Santam Ltd (SNT) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our results presentation for the year ended December 2023. I'm joined by our Group CFO, Wikus Olivier; and our Head of Strategy, Thabiso Rulashe. This morning, we'll take you through and give you some context of the operating environment, give you a sense of our strategy and then take you through our financial performance. Starting off with just some of the key messages for this year, 2023 was certainly like the years before that, a very difficult year. We implemented our Future Fit strategy restructuring the group at the beginning of 2023. And we also began the journey to implement our underwriting actions to improve our underwriting margin. Our broker partnerships across South Africa remains very, very strong, maintaining our leading market position. Our investment performance, together with strong performance in parts of our business, has led to an acceptable result for us for the year 2023. And so we have benefited from diversification across the group. Our key focus for us in 2023 has really been around disciplined execution, our focus on both top line and underwriting profitability. Turning now to the operating environment. 2023, on the global scale, was certainly a very unpredictable and difficult year. We also saw a year that recorded again a natural catastrophe events in excess of USD 100 billion. Coming closer to home within our domestic environment, as economy continues to struggle, high unemployment, and we certainly saw an increase in load shedding. Infrastructure challenges persisted. And the weather events, although different from the year 2022, certainly had an impact on the industry at large. While the insurance industry has had to deal with many challenges in 2023, we have certainly seen a certainly a lot more headwinds than there were tailwinds. There has been pressure on the underlying consumer. We've seen increased interest rates, the pressure of inflation are double-edged sword in the sense that interest rates have been good for float income for the insurance industry. But I think the general economy at large has really been a very difficult environment. The natural catastrophes have certainly become more frequent in the recent years. And I think we see that in the global environment, Nat cat activity again topped ZAR 118 billion. Most of the nat cat activity is from secondary payrolls, which are severe conviction storm. Largely out of the U.S., we've seen some earthquakes coming out of Turkey, but it does continue to create pressure on rate increases in the commercial property space and the reinsurance space. Looking at the Santam profile of nat cat activity, we see that 2023 was certainly not a negligible year from a cat activity. We saw the Western Cape floods coming through and also the hailstorms in Halten. The combination of that does present a material impact on the results for 2023. But across the board, what we do see is that there is certainly an increase and in frequency and both severity of natural catastrophe events, both internationally and locally for us here in South Africa. Turning to our strategy. 2023 was the year where we restructured our business into a multichannel operating model. Our key vectors for growth into the future for us was really around strengthening our business here in South Africa, driving international expansion and diversification and then beginning our journey to strengthen our eco partnerships and partnerships across our business. We've made good progress in maintaining our dominance through our broker channel here in South Africa. It does remain important for us to continue to diversify our business by scaling our direct and tied agency across the board. Our international expansion strategy continues to benefit from our partnerships with the Santam Allianz JV into the rest of Africa, and our specialist capability remains the jewel in our crown. The hardening rates in the international space certainly support the scaling of our reinsurance capability, and this will remain a focus for us into the future. On the partnership side, we're very proud of our partnership with MTN, which has added significant customer numbers and taken our offering to a different segment of the market than where we normally typically operate. A lot of this is obviously for us underpinned by modernizing our IT and digital capability across the board to ensure continued service excellence to our brokers and to our customers at large. And so 2023 was the beginning of our refreshed Future Fit strategy, and we believe that the strategic response to some of the challenges that we are facing in our environment is an appropriate response to take the group forward into the future. Turning now to the financial performance of the group for the year 2023. On the growth front, the group achieved a growth of 5.5% in terms of our GWP and 5.8% in terms of our net earned premiums. It was a year where we took tactical decisions and decisive action to cancel a loss-making business. Outside of the loss-making business, growth certainly would have been higher at 8%. But we've taken an approach that ensures that we are writing business that contributes positively to the underwriting margin of the group. And so that continued discipline of ensuring profitable growth and balancing growth with profitability has been a key focus for us in the year 2023. Our earnings reflect an underwriting margin of 3.5%. This margin has largely come under pressure due to the Western Cape floods, the fires that we've seen in our commercial portfolio and the hail we saw in the Halten region. We've also suffered from a higher frequency and severity of large fire losses in our commercial property book and losses coming through in our proportional international business. The alternative risk transfer businesses outperformed well in 2023, and the net income has largely also been supported by superior performance in the specialist business, our Partnerships business, which underpins the ART businesses. There's also been strong investment performance that has buoyed the net income up some 60% odd to ZAR 3.250 billion in 2023. The return on capital is supported by that at 28.5%, a pleasing result on the net income result. The underwriting result does remain under pressure below and outside our target range of 5% to 10%. The