business with support of over 3,000 intermediaries across the country here in South Africa. The strength of our business really lies in the diversification of our business model across product lines, geographies and also across channels. We provide a very diverse range of insurance products and services, including motor, property, agriculture and crop and assets, engineering, accident insurance as well as deep expertise in the specialist lines of business. From a geographic perspective, our footprint spans South Africa, our home market, the rest of Africa, north of the Limpopo, key international markets, including the Middle East, Eastern Europe, Southeast Asia as well. We offer primary insurance, alternative risk transfer and reinsurance, and we operationalize this through several business units that complement each other regarding the markets and the offerings, and we believe this allows us to meet our client expectations a lot more holistically. Now despite the challenges that we faced in the last 5 years, within our macro environment, our business has proved to be resilient, continuing to deliver strong returns and sustainable value creation to all our shareholders. Now looking at our overall strategy, our 2030 ambition is grounded in a clear understanding of our evolving operating environment. We are navigating what we believe are complex environments. We do have subdued economic growth in South Africa evolving customer as well as intermediary preferences that require a much more agile, digital and personalized engagements. Competition is clearly also continues to intensify, and we see this not just from incumbents, but also from new entries into the markets such as fintech players as well as entries from players that are established in other industries such as telcos, banking and retailers, all making it quite a competitive landscape step for us. And so we continue to face in addition, increased frequency and severity of weather-related events, but I think this is a global phenomenon that we see pretty much across the whole insurance industry. We also see technology continues to transform the industry, particularly through AI and data analytics. And finally, finding talent with specialized skills remains critical and the demand for these tax survey data skilled employees is leading to intense competition. And we find that the skill sets for specialist insurance are quite fungable across the rest of the world. And so that makes the pressure on talent, quite aggressive even within our own South African market. Now our strategy responds to these drivers of change with agility. Firstly, South Africa remains our core home market and the foundation of our growth, and our focus remains on strengthening our leadership position by maintaining our dominance in the broker distribution channel across personal lines, commercial and specialist lines. We have, however, started the journey of transitioning our model to a multichannel model to meet evolving customer needs and importantly, scaling our direct and tight agency offering is also quite key to our growth ambition here in our core home market. Secondly, we are focused on driving our international expansion and diversification to reduce single country risk. We aim at new growth avenues by expanding our specialist capabilities, scaling our reinsurance while also leveraging our SanlamAllianz relationship to build out our footprint across the rest of Africa. Lastly, we continue to focus on our ecosystems and creating new partnerships, creating stickiness, unlocking new revenue streams, deepening our customer relationships, and we also plan to leverage the Sanlam ecosystem play, which you will hear a lot more about later this afternoon. And so our 2030 ambition is bold, but it is grounded in a clear understanding of our context and capabilities. We do believe that by strengthening our SA base, expanding internationally and scaling ecosystems, we are positioning ourselves for sustained long-term growth. However, for today, our focus will be on accelerating this strategy through our Lloyd's syndicate. So now let's zoom into the Lloyd's opportunity, why we see this as a key accelerator of our growth. So about 12 weeks ago, we announced that we have received in principle approval to create a Lloyd syndicate, which will be known as Syndicate 19 and as Paul has alluded to, this is a reference to the year that Santam was founded. And so we do view this as a transformational step in our international journey, albeit, as I've mentioned, really humble beginnings for us as we step out into the global platform. And so where we are currently is in what's called the making it happen phase. And so we are ultimately getting everything in place to start writing business from Q1 in 2026. And so the big question for us is why Lloyd's. Firstly, Lloyd's is a global powerhouse with significant scale and proven value creation. Lloyd's generated $55 billion in gross written premiums in 2024, and for context, that is more than 7x the size of South Africa's total P&C market and about 3x the size of Africa's entire P&C market. It also offers broad access with licenses to operate in 77 insurance and 200 reinsurance territories. The map that we are showing you reinforces Lloyd's global footprint, which has a strong presence in North America, the U.K., the rest of Europe and the Asia Pacific region. Lloyd's, however, still remains relatively small in emerging markets, specifically Africa and in Latin America. And so our presence at Lloyd's is clearly an important step towards their expansion to also be truly global. Now Lloyd's offers a diverse portfolio that is well balanced and resilient with a healthy spread across multiple lines of business, including reinsurance. We're also very excited about Lloyd's and the fact that it provides deep expertise, and it is also a very strong hub for talent, which we believe will go a long way to complementing our own specialty skills that we have here in South Africa and across the rest of our African businesses. The Lloyd's market is also a proven and trusted model. Dating back years, we talk about Santam being 107 years old, the Lloyd's market, more than 300 years old, and it has shown an incredible record of growth and profitability and financial strength, particularly in the more recent years. Over the past -- last 5 years, Lloyd has delivered a 9% CAGR in gross written premiums, over GBP 10 billion in profit over 2 consecutive years and a combined ratio of 87% in 2024. And we do see returns of 9.5% annually over 20 years, and it does outperform some traditional asset classes. Additionally, Lloyd's also offers access to superior rating with S&P, Fitch, A.M Best and is ultimately underpinned by a very strong governance and performance oversight. And so the rating aspect of Lloyd's is clearly a massive advantage for us at Santam as we go into the international landscape. The requirements by Lloyd's, particularly around its underwriting discipline, the strong governance, these principles clearly resonate very well with us as part of the Santam Group. Ultimately, we do see this as an attractive opportunity as Lloyd's offers a unique combination of tested scale diversification and reliability. And so it does make it a strategic enabler for accelerating our international diversification goal. Now, we also see strong alignment between Santam and Lloyd's with Santam being the first Africa-based syndicate. The time is appropriate for Santam to enter the Lloyd's market as our organizational maturity across key capabilities does meet Lloyd's entry criteria. We are uniquely a very strong and trusted African brand with a strong specialty capability in South Africa and across the continent. And so our track record is further underpinned by a strong robust governance framework and capital management capability, which Lloyd's finds acceptable for us to enter Lloyds. And so in addition to that, what we also bring is a very diverse and inclusive culture, which strongly resonates with what Lloyd's is also trying to do. And so from our perspective, this is undoubtedly a big step. However, we are not starting from scratch. I think we like to position it that we are more of a what we call a grown-up start-up. We will see part of our existing specialist business into the syndicate, and this will effectively give the syndicate scale from day 1, while we'll also build out the rest of our London-based business. And so we're effectively targeting a gross written premium in the range of GBP 300 million to GBP 400 million for the year 2026. And so this dual approach allows us to deliver instant volume and credibility into the Lloyd's market, and it also creates a synergistic growth opportunity for our syndicate back here in Africa while also leveraging our partnership with SanlamAllianz. And so our business in Lloyd's will effectively focus on specialist lines of business that we understand and our business will be written across a range of markets, allowing us to expand beyond our current footprint. As a business, we are currently in a strong capital position. And so this allows us to explore high-value growth opportunities such as Lloyds without putting strain on our core operations and with no impact on our ordinary dividend trajectory. To manage the impact on group capital, we have issued a further ZAR 1 billion in subordinated debt. This issuance has been designed to support Santam's group regulatory capital requirements, given the growth expectations that we expect to see coming through from Lloyds in the years to come. And so we expect to remain within the capital coverage ratio of 145% reflecting, again, disciplined capital management, supporting growth, while safeguarding shareholder value. And so as part of our group's investment strategy into expanding, we have taken a stake in Avatar Holdings, which's based in the U.K. Avatar is a new startup with a unique technology platform that allows us to underwrite and price midsized corporate risks much more efficiently than traditional methods have done. And this is consistent with what we've done with our specialist business here in South Africa, where we've built it largely off the back of MGAs over the last few decades. And so we do view this opportunity as complementary in the long run to our syndicate. And so the group from the onset will not immediately deploy underwriting capacity until Avatar has an underwriting track record that is established. Avatar, we do believe in time can become a source of future new business for forth Santam syndicate. And I think this is consistent as we've seen that 40% of the Lloyd's market, GWP does come through from MGAs. Now the strength of the team, our underwriting approach, governance structures and cultural integration is key to ensuring that we deliver successfully on our goals into the Lloyd's market. And so execution will be driven by a seasoned leadership team with deep Lloyd's experience and a proven success in this market. The appointment process is still ongoing, and it is an important step in operationalizing the syndicate. The key and primary task of the suitably experienced executive team is to ensure that the syndicate is prepared for business inception from Q1 2026. We will adopt a low-cost follow model. We will follow market leaders and use focused facilities to manage costs and our exposures. We are also embedding Santam's inclusive culture, supported by our shared services back here in South Africa and secondments to foster Lloyd's expertise and standards pretty much across our business. Now all of this will be underpinned by strong governance. While our lean operating structure will ensure cost efficiency and agility, we have partnered with [indiscernible] Aster, who are the leading managing agent, and they will assist us with the day-to-day management of the syndicate, and they will also ensure regulatory compliance, drive operational oversight, allowing us to focus on what we believe is the core, and that's really around the underwriting. We've also announced the appointment of Mr. Robert Stuchbery as an additional independent nonexecutive director on the Santam Board from the beginning of September 2025. He does bring extensive executive, nonexecutive and underwriting experience in the global insurance industry, and in particular, within the Lloyd's market. And so with the right leadership, underwriting discipline, cultural alignment and governance, we are well positioned to execute on our Lloyd's syndicate strategy successfully. And we do believe sustainably over the years to come. And so while we are still finalizing our targets, our ambition is clear. International contribution to gross written premiums, we expect to be well over our current target of 20% by 2030, syndicate margins exceeding current benchmarks and hard currency returns that are creative over the medium to long term. And so we do believe that this is a strategic investment with measurable impact in the years to come. Now looking at some high-level milestones, which we have achieved some to date. Key approvals are in place and work is in place in the making it happen phase, and we expect to receive permission to write later on at the end of this year. And so part of the making happen phase is really bringing the team on board, putting offices in place, agreeing on the specifics of risk appetite right down to the coffee machine to ensure that the team works around the clock when we do start to write business in Q1. Now our ambition is obviously very clear. We are focused on growing the syndicates and hitting foundational milestones of writing our first policy in Q1 and then scaling the international diversification. Importantly, in the lead up to 2030, we aim to sustain underwriting margins above 10% and to grow the international contribution, as I've said, well in excess of our 20% current target and thereby positioning the syndicate as a platform for very strong international growth. In closing, the syndicate is a transformational step in our Santam journey. It accelerates the international ambition, gives us access to top-tier underwriting talent, allows us to grow in lines of business that we understand and also into new geographies. And so we do believe that we are building a syndicate that is, firstly, strategically sound, operationally efficient and prime for international growth from day 1. And this, we do believe will have attractive underwriting margins and long-term value creation at its very core. Thank you very much, ladies and gentlemen.

Thank you, Tava, a grown up start-up. I think that's my favorite phrase so far. Now I know I think this is probably the third time you're telling the story of Lloyd's.

I think just about the third time.

So I'm hoping Q&A should be a breeze.

There is always a new question.

So like before, we'll start with a few questions in the room. Please state your name, company that you represent, and we'll get a mic to you.

It's Warwick Bam from RMB Morgan Stanley. One for me. Just can you give us any indication of maybe what your jurisdictional objectives are in terms of diversifying risk globally. Do you have any guidelines as to which jurisdictions you're willing to gain exposure to or whether there is jurisdictions that you particularly favor? And then within the specialist, I guess, line of business, maybe you can give us a flavor of what type of risks do you expect to take on just to give us a sense of how diversified it is?

Thank you very much, Warwick. So I think we did show a map giving you a sense of the geographical spread as well as a sense of the lines and class of business that Lloyd's does underwrite. And so you'll appreciate that Lloyd's is a global platform that brings incredible scale. But I think what's important for us as we start to venture out in this journey is to be very disciplined, particularly around underwriting margins. And so we are not under pressure to grow simply for the sake of it. I think where we see the underwriting cycle at the moment is that there is incredible pressure in terms of softening of the market. So we're being very careful to maintain the underwriting margin that underpins a key metric for us, which is return on capital. And so from a diversification point of view, we do expect that we will write in markets beyond our core South Africa and Rest of Africa business. And so we do expect to bring exposure on board that is North America, U.K. and parts of Europe. I think that's consistent with just the footprint. But I think importantly that we will stick to lines of business that we do understand primarily in the property lines, marine and engineering. We will stay away from non-U.S. casualty that we are currently very uncomfortable with. And I think it's a space where I think we've seen historically just the performance of that class of business with the nuclear verdicts in the U.S. where we would be uncomfortable with that. So I think our intention is really to stick to areas that we understand where we can deploy our capabilities in line with the resources that we're bringing through in terms of new resources within the business. So we'll stick with what we believe makes industrial logic given our current capabilities and our build out over the next couple of years.

It's Harry Botha from Bank of America. Just a question on the global pricing market. I think if we enter into a multiyear soft cycle, how do you see that underwriting margin evolving ultimately? And is there any upside risk to the 10% target that you have?

No. I mean I think -- if you look at the cycle, I think it's not unique to the business that we start to think about within Lloyd's. I think it's consistent with how we currently run our business in South Africa, and so we've seen our own South African business go through up and down cycles. And I think I'll reiterate that we've also spoken a lot about how our market share evolves here in South Africa, and so you've seen it fluctuate between 20%, 22% all the way up to 24.5%. I think that shows the discipline that we have around protecting the underwriting margin. So we're simply not aiming to grow top line or grow the business simply to achieve growth on the top line. I think we've seen cycles come and go, the ups and downs. But I think what is important is that linking to our South African business is that we have seen a structural shift in how we price property back here at home in South Africa. And so we do believe with what we're seeing even in the competitive landscape that some of that is sustainable. As far as the global market is concerned, yes, there is a softening of rates. But I think if you look over the last 10 years and you index it over 10 years, you're finding the different categories of classes of business are well in excess of between 60% to 80% of historic lows. So even though you do have a softening of the market coming through, you still have rate strength within the business. If you look at Lloyd's own forecast, so you've seen it like combined ratios, 85%, 2023, weakening a little bit to 86% 2024. And if you look at the forecast for 2025, you're still at about 90%, 91% combined, and they forecast an outlook for 2026, again at about the 92% combined ratio. So there is still value cost of capital within Lloyd's, still 10% and below. And so the market as a whole is delivering a return that is above the cost of capital. And I think fundamentally for us, that return on capital remains a very strong under pillar now how we think about the market moving forward.

