3/15/2022

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Good morning and welcome to each of you. We are delighted to be hosting the financial results for the first time in person in two years. Welcome to everyone joining us online, as well as the webcast and the audio call. Thank you all for taking the time today. Shifting gears, accelerating growth. That's the theme of today's presentation. We really and truly are past the recovery phase of our journey. This is a journey forward. that many of you have been on with us and you have heard the many promises we've made and the ambitions that we've shared. As we shortly hear, the promises are being kept and the ambitions now becoming realities. Today's update will provide insights on how we progressed on the execution of our strategy in 2021 and how we've responded to the myriad challenging external factors, including the impact COVID-19 has had on our business. We'll also share some of the highlights from our segments so you can see how each part of the business is handling and responding to its own unique set of challenges and opportunities. We'll talk to you about our current performance, which has shifted gears and gained substantial momentum. And lastly, we're going to give you a good sense of what we believe lies ahead for Old Mutual, a future built on these strong strategic foundations. To answer all of your questions today, all of our MDs are in the room, so please feel free to ask any questions that you may have. If you could please communicate these questions via the webcast or conference call. And so starting off today will be our Chief Executive, Ian Williamson, followed by our Chief Financial Officer, Kasper Trosky. Over to you, Ian.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

Thank you, Siswe, and welcome to all of you. I'd especially like to welcome Zoraida Ibrahim, our Chief Operating Officer, to our leadership team, and also to thank Heloise for diligently caretaking the COO function for over two years. Last year, the second year of this global pandemic, we held our ground and reaffirmed our commitment to our values and to our stakeholders, including, of course, to you, our investors. Our truly mutual strategy can be understood through three primary components. The first is our vision or victory condition of becoming our customers' first choice to sustain, grow and protect their prosperity. This means that we want to be top of mind with regards to our brand presence, our distribution reach and the breadth of solutions we offer to our customers. The second leg is our execution framework, the how of our strategy. Rectify, simplify, and amplify, which breaks down our long-term ambitions into shorter-term tactical steps that will allow us to reach our destination and deliver on the commitments we've made to you as investors. And the third leg is our value drivers, which focus on the what. the tangible outcomes we will deliver to shareholders, revenue growth, operating margins, capital efficiency, competitive strength, and execution and delivery. Our implementation of ESG principles across our dual roles of asset owner and asset manager continues at pace. We are now an official member of both the Net Zero Asset Owners Allowance as an asset owner entity and the Net Zero Asset Managers Alliance through the Old Mutual Investment Group. Apart from preserving the planet for future generations, we've got a fiduciary duty to ensure the sustainable continuity of our business and protect our stakeholders' interests. So please look out for our first climate report based on TCFD principles, which will be released next month. On a personal note, During 2021, my oldest daughter wrote her matric exams. And watching her work so incredibly hard and succeed amidst the challenges and pressures of writing matric, compounded by the challenges of separation from friends, online schooling, and a complete shift in school norms, I was made acutely aware of how much COVID-19 has impacted our young people. And how our children have responded to this pandemic has reminded us all of what's possible. and how resilient we can all be in the face of adversity. And at our mutual, we've similarly seen the response and ability to persevere in our results. But before I break the results down, let's start with headline performance indicators. 2021 was a really significant year for us, as we recovered from the enormous impacts that COVID had on our operational and financial performance in 2020. As you can see, we are green across our key metrics. We've honored our commitment to our customers and paid out over 21 billion rand in claims in our life business in South Africa, which is the primary driver of our net line cash flow outcome. We achieved a massive recovery in the front end of our business that was driven by much better productivity, reflected in the significant improvements in life AP sales, the value of new business, and in funds under management. In a moment, I'll go into some detail to highlight areas that have really been spectacular, not just against 2020, but also against 2019. And while we're here, I'm delighted to tell you that our board has approved a final dividend per share of 51 cents for 2021 at the top end of our policy range for the cover ratio. It's taken this decision given its confidence in the strength and resilience of our balance sheet, but also taking into account some lingering uncertainty around a possible breakout variant of COVID. This dividend declaration follows on from the bold step we took towards simplifying the group when we distributed 12.2% of our stake in Nedbank, allowing us to focus on our core business, while also providing a substantial return of capital to shareholders. These results are the outcome of focused execution on our rectify, simplify, and amplify framework, and the clarity that this brings for our people. To recap quickly, rectify means fixing areas within our value chain that are not working as well as they should, and reorientating towards new ways of thinking and operating. Simplify is about leveraging our existing resources and further streamlining our processes, systems and products through the use of technology, allowing us to respond to the constantly evolving needs and expectations of our customers. And rectifying and simplifying allows us to then amplify. setting the foundation to enhance the breadth and scale of our capabilities through strategic partnerships, through investing in innovation, and through using our extensive resources to tackle societal challenges. By delivering through this framework, we keep our promises to you, our investors. You will remember that I made you a number of firm commitments at our interim results last year. I promised you that we were going to revolutionize our customers' experience of Altmutual and change the trajectory of that experience. I said we would build an entirely new insurance business end-to-end to deliver exactly what our customers expect and more. We promised you that our relentless drive to improve efficiency would translate into measurable, and sustainable cost savings of R750 million by the end of 2022. We undertook to harness the unrivaled force of