financial strength of the group is well within target, and that does give the Board confidence and comfort to declare again a progressive dividend of ZAR 9.05. The total distributions for the year 2023 is up at ZAR 31.80. In terms of our direct and international strategy, we've progressed moving 1 percentage point up, and this remains a focus for us over the next couple of years in terms of our Future Fit strategy to 2030. Turning to our underwriting actions and our focus on correcting the underwriting margin. As we came out of 2022, we saw a wave of inflation that largely affected the motor book. Claims inflation was significantly above where the premium rates needed to be. And we set out to increase premium rates as well as take corrective actions on the underlying motor book. I am pleased to say that as we've come through into 2023, we have seen that the actions that we've taken on both power surge and motor-related claims have largely yielded results. We find that in 2023, that the impact or adverse impact of power surge claims and motor-related claims has become negligible into 2023. What does remain a concern for us is the performance primarily in our commercial property portfolio. And you can see the impact of the nat cat events, primarily the floods in the Western Cape and the hail events, have created significant pressure and drag on the underwriting margin. While 2022 saw the large KZN floods, the 2023 nat cat activity has largely been attritional losses that are below the attachment point for our reinsurance. And so those remain largely for our account, and we need to manage those through appropriate risk management and selection. We have a category, what we've called cancel business. This category is where we've canceled business to the tune of ZAR 1.3 billion in the last year across the various businesses that operate across the Santam Group. Spread from our Emerald business into our international business, this is a business where we found that the rates are inadequate and unsustainable for us into the future. And we've taken a decisive step to cancel this business. And so we do not expect that this drag on the underwriting margin will continue moving forward into 2024. In 2023, we also saw large fires, particularly in our commercial property space. These fires were largely and by most part driven by electrical fires. This, therefore, remains a key focus for us, primarily around remediating the property portfolio to address the challenges that we are still seeing in our book, particularly from weather and from large fires. The year quoting exercise that we've spoken about has largely been successful and to a large extent, has gone to mitigate some of the flood-related losses that we saw earlier in the year. Were 86% through geo coding our property book. But I think what this does show is that while we cannot completely eliminate cat or weather-related claims or large fire claims, we do expect some upside or easing on the pressure on the margin from our underwriting actions and focus on these particular areas that are creating drag as we come into 2023. The investment return off the back of our industries and adjusting our property portfolio, our investment portfolios to shorten the duration has certainly yielded benefit for us in terms of the float on our underwriting portfolio. And so the underwriting result, although under pressure in 2023, we do have line of sight and absolute clarity on the issues that are creating pressure on the margin. And we do believe that, to a large extent, some of these issues will be remediated through our underwriting actions. And so we fundamentally believe that the range that we maintain of 5% to 10% is largely achievable going into the future. Turning to power surge. The year 2022 and 2023 saw an increase in the number of hours from load shedding. Despite that increase in load shading, you can see that we've managed to bring down, one, the number of claims from power surge and also the quantum of claims. And this has largely been as a result of the successful actions that we've taken in combating and dealing with power surge claims. And so as we've come into 2024, the impact of power surge claims, which did have potential to create material adverse experience in terms of our underwriting profit, is now negligible going into 2024. And I think this is a good example of where underwriting actions have been very, very effective in managing down the impact of power surge claims. Looking at the MiWay turnaround story. The MiWay business has shown growth in 2023 of 5%, up from 2022 of 2.5%. And we are pleased to see this turnaround starting to come through in the MiWay book. We are seeing net policy inception start to go positive. The quarter-on-quarter growth of the business is showing a very positive trajectory. And this is off the back of our restructure within MiWay to reposition this business for both inbound and outbound. It does mean that we will be spending a lot more to increase the visibility and the top line action to call within the MiWay business. And so we're very excited about the trajectory of this business and the turnaround starting to come through in this business. In the short run, the margin will be under pressure as we spend more to drive above-the-line visibility and presence. But I think a good outcome from our perspective in terms of the turnaround story for MiWay. Turning to our long-term targets. We have maintained our long-term targets. The key metric for us is underwriting margin between 5% to 10%. And as I've explained, we do believe that this target is appropriate given the level of underwriting actions that we are taking. The broader macro and risk profile within our environment does remain difficult, but the actions we are taking are appropriate to maintain our long-term financial targets as we position them. We also keep an eye on our nonfinancial targets around our customer experience, working with our brokers and ensuring that our employees are happy and that our policy count continues to grow into the future. We maintain our dominance of our market share across South Africa, and we believe that does give us scale advantage here in South Africa. So turning now to the detail of our financials. I'll now hand over to Wikus to give us further context on the operating performance for 2023. Thank you.