I'm going to shift to a few questions via the online live stream, Tava. So we've received well, 2 questions from Faizan Lakhani at HSBC. The first that you touched on right now around the softening of the rates in the next cycle. So I think we can skip that. The second one from Faizan was, will you continue to write business on your own paper? Or will it all be written by Lloyd's? And what portion business do you plan to lead?

Thank you for the question. So I think the Lloyd's platform gives us advantage. And if I digress to some extent. So you've seen big players, for example, in the U.S. use a dual approach, even London-based companies, company paper and Lloyd's and both bring strengths and advantages. In our particular case, we have been under constant pressure from international markets playing within the South African market. And the reason for that is you find terms and conditions that may be a lot more attractive, while let's say Lloyd's paper versus paper that we are putting through Santam, using our own reinsurers, which may have restrictive conditions. And so back even in our core market and as we work with SanlamAllianz, that we will see some advantage depending on where we think we can place the business either on one balance sheet or via Lloyd's. But I think ultimately, we consolidate the old stack. And so this gives us advantage even back here within our core markets. So in terms of the proportion where we will lead and where we will follow, I think, like I said, these are really humble beginnings for us venturing out. I think we will only look to lead where we do believe we have strength of expertise to lead in class of business that we do understand. And so from our rough split, we've talked about seeding about 60% of our existing specialist business as part of the syndicate and then the 40% will be into other markets. And the split between lead and following in those markets will largely depend on the strength of our underwriting capability. While we haven't shared the specifics of those numbers of lead follow ratio, I think what I will say is that we can expect that we will have a healthy split between lead and follow. But I think once the syndicate started writing business, I think we'll be in a better position, I think, to give more metrics just around how much are we needing and how much are we falling. But I think, again, linking to the previous question, the key underpin here is that we must hit our underwriting margins and return on capital targets.

Okay. We're going to take one more question before we close the session.

Marius Strydom, ALG. Firstly, congratulations for getting the approval. It's a real feather in your cap. It's not an easy thing to achieve. And then the question relates to the seeding of the business to Lloyd's. Obviously going to move from a normal accounting to 3-year accounting. Is that not going to tie up cash for a few years, reducing your cash generation within Santam a little bit.

No. I mean, I think if you look at -- I mean, so maybe let's let look at our dividend philosophy, right? So I think what you've seen is that we've typically used our capital coverage range ratio as one of the key triggers once our capital coverage ratio gets to that upper end, and so we haven't typically followed a payout ratio approach. And I think we believe that the approach we've taken is fairly conservative given the volatility that you see within our business. And so you are right that you do move to that 3-year accounting with the reinsurance to close at the end of 3 years. But if you look at the size of the syndicate relative to the size of the Santam balance sheet, we don't believe that, that creates any material issues from a cash flow perspective, particularly around funding our ordinary dividends.

Tava, we're going to bring [Technical Difficulty] to a close. Thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Asha.

So from the grown up startup, that's going to help drive the growth and resilience and also hearing about how Sanlam can win in both developed and emerging markets. We move now from Lloyd's of Lending to LEGOs in Lusaka. Now Heinie Werth, CEO of SanlamAllianz, will show the scale and potential of our SanlamAllianz joint venture and how the group is positioned to capitalize on the Pan African opportunity. Before Heinie makes his way to the stage, we have a few words from Allianz CEO, Oliver Bate.

Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for providing me with the opportunity to share a few words on our partnership today. Let me start a bit early. Allianz story in Africa actually began in 1912, thus marking over a century of presence in this remarkable continent. When asked about our commitment to Africa, my answer is simple. We see both today's remarkable developments and tomorrow's even greater potential. We're the world's fastest-growing population, a vibrant use accelerating urbanization and impressive resilience Africa is poised to become a powerhouse of innovation and entrepreneurship with truly transformative talent. Now after 3 years of thoughtful discussions, we recognized in Sanlam, a partner whose values mirror our own amongst those integrity, care and respect where both people and performance matter. Becoming a true insurance powerhouse does not only need the technical capabilities and insurance knowledge, but also cultural integration and strategic alignment. And while Allianz brings in global insurance expertise, and a lot of technological innovation, Sanlam certainly brings unparalleled local insurance competence and insights as well as deep community connections. That is why together, we have created the #1 Pan-African insurance company together. An achievement, I believe, neither organization could have accomplished on its own. Therefore, our decision to increase our stake to the 49% reflects our long-term vision and our belief that true leadership means recognizing opportunity before it becomes obvious to others. And that is what we already see. Just 2 years in, this partnership has exceeded my expectations. The synergies between our organizations, be it cultural or economic have been remarkable at all levels, while integration costs are lower than expected. Our rebranding efforts, integration progress and financial performance have actually surpassed projections, validating our ambitions. I now see an organization that has already transformed insurance across many parts of Africa, as well as being committed to being empowering communities and contributing positively to society development. But we will go even further, making insurance more accessible, more responsive and aligned across the continent, while protecting what matters most to our clients. And we will achieve this while maintaining disciplined focus on margins, on productivity and intelligent capital management, thus creating sustainable value for all stakeholders. As we move forward, I want to express my gratitude to our teams across Africa and to our investors who share our vision. The SanlamAllianz partnership proves that we -- what can be achieved when organizations unite around shared values and a common purpose. I could not be prouder of what we have already built together. And at the same time, I'm super excited about the journey ahead. Thank you very much for listening.

Well, thanks, Oliver. I think you have said everything that I'm planning to say. I will just reinforce. I think you summarized it very well. The reason for why SanlamAllianz about is really to shareholders. We really have a belief and commitment to Africa's future. From the first time I met Oliver and the team, you could see you really believe in the future of Africa, the future growth potential. And you all know it has always been a core part of Sanlam's own ambitions. Secondly, Oliver also has put it. Both parties realized that you can be more successful in the African continent by joining forces. You need scale and you leverage the best what both groups can bring to you. So Oliver summarized it very well. I have to say even before I start putting my Sanlam -- my old Sanlam hat on, the value that Allianz brand brings is actually amazing across Africa. To have the value of this combined brand, SanlamAllianz really take you through the door. I don't see it's so easy. It's not just about closing the -- selling the policy then. But it's amazing the combined brand that we now have. I'm going to tell you a little bit more on why we believe Africa have got a good future. Also then why we at SanlamAllianz believe, we are well positioned to capitalize on it. And then a little bit about our strategy, strategic objectives. And as David have also said, anything we do, you have to measure. Otherwise, you don't know why you do or are you successful? So you've heard a lot about this already, and GDP growth for Africa is expected to exceed the rest of the world for the coming years. Admittedly, from a smaller basis, but in real terms, a much better growth profile overall in the African continent. And you will see on this slide on the right-hand side, it's basically all regions. 5, 7 years ago were very difficult after COVID, immediately after COVID. We recently had all the issues in Egypt. But the growth projection is now very, very positive, I want to say, and you can see there North Africa also coming back from weather at a very low last few years and then very high expectations in East Africa. So the first point is growth prospects in Africa is good -- economic growth prospects. Secondly, Paul also referred to it, very low insurance penetration. Less than 1% insurance penetration on the life side and on the general insurance side. Yes, there's 1 or 2 exceptions, Morocco about a 4% penetration, Namibia is 6% insurance penetration. But collectively, in the markets where we operate, less than 1%. So the big opportunity, the big -- what we have to get right is how do we improve this insurance penetration in the years to come? It's not easy. Income levels are quite skewed, but it is doable with the right products and the right people, and I'll come back to that. We've also heard about the size of the working population. I mean currently, more than 800 million people working population in Africa, expected to be more than 900 million by 2030. I saw expectations for 2050 the other day. It's going to be massive. I'm not sure that I will be able to help at that stage. But overall, a good story, 20% of the world's population, a very, very young population, 75% growing labor force, urbanization, big cell phone penetration all across making it easier to get to your client, to deal with your client. So if you take these 3 factors together, good economic growth, low insurance penetration, a growing young workforce. It really creates an unparalleled opportunity. Not easy because Africa is not one market, it's 52 countries. You all know countries don't behave the same at all times. There's different drivers in the countries. But overall, a big opportunity for the future. If we look, why are we well positioned? So yes, we're only 2 years in existence. But you've heard that Oliver also said Allianz, more than 100 years in Africa. We've been largely in Namibia. But then for the last 25 years, built up an extensive footprint across Africa, Sanlam. So we are well positioned. We are present in 26 countries. There's no other insurance group in Africa that can give this offering to its client of, if you deal with us in one country, we can also help you in other countries. Part of our ambition, and we're already quite advanced is that you have to be a top 3 player -- many of these markets are small, so you have to be a top 3 player. You can see we are already well positioned. General insurance, 18 of the 25 countries we're already there. We have to make plans to get all 25 countries there. And on the life insurance side, we operate in 21 markets. And there, we're in 15 of the 21, we are a top 3 player. Oliver also referred to it, the basic financials -- luckily, we didn't start from scratch, but we did succeed over the last 2 years, not only to keep the businesses together but also to already lift the game, as you can see there, even in the profits and volumes that we reported for the first 6 months. So I really believe a strong base. The footprint counts a lot. The brand is really, really remarkable, accepted on the African continent. And I do think we are a solid base. We have to put things together and take it from there. Another thing that I would like to highlight is Africa's premiums is still small relative to that of even South Africa, even though South Africa is relative small portion of the economy in the total Africa. What we already have is we already have 16% of all the premiums in the markets that we operate. That's a good starting point. You've heard Tava and 22% and all of that. So there's scope. There's really scope to take this forward. So we need to grow the underlying insurance penetration, but we also have the opportunity to improve our own participation in that cake. We don't have exact numbers, but no other insurance group across Africa have got more than 3% to 4% of the total premiums. So we are well positioned. It is nice to work in Africa, knowing that you've got a backing of 2 very strong, strong shareholders and 2 shareholders that is committed to support us in this journey. But they always have expectations, any shareholder. We are there for our stakeholders, for our shareholders, clients, everybody. And we plan to more than double our profit -- our '24 profit was our first year of existence, and we plan to more than double that by 2030. And we are really going to focus to get more of our businesses into a top 3 position all across the continent and we want to further diversify. Yes, we've got a well-diversified group, but it's still concentrated in a few large markets. So that's the overarching objective that we have set ourselves out to do. I always say we try to keep our strategy very simple. After the formation of the joint venture, the key focus was to merge and integrate our overlapping businesses. We, Sanlam and Allianz had overlaps in 11 of these 26 countries, and that was a big drive to get these businesses together to ensure we don't drop the ball in the process. I'll come back to that now. I've already spoken a lot about this. If you're already a top 3 player, everybody go for you. So a big part of our strategy is how do we retain and maintain our market shares where we are top 3 and then complemented to that, where we're not top 3, what plans that we put in place to get there. Over time, we will selectively add new countries, and we will also exit countries. We recently exited Zimbabwe, great current business, great people, but not an easy country to do business in. So we are willing to add countries over time, but we're also willing to make difficult decisions where we don't believe in the future or that the future will be difficult and that we won't really be able to make a difference there. A big part of our strategy when you operate across so many markets is we quite often get a question, but those countries can do it on their own. They've got their own management teams, their own insurance regulators. What we try to bring to them with the help of Sanlam and Allianz is technical support from the center. How can we accelerate their growth pattern relative to their competition. And that's what we are really about SanlamAllianz. We're a holding company, but not just the holding company, we are there to help our businesses on the ground to get bigger and better, quicker. We have to help them to differentiate themselves from their competitors. And then part of Sanlam and Allianz's DNA is, you always look at efficiencies. So that's a very simple snapshot of our strategies. If I take it to the next level, how do you protect and grow your market share? How do you protect what you have? How do you grow it? It is then about our life and general insurance clusters. And I want to summarize it very simplistically. In life business and in general insurance business, the big driver is getting the right products to the right clients for the right distribution. I know it sounds simple, but that's really what it's about. It's all about making sure you've got competitive products, products that is solving the needs of your clients and take it to your clients. So a big focus still in Africa on the life side is agency distribution. Yes, we do empower them with technology. We help them with digitization, but helping our agents in terms of their own productivity, their footprint, their skills, that is what is critical. Also on the African continent, and we've seen it even more in Egypt is the importance of bancassurance. We've been dealing with banks for many, many years. We actually deal with more than 200 banks on the continent, not all to the same level, but we really take a bank assurance expertise to the markets where we operate to help them. And then as I said, it's about the products. Capital markets differ in different African markets. You can't offer all products in all markets. You have to look at the maturity of the market, what is the duration of assets you can get into. Annuity business is a core focus for us, but many markets do limit us what we can offer. Individual products are always our bread and butter. And then we do not yet I want to have a fair share of group risk across the continent. So that's the focus area. This is the focus area that our teams out of Cape Town, Johannesburg, all our [Technical Difficulty] they do to help our countries to drive these strategies. General insurance also all about product. And here, we play in all segments in the individual side, it is about motor insurance and health insurance. An area where we're not yet that good is your mid corps or your small and medium enterprises or your smaller commercial enterprises. That's going to be a focus area for us on the general insurance side. Otherwise, people chase the same book the whole time. We are quite big already in corporate and commercial or specialist business across Africa. That's about 40% plus of our portfolio and we see further potential, obviously, for that. And this is where it's become very important to offer the security of a solid brand and solid financial strength to those clients. Behind this, behind our general insurance, we've also got a unique model with SanlamAllianz Re, our captive reinsurance business. We also succeeded earlier this year to get A rating for that business. And basically, that business pull our reinsurance across Africa and then go and place it in the international market to basically get better terms for our businesses than what they could have gotten their own. So it's a very nice vehicle that we have, and we also plan to gradually roll it out to countries where we do not have primary licenses, but where we can also then offer third-party reinsurance to other local players. For example, in the DRC, Ethiopia, whichever countries where we do not yet have our own licenses. Same on the general insurance side, extremely important. You have to make it easy for your clients and your brokers to deal with you. So standardization, simplification is always part of it. And I come more from a life insurance background. In general insurance, you take sometimes big risks, you have to make sure your technical capabilities are really up to it. And that's an area where I have to say where Allianz is helping us now tremendously in the relooking the way we do that. Across our business, life in general, there's always a few common initiatives. It is about making sure we've got the right people, the right culture that people feel they all belong to SanlamAllianz, that when you deal with people in Nigeria, you have the similar feeling than dealing with people in Egypt in terms of the culture or the way we treat our clients. There's a big drive always to see how much we can standardize on systems, on the life side, general insurance side, finance side to drive cost efficiencies through that. And then behind our life and general insurance, we also have a big portfolio of assets and the whole drive is to optimize investment returns, notwithstanding the limitations of limited capital markets on the continent. So quite a simple strategy all around, holistic plus on life in general. In the end, for us, it's about execution in the countries. I've started off that are not the most important focus for the first few years were our integration projects, the 11 countries where we had overlaps. 8 countries are completed. They're on the left. Before the end of the year, we will also merge our businesses in Kenya and Mauritius. And then many of you will know, Morocco was a bit more difficult. We had certain competition concerns by the regulator. We first had to address their concerns before we could decide how to take it further. And as we stand here in the next month or two, all of those concerns will be addressed, and we will start our planning for a merger, but that will only happen next year as any process with regulators anywhere always takes a bit of time. As David said, it's all about measurement. However, we measure whether we do create value. Most important in the end is the bottom line. We want to grow that with South African inflation plus 10% more than that, that's plus/minus 15% and more. We do believe that's definitely achievable for the next number of years to maintain that growth. To achieve that, however, you need to get the business on the life and general insurance side. On life side, we target to grow our volumes 12% to 15% in our new business volumes. But through scale then, we will be able to grow our value of new business with at least 15% to 20%, which is then building the profit for the future on the life business side. General insurance, a bit more tough. It's a very competitive market, people underprice easily. So we will strive to get 12% to 15% growth there as well. But more important is, we want to deliver it at the insurance margin of at least 10% to 15%. And the insurance margin obviously consists here of your underwriting margin to maintain that discipline and to add to that, the return on technical reserves. I don't think we will be able to achieve this every year. I do, however, think the profit is a given. We don't want to go for volumes at the expense of profitability. So our core focus, notwithstanding the volume focus will be our operating growth and our insurance margins that we will protect. To conclude, I think David had in one of his slides, we assess that the growth or so top line growth in India will be faster than South Africa and Africa in the short term. I tend to agree with him. Africa will not always be that easy. It's a collective of many markets. But I do know in the longer term, we're building a sound foundation to capitalize in the medium and longer term. I've talked enough about, I really believe we've got a quality partnership between Sanlam and Allianz. It's not always easy to have 2 shareholders. Both have expectations, and you have to keep both happy. So it's not -- it's -- but it's part of life. That's -- at this stage, it sounds when I listen to Oliver, we keep them reasonably happy. And then, yes, on that basis of a quality partnership, believing in the long-term future of Africa, I really, really believe, we are putting in place a sound foundation at SanlamAllianz to capture -- to help to grow the continent but also to capture the fair share of that growth. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Heinie. I think just listening to Oliver as well and just picking up on some of the themes that were so similar in Subashri's video, where he spoke about deep community connections contributing to the positive societal impact. So seeing the similarities across the Indian market, African markets, and later in our South African markets, I think, is going to be key to our success. So we'll start like we have before with questions in the room, we have a hand here in the middle of the room. Can we get a mic there, please?