Good morning, everybody. It's my pleasure to take you through some of the detail of our financial results for the 2023 annual period. Starting from a technical perspective, as we already highlighted in our interim results announcement last year, we have implemented the new insurance accounting standard on a fully retrospective basis from January 1, 2022. The financial impact on our results were not significant with overall a ZAR 100 million positive impact on our underwriting result for the year, which translates into a 0.3% impact on our underwriting margin. The standard also required the reallocation of some line items. For example, reinstatement premiums now forms part of our claims expense, while a portion of our binder fees must also be reflected now as part of our commission cost. But this again didn't have any significant impact on the key ratios that we report. Just to confirm again that the implementation of the new standard doesn't have any impact on our capital management philosophy or our dividend policy going forward. Overall, a solid set of results with a return on capital of 28.5%, well in excess of our hurdle rate of 24%, supported by an excellent result from our ART businesses as well as specialist solutions, and also benefiting from favorable investment returns and the profit that we realized on the disposal of our investment in SAN JV. Looking at business volumes. As Tava already highlighted, the environment has not been supportive for top line growth during the year with the SA economy continuing to struggle and also pressure on both our commercial and personal lines clients. Excluding the cancelled business of ZAR 1.3 billion, we did manage to grow the underlying book by 9% on an overall basis, which was well in excess of our long-term target of growing the total book by 1% to 2% in excess of nominal economic growth. This result includes solid contributions from our broker client solutions and specialist solutions businesses with, in particular, broker and client solutions realizing the segmented premium increases that they've put through in response to the high claims inflation and increased claims frequency that we've experienced over the last 18 months. At a net earned premium basis, which is the growth after taking into account the reinsurance premiums that we pay, also increasing at 8%, excluding the cancelled business. Looking at from an insurance class perspective, the motor and property book store remain our largest lines of business, with motor growing by 7%, excluding the cancelled business at Santam Re. This is a combination of double-digit growth within broker and client solutions, partly offset by lower growth within MiWay. Property portfolio also up 11% on last year, excluding the canceled business and some business that we didn't renew within Emerald, with again very strong contributions from Santam Re and the broker and Client Solutions businesses. All of the other major lines of business also achieved very strong growth. The exception is accident and health, which is down 20%. Also due to a portion of the ZAR 1.3 billion of premiums that we've canceled relating to this class of business, and crop also declining by 2% from a very high base last year, but actually exceeding our expectations for the year. Turning to the business that we write outside of South Africa. Total GWP increased by 7%, with again a stellar performance from Rest of Africa, up almost 20% with business that we write through our key partnership with SanlamAllianz across the continent increasing by 28% overall. Namibia also had a very strong second half of the year, lifting their growth rate from 2.3% in the first half of the year to almost 7% for the full year. So a very strong recovery within the Namibian business as well. The other international growth at 2.3% last year reflects the cancellation of businesses within Santam Re. As we've also reported in our interim results, we have seen a substantial increase in the cost of nonproportional reinsurance with our cat premiums increasing by 78% since 2019. This is not unique to us. It's a global phenomenon in response to the significant increase in cat events that Tava has already gone through. The growth in our overall book, however, enabled us to limit the total cost at 21% of gross earned premiums, which is broadly in line with the last few years. From a positive perspective, we have gone through our January 2024 renewal, where we've actually experienced single-digit rate increases compared to still double-digit increases in the prior year. We also continue to optimize our reinsurance program. And for the 2024 year, we did increase our cat retention from ZAR 505 million to ZAR 1 billion, and our per risk retention from ZAR 85 million to ZAR 100 million. The savings that we've been able to realize through this in the reinsurance premiums will more than compensate us for the increased potential exposure going forward. Turning to earnings. At the net income level, after tax minorities, we increased the earnings base by 64%. Conventional earnings, up 25%, benefiting from very favorable investment returns on capital, which almost doubled on last year. This number includes ForEx gains as well as a revaluation of our investments in India and Malaysia, which on a combined basis increased by 20%, but then also benefiting from a turnaround from negative mark-to-market changes on our capital portfolios in the prior year to positive mark-to-market changes in the current year. Our ART businesses had a very strong year, increasing the profit contribution by 40%. We have good performance across all of the lines of business with both fee income and investment margins up. The fee income, in particular, benefited from the very strong new business that they've written over the last 2 years. Within the associates number, there's a ZAR 700 to ZAR 5 million included as in respect of the profit that we realized on our investment in SAN JV. And this is a one-off item in the current period that will not repeat going forward. Just looking at the conventional result. Overall, a 3% increase in the net insurance result, which is a combination of a more than doubling in the investment return that we've earned in our float portfolios, which more than offset a 26% decline in the underwriting result in the current year. The claims incurred ratio at 66% is well above our expectations for the year with the natural events costing us about 2.5% and then the large fire losses and the runoff losses in the Santam Re portfolio, each adding around about 1.4% to that ratio. Management expenses remained well under control at 16.5%. It is slightly up on last year. But you may recall that the prior period did benefit from a lower provision for variable remuneration costs. But overall, at a margin of 3.5%, which is below our 5% to 10% hurdle rate for the year. So as when we compare to last year, the margin did decrease from 5.1% to 3.5% with both periods including large losses relating to fires and also weather-related dealings. Two of the key factors that caused the decline is, first of all, the CBI reserve release, which was ZAR 500 million more in the prior period. And then in the current period, we did experience higher losses on the runoff cancelled business within Santam Re. Those 2 factors effectively explain the drop in margin. And then as already highlighted by Tava, we stripped out the large events for the year. We achieved an underwriting margin of 8.4% compared to 6% for the prior period, which largely reflects a turnaround in the profitability of the motor book and also the mitigation of power surge losses. Looking at it from an insurance class perspective. The motor book is down on last year, but that's entirely due to the hail event we had in Gauteng and as well as the runoff losses in the international motor book. If I allow for that, the motor book increased its profit by 5%, which again reflects the turnaround that we've achieved from the underwriting actions. Engineering is lower than last year, and that's due to a high base in 2022, where the business did allow for some positive claims development. The property book, as already highlighted, remains problematic with a loss of close to ZAR 470 million. And as Tava indicated, this is a particular focus area for us into 2024. All of the other major lines of business contributed very solid results. Just turning to MiWay. Tava's already indicated the welcome turnaround in the top line performance of MiWay. From a loss ratio perspective, they did manage to decrease the total claims cost, and this is despite also having exposure to the hailstorms in Gauteng and also some attritional weather-related losses in the first quarter of the year. The acquisition cost ratio increased substantially from 32% to 36%, but I think this includes the investments that they've been making in the new strategic initiatives. In particular, growing the inbound channels and also building out a tied agency for commercial business. From an investment results perspective, we remain focused on our philosophy to match our assets and liability profiles as closely as possible. And we, therefore, didn't make any significant change to the investment mandates of our key portfolios. The only major difference was an increase in the total of our sub debt by ZAR 500 million during the early part of the year. From a currency exposure perspective, also the only change is elimination of the year exposure from the balance sheet, which is entirely related to our investment in SAN JV that we've disposed in the second half of this year. But otherwise, the currency exposure also remaining in line with the prior period. I already highlighted the favorable investment returns that we've earned. This slide just summarizes that we've earned it across both our flood portfolios as well as our shareholder investment portfolios and also across conventional and our ART businesses. Just turning to capital management. This slide just provides you a picture of the split of our total return on capital between insurance return on capital, which is driven by our net insurance result, as well as the investment return that we've earned with 2023, more than half of the return coming from the investment component. Within that 15%, about 6% relates to the profit on the disposal of SAN JV. Tava's already highlighted that the group remains within a very solid position with our capital coverage ratio in the midpoint of our target range, which allowed us to increase the final dividend by 7.1%. We add up all of the distributions to shareholders over the year. We provided our shareholder base of a cash yield of 12.4%, which I'm pretty sure would have been welcomed by all of our shareholders. I'll now turn you back to Tava for some closing remarks.

Thank you very much, Wikus, for that detailed update. Maybe just in closing. So we do remain committed much more broadly to our ESG commitments. We continue to be very proud of our partnerships with the municipalities across South Africa, where we partner with 95 municipalities through our partnership for risk and resilience program, which is really aimed at assisting vulnerable communities managed risk events relating to climate relating to fire. We do continue to enhance our disclosures around our climate-related activities, and you'll see more in our updated financial reports coming through later on this -- later on as we publish our results. And then I think just in closing from our focus area perspective. For us, ensuring that we get underwriting margin back into the 5% to 10% range is a critical focus area for us as we go into 2024. We do believe that this is achievable looking at the particular pain points that have created pressure on the underwriting margin in 2023. And so fixing the property portfolio, addressing the challenges in the commercial fire space and then enhancing our geo coding to support with managing and modeling the flood-related losses is our key particular focus for us into 2024. Our broker network remains fundamentally important to us, maintaining our strength and our distribution capability across South Africa, diversifying in Santam Re as a specialist business is a key focus for us, leveraging the Santam Pan Africa relationship into Rest of Africa and also into India remains critical for us. And with the MiWay turnaround taking root, scaling direct is critical for us as we diversify and move our multichannel capabilities across the entire group. And so I think with those priorities spelled out, we do believe that the underwriting margin or the midpoint is achievable. And I think a lot of the actions that we are focused on are around driving profitable growth for us as a business into the future. And so I think, overall, I think a decent set of results given a very difficult macroeconomic environment, the weather-related and the fires that we are seeing coming through. But these are payrolls that we largely believe are manageable. We are absorbing the increased cost of reinsurance and restructuring our reinsurance program to manage that a lot better into 2024. And so we do have some level of confidence that the financial targets that we've set for ourselves into the future are appropriate. And so we have responded both tactically and strategically into the long run. And with that said, happy to take your questions. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Tava, and thank you, Wikus. We now move to our segment where we have some questions that we will entertain and we'll give some responses to it. I'd just like to advise for those online, please enter your questions. Just 1 question that we do have from Michael, UBS. Can you provide color on how much GWP in 2023 base that has been canceled and won't repeat in 2024?