Your presence in 26 countries is obviously impressive. But how optimal would you say the portfolio is from, I suppose, either a cash generation point of view or the ROE point of view relative to cost of capital?

Okay. So yes, as you say, 26 on a map, it looks always great. If you look through the 26, there's normally 5 or 6 businesses that still comprise 80% of the business. So if I look both in the life and general insurance side, 4 markets feature every time, and that is Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, and then Kenya as future potential. Kenya, we are still too small. But where I'm heading is, basically, for the next few years, the focus is how do we bring more companies up to that. So currently, I will quite often say, look, you also sometimes think that we've got many small businesses, is it really worthwhile? But then we've seen over the last 20 years, we've succeeded to take small businesses. Ghana was always for me a good example. We were nowhere in Ghana in 2005. We built up a business with the local management, which became a market leader there. Unfortunately, we sold it a few years ago, but it's doable. So our approach currently is in lots of markets. Yes, there are certain markets where we need to scale up quicker. Nigeria, Kenya and Ghana is 3 of them -- are 3 of them. For the rest, it is looking which of these other businesses can we upscale as well to get them meaningful. I don't think all of them will be successful in the end or not to the extent we want them. In their own country, they may be. And but that's why I've said, we will look over time, do you stay? Do you -- we don't want to exit easily. It's very difficult to go back once you've exited. In terms of cash generation, what I can say to you, I must be careful. When we created the JV, we had the zero check book, right? We didn't have the luxury anymore SanlamAllianz. You write a check and they go through their bank accounts. So actually, dividend flows from our countries. Dividend payments by the countries are very, very good. We do sit with complex legal structures, where dividends sometimes take 1 or 2 years to get to South Africa. We are looking at ways to simplify that. And then we first have to build a bit of a cash base or a working capital base in our own name before Sanlam and Allianz will really benefit from that. ROE will always be a focus. I think at this stage, we will be on the lower side, but the growth will help us to improve that. But I would say, group-wise, we are possibly the lowest ROE at the moment.

For those targets as well, doubling your earnings around 15% growth over the next 5, 6 years. Could you maybe give us a sense of when you expect that to come through more of it early, more of it late. Do we have to be patient? What sits in the base at the moment that could be impacting that as well. Currently, there's a lot of mergers taking place. Are there meaningful costs associated with that, for example. So is the base depressed? Or are they -- there was going to be a step up and then slower growth to that doubling earnings? Or is it going to be an acceleration of growth?

Francois, I think the first few years will be quicker growth purely because of all the synergies. Oliver referred to it. We are exceeding our planned synergies. We're doing it at a slightly lower cost than what we thought we would do it. And that will help to accelerate the base initially. The issue will then be you need to get the volume growth as well on a sustainable basis to keep that going. So in my own mind, I think the next 2, 3 years will be quicker growth on the bottom line. And then it will become a function how do we accelerate the top line.

Similar question around your new business value on the life side. You've given us targets there. More or less how does that pan out in the short term versus longer term?

I'm very positive on the way it's playing out at this very moment. Robert and the team, they've done some great stuff before the JV already to lift the game, and they are very, very well placed to deliver that and outperform that.

Heinie, one question from the online live stream. Michael Christelis from UBS. Can you update us on the reason for maintaining a listing in Morocco?

Look, we have to respect that different countries want to get their own capital markets or stock exchanges going and growing. So we have to be very careful as a foreign investor to go and delist companies. And yes, the current float or free float in Morocco is possibly around 10%, but the local regulators requested us to stay listed. And we really respect that. We've got a listed company, Botswana, Kenya, Morocco. If that can help the local community to participate in the company, if that can help the stock market development, I think that's part of the game of doing business in different countries.

Okay. We have another question from Michael. What gives you confidence of increasing insurance penetration across the continent, where in many countries, penetration has fallen in the last 20 years?

Yes. I think if you look at the combination, especially in dollar growth terms, some countries have definitely gone down. Others have gone up. We see our job with local regulators and other people, you need to show to people the value of insurance. So earlier this week, Tuesday, we had quite a few international clients and brokers here. And the whole theme the whole day was and we took the lead you, it's about paying your claims. When people see you pay claims and you honor your commitment -- we've seen that in India as well, 20 years ago, Sundaram Finance didn't want to sell a credit life policy. The moment the first credit life started to pay out and people or families were able to retain their truck, it took off, it got accepted. Now it sounds many years ago, 20 years ago as well, we had Ghana. Funeral policies were not in the market. We developed it. We're currently seeing and it's early days. Many of you will know we don't have bancassurance partners or big ones in Morocco. We're starting to take the lead now to sell similar saving products what the banks do through our agents. Early days, but it's picking up. So you have to do things to develop the market -- you have to go with your product, you have to continue to drive it, but you also have to create that awareness of why is it good? So it's not going to be easy. I agree with Michael. It's one of those things that I wish it just explode, but it's hard work.

Thanks, Heinie. And I think that talks to your closing remarks also around the long-term focus that we have. And folks, that brings to a close of...

One more question. I just wanted to -- I mean, would you say your -- your model is reliant on bancassurance mostly. And what is the risk of disintermediation from the banks? How do you think about that?

If you take general insurance, it's largely broker business, complemented with individual agents in many of the countries. Bancassurance are very small. We see it actually as opportunities still because we are big in bancassurance on the life side. On the life side, I will stick out my neck, we sell about 40% through banks, but a lot of that is in Egypt. So bancassurance, is always a very good add on. Once you embed yourself well with the bank and clients, it's not too easy for you or the bank to dissolve the relationship. If the bank continue to feel that you add value to their clients, you understand their strategy, what they try to achieve and you help them. Look, in the end, we believe the people on the ground make the difference. We talk about this stuff, but the relations on the ground keep you in the bank.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Well, folks, this concludes the first half of our program this afternoon. We'll be taking a short comfort break. So for now, you can stretch your legs, grab some refreshments. We'll be back promptly in 15 minutes. For those that are with us in person, we have set up a live time bank kiosk in the foyer. So if you have not yet had a chance to interact with this, I do encourage you to try this out as it's going to give you a great sense of what's to come after the break when we'll be discussing how Sanlam plans to win through its ecosystem play in South Africa. So we'll be back promptly in 15 minutes. [Break]

Welcome back. We hope you are refreshed and ready for the second half of our program. We will now turn to South Africa. Still the heartbeat of Sanlam where the ecosystem itself is becoming a growth engine. For our next session, we will tell the story of how our core businesses are innovating to secure both today's income and tomorrow's growth. Before we dive into these specifics, I'd like to invite Paul back on to stage to share his perspective on the investment case for South Africa.

Thanks, Asha. I'll be very, very quick. But I wanted to say that at Sanlam, we've got 2 big growth engines in Africa and India, but South Africa remains a very critical base for our group. And before our team come up and discuss how we're turning South Africa into a really high-growth engine for the group, I wanted to reaffirm our commitment at Sanlam and particularly our belief that South Africa can, in fact, be a strong growth engine and that it has good growth prospects. South Africa's fundamentals do really remain strong. And I think often South Africans in particular, forget this. We have a young population. We've got an incredibly well-diversified economy. We've got deep capital markets. We've got very sound institutions. And these give our country resilience, and I think great long-term investment appeal. We've also got a mineral base that makes it globally strategic. And we can see right now in the world how important that is. And I think our institutions and our constitution really anchor this country's stability. We're beginning to see after a decade of economic stagnation reforms through things like Operation Vulindlela, some policy alignment that is beginning to turn the tide. We see infrastructure and energy reforms coming through. They are actually not just things that people talk about, but there are actually actions taking place and outcomes. And the markets are beginning to respond. So we can see that there is lower inflation expectations that are building up. We're seeing rising foreign direct investment, which is super, super important in this country. And we're seeing improved investor sentiment. So I think we are just after a very wicker decade of the 2010s, we're beginning to see an inflection point and a turn up. Reforms are really reshaping this economy. So the governance cleanup, I know some people are frustrated at the speed of it, but the governance cleanup, large-scale private investment into renewables, logistics upgrades and digital connectivity are all really, really beginning to take shape. These are anchoring confidence. They're accelerating growth off a low base, and they're creating the foundation, I believe, for sustained recovery. And in many ways, because we've dropped to such a low ebb, just relatively small deltas on each of these things can make a very big difference. We are cognizant that a full recovery back to the sort of growth rates that we should achieve is going to take time, but I really do believe that it will happen. South Africa will succeed in turning around the damage of the 2010s. And at Sanlam, we're very confident in the medium-term growth prospects for this country. We do see that already there's much improved underlying growth potential in our domestic economy. So with that perspective, I'm going to hand back to Asha, who will introduce our panel.

Thank you, Paul. For our next growth vector, I'll be joined on stage by Anton Gildenhuys, CEO of Sanlam South Africa Life & Savings; Bongani Madikiza, CEO of Sanlam South Africa's Retail Mass business; and Karl Westvig, CEO of TymeBank. Before our panelists make their way on to the stage, let's hear a few words from Dr. Johan van Zyl, Executive Director and CEO of Ubuntu-Botho Investments. Sanlam's strategic [indiscernible] partner and it's operating company African Rainbow Capital. [Presentation]

Anton Gildenhuys, welcome. I think this is one of the wait is where we had mixed most interest. I think everyone is looking forward to hearing about this. Anton, I'd like to start with you as CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings. We heard Paul in his opening remarks, talk about how our South African business is the group's traditional center of gravity being built over 100 years. We heard about the scale and competitive advantages we have in South Africa. So can you give us a bit more insight into this market positioning, especially in South Africa, where the insurance market is seen as relatively mature?

Yes. Thanks, Asha, and good afternoon, everyone. Yes, I mean, we've managed to really leverage all of the scale and competitive advantage. And we saw a couple of transactions earlier today into building a leading position in pretty much all of the product lines that we currently operate in. We've got a 21% market share in intermediated funeral business. We've got the largest group risk book in South Africa at about 25%. If you look at Glacier, we've got the largest list in South Africa with more than ZAR 700 billion of assets under administration. So it's an enormously powerful platform that we've built. But David mentioned that you should drive for show but for dough. So if you look at the market shares, we've got that 300 yard [indiscernible] into the middle of the fairway. But the thing we're sinking that 50-yard but. If you look at our market share of value of new business, we basically wrote about 1/3 of the VNB in the listed insurance industry in the first half of this year. So we write quality, high-margin business in the market that we currently operate in.

Asha, if I may just add, I think Anton paints a very good picture from where we are. I think what we need to do now is to move this business into the next phase. And we think through this about growing the number of customers. We think about this growing the number of products we sell to the customers at a decent margin. Note, I did not say at an exorbitant margin. And it's quite important that we then keep these customers engaged for a long period, which the people insurance will call persistence. Our view is based on fundamentally that what is the South African customer looking like in 5 to 10 years' time. And we must build capability that responds to that. So if you look at -- I think there are people who have been writing about the retail mass business for many years now. They will know this. 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you would sell insurance in the retail mass, and you are done. But today, those customers, although they are struggling, they have improved their lives. So if you go to a school tomorrow, especially after month end on a Friday, there are as many cars at the school as a number of teachers. What does that say? It says there is an insurable interest, there is an opportunity for us. These same teachers, same police women and men now have disposable income that is able to buy a TV set, et cetera, et cetera. So they -- it's important that you build a capability that allows you to not only sell one thing, but to sell a number of things. And that's the ecosystem we're trying to build for the future. But you've also seen that the group, we've been doing a few things, building blocks. We have a health care proposition. We have a discussion now around lending. We have a discussion around transactional. All of these things lend themselves well to the customer of today and the customer of the future. To demonstrate a bit about this, let me just talk a bit about the work that we've done with Assupol up until now, that gives you a sense of how our strategic objectives are being executed. I want to start by saying it's actually quite interesting. It's the 16th of October -- we took over Assupol the 16th of October last year. Paul will remember it was a fun day. What are the things that we've achieved? So we've improved productivity in that business by 24%. We have killed churn within and between the 2 licenses. We have made sure that all the advisers are employed. So we had advisers who were contractors. We converted them to be employed. And the reason is simple. We wanted to make sure that we can control what these advisers do because there are these changes that we want to implement. And the fourth thing that we've been able to achieve is ensuring that we can move all our advisers onto a digital platform. That allows us to then -- well, firstly, know where they are. It's important. But secondly, and most importantly, is to then be able to say when we add all of these products, can we use one platform to add products that we can sell more things. So again, we want scale, we want more customers. We want to sell more to these customers, and we want to retain them more.

Bongani, I think definitely like productivity is the name of the game, right? And Anton, I think just the way you described the market leadership, and the quality of the businesses is like pretty impressive. And Bongani, you touched on it a bit as well in terms of serving the customers of today but also serving their needs not only today but for the future as well. And now we know that the pace of change is just relentless. In industry convergence is becoming more and more prominent, particularly across banks and insurers. We've also heard in Dr. Johan van Zyl's opening remarks about the next chapter of this partnership and relationship with time. So can you tell us a bit more about how these fits in, how everything comes together? I'm glad you touched on Assupol Bongani because we've had questions about that as well. And like importantly, where do we see this growth coming from?

Thanks, Asha. I think that is actually key because combined with this leadership position we have, the key question we constantly get is where will your growth come from? And we see mainly 2 primary sources of growth. The first one is we are going to expand our solution set. First of all, to get more sources of revenue. But secondly, and perhaps even more importantly is to build our relevance amongst younger mobile-first urban consumers. I mean if you look at our primary product lines at the moment, risk and savings, investment, pre and post-retirement, those are not the typical products that a young start-out customer would typically seek for first at the outset. What do they want? They want credit. They want transaction. They need transactional facilities. So we're very excited to announce a very important and key strategic partnership with time to embed them into our ecosystem. We can talk about -- more about that just now. Of course, all of that is subject to regulatory approval. Let me just make that disclaimer upfront, and I don't have to mention it again. But time transactional banking, credit, we've pivoted our credit business into a partnership with time. It's an existing profitable business. So that gives us a nice scalable business that we can build even more. And we've already started with health care as well, a bit more than a year ago. So you can see almost our traditional solutions on one hand and how we complement that, we really become relevant to younger clients. So that's new revenue sources. And then the second source of growth is to really fill the gaps between all of our product lines to cross-sell. And that is actually what Bongani really focused on as well is we've got these relationships. We've got advice relationship with our clients. How can we leverage that more and more to remain relevant throughout their lives and start with products and introduce new ones as they go through their life journey.

Karl, I think this is a really good segue to you because we've heard now Anton and Bongani reference lending and credit, the new partnership subject to regulatory approval. And Paul touched on it as well. Times, I think, reached incredible milestones and achievements being recognized as one of the top 100 most influential companies, reaching unicorn status after your last capital raise in December 2024, having Nubank join your shareholder base, which are all pretty incredible achievements for a bank that just started in December 2019. And I think having that partner that's pretty much the largest digital financial services group in the world, if I recall, of the last stats. I mean these are just like really great votes of confidence. Now there's a lot of excitement, I think, in the market around time generally, but also a lot of excitement in the room and within Sanlam around what this means. So if you can share with us why the partnership with Sanlam. And importantly, what can Sanlam clients expect to get through this partnership?

Thanks, Asha. So let's just create some context. So Anton spoke about the various pillars. There are 4 key pillars we're working on. One is the personal lending business so that we're sharing 50-50, and we bring the best of both worlds. So Sanlam has already got a 20-year-old book that's been seasoned over many years. On the TymeBank side, we built a fully digital journey on a digital tech stack. So putting those together, the teams together, you get the best of both worlds to able to scale and compete in the market. On the transaction banking side, what you're actually going to end up getting is we're rewriting the whole tech stack and not everyone knows that. So the current platform that you see is going to be replaced. We're really in the friends and family and test phases. So January in the new year, there will be a brand-new app that comes out. So this partnership is built on probably the newest tech stack in the world. So you're getting the best of breed in terms of technology. It's completely cloud native and allows then for much more flexibility later on. The third element is insurance. So the captive audience is on both sides. So Sanlam will be the exclusive provider of insurance into TymeBank customers, and we'll jointly build that out. And then the fourth part, we'll talk about later is loyalty, and we'll be part of the loyalty program for that. So what Sanlam customers can expect to receive, one, effectively a free bank account. So they're not going to pay monthly fees, the lowest transaction fees in the market. I'll explain later about the cost structures, but it also allows us to pay the highest savings rates in the market and an exceptional customer experience. I see the Chair has now got his TymeBank account. Thank you, Chair. And it wasn't too painful a process. So it's good to know. And with the new branding coming, and we'll talk about brand later, it will be -- have Sanlam elements to it. It will be a blue card, not a black card. So there's lots of exciting stuff coming in the future. And then just the last point quickly on why Sanlam. Between our 2 entities, we have around 17 million customers. It's a large captive audience and incredible data, and we'll get data off the back of loyalty of transaction banking, of insurance, which allows us to leverage AI and data analytics.

The lowest transactional fees and the free bank account obviously sound really, really incredible, especially in the context of the South African market. Tell us a bit more about your operating model and how that actually underpins and allows Tyme to develop such a compelling client proposition. And also, if you can tell us a bit about practically what does the Nubank participation play out like in the world of TymeBank?

So it's important to understand the strategic advantage we've created is when we built TymeBank, one, we don't have a branch infrastructure. So our headcount totaled 650 people in South Africa with 12 million onboarded customers. So it's a small team. We don't handle any cash. Cash is handled only by our retail partners. So we need no middle office and no back office to operate the bank. And as a result, our onboarding process, if we have a kiosk and we include an ambassador next to the kiosk, it costs us less than $5 to acquire a customer, less than ZAR 80, ZAR 90 to acquire a customer, one of the lowest in the world. Alongside that, because we have a lean infrastructure, we operate at about 10% of the cost to serve a customer of the incumbent banks and 20% of what you'll know is the largest bank in South Africa right now. So we have a long-term strategic advantage on cost. Nubank, obviously coming as a shareholder, they've been incredibly supportive. So they operate in 3 markets: Brazil, Colombia, Mexico. 123 million customers. They run a market -- have a market cap of about USD 70-odd billion. At one stage, they were valued more than our total banking ecosystem in South Africa as one digital bank and only 12 years old. So they've been incredibly generous in providing support in AI, in operating models, in marketing, et cetera, et cetera. So there's lots of information exchange, and we'll certainly leverage them when we look at launching credit cards next year.

Anton and Bongani, I think Karl has given us a really good synopsis of the what. But I think what everyone is really interested in is the how. We heard from David and the Shriram ecosystem in terms of how that developed off the strong credit base and how the ecosystem actually drives really high client engagement and a powerful client experience. So given what we've just heard, can you tell us how you see the development of the SA ecosystem? And how do all of these pieces come together? And I think it would be great to also share some insight into how our advisers fit into all of this because they are quite a critical part of the broader Sanlam ecosystem.

Yes. I mean this is where it really becomes quite exciting. We're busy with a lot of things that's coming together now in this ecosystem. And the first thing that I want to point out is we are building what we call a single front door into the Sanlam Group. And the single front door will be omnichannel. It will be digital, it will be through branches and then through advisers as well, where a client will access Sanlam through one point for the entire portfolio, our existing solutions, but then, of course, our expanded solutions as well. Then secondly, in Sanlam, we have developed a range of mechanisms and embedded loyalty features in our products. In my way, there's cash back if you don't claim. In Bongani's business, we pay close to ZAR 1 billion per year in cash backs at the moment. And we've got wealth bonus construct in the middle market, the affluent market and it's also embedded in the personal lending solution at the moment. We're going to pull all of that together into a new single rewards program with new very innovative lifestyle benefits as well, which we can't tell you much more about now, but that's going to be incredibly exciting. And then the third thing is I want to expand on the transactional facility. This is not just another product in our portfolio. We are going to integrate this transaction facility into our ecosystem to a revolutionary way. To demonstrate that, Karl spoke about this Generation 3 platform that Tyme is building that they're launching soon. The Sanlam Group new app for this single front door, we are building that app on exactly the same chassis as the Tyme chassis, and we're using the Tyme and TymeX development team to do that. I mean that has a number of advantages. First of all, you get best in world, new best-in-class cybersecurity onboarding, interchangeability of solutions. So it's only if you've got this transactional thing and there's API calling the rest of Sanlam and you wait and you see that thing running. It's all on the same app that we're building there. And then the integration also extends into our solutions. So for example, I spoke about our rewards programs and all these cash backs benefits and so on. We are going to play that into the transactional competency or the capability on the app, which puts the client in charge. The client can then decide to spend it out of the app. And the nice thing for us is by doing that, not only do we put the client in charge, but we are also exposing clients to the functionality that we have in the Sanlam transactional solution. They can see how easy it is, the cost features, how they will earn interest on this thing, and we believe that's going to be incredibly successful. You can...

I think that's spot on. I just want to amplify that Anton says we pay about ZAR 1 billion in cashbacks. On any given month, about 15% to 20% of the people ask us not to pay into their normal bank account, which means you have an opportunity to open the bank account on the TymeBank, Sanlam so that you can then be able to pay the money into that. So it's not -- we're not introducing friction for customers. Customers are asking us, don't pay into that bank account. And therefore, this is an opportunity for us. We need to build a business that enables us to then talk to that customer before. And as it happens, well, the first one is to know when the cash back is due. So it's important that we put that structure in place. I also want to talk a bit about the advisers. We have about 8,500 tied advisers in the South African business. Both in the affluent and mass market. And we've started with integrating in the mass market, not because of anything else other than the fact that those customers need the help now, and it gives us the relevance and the speed. When I spoke earlier about what we're doing with the Assupol adviser team, it was to demonstrate that without integrating the 6,000 advisers between the old STM and the old Assupol into one Sanlam retail mass machinery, we would not be able to achieve this. So if you think about it, we now have all of these advisers on one digital platform. We're able to sell what's driving life now, what's driving wheels now, what driving primary health care. Next year, we're going to drive transactional, we're going to drive credit in a way that is integrated with the back office. But also in my experience, it only works better if the advisers are part of the process. Because if advisers see themselves as an appendage of this thing, firstly, they'll call this thing a [indiscernible]. And then you then have a situation where you don't have an ecosystem that works for the whole organization. But I just wanted to give you -- to give the audience a sense of how practically this would work. So we've got a small video that just shows how this would be integrated into our ecosystem.

Thanks Bongani. [Presentation]

I'd just like to lift out a couple of things from the video. First of all, that video is AI generated. I don't know if everyone picked that up. But importantly, it was AI generated by one of our staff members using freely available tools. So that just gives you an idea of the power of AI to disrupt. Also in that video, you can see how we basically leverage data, like Karl said, in the ecosystem to constantly track what Sifiso is doing. And then when a journey is abandoned, for example, towards the end of that example, to link that client up with advisers. And we've got learnings in that regard, how that can work. And David spoke about what happens in India with their super app and the synergistic relationship between digital and humans. And we've got a lot of lessons. We had a team from Sanlam Connect that visited India quite recently, picking up how they work, how they pick up leads, mature these leads digitally and then send it back to the adviser. So we really see a synergistic human-centered digital solution.

I think there's one more thing that I'm keen to just pick up on with you, Bongani, because Sifiso walked into a branch. Tell us a little bit about the branch in this world.