No. Thank you very much, Michael, for that question. And I'll let Wikus give some of the detail. But maybe just to give some context on what we've done. I think going into a very difficult environment, it's been very important for us to be a lot more sensitive and acute with the quality of the business that we are bringing across all our different lines of business, both international and local. And so when we look at the portfolio, we've been uncomfortable with some of the rate strength that's not coming through, in particular parts of our books, particularly more proportional in the international space and some of the Emerald business in the corporate property space. And so we've taken a very drastic and a very decisive approach to canceling that business. You can see, as we've indicated, a drag that it is creating on the underwriting margin. So we don't expect that business to repeat as we come through into 2024. And so we do expect some further upside in terms of relief on the underwriting margin. Wikus?

No, I think just to confirm the ZAR 1.3 billion number that we disclosed is an annual number. So that is now already out of the base. So there won't be a further knock-on effect of that into 2024.

Good. Thanks, Wikus. Again just got 2 more questions from Michael. This one is on MiWay. What level of growth can you expect from MiWay over the next 3 to 5 years?

So I think just looking at MiWay, it's a book that's growing just above 5% now. We've seen that book come from a very low growth base of 2.5%, now heading to 5%. And if you look at that last quarter that we showed on the slide, that growth is now heading towards 6%, 7%. And so we do expect that trajectory to continue into the future. Mindful of the fact that it is operating in a segment of the market where we do see pressure on the consumer segment. So it's a segment of the market where we are typically seeing an increase in rejection debit orders. And so typically, we are trying to put through double-digit increases, but the sensitivity of that book does mean that we're trying to put through a 12% to 14% increase on that book. You are achieving on that base slightly below 10% growth in terms of the premiums that we're able to increase on that particular book. But I think that's largely been with the outbound strategy. We are now shifting, as I said, that business to a more inbound. And so you are seeing a lot more spend around MiWay trying to get an increased call to action coming through for customers. And the profile of customers that we typically see between inbound and outbound, the economics are much better on the inbound approach to running a direct business. And so we do expect momentum or continued momentum in MiWay in terms of increasing that growth trajectory into the future. And so we are expecting our target, obviously, for us, is to get that business growing much, much closer to a double-digit growth over the longer term. But the initial turnaround that we have seen where there was drag in performance in this book is certainly encouraging as we've come through into 2024.

Thank you, Tava. Wikus, this one is for you as well. It comes from Michael. What impact does the increased cat retention have on your solvency capital requirement?

Thanks for the question, Michael. It does not have any significant impact given that the solvency requirements are based in a one in 200-year event. So the increase in our retention level is more earnings volatility impact rather than a capital impact per se.

Okay. Good. Thank you, Wikus. Question from Asif Mohamad. He's got 2 questions also. I'll first take one question. Can you please give us market share trends over the last 5 years of major segments?

Thank you very much, Asif. I think we'll be happy to give you more context just around some of the detail. But I think what I can say is that we've been able to maintain our market share well above the 24% margin. So that does give us significant scale advantage in running our business here in particular in South Africa. If you look at our international book, I think that's running our exposure outside of South Africa, that's about 16%, 17%. And so that's growing quite nicely. In Rest of Africa, we estimate the specialist market to be similar about ZAR 2 billion. I think we probably have closer to 5% or 4% of that. But if you look at the growth outside of South Africa specialty business, that's again double-digit, closer to 20% growth that's coming through. In South Africa, we are seeing that the market as a whole is not growing at double digits since it's -- I think it's growing at 3%, 4% as a market. And so we are above the growth. And so I think we should be able to continue to maintain our market share into the future. But I think from a detailed segment perspective, Asif, we'll be happy to share some of that information with you as well.

Okay. Good. Thanks, Tava. Second question, what are the major ESG initiatives of Santam over the next few years?

Thank you very much. I mean I think that's a very simple question. I think, Thabiso, I'll let you pick that one up. But maybe just to start is that I think the ESG for us is pivotal to how we run our business. Let's just start firstly with the E, just what's happening around what we're seeing in the environment around catastrophic activity. To some extent, the science does indicate that you can show some correlation between certain secondary payrolls and climate change, but there is some difficulty in linking some of the other payrolls, particularly to climate change. But I think we can't deny that we are seeing the impact of climate change. And so we have a whole host of initiatives. I've spoken a little bit about our P4RR initiatives, working with the municipalities right down at grass roots around dealing with issues around flood, dealing with issues around fire vulnerabilities of those communities to those particular payrolls. We've also enhanced our disclosures to just align with international requirements around climate-related financial disclosures. I think that gives some content. I think in our reporting suite, we have a much more comprehensive explanation of what we're doing, particularly around climate change. Thabiso, I don't know if you want to add anything in that context?

Yes. Thanks, Tava. Maybe just 2 areas to add on. If you look at our S of the ESG, social, if you look at our focus with partnerships, that's really geared towards driving and narrowing the risk protection gap. Financial inclusion is one key aspect that we think as a group we're driving a lot more going forward. That will remain a key focus. And one other area is around our employees. Now they remain core to how we do our business. So there is a strong focus around [indiscernible] and our own employees. Obviously, on the governance part of it, I think we as a group, we keep on focusing and making sure that from a governance perspective, we are all doing the correct and the right things that are adhering to legal requirements and regulatory environment. So those will remain some of the key focus moving forward. Thanks, Asif. Then 3 questions. I'll start one at a time. These are from Hanover Mark from Granite Asset Management. Net underwriting margin target of 5% to 10%. Is this target an all-in underwriting target? Or is this an attritional loss target?

It's definitely an all-in underwriting margin targets. So it includes attritional losses. And of course, also an expectation that we will have weather-related events from time to time that we will have fire losses coming through in the portfolio. But it's also important to look at it almost through the cycle as well that you may have years where you're below the target. But on average, it is our target to remain within the 5% to 10%, allowing for all types of claims.

Thank you, Wikus. I think this question is also for you, Wikus. The duration of float. What is the current duration of the float assets and how it has changed versus the past?

See, if you look at our float portfolios, it's very much managed on mandates that align to the typical money market funds that you see out there. So at the moment, we're sitting around about average duration of 120 days, which is broadly aligned with the industry, and it's also in line with the prior year. On our international debt portfolio, we specifically shortened the duration about a year or 2 ago, which has helped us quite a bit in the current interest rate market.

Okay. Good. Thank you, Wikus. Maybe just before I continue with the online question, I just want to go to the conference call and see if we have any questions on the call. Please, could you please describe your name and the company you represent.

The first question we have comes from Warwick Bam of RMB Morgan Stanley.

Three, just really the first one focused on the solvency ratio. [ Consistence ] what the benefit is, if any, from the ForEx gains and the revaluation gains that you've had, especially in the Shriram general insurance business in this period. Secondly, around the Santam Re business. Profitability was clearly strained in the 2023 period. Is there any reason to believe that you're remitted to other reinsurers in the market sort of gives you a structural disadvantage, especially from a return on capital perspective. And on that, can you give us a little bit of color as to what kind of drag that Santam Re business had on the returns on capital for 2023? And then lastly, if you could just come back to the [indiscernible] retention of ZAR 1 billion. How does that compare historically? And is there anything else to consider? Just in terms of your aggregation risk, you mentioned ZAR 100 million per cat [indiscernible].

Okay. Thank you very much, War, for your questions. So maybe let me start at the end, and then I think we can work backwards to some of your other questions. So I think just starting with the CAT program, I think it's quite clear that I think you've seen a hardening of rates in the international market. And that increased cost certainly would have filtered through to our underlying portfolios. But we've taken a decision to restructure the whole reinsurance program providing further protection, particularly for our corporate property business, the Emerald books. So that has a much more improved protection at a much more lower retention limit. But aggregate CAT program does increase to ZAR 1 billion. And I think it's important to say that although we've increased the retention points to ZAR 1 billion, we have saved on the premiums that will typically be paying for that CAT program. And so you will see that we are beefing up our reserving, and so that should provide some further protection towards volatility in the underlying portfolio into the future. Wikus?

I think maybe just to add to that. As I mentioned, we increased the retention from [ ZAR 505 million ] to ZAR 1 billion. But one aspect also taking into account is reinstatement premiums that in the previous program, if we had a claim above the [ ZAR 505 million ], we would have to pay reinstatement premium. So the effective protection that we had was just more than ZAR 300 million. So that's effectively what we've increased our retention by. Maybe turn to the kind of the first question. So the revaluation of our investment in SGI and also the ForEx gains, of course, comes through as an increase within our own funds, funds that's available to cover our capital requirement. But then in terms of the solvency regulations, you must also apply a shock to those assets as well, which reduces the positive impact. So overall, if I look at the SCR ratio, it didn't have any material impact on that ratio. But we did have a slight positive impact.

Just maybe the second question that is asked, which is around Santam Re. How we see that business going forward? And how it compares with our -- with other international reinsurers? And what are the impact of the drag? What drag did it have on our results?

So I think, Warwick, I think if you look at the Santam Re business, I think what you'd appreciate is that reinsurance is a syndicated business. So it does allow small players to take part and to follow in terms of some of the bigger structural programs that are out in the international market. So we do have the advantage that we are running off a rated paper from one of our reinsurers, but also running off the back of South African expense base. So that does give us some competitive advantage from an expense perspective. From a return on capital, it is a dollar business. We do expect to achieve double-digit return on the capital that we do deploy towards this business. But because it's also sitting on the Santam balance sheet, we benefit from use of the economic model that we use across the entire group. And so it doesn't create a drag from a return on capital perspective in terms of writing international business. If anything, it actually -- we actually have a structural advantage from being able to put that on the Santam balance sheet. As far as the 2023 performance is concerned, we have canceled proportional motor business that we are uncomfortable with in that international portfolio. We simply do not believe that the rates that we are achieving on that proportional part of the business are sustainable for us into the future. And so we've taken that drastic steps similar to what we've done pretty much across the group here in South Africa and part of our Emerald business to not write business that we don't believe is sustainable into the future. But we are in a hardening market from a reinsurance space perspective. And so we do believe that the reinsurance business will contribute profitably into the future, both from a growth perspective and also from a bottom line perspective with acceptable return on capital that does meet our dollar-related return on capital that we expect.

Operator, do we have any questions on the line?

The next question we have comes from Francois [indiscernible] of Income.

Yes, most of my question's been asked. Just a quick one on your other operating expenses of ZAR 223 million in the conventional segment. As far as I know, these sort of costs in prior years would have been included in underwriting profits, right? Maybe if you could just give a bit of detail around those costs, and I think it's increased from around ZAR 130 million last year on the new segmentation, the IFRS 17 segmentation. So 2 things, really. One, does [indiscernible] that the Qualico underwriting profit is less good in so far as there are other costs we've got to other operational costs that would have previously been accounted for in underwriting profits that we separately allowed for. And then secondly, if you can just explain the increase in that other operating costs from the ZAR 130 million last year.