I'm in sales. So I wanted to talk about the branch at the end. It's a punch line. But look, we have 100 branches as we speak now. And when we say we're building a branch, we're not just building a bricks and mortar. It is how the branch works. It is how the customer comes in. You have to drive the same level of productivity that you need. Now for those people who know a bit about the branch network with our customers -- sorry, our advisers will do 1x and the branch is going to do 6x the number of policies. If we have credit even better. So you can see how you can leverage the branch network, but there is more, as they say. One of the key things we've realized, and we've got a lot of competitors, both in insurance and in noninsurance who have relied on this network of branches. Our view has been we will be able to build these 100 branches and we'll increase them to 200, but we will also be able to use the 6,000 advisers as mobile branches. Because in our minds, if you have digital, then that adviser is able to help the customer with everything. This is why we insist that all our advisers get on to [ iManage Pro ], our digital platform because without that, then we won't be able to control the sales process. We won't be able to control the credit rating and related issues.

Thanks, Bongani. I think we can drop the punch line again at the end. So all of this sounds really exciting and potentially really expensive as well. So I'm keen for us to get into some of the detail behind what Sanlam is investing, what we see as the upside. And we've received a lot of interest just in terms of the commercials of the partnership. So if we can spend a few minutes just unpacking that, I think that would be quite appreciated.

Yes. I'll start a little bit on the Sanlam side and then Karl, if you can touch from Tyme side. I think, first of all, we are leveraging existing world-class infrastructure. So there's Sanlam Blue app or Sanlam Group app that we're building. We've got this enormous advantage of collaborating with Tyme Bank to build it together with them using Tyme X. So the incremental cost is really not prohibitive. If you look at the loyalty side, the new rewards program that we're building, we are leveraging global software as the back end of the rewards program. But we are consolidating all of these different rewards programs into one. So we actually expect quite a lot of synergy from day 1 by able -- being able to close down all of these separate platforms. Wealth Bonus is running on the platform, MiWay is running on the platform. And it's not only the platform but also engagement with the client that we can pull together to really enhance the client experience. In terms of what we expect, I'm really so excited about getting access to all of these new clients that traditionally has been a bit more of an uphill battle for us to get into. Sifiso is starting with banking and he's 25-ish old. We can see that working. We get new revenue sources to really power our growth. And then, of course, we become the supplier of other financial services products to the 12 million clients that Tyme already has, which further powers growth.

Maybe I can jump in quickly. So on the personal loan side, which is really a profitable book. So on day 1, by putting the 2 businesses together, we get the benefit of growth and we benefit in the profit. So that's profitable on day 1 with a greater ROE. On the banking side, it's incremental cost only really. So where there's development to fill in some product proposition gaps like Apple Pay, which is coming shortly and a bunch of other things that we share the cost in. But essentially, it's 50-50 down the middle on the whole venture, and it's an evergreen venture. So the plan is to have a very long partnership like the other partnerships that Sanlam already enjoys. Maybe just a quick point. I'm not sure if anybody picked up on Sifiso video, but you would have seen GoTyme not Tyme Bank in there. Now part of what's happening in the next 6 months is, one, we've developed a new tech stack, which we're launching. Secondly, we're actually shifting and it's not public yet. So you would first to hear it as in the broader audience. We're shifting to a global brand called GoTyme Bank, which is the brand we use in Philippines. So we have regulatory approval for it, but we'll announce it slowly as we start rolling out the new app. It's probably more like January and then a big public launch in March next year. So there will be marketing dollars behind promoting the new brand and the color will be much more aligned with Sanlam as well. So we'll lose the yellow and the black in the process.

So I think over the -- well, over the course of the day, we've all heard about the 2030 plans and all of these plans are obviously going to be executed over the next couple of years. Karl, I think you just touched on some of the immediate milestones from a Tyme Bank perspective. Anton, I think if you can talk about from a Sanlam Group perspective, what are some of these interim milestones, what can we expect and when?

Yes. No, I mean, you're absolutely right. To pull all of this together will take some time. But we really focus to get the impactful launches and milestones as early as possible. So we are targeting first quarter next year towards the end of the first quarter, March 2026 for the rewards program and then towards the end of the first half next year. So let's say, June next year to launch the Sanlam Group app that will include the transactional banking capabilities.

Okay. I'm keen for us to wrap up and start bringing this discussion to a close. And as part of that closing, I'm just keen to hear, I think the audience is keen to hear and we've had questions around why do we believe Sanlam will win in this space? And why do we believe we'll get it right?

Look, I think a number of reasons, but let me start with the simpler one. Insurance is sold. Bank transactions are bought. We are very good at selling insurance. Now bringing something that's extra that allows customers to come to us gives us an ecosystem that is very strong. You will not be able to win in the next 10 years if you do not have that ecosystem. And I think we've been able to build that ecosystem systematically for the last 5 years, building on the base that we've had for the last 100 years. So I think that's important for us. The second thing that I think people in the room and the audience must appreciate. We've made a lot of progress in integrating Assupol. And it's not because we are great, but yes, let's stick to that line. It's actually because of the institutional memory that we got from the organization. We were using models that Hennie is using to integrate the rest of the African continent. So the institutional memory in the Sanlam Group allows us to just catapult other competitors. That is what is a differentiator between ourselves and our competitors into the future.

If I get a couple of things, Bongani. So one, our experience already between the Tyme Bank team and the Sanlam team has been an incredible experience. Strategically aligned, culturally aligned, great executors. So a lot has been developed already in the background. So we are in the final stages of launching some of the apps and the lending platforms. Secondly, there's roughly ZAR 250 billion being paid out of Sanlam every year and collectively about ZAR 280 billion in via debit orders. If you can capture a piece of that transaction flow, not paying it to third-party banks and putting it through your own ecosystem, you're already capturing value. And there's also a very small overlap between the 2 bases. So where Tyme is younger and less affluent, Sanlam is older and more affluent, there's only a 10% overlap, which means that the rest is just free space to be able to cross-sell into each other. So there's massive tailwinds for this.

And Karl, do I say anything is possible when time is on your side.

I think you just broke a promise.

I thought I'd test the waters. It seems safe and I've got a few giggle, so I can prove my family and friends wrong. Gentlemen, thank you so much. We are going to open up the room to Q&A. I do just want to say that folks, we are running slightly behind schedule, but the interaction and engagement in Q&A has been great. So please bear with us. We will try and catch up a few minutes. But equally, we are keen to answer as many of your questions as possible. So we're going to open up to the room first and then see what we have online. Francois?

I'll try to be faster this time. I get the sense Bongani wants to talk about the Assupol integration. So -- and I think you've mentioned some numbers, 24% increase in productivity. How do you measure that? We certainly haven't seen that on new business value number. I think that's down quite sharply in the period. So maybe if you could just square that circle for us. And then yes, I think you've also had some other metrics in terms of -- so you've managed to cut out the churn you said. Can you give us a sense of what churn used to be?

You're asking difficult questions, but these are important questions. So let's start with the churn. On the Assupol side, it was not as high within Assupol. So it was around 10%, 15%. On the Sanlam side, it was quite high. It was about 25%. So we had a very tough 2024 at the beginning of 2024 to clean that out, and we had a rough year last year to just take that through. So you would have seen towards the end of the year that our volumes went down. A lot of people thought that it was -- for us, it was -- we're cleaning out the quality. And hopefully, when Paul and Abigail talk to you at the end of this year, they will be able to have a conversation around how the quality has improved. Between the companies it was quite difficult for us to measure. But what we've done is to say you can't sell a policy -- you can't replace a policy on both sides. So I think that -- if we close it that way. I think a lot of us, when we look at the productivity uplift, we expect -- so firstly, we've weaned out all of the less performing advisers. So what you would have seen is that you had a higher pace where you now have a lower base. So that's why you're seeing an increase in productivity. You're -- I think at an adviser level, we've moved people from 7 policies a month to about 10 policies a month. That is significant. And all of that is not only just introducing a system. It is how you manage sales, how you track sales on a weekly basis, et cetera. It's the boring stuff, but you have to do it well to get it done. And unfortunately, every year, you have to start from scratch and do it well again.

I think just one thing to add is because of all of these interventions, we see the file size growing now. So because of the churn, I mean, we write new business, but the file size just remained the same. Now we see the file size growing.

Two questions, please. Just in terms of pricing that you expect to see through the ecosystem approach for insurance distribution, you've got competitors saying they're 30% cheaper than the market. Do you expect to be able to match them or beat them? And then I guess maybe just to clarify in terms of penetration in the Tyme Bank customer base, what percentage of customers do have insurance currently on your estimates?

Yes, I'll start with the first one. Our intention in the ecosystem is actually not to only focus on, let's call it, commoditized solutions. Bongani spoke about our intention to go into credit into insurance, health care and so on as well. And I think the economics there are quite different. In fact, I think it's impossible to sell those solutions without the provision of financial advice. So I think as a collective, the total solution will be incredibly competitive. And we, of course, through the rewards program, will also incentivize clients to have cross holdings and to build a portfolio. So if you're just a single client buying a policy and you stick with it, I mean, then the market dynamics will be similar to what you see today. But if you look at it as a portfolio with rewards and the ecosystem, you will definitely see an improvement in the Sanlam side.

And then to answer your question on penetration of insurance, it's not something as time back we've driven at all. So we've had some insurance partners that have been available on app, but it's not being sold, as Bongani said earlier. So we're in the low single digits, if anything, on the insurance side. But once you've got an integrated ecosystem where you've got a single point of entry with a full portfolio of insurance products, banking, loyalty, all in one place, we see huge opportunity...

I think it shouldn't be lost that, as you mentioned, Tyme is joining the Sanlam Rewards program with their existing 12 million clients. So it's not as if it's only for the Sanlam GoTyme new clients, but it's actually for the existing clients as well, which will enable us to target those clients and to incentivize them for cross-selling.

Anton, just one question from online, Michael Christelis. Can you comment on the growth outlook for the retail affluent profit growth trajectory given the very low single-digit growth shown over the last 5 to 7 years?

Yes. Michael, we have been great to have you here, but I'm sure that the cost savings initiatives are working well. No, I think in terms of the affluent market, a lot of the growth in the affluent market is linked to underlying asset growth because in the affluent market, you tend to sell more pre and postretirement solutions. In fact, our growth has been pretty good over the last 12 months or so. And with asset prices that lifted quite a bit. I mean, you can expect quite an improvement for growth in the affluent market for, let's say, the foreseeable future.

Are there any more questions in the room? We've got a mic coming over.

Maybe to Karl, there's this sort of idea of customer primacy in the banking space. And I guess some of this maybe relies on people engaging quite regularly with the app and all that. Maybe what are your guys' thoughts on that? Because obviously, it's a big thing. Everybody is trying to do it. How do you differentiate? How do you secure that primacy so that you enhance the benefits, I suppose?

Yes, it's a great question. And it's -- so what we're seeing in the banking space is people are shifting from being primary banked to multi-banked. And we think about ourselves. So 10, 15 years ago, you were either a standard bank or a Nedbank or an app, so you weren't multiple. What we're seeing certainly elsewhere in the world and it's happening in South Africa, too, is people are now holding multiple accounts. They have a Monzo account and a Revolute account and all the rest. And they will use whichever account suits them best for that particular product set, either for saving or for payments or for international transfers, et cetera. So we're certainly seeing the fraction -- the fracturing of banking into multiple environments. So our strategy at the moment, it's very hard to move a primary bank account in. And if you think you're going to do that easily, it's not going to happen. But what we can do is we can give best-in-class for every service and start engaging customers at that level. And over time, they get frustrated with the other bank, they'll shift more into you. So we plan to be the best savings bank. We plan to have the lowest cost structure. We plan to have the best user experience, et cetera, et cetera. So it's a multi-banked world, and we need to make sure we show up on every product in the bank.

Thanks, Karl. Are there any more questions in the room? Okay. No more questions online. Thank you very much. So we've just seen how Sanlam leads and will grow in its home market and how Sanlam is about more than just insurance, committed to supporting formal financial inclusion in South Africa. Now we have Carl Roothman, CEO of Sanlam Investment Group, who will talk about how we are transforming in asset management into a global solutions-led business.

Thank you, Asha, and good afternoon, everyone. It's absolute pleasure to be with you this afternoon. What we wanted to do this afternoon is just explain to you, I mean, our theme is asset management reimagined. And over the last couple of years, we've made a very significant and strategic and intentional changes to our operating model in our asset management business, and that is in line with our vision and ambition to become one of top 5 emerging market asset managers in terms of AUM, profit and very importantly, impact. And those changes resulted in us in Sanlam Investments, Sanlam Investments Group today being one of the leading and one of the largest asset managers in South Africa, and we're incredibly well positioned in what we think is the growth vectors of the investment industry over the next 5 to 10 years. And those vectors are, as Paul mentioned earlier today, multi-management, indexation, alternatives and wealth management. But I think to explain our model and the changes that we've made and the excitement that we have about how we bring all of this together, I think it's also very important for all of you to understand the changes that happens in the industry, global trends as well as local trends in the investment industry. And very importantly, on this slide, the first 6 trends are what we call global trends that happens in South Africa and internationally. And then the last trend, the increase in offshore flows is a very specific impact on the asset management investment industry in South Africa. So I think -- and then we will talk about how we position our business. The first trend is important is in the traditional investment structures are losing ground. So what we mean with that is you see a significant rise in exchange-traded funds, ETNs, actively managed certificates. These structures are being listed on various exchanges, portfolio managers and clients can access these structures quite easily. It creates a lot of liquidity, and that is changing the way people invest and the structures that they use. Second to that, very, very important, is the mass customization is becoming mainstream. What we mean with that is that customization and how you build solutions for clients that's more focused on outcomes-based and what a client is looking for is taking a lot of dominance in how people think about asset management. So we just in the past had a few products, you put a few products together. It's now all about what's the outcome-based, how we think about different portfolios, what is your investment goal and how do we customize those solutions for you in technology and is allowing us to customize for a lot of clients. So that is taking significant growth in the industry. And then why -- and then the result of all of that is the rise, what we call of discretionary fund managers. And discretionary fund managers globally and in South Africa, as more and more advisers are using these different tools, they're outsourcing the investment decisions that they want to make. They focus more on the clients. So what happened is that you've seen is a rapid rise in discretionary fund managers who basically become the gatekeepers. So they control the clients, they see most of the flows. They put the portfolios together, they interact with the different asset managers, and they're becoming very, very powerful and attracting a lot of flows. Then obviously, you've seen significant margin squeeze in the industry, specifically in the active asset management capabilities. And then what we all know is a significant increase in the ground that passives are gaining over active asset management in South Africa and specifically globally. And then a rapid rise of alternatives. So as fees are becoming under pressure, more flows going to indexation, fewer opportunities in the listed world in South Africa and offshore, significant rise in alternative and private markets, specifically in private credit and in other funds. And that's -- you've seen that into wealth management and family office spaces and now that's going into the retail environment. So a rapid rise. And today or in a couple of years, we'll probably see about 20% of all assets sitting in private markets, and that will probably represent a forecast about 50% of the revenues and the profits that sit within in the asset management industry. And then on top of that, very, very importantly is the significant change in South Africa is the change to Regulation 28 2 or 3 years ago. where the allocation that allocators of capital and pension funds can increase their offshore allocation to 45%, and that has a very significant impact on the South African asset management industry. And why is that the case? Because to increase offshore, it's very difficult for South African managers to compete with large, well-established global asset managers have got more depth, they've got more breadth in the capabilities. They know the jurisdictions quite well. They've got local knowledge in the different areas. And we've seen over the last couple of years, mainly pension funds, the offshore allocation increasing from roughly 26%, 27% 3, 4 years ago to about 39% today. And that also makes portfolio construction and how you think about those portfolios incredibly important. And then very important on the overarching all of that is that you have to own distribution. And you have to have a significant influence over distribution, obviously, with technology as well to really -- distribution becomes your ticket to the game. And if you can control distribution, you can control the flows, then I think you have a very good chance of success. So in our business, we think we're proud ourselves that we've had a very good track record, very good our track record of understanding the shifts in the asset management industry. And we've made a few changes in our model over the last 10 years or so in line with these changes to make sure that we remain relevant, that we become one of the leading asset managers and one of the top 2 in South Africa and set us up for growth. So if I can just talk through this briefly. So the first is that we set up our own discretionary fund managers, Graviton and Glacier Invest. In 2019, we set up a strategy called Amplify. Amplify is basically a sub-advised strategy. We've recognized in South Africa that significant number of flows went away from large independent asset managers to boutique asset managers. We entered into agreements with them. We picked the best teams in South Africa with very specific skills, active management and hedge fund capabilities. We set up Amplify, and that is now one of the fastest-growing investment strategies in South Africa. In 2020, we sold 25% of our business to African Rainbow Capital, one of our partners in Sanlam Investments Holdings, and that was in line with our commitment to transformation. They bring significant deal flow to us, and that was -- that helped us to become more competitive and more relevant in the South African investment landscape. 2022, we also realized that we sold our business in the U.K. We wanted to exit out of markets that we're not competitive in. We want to focus on markets that we think we've got a competitive edge. 2022, we merged with Absa. That gave us scale. It gave us access to significant distribution from Absa Bank, and it gave us scale across active passive and solutions capabilities, multi-management. And then in 2024, in line with our ambition to grow -- to increase our alternative capability, we implemented what we call the demerger of Sanfin that you all know, aligned with a well-known 3-manager model, where we took the strong capability, ZAR 90 billion of assets from Sanlam, where we basically managed the annuity book for them with credit enhancement. We split that business. We created added the assets to our alternative asset management capability. That created significant scale for us. So there we could go from a ZAR 40 billion to ZAR 140 billion business and allowed us to use that scale to grow -- continue to invest in that business and attract third-party money with those capabilities. And then lastly, I mean this -- all of this culminated into our transaction with Ninety One, where we sold our SIM active management in South Africa and our Sanlam business in U.K. business to Ninety One, and I will talk a little bit about that in the slide -- in the next slide. So what this basically means for us is that I think we are an incredibly high-quality asset manager with incredible scale and a very, very strong competitive edge. That competitive edge for me, what makes us very unique compared to a lot of our competitors in Africa is that we are very entrenched and customized solutions. That is our DNA in Sanlam. We know how to create these solutions. We know how to use portfolio construction. We've done it for many years. We've got best-in-class building blocks, which I'll talk through. We've got access to the Sanlam balance sheet to allow us to invest in private market capabilities so we can attract more money from third-party clients. We've got incredible strong distribution footprint in Sanlam with all the advisers that they have in South Africa, where we keep on building solutions and flows that come into our business and obviously, a leader in transformation and empowerment. But then on top of that, I think we've got very, very unique partners. First partner, we heard some of that earlier today is Shriram. So as we build our solutions in South Africa, we created and we built solutions internationally. We're going to go to Shriram, and we're busy talking to Shriram to provide exactly the same solutions to their clients in India as they start going offshore. So that's a great partnership for us. We've got Allianz as a partner. They can invest in our alternative strategies in Africa and other emerging partners. We've got African Rainbow Capital, who provides us with great deal flow that provides us with relevance in South Africa. And then obviously, as I mentioned, Absa with the biggest -- one of the biggest distribution networks in South Africa, and we build scale and solutions for them. So this puts us, in my mind, in a very, very competitive, very unique position for significant growth going forward. And what does this then mean for us and how do we put all of this together and how do we create what I call the successful ecosystem to really set ourselves up for growth going forward. So we are unashamedly focused on being a solutions business. And that is what we said through our multi manager, we create solutions for clients. We create that very successfully. And those solutions come through our DFM capabilities, Glacier Invest and Graviton. Glacier Invest very much on our all our clients that sit on the Glacier platform. Graviton is very much on all our clients that sit on various other platforms in South Africa and then Amplify as we build those solutions together for them. And we create solutions from institutionals point of view. As Sanlam's umbrella fund keeps on growing, we build more solutions for the umbrella fund, and we keep on growing our assets, assets under management. Similar for the retail clients and similar for ABSA. And then in Sanlam Private Wealth, we also see that as a solutions business. Sanlam Private Wealth is probably one of the top 2 top-tier private wealth businesses in South Africa. We've got half of our assets in offshore deeply rooted into the ultra high net worth client base in South Africa. We've got a phenomenal fiduciary of tax and advisory business. We provide very, very detail advice to clients for the family offices in South Africa and offshore. We've got offices in Mauritius. We have offices in Guernsey. And very importantly, we also have a lending book where we provide loans to those clients in South Africa. So it becomes a very, very, very integrated sticky asset management or wealth management model. And as we built our alternatives capability, we will start providing more alternative capabilities and assets to those clients, really creating a very, very I think, a strong value proposition for Sanlam Private Wealth. And then if I can talk a little bit about Ninety One. So the reason why we did the Ninety One transaction was because of the changes in Regulation 28. We realized that with those changes, more and more money is going to go offshore. We do not have the capability. We think at Sanlam to really attract or really provide a good solution for our clients, we went out to the market. We look for a partner asset manager, and we decided at the end of the day with Ninety One. And the reason for Ninety One is a couple of things. One, they have a very, very good into offshore capability. They've got the breadth, they have the depth. They're present in a lot of jurisdictions, a very good track record. Secondly, very well integrated product capability between the South African asset management and the international capabilities. Thirdly, very, very strong culture, very same culture to us. Very good philosophy, and we can work with them incredibly well. So I think this capability with Ninety One will add significant -- enhance the solutions and the product that we deliver to our clients through our active management. So if you think about that Ninety One block there, that is basically SIM. So when you think about SIM, we sold SIM to Ninety One, that's basically the block there. So Ninety One just replaced SIM. So it's only a portion of our business, and we're very well focused on the other areas. And then if I can just talk a little bit, so we'll have 12.3% shareholding in Ninety One. In June this year, we already completed the U.K. transaction, and that's going very well and settled very well in that business. We're on track for the 30th of June -- or November of this year to complete the South African portion of that business, probably 3 months of transition. And basically, from an earnings point of view, so we will recognize that investment as a fair value through profit and loss. The dividends will come through -- the dividends of that we realized and the mark-to-market gains will be reflected as investment income as investment surpluses through our profit and loss. Part of that what we -- of the transaction is we've got certain significant stranded costs in our business over the next 12 to 18 months. We will reduce that stranded costs, and we will make sure that our earnings on this business will be pretty much in line with our projections for the next 3 to 4 years. And then very importantly, the other building block is our indexation through Satrix and our structured solutions there. More and more clients are moving through indexation, portable alpha, building very, very strong solutions in those businesses. And then the last point I just want to mention that is on a very good building block is alternative businesses. So we've created this larger alternative asset management capability with roughly ZAR 120 billion. But very importantly, as we -- we're now set up for significant scale, a significant growth to attract third-party money. So we've got an equity building block, we've got a debt building block. And our equity building block, we partner with some of the private equity funds. We own ourselves like a mid-market fund, and we're busy launching our second mid-market fund by the end of the year, where we're trying to raise ZAR 4 billion of assets. But then we also enter into partnerships. So we realize that we don't have all the skills to build these strategies. So that equity building block, we're also now investing in a secondaries fund. We're lifting a team out of London, we take a stake in that business, and we build the secondaries capability that will invest in Africa and other emerging markets. Similarly, we've got a shareholding and climate fund managers which is arguably one of the top 3 climate fund managers in the world, very recognized, the head office that's in The Hague. Through that, they've raised 2 funds already and closed 2 funds. First fund is $1 billion renewable energy. Second fund is $1 billion of water and waste through South Africa and other emerging markets. They're busy closing $1 billion fund of green energy in Namibia and South Africa. Through their capability, through their track record, we can leverage other capabilities. On the debt side, we're doing the same. We use our Sanlam alternative -- Sanlam credit book with roughly about ZAR 90 billion. We can set up mezz funds. We can set up project infrastructure funds in South Africa and in Africa and we can build that capability and then go out to the market because the market is looking for scale. So if you want to go to international allocators of money, like allocate $50 million or $100 million, so to build this capability at scale, is incredibly important for us. And then the last point I just want to mention is this underlined by a platform in South Africa through our banker SCI. So we built -- as we build these solutions, we built that on to our platform, and this platform then has a very integrated approach into our SAMI platform investment business in Ireland. So as we build local capabilities, as we move on to international capabilities as more money goes offshore in South Africa, we just continue to keep the money in our ecosystem and our platforms and continue to build that in Ireland. So end of the day, what we create through this is what I call an integrated value proposition. So as we build solutions, we fill those solutions with active asset management capabilities, with passive capabilities, with alternative capabilities, and then we share in the margin on those business. Usually in the DFM, you share roughly 25% to 30% of the margin through your capabilities. We're now closer to about 45%, 50%, and that actually is a very, very good model for us. And then just lastly, what all of this means is that our focus going forward is what we call the high-growth areas of the industry. And through -- on this slide, you can see that these businesses are multi-manager, Satrix, alternative investments, Sanlam Wealth, our quality business. The multi-manager, 28% market share. Satrix, 38% market share, more than 50% of the flows in 2025. Obviously, this results into significant AUM and the multi-manager amplifies now after just a couple of years, nearly ZAR 60 billion, ZAR 70 billion of AUM, the fastest-growing strategy. Our DFM just went through ZAR 100 billion a couple of months ago, and we continue to grow this asset. The same with Satrix with the flows that we create, you can see that obviously then results in very, very good revenue CAGR more than high digital growth for us over the last couple of years, and we continue to see this in the future. And then obviously, what's very, very important in the strategy is the strategy is only successful if you have very strong continuous flows into those strategies. So to generate more than ZAR 160 billion of net client cash flows through these strategies over the last 4, 5 years where South Africa struggled with flows into the industry, I think, is a testimony to the solutions business and the capabilities that we've built, our focus on our high-growth areas, and we're incredibly excited and ambitious and positive that we will continue to grow with this in the future with all the partnerships that we have in our business. So hopefully, through this, you've seen that we've created in our mind, a very strong investment platform with very strong clients, very unique value proposition, and we think we are set up for significant growth over the next couple of years. Thank you.

Thank you, Carl. Let's keep Q&A rolling in the room.

RMB Morgan Stanley. What's the split between institutional assets, institutional clients and retail clients? And how sticky have your institutional client mandates been?

So obviously, it depends on the different strategies. So this would be our business model after the Ninety One transaction. Active management of the Ninety One, the split was roughly 50-50 between institutional and retail. In our current contract, as you see here, we're basically mainly a retail business. So we have very, very strong retail. The margins are higher. The money is a little bit more sticky. So I would think on our current construct, we are -- our split is probably about 70% retail and roughly about 30% institutional.

We have a question online from Michael. Can you give us a rough idea of the size of the stranded costs in SIM from the Ninety One transaction?

I'm not sure if I want to give a 100% idea of the stranded cost, but SIM was roughly about 25% to 30% of our earnings. And we would like to, over time, make sure that there's a significant reduction in our cost to make sure that we -- our growth trajectory is in line with what we've done with Ninety One. Obviously, we will also show the dividends that we will receive from Ninety One into our numbers for profit loss as we discussed. But I don't really want to give a specific number on the stranded costs. But we are very, very committed and very aware of what we need to do to make sure that our business reflects the shape and the size of what we have today after the Ninety One transaction.

I don't think we should take this as a sign of tapering energy. We have one.

Sorry, it might be my tapering energies here. So I'm just adding the AUM. I'm missing about 1 billion -- sorry, ZAR 1 trillion or so maybe just under. Is the balance like balance sheet money, so just...

So this is including Ninety One today with SIM active, and this would reduce roughly to about ZAR 1 billion of the transaction on the 30th of November.

Carl, it looks like you are off the hook. So thank you very much.

So shifting from managing assets to managing finance. At the start of the session today, we heard Paul introduce our revised metrics and our ambitious targets to 2030. Now we have our group CFO, Abigail Mukhuba who will tell the story behind the numbers, helping us bolt the bridge between the old world and the new world and provide greater clarity around capital allocation and the confidence in our elevated targets. Abigail, over to you.