Thanks for the question, Francois. So what's coming through in that line item is, first of all, the admin businesses that we've got within the group, for example, Brolick that runs large revenues, but also large expense base with overall a very small impact on earnings. Then secondly, our profits from the franchise businesses similar to Brolick goes through that line. It's got revenue and expenses, but overall, not a big bottom line profit impact at this stage. And then the other item, which is one of the biggest contributors to the growth actually is the investments that we're making within our ecosystem play, in particular on Plus and now within Kanda after that acquisition. So yes, in the past, we included it the net result within underwriting, but it was really a few million rand and didn't have a sizable impact. We've now split it out in a separate line item as the specific businesses don't directly relate to underwriting activities but more admin type activities. I hope that answers your question.

At this stage, there are no further questions on the conference call.

Thank you. I'll then come back to the online questions. Hannover, Marc, I think your question you asked was answered. But just for transparency, I will just read it out. Scaling Santam Re is one of your targets. What does that mean? And what competitive advantages does Santam Re have? I think, Tava, you answered that question.

Yes. I mean I think I will answer that particular question. And I think we have a 24% market share in South Africa. And so it's very important for us to continue to diversify our business. We do believe that there are niches outside of the South African market. where we do have capability and advantage to allow us to play in that space. So our specialist capabilities is a good example of that, where we write business across the rest of Africa into the East. And our Santam Re capability allows us to write. We're in the current write business across 60 countries. It is a profitable business. It does have tailwinds and momentum in terms of just the hardening that we're seeing in the international space. And so we do believe that with our balance sheet, our diversification on our balance sheet and our expense base and superior skills capability based here in South Africa that we can play in the syndicated business. But our strategy in that space has largely been to write very small follow lines. And so you have diversification even within that Santam Re portfolio.

Good. Thanks, Tava. From Jarred Houston from All Weather. Can you provide more detail on higher reinsurance retention? How does this decision impact your relative competitive position or capacity?

I think it's -- I think there are several factors here. So I think, on the flip side, so we benefit from harder reinsurance rate in Santam Re. But on the rest of our book, the cost of that higher reinsurance certainly creates -- would create a drag on the performance of our book. And so we've taken that decision to increase that retention. And it's twofold. I think there is a saving that comes through from pushing up your retention limit. And I think our reinsurers have certainly welcomed that initiative, but it also signals to our reinsurers our intention or rather, our confidence around being able to underwrite better below that ZAR 1 billion retention mark. And so if you look at the underwriting actions that we are putting in place, we certainly have some level of comfort that we can navigate that space below ZAR 1 billion a lot but better than we've been able to do in the past. And so to simply pass those premiums and those profits on to reinsurers at a much higher exorbitant cost would be sub economical for us as a group. And so we've taken the perspective that we can manage that underlying risk below ZAR 1 billion and we're not comfortable with paying simply higher rate on lines at that lower retention limit. And so I think for us, this is a decision that we believe over the long run does stand us in good stead.

Thanks, Tava. 2 questions, but I'll take them one at a time. These are from Spiro [indiscernible] from CGAM. To what extent will the exclusion or excesses in power surge affect growth in those business lines? Have changes in power surge business affected the relations with larger clients?

Spiro, thank you very much for that question. And just maybe just provide broader context. So we have seen an increase in load shedding in 2022 all the way into 2023. And we've managed to mitigate the impact of that load shedding in terms of the claims we've seen from power surge claims. And it is important for us to say that we do believe that power surge remains an insurable payroll pretty much like motor in any other parts of the business. But what is important is that we price it correctly, which is what we've done, and then we manage the claims on the back end to ensure that we are paying the right claims. And then I think it's important to say that what we are uncomfortable with is systemic grid failure. And we have changed the wording within our property book to ensure that we do not have exposure to systemic grid failure, and that's consistent with the wording that we are seeing in our reinsurance partners that we work with international, who's also uncomfortable with systemic grid failure.

Thanks, Tava. Then one question, I've got 3 more questions, but one more question from Spiro, is do you foresee cancelling business in the property segment given the poor results? Can you give detail how you expect to turn it around?

So looking at the property segment, so we've seen the impact of the floods. We've also seen the impact of the fires. And we believe that premium increases on their own are very a bland tool. We are moving more to risk management. So that means working much closer with our brokers. We're working much closer with the clients around ensuring that the properties are not prone to fires. We've seen that a lot of the fires have largely been electrical, right? And so working with our clients, ensuring that we have sprinklers, ensuring that we increase our surveying capabilities so that we can pick and choose and mitigate the exposure to potential fires within the underlying portfolio is some of the actions that we are taking around this.

Thanks, Tava. Question from Barry de Kock, Denker Capital. Can you elaborate on the deceleration in reinsurance costs and the outlook for this, particularly in terms of how the market may evolve if 2024 is a CAT heavy as well as the benign year for the providers of reinsurance?