Thank you, Asha, and good afternoon, everyone. I'm well aware that it is the craziest shift, but I hope you still have enough energies for this afternoon. So we have just heard about our broader strategic ambitions and the growth vectors that will take us there. Our responsibility now is to make sure that we show you how these ambitions translate into measurable, affordable and sustainable outcomes. Today, we're going to demonstrate how our reporting, how our targets as well as how our capital allocation work together to provide a transparent view of how we leverage the strength of our franchise to create value and accelerate our growth trajectory, not just in the near term but consistently over the long term. I'll walk you through how we've improved our financial reporting clarity, how we've embedded continued discipline in capital allocation and how we've positioned Sanlam for quality growth, supported by clearly defined and focused key performance indicators to help us track delivery on our growth factors. Everything we're going to share with you today and everything that we've already shared reflects one commitment, ensuring our -- that the capital that you've entrusted in us delivers quality and sustainable returns, through 2025 to 2030 and beyond. So Sanlam has long been recognized for clarity of its reporting. Believe it or not, we have the Investment Analyst Society of South Africa's award for Best Financial in the financial services sector 12x. While our reporting remains very strong, IFRS 17 and the demand for greater comparability and transparency require us to simplify and modernize our disclosures. Three themes underpin our ambition. First, we want clarity and transparency. So with the maturity of IFRS 17, we are removing the complexity and refocusing our reporting on IFRS as a base reporting standard. We are retiring our shareholder fund accounting, which served its purpose under IFRS 4. Second is discipline. Rigorous and consistent capital allocation, as was said earlier, is in our DNA. We now enhance transparency by disclosing sources and uses of cash, ensuring every rand invested earns an appropriate return. And then lastly, from a growth perspective, we don't only just focus on any growth, but growth that is diversified, defensible and value accretive over the long term. We have consistently delivered ahead of expectations and the targets that we set and announced today reflect confidence in sustaining that performance. By streamlining both financial and nonfinancial reporting, adopting KPIs and targets and embedding sustainability as a core value driver, we are strengthening Sanlam's investment case. We are also giving clarity on the growth drivers, transparency on capital allocation, and comparability with best practice whilst positioning the group for long-term quality growth. So if you allow me to begin with how we streamlined our reporting and disclosures to drive transparency and comparability. So over the past year, I've heard some people say that our M&A has been a bit quiet. So over the past year, we've overhauled our financial disclosures, making them simpler, clearer and more consistent with global best practice. We have made a shift, as I said earlier, to refocus on IFRS, moving away from Sanlam specific shareholder accounting and embedding IFRS 17 whilst aligning with global best practice. We've aimed to modernize our disclosure so that we can better capture the longer-term value and confidence of our story, increasing simplicity and comparability, but also introducing new definitions and updating our KPIs. Sustainability has become part of our DNA. And as I said earlier on, at this time, we are committed to measuring and monitoring our progress through the implementation of our sustainability index that Paul referred to earlier. Importantly, also, our business fundamentals remain unchanged. Our capital allocation discipline, the strategy as well as our dividend policy remain intact and unchanged. Our dividends remain underpinned by strong capital and earnings resilience anchored in the strong cash generation of our business. So if we go through the key changes in our reporting, in terms of our performance metrics, under IFRS 4, net result from financial services was the lens that we looked at if we were looking at our core performance. And under IFRS 17, as I said, it's no longer relevant nor is it aligned with best practice and I think the feedback that we've received from most of you was that it is hindering peer comparison as it makes us noncomparable with others. So we have replaced it with operating profit and replaced net operational earnings with adjusted headline earnings directly aligning us again with best practice. And then I will cover the difference in slides that follow, so you can see exactly what the two look like side by side. We've also streamlined disclosures by simplifying our segmental reporting and introducing clearer visibility into the performance drivers. Some of this, you will only see when we come out with our year-end results with a detailed segmental reporting. I think the other thing to highlight is that we've also made a direct link to strategy in terms of us being able to show you the disclosure of sources and uses of cash. And in terms of returns, we want to continue to show return on group equity value as our long-term value measure. But now we're pairing it with return on equity as a universal benchmark of near-term profitability. And we are hoping that this will give you both a short-term and a long-term return perspective on the business. And then from a solvency perspective, we are also going to focus on economic solvency being management's true gauge of resilience in addition to our regulatory solvency. So if you bring it all together, we are basically now going to report on the group's financial performance and position through a single balance scorecard with 6 dials. It's going to be operating profit growth, return on equity, return on group equity value, dividend growth, solvency and lastly, sustainability. So in the efforts to be more transparent, we just want to flag again and highlight that IFRS reporting will show more volatility since the volatility absorption mechanisms that we used to use when we used -- in our net result from financial services are now no longer going to be in place. The business itself, the underlying business has not changed. You're simply just seeing the real economics playing out. And despite the visible swings that may come from reporting period to another, I just want to reiterate, our dividend policy remains unchanged. It is underpinned by strong capital and earnings resilience. But overall, the outcome should be a clearer transparency and stronger comparability and sharper insight into what exactly are the real drivers of value for the business. So in simplifying our financial disclosures, so previously, our earnings buildup included additional lines for items like project expenses and shareholder fund reserve movements which added complexity when people were trying to use our numbers for their modeling. These adjustments are now going to be removed, giving us a much more simpler and more transparent earnings buildup. Importantly, the bottom line IFRS earnings, as you can see on this slide, if we use the prior year numbers will remain unchanged. We are also discontinuing the separate shareholder fund disclosures and focusing solely on IFRS reporting and earnings. I know, Adrienne, you did ask me that somewhere. Historically, shareholder fund adjustments, maybe just to remind everybody, they included -- just for you, Sarine, this one is zeroization of negative liabilities, is a common joke between the accountants and the -- actually I don't know what a negative liability is. So that was one of the adjustments that we made. Pandemic reserve releases, the future fed fund project expenses, asset mismatch reserve adjustments which is something that you would have heard us generally referred to as gate mechanism. Also, we're going to -- historically, we used to have something called the reversal of locked in discount rates as well as the negative rent reserve impact. So our objective really in everything that we've been doing has been very clear. We want to enhance investor understanding and improved transparency of our earnings disclosure. So we will keep refining the disclosures to promote clarity and transparency, ensuring that the underlying structural performance trends are evenly distinguishable from short-term market-driven fluctuations. And to support this, we will continuously be enhancing our disclosure, including showing everybody the impact of investment volatility in our numbers that we will -- you will be able to clearly analyze it. So if we talk about volatility, Sanlam's earnings are naturally influenced by external factors such as markets, interest rates as well as currencies. And while the underlying economics of our business remain unchanged, as I said earlier, the new reporting measures will show noise and our enhanced disclosure will separate market-driven volatility from the underlying operational performance and hopefully give you a clearer picture of the group's results. If we use, let's say, historical numbers, just to make a point of what I'm saying now, previously shareholder fund adjustments helped reduce volatility in our earnings. And with these removed reported results, as I said, will be quite volatile. So if you look at the period between 2020 and 2024, from 2020 to 2022, our shareholder fund adjustments led us to an increase in net results from financial services. Whereas in '23 and '24, net result from financial services decreased as a result of these adjustments as positive market gains were absorbed into the asset mismatch reserve that I talked about earlier. So when you remove these adjustments, the 2024 base earnings are therefore higher. But it also means that your 2025 operating profit growth may appear a bit more muted if similar market gains are not repeated going forward. And then in addition, if you remember in 2024, we included -- our results included a large one-off investment gain and a one-off reinsurance recapture fee. But overall, in our reporting, the underlying economics of the business is not changing. I just want to reiterate that. But at a reported level, you will see more visible swings. And then we're not going to go into too much detail of these ones, but some of the enhanced reporting that you can expect, especially when we come out at year-end is, it includes streamlined disclosures, simplified segmental reporting, improved transparency in areas such as IFRS 9 and IFRS 17 disclosures. As I said earlier, we recognize that historically, our disclosure transparency into sources and uses of cash has been limited, and this is an area of improvement going forward. I think earlier this afternoon, we have published on our website, a disclosure pack which will provide illustrative examples of all the information that I'm referring to because I do know that this is quite a lot at a very high level. And then if we maybe move away from the topic of disclosure and reporting and rather focus now on capital allocation discipline, our approach to capital management really strong performance that we aim for is not -- I mean, the strong performance that we aim for is not only just about generating capital. It's also about how we deploy the capital. So every rand that we deploy must create value through above average returns. Our framework in terms of our capital allocation, it prioritizes first shareholder returns. And then it also looks at reinvestment where returns are superior. And thirdly, it also looks at making sure that disciplined expansion into areas of sustainable advantage are quite a focus area, and we will unpack this a bit later on. But I think what's important to note is that our discipline ensures that quality growth is also sustainable and predictable. And we continually redeploy capital from lower to higher return areas. Ultimately, our framework is anchored on financial strength, wherein Santam solvency continues to be rock solid. Credit ratings remain very strong with low levels of debt. We also focus on sustainable growth through our cash position, which supports investing in organic growth. And lastly, we also aim for attractive shareholder returns as evidenced by stable and growing dividends. With our cash generative businesses as well as the strong earnings growth, we consistently build surplus or discretionary capital. We are clear in the hierarchy of deploying discretionary capital by focusing on value-accretive acquisitions. That means strict return hurdles. And second, also considering share buybacks, but only at the right price. And lastly, we may consider special dividends if literally everything else, there's nothing else that will deliver better returns or that will be more value-enhancing. So it's crucial for us that every rand is again deployed with one objective, creating long-term sustainable shareholder value. We also mentioned that we're introducing group economic solvency ratio going forward over and above the regulatory solvency ratio that we've been previously publishing or disclosing. So firstly, Santam's contribution in our -- in the -- rather, if you look at what makes group economic solvency ratio differ from the regulatory ratio. Firstly, the Santam's contribution is based on economic -- on their economic internal model, which is -- which better reflects Santam in the group's risk profile. And then the second thing that differentiates us is that your economic solvency is measured before deducting foreseeable dividends. And this gives us a clearer view of the capital available to absorb losses. This approach aligns with what market practice currently does, and it provides a more accurate reflection of our financial strength. And importantly, it's important to note that our regulatory solvency cover has also stayed consistently within target range and has remained stable. So this is really just to complement the regulatory one already. And then the proposed economic solvency ratio is also comfortably within the 150% to 190% target range even under severe shocks and market changes. Our leverage ratio also well below limits, giving us significant flexibility and debt capacity when required. This is also reflected in the strong credit ratings for Sanlam and its subsidiaries. Ultimately, Sanlam's capital allocation philosophy is central to our investment case as a quality growth business. The strength of our South African operations is clear in the high returns that they generate and their strong cash conversion. While these businesses are relatively lower growth, the significant cash that they produce underpins our group dividend and provides the means to fund higher growth opportunities across the portfolio looking ahead, capital deployment will be focused on the growth vectors we've already discussed since afternoon, being the engines that will drive our future growth. In terms of our priorities, our approach remains disciplined. We've prioritized businesses in geographies where we have sustainable competitive advantages. We focus on areas where cash generation is strong and scalable and where growth will be achieved without margin dilution. And it's not just about where we invest, but also what we invest in. So the technology, the customer engagements, strategic partnerships that strengthen our market position. Our capital allocation priorities are very clear to us. First, we aim for new business at attractive returns with life new business internal rate of returns consistently above 20%. Second, we prioritize into existing businesses where future returns are most predictable. And third, we focus on those businesses once the business -- we focus on those businesses where the business models have been proven. And then this balance allows us to leverage cash generation quality whilst accelerating our growth trajectory through disciplined expansion into the right opportunities. As a group, we generate significant levels of cash and we closely monitor both the sources of this cash and how it is deployed. We pay particular attention to cash that is retained in the cluster businesses or our underlying operating businesses to ensure business levels solvency as well. And then we also focus on cash reinvested to fund new business growth as well as cash returns to the group for wider allocation. Think that this disciplined oversight really just ensures that capital is always deployed where it delivers highest returns. And we avoid lazy capital being trapped in businesses where it could be put in better use. We also prevent the reinvestment in areas that do not meet our strict return hurdles. And this sharp focus on the sources and uses of cash is central in how we manage and enhance our return on equity going forward, and we will be disclosing this going forward. If you look at the period 2020 to 2024, our group generated significant levels of cash with the bulk coming from profits in our mature South African business, as I mentioned earlier. And the majority of the cash generated has been returned to shareholders through dividends, providing a strong and predictable base of returns. At the same time, we allocated a meaningful portion to new life insurance business where we consistently again achieved internal rate of returns about 20%, ensuring that we've got high attractive returns on reinvestment. Cash deployed into corporate activity is comparatively small and always considered in the broader context of disciplined capital deployment. And in future, we will concentrate on the disclosure of sources and uses of cash, so you can actually start tracking us on this going forward. If we focus on dividends, dividends continue to be a core part of Sanlam's value creation for shareholders. Sanlam has built a strong long-term track record of consistently growing dividends. And this has been underpinned by the resilience and cash-generative nature of our particularly South African franchise. Despite the additional volatility introduced into earnings through the adoption now of IFRS into adoption of operating profit and adjusted headline earnings, our dividend policy again, we reiterate remains unchanged. It continues to be supported by strong cash generation, a robust capital position and earnings resilience. For us, the policy is clear. We aim to distribute available cash fairly fully while reducing volatility for investment market movements and one-off items. So as a result, there will be no change in the group's dividend profile. There should not be. Stability will be maintained even after the accounting changes. It's also important to note that the underlying cash generation of the businesses, as we saw with the different growth vectors across the portfolio, depending on the life stage and maturity of each business, as well as the capital intensity of that line of business may differ. But that said, we continue to benefit from a very solid cash remittance mix across the group. Now maybe just allow me to give you a bit more color into some of our targets that Paul introduced at the beginning of our session. So the group is sharpening its focus on financial metrics that integrate sustainability into both our business and operations. We are committed to not only delivering the strong financial performance, but also measuring and enhancing our impact on the broader society. Our ambition ultimately is to use the strength of our business to uplift communities to support the society and protect the environment, ensuring that value creation is both sustainable and inclusive. So if we start with the overall financial position and health of the group, we expect all key metrics to be within target ranges and deliver above the minimum flows were relevant. Because of this, we will be lifting our dividend target flow to a minimum of at least a rolling 3-year average CPI plus 4% and this is compared to the current cash target of a rolling 3-year average of CPI plus 2% to 4%. I think it's important to note that this is not a stress target that puts pressure on the balance sheet. In fact, I think it's more a confident signal to you, our shareholders, that we can deliver income growth alongside capital appreciation. We are also lifting our target on return on equity per annum to a minimum of at least 20%. Historically, this has been an average of about 16% over the past decade. For us, return on equity and return on group equity value are complementary. They answer 2 different but equally important questions about value creation. Return on equity shows how efficiently we are using our current shareholders' equity to generate accounting profits. It is short-term profitability measure in the current period relative to the equity deployed. On the other hand, the return on group equity value is more of a longer-term measure. It captures the total economic value created over time, both the profits we earn today and the change in the present value of the expected future profits. This, therefore, makes it forward-looking and comprehensive, particularly for businesses like ours with future cash flows from inflow contract -- in-force contracts rather, a significant driver of value. And of course, it contains a myriad of assumptions about the future. We will continue to make prudent assumptions in calculating our GEV. So this combination really of ROE and ROGEV aligns perfectly with our focus on quality growth, delivering strong returns today, while compounding long-term shareholder value, as Paul mentioned. We have chosen our KPIs deliberately, by the way, not only are they industry standard, but combined, we believe that they give us a complete view of the quality and sustainability of our growth. Over the past few years, we have consistently outperformed our targets while keeping leverage conservative and maintaining robust solvency position. The COVID years were particularly tough for our industry. But even then, we delivered. We exceeded target in most years with the only exception being 2020 when we reduced our dividend by 10% after an unbroken record of increases since listing in 1998. This combination of strong performance and balance sheet strength is a point of pride for Sanlam. It demonstrates our ability to execute consistently and navigate changing market conditions without losing momentum. And as we look ahead, our balance scorecard for 2025 to 2030 sets out clear minimum targets for us. Operating profit growth from an average CPI plus 4% to at least CPI plus 6%. And then as per the previous slide, the return on equity is lifted from 16% to above 20%. Alongside ROE, we are targeting return on group equity value of more than the South African risk-free rate plus 4%. And then from a dividend growth perspective, we're aiming for CPI plus 4% is a minimum. And then as I said earlier, we expect the economic solvency ratio to comfortably be above the 150% minimum or lower end of the range. And for the first time, we also said we will be introducing a sustainability index. Obviously, for that one, you have to until we come out with our year-end results in March. And then maybe just to also flag or highlight that these targets are quite deliberate. I think they reflect a greater ambition and confidence in our own ability to deliver as well as leveraging the quality of our stable cash engine, while accelerating growth through the new engines that we have built and have been discussing since in the afternoon. Again, these are not stretched target goals. I think it's important to note that we are saying these are floors, conservative minimums that we expecting to achieve and hopefully outperform. And then with the scorecard, the balance scorecard, we should be able to see a 360 view of Sanlam's performance, covering profitability, capital efficiency, cash generation as well as long-term resilience. Ultimately, we believe that the scorecard is simple. It should be clear to all stakeholders. It's transparent. So you should be able to track Sanlam on how we're doing, and it's balanced. We believe it drives the right trade-offs between short-term performance and long-term growth. And it will remain our primary tool for managing and communicating performance going forward. And then maybe just to also remind everybody, alongside our primary KPIs, the group will also track a range of secondary metrics both at group level and specific to each growth vector. We are not sharing targets for these today. Their role is quite different. They're supposed to serve as a continuous health check for management and the Board on the primary KPIs and provide us with an early warning dashboard as to help -- an early warning dashboards to help us cross-correct where needed well in advance. I think before I hand back to Paul, I want to maybe just say we balance ambition with discipline. With multiple growth vectors and the commitment to deliver sustainably, our strategy is very clear. It is about quality growth, disciplined, transparent and long term. Allocating capital where it delivers the most value and then reporting and measurement that keeps us accountable and overall delivering tangible value year after year through to 2030 and beyond. So let me leave you with these 3 points. First is enhanced clarity and transparency. We've modernized our reporting so that Sanlam can be tracked directly against global best practice. Second, we are ambitious with confidence. We have raised our targets. We've set them as floors, not ceilings, and we've underpinned this by a proven record of outperformance and resilience if you look back the last few years. And third is consistent value creation through disciplined capital allocation and sustainability embedded at the core, we ensure that every rand is deployed with intent and accountability. And that is how we leverage the quality of our foundation to accelerate sustainable growth for the long term. So please judge us on the right measures, the balance scorecards, not the noise over the next few years. Thank you.

Abigail, thank you very much indeed. And before I hand back to Asha so that we can have some final Q&A if anybody does have anything left to do, I'm just going to end with a few remarks. Just to remind everybody that our business case or our investment thesis at Sanlam is quality and growth. I think you've seen the emphasis that we place on the strength of our business and the maintenance of balance sheet strength. On leadership, making sure that in every market, every segment, every customer we touch, that we maintain leading margins because the proposition that we have for customers is better than they can get anywhere else. It's really important to us on the growth side to make sure that we positioned our business in growth markets, which is why we exited markets that we felt were -- would not fulfill that objective. And finally, to have very clear growth factors in mind that we can use to enhance the growth that will come from the underlying. For us, it's absolutely critical that every time we do business, we make sure that the returns exceed the cost of capital. That is why we do not have onerous contracts. We do not write new business at a loss. It's vital to us and in all cases, the client proposition we take out is the best possible deal that we can do for customers. And you heard from the South African team this afternoon the importance of providing a breadth of product offering but also great value for customers backed by advice. And finally, our growth has to be sustainable. So these are the lenses that we look at things through. And I'm going to hand back now to Asha to cover off Q&A. But in case I don't get a chance again, I really want to thank everybody very much for -- I know it was a very long day of listening to people. And I want to thank the Sanlam team and Asha you for all the effort that went into putting today together. So thanks very much.

Thanks, Paul. I'd like to invite Mlondolozi Mahlangeni, our Group Chief Risk Officer and Chief Actuary for this last Q&A to join us on stage as well. And we're open to the floor.

Baron from JPMorgan. Given all the corporate action over the last few years and your new earnings and ROE targets, how would you sum up the outlook for organic and inorganic growth for the next 5 years?

I'm not sure Baron, you're looking at me when you asked it. So [ would have ] just kick it to Abigail. So obviously, at any point in time, you make the best guess at what the future holds. And we can only guess about the future based on what we know today. So I think when we set our targets, we've had a look at the business that we've got. I think David put it very well. There isn't any M&A that we need to do or have to do. I think we have super good platforms in every space. We need to drive the businesses we've got. You've heard about the challenges in South Africa, all the execution that we have to do to get our loyalty program rolled out to get the banking proposition delivered into all our branches into all our advisers. So there's a lot to keep us busy with. So when I think when we frame the targets, it's very much around the business as we know it today. That does not mean that we've got -- we have to be blind to the opportunities that are out there. We all know we live in a dynamic world, and we need to be open minded. And so these targets, I think, are set in the context of the current business as we know it.

I think I'll field one from online. We've got James Shuck from Citi, asking 2 questions. The first question for the economic solvency outlook, how many percentage points are currently generated per annum from the normal operating contribution? And how will this evolve through 2030?

Mlondolozi, you're the man. This is about the dividend, I suspect.

Yes. And I think it's a lot more than the dividend. So if I understand the question, James, correctly, I mean I think probably is linked to the dividend, but it's from a solvency perspective. So I think the question what you're trying to -- what I think you're asking is what is our own funds, our organic own funds generation, so when you look at the economic solvency. So our organic own fund generation is around say 10%. So we generate own funds of about 10% from our capital base. And if you look at that and you compare to what that looks like from a dividend perspective, that's a coverage of about, say, 20% to 30% of our -- for a dividend from an own funds generation perspective. But we can provide a lot more of the other details if James requires, but I think that's the basic answer in terms of the own fund generation.

We have a question from Marius.

Marius From ALG. It's a follow-up question. By your own definition, you are at the upper end of your solvency -- your solvency band, and you've just mentioned that there aren't really no large further M&A required. So I think the question is quite obvious. Should there not be -- should we be expecting shareholder distributions in some fashion?

Absolutely not. You can put that in your report tomorrow, Marius or tonight. So our main stakeholder in our business is our customers, and I'm hoping many of you are our customers. So what I want every night above all else is when you put your head on the pillow to know that we're there tomorrow. And we're not going to be distributing and watering down our solvency position at all.

Let's take another one from online. Michael Christelis, will project costs still be separately reported inside your new operating profit metric?

Michael, so project costs will be included in the operating profit line. So they will no longer be -- we used to have them in 3 different lines -- in 2 different lines. So they'll be within the operating profit line. And then in the detailed notes of the financials, we'll be able to show the details of the project cost.

That's a pity. I was hoping we'll be able to hide them going forward.

Okay. Let's take another one from online. We've got Faizan Lakhani from HSBC. Do you have other tools to offset volatility such as realizing fixed income losses, adjusting reserves, et cetera?

Okay. I'm going to kick this to Mlondolozi because I didn't understand the first piece. But what I can say is that we have and I'm giving you a chance to think through the list of them. But we have a whole series of on-balance sheet reserves now that we moved out of the policyholder to the shareholder side. So the one big one is the asset mismatch reserve, but there are quite a number of others as well. And obviously, within our reserving itself, we have the ability to reserve very prudently. So I think most of our audience will probably recall that when we had COVID in the Life business, we had a pandemic reserve that we ran down to support claims in that period. And we subsequently built that back up again by taking a bigger margin on the mortality side. So we implicitly have a margin there that set aside for future pandemics. But I mean, maybe you want to -- I didn't follow the fixed income one personally, but maybe you knew what that was.

Well, I'll deal with that one, Paul. Thanks so much for the time to be able to think. Yes. So I think Faizan, I think if you think of it in 2 ways, the first one is that the first mechanism that we use to deal with your investment volatility is via a very strong and sophisticated ALM and balance sheet management. So we're doing a lot of that, and we're increasingly doing a lot of that. And as a consequence, some of the volatility has been reduced. But I must hasten to add that when you look at the transition from IFRS 17, so to IFRS 17 from IFRS 4 and what that has enabled is that there is no longer a divergence between your IFRS balance sheet and your GEV balance sheet. So you are able now to hedge the best liability a lot more accurately. And I think, Paul, the question I was referring to is that in the past, you used to hedge liabilities with margins, so which means that on IFRS 4, you could be hedged, but you've got a volatility or mismatch on your GEV basis. Now with IFRS 17, you can then hedge more accurately on both basis, and therefore, you don't have that volatility. And as a consequence, you don't have that fixed income problem because we hedge our fixed income liabilities accurately. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that a lot of the volatility that we have now remaining arises from items like accounting mismatches, the items that I referred to about locked-in rates that will continue to stabilize. And other sources come from ongoing sources relating to some of our asset-based fees or market-linked fees. So we'll continue to stabilize some of those components. And the third component are items relating to non-hedgeable risks like, for example, the tail of our annuity book, you can't find assets to hedge. So you're running that mismatch and you'll be able to stabilize a component of that. So we'll continue to stabilize that element. The last component, and I think for some of the more technical enthusiasts is the fact that your -- in your IFRS 17 results, you've got the investment result, which is driven not so much by your CSM. Your CSM has no investment exposure whatsoever. It's not interest rate sensitive. It's a fixed number. Your risk and your investment volatility come from how you invest the assets backing the CSM. So one of the ways to immunize part of your exposure is in how you invest the assets backing the CSM. Even if we invest in assets that don't have fixed rate exposure and they've got floating rate exposure and can generate certain returns to the extent that some of those returns are stable on a long-term basis, they've got some short-term volatility, you can stabilize some of that component, and we'll continue to stabilize that.

I hope the technical enthusiasts are sufficiently have their heads scratched a bit. We're going to take one more question before we call this to a close. From James as well, many European peers give cash remittance targets geographically and in total. Why did you decide not to give a similar target?

James can actually calculate it back if you look at our dividend targets if you work it back. But in terms of our disclosure, it will be there.

Paul, Abigail, Mlondolozi, thank you very much.

Thank you very much, Asha. Thank you everyone.

So that brings our program for the afternoon to a close. Like Paul said, we really appreciate that you took the time to join us this afternoon, and we hope that you found it interesting and insightful. We've tried to address some of the big burning questions that you have raised. And we hope that today's sessions have gone some way in giving you greater clarity. You asked about India and David gave detail on our strategy for India and how our competitive moat in that country gives us a solid foundation for quality growth for years to come. You asked about the TymeBank partnership, and we heard from our panelists about how the SA ecosystem will drive our market relevance, both today and into the future. We also had a lot of interest in the Ninety One transaction and what that means from a profit perspective and Carl gave us some good insights into that. And after hearing about all of our ambitious plans in each of these growth vectors, Abigail, wrapped it all together and just showed how our plans are grounded in disciplined capital allocation and also the raised floors and open ceilings that give greater confidence in our plans. And I think just in terms of my final closing remarks and reflections in listening to each of the presentations today, I was reminded of the African proverb that if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go together. And I think this came through as a strong, consistent theme in each of our core regions where we have quality partnerships that will secure our growth for the future. So I don't want to stand between you and afternoon drinks. For those that are in the room, there's an opportunity to interact with management and refreshments in the foyer. Thank you all for joining and for everyone running Sanlam Marathon this week, all the best.