Thanks for the questions. So as I indicated in my slide, we have experienced single-digit increases in 1 Jan 2024 renewals. And we do expect that to persist in the absence of really big global CAT events. You may have seen actually some of the results coming out from global reinsurance, where they've in general done really well and should be able to absorb CAT events in this year as well. I think it's only if we really experience a large number of large events and the return on capital again comes on a significant pressure that we may see some increase or hardening in the writes again. But again, it will be very much country specific as well if we in South Africa don't experience significant events, it shouldn't really impact our reinsurance writes significantly.

Okay. 3 more questions. I'm also watching the clock. This is from [indiscernible] from MROA. Given the challenges in the operating environment, what are the 3 topics you'll be focusing on in this coming year?

No, I think, first of all, the focus remains on growth. So that's a key part of our strategy this year, in particular, scaling our direct businesses where we do not have a significant market share. And then also a particular focus on our Partner Solutions business, where we really have an opportunity to partner with people that have got an existing large client base, and we can cross-sell into that base. And then, of course, one of our biggest partners is the Santam Group. So there's also a large opportunity for us still left to cross-sell within that book because that's one of the best ways actually to go through challenging times is to grow your top line. And then from a bottom line perspective, it is all about managing the underwriting margin, managing our claims exposures that we've already covered in previous questions. And then what we've seen in this year's results as well. Diversification is not only across our different business units, but actually also between our underwriting performance and our investment performance. So we did have the wind from the back to some extent this year on our portfolios, but we'll continue to optimize and position those portfolios to make a meaningful contribution to our overall earnings, also in pursuit of diversification.

I think maybe just to add to that, Wikus, is that in announcing our refreshed Future Fit strategy, we've talked about a multichannel approach. It's beyond diversification. We also believe that by shifting to other channels of operation, one, we can reach new customer segments that we haven't traditionally been able to reach. Customers are calling that they do want to reach us through new methods, digital methods, direct methods, and so scaling up on the direct is equally important for us. But the economics and the behaviors we see between the different clients coming through the different channels is also different. And so I think that does yield some economic benefit in terms of driving profitability on the bottom line. But it's also important to say that we do remain largely a broker-driven business, and we foresee that to continue into the future. although the diversification strategy and the multichannel strategy will, to a large extent, allow us to diversify our channels beyond the broker segment that we currently are dominating here in South Africa.

Thanks, Tava. Question, I think this is for you, Tava, from Spiro at Global once more. Can you speak to the impact of, if any, on the return business given the Transnet port issues?

Thank you very much for that question. So we're a big corporate player here in South Africa. And so we write business for big listed entities as well as the first state pretty much across the all of South Africa. And what we found is that the infrastructure challenges that we are seeing across the country do have some impact on the profitability of the business that we write in that space. And so we do have some concerns where we are writing some first state of business. But I think a lot of that pressure is coming more from the competitive space where we find competitors without reinsurance, we'll be comfortable to write that business at much, much lower rates than we are comfortable. And so when we talk about relooking at all our portfolios, ensuring rates are sustainable, [ first state ] is certainly one of the areas that we are relooking at saying, is this sustainable in terms of the rates that we offer and that we can write on this business. But it's not unique to the first state. We find that across the corporates. We find that across all risks that we are taking.

Thanks, Tava. One last question from [indiscernible] from First Avenue, which one of your businesses would you say poses the greatest risk to you achieving underwriting margin in the near term.

Wikus?

No. Interesting question. Because I think if you look across our portfolio, as we mentioned, is very much diversified, playing from personal lines through small commercial to your big corporates. And any of those businesses are exposed to CAT events in particular. The flooding that we've seen in the Western Cape last year, it was KZN. So I don't think there's any particular business. I think any -- all of them are actually exposed, and that's why there is a very much a deliberate focus on risk management, appropriate risk selection, appropriate pricing across the entire portfolio.

Yes. Maybe the only comment I'd add to that, Wikus, is that because our business is diversified and we have a 25% market share, it does cushion us from a performance and underwriting perspective to any one particular business being exposed in any one particular year. And so personally, I'm quite excited about our multichannel strategy. I think it further strengthens our position here in South Africa and then our ability to drive business into the international space further provides us with diversification. And so at any one point in time, while you won't expect all businesses to be free from any one particular payroll is that on average, we do expect that the underwriting margin should improve into 2024 across most of our businesses.

Thanks, Tava. So thank you for all of you for the questions you've given us this morning. Thank you so much. And Tava now for one last more word.

Thank you very much, all of you, for joining us this morning. Let me also take this opportunity to thank the Board for their support, my colleagues on the executive management team, the many staff that we have working in this business, and the support of all our clients and our brokers that have provided incredible support to our business in 2023, which was an incredibly difficult year. But what we have seen is that the business has been able to withstand the headwinds, and I think we provided an acceptable result with increasing momentum as we come through into 2024. Thank you very much for joining us this morning, and please have a good day further.