Mason Foundation's distribution engine to regain our competitiveness. I said that we would completely re-energize the customer and advisor experience in personal finance and wealth management and so continue to earn our place in this highly contested space. I promised that we would improve investment performance in old mutual investments and that we would embed digitalization across all parts of our business. And as we take you through our results journey, I'm confident you'll agree that we've delivered against these commitments. So with that context, I'll move on to the external environment within which we delivered these results. In 2021, Global economic growth rebounded after the sharp declines of 2020. This was in large part supported by the rollout of vaccines and the relaxation of previously imposed COVID-19 restrictions, resulting in increased demand and increased economic activity. We also saw equity markets recover right across the continent, although once again, that growth was somewhat constrained by continuing outbreaks of new COVID-19 variants. While markets are improving, we are acutely aware of the pressures that consumers remain under, with rising global inflation putting continued pressure on interest rates and on GDP growth, as well as heightened volatility in the global geopolitical landscape. In the rest of Africa, markets remained largely on a growth trajectory. During 2021, South Africa experienced material excess mortality during the second and third waves of COVID. And notably, the third wave, the Delta wave, had a double hump or double peak, which impacted both our personal finance and corporate businesses severely. The fourth wave then saw the emergence of Omicron, which was highly transmissible, but very much milder in terms of severity. In 2021, the impact of COVID-19 on our segments resulted in materially higher claims than we had modeled for at the beginning of the year. In total in the year, we paid out more than 13 billion rand in COVID-related claims across the group. And in the second half of the year, we raised additional provisions of 2.2 billion rand, which Kasper will take you through in detail. We've responded by repricing our group life business and individual business on the expiry of guarantee terms, as well as repricing new business for unvaccinated lives. During the year, we implemented a mandatory vaccination policy for our employees in South Africa And today, well over 90% of our staff are vaccinated, and we've accommodated those who choose to not be vaccinated, requiring them to undergo weekly PCR testing. But what about the future? In our response to COVID, we've taken into account all views, research, and expert projections, including those of medical experts, such as Professor Salim Abdul Karim, who recently met with our EXCO leadership team. After what we experienced with the fourth wave, wider but less severe infections, we now believe that the world may finally be getting to grips with COVID, but that the threat of a new breakout virulent strain of the variant of the virus does remain. Whatever the outlook, vaccinations remain an essential part of our human defense against the virus. Given the backdrop that I've sketched out of market recovery, increasing consumer pressure, and the challenges brought by a shifting and unpredictable global pandemic, our segments have really performed exceptionally well. In the Masson Foundation cluster led by Clarence, result from operations excluding COVID increased by more than 50%. We strengthened our tied distribution channels, which enabled them to deliver a sharp increase in productivity levels with a focus on both advised and non-advised products. Our alternative and foundation market channels delivered strong sales growth, with a high proportion of risk sales helping us to improve margins. And thanks to the focus and investment we put into this sales force and the productivity recovery we experienced because of it, our sales have continued to grow consistently right across the business. And this has been boosted in no small part by Old Mutual Protect sales, most of which come from the Mason Foundation cluster. As Clarence mentioned at last year's Capital Markets Day, we are pursuing opportunities to expand into the full value chain of funeral services through strategic partnerships. And we will update you on these at our interims on the progress we are making. As a result of all our efforts in 2021, V&B recovered strongly from last year's low. with our VNB margin ending at the lower end of our target range of 6-9% for this segment. Risk sales are up 40% and savings are 20% higher than in 2020. This mix does dilute the reported margin. Old Mutual Finance had an exceptional year, delivering the lowest credit loss ratio in its history. But I must caution. but as we continue to prudently increase our lending volumes, we aim to maintain a sustainable loss ratio of 7% to 9%. Even as we expand our alternative channels, the face-to-face sales force will remain absolutely relevant as a core part of a multi-channel distribution strategy. It has been the secret sauce inside MFC for many a year. Exceeding considerable pandemic claims, the front end of the personal finance business had an absolutely outstanding year. As with MFC, our strong focus on advisor productivity and improving customer experience resulted in sales exceeding 2019 levels. We've also seen good traction in the take-up of new solutions, particularly of Old Mutual Protect, which has supported our recovery in the recurring premium business industry. and has replaced our previous flagship risk product, Greenlight. When customer appetite returned, Old Mutual Protect proved that it is exactly the product the market was looking for, offering customers modular, tailored benefits to suit any budget or need. We do acknowledge, though, that we still have work to do across the value chain to extract further benefit from Old Mutual Protect, work that will result in an uplift in margins. We are also on track to launch our savings and income proposition, which builds on the benefits of this platform. On the other hand, net client cash flow remained under significant pressure, driven primarily by the payment of claims during COVID wave two and three. Expense management has been nothing short of excellent, with growth in expenses coming in at below inflation for the second year in a row, despite investment in digital enablement and the rollout of new solutions. In wealth, Karen and the team have focused on both our distribution capability and investment performance. In the distribution arena, we are focusing on capabilities in areas we have previously been underrepresented in. And I'm confident that these ventures will bear fruit because of the tremendous success our team has experienced in seeding adjacent new businesses within particularly the wealth business. Just think, for instance, of our private client securities business, which we've taken from zero to $40 billion of assets under management in the last five years. On investment performance, the team has achieved an exceptional outcome in a highly competitive environment. Compared to the largest balanced funds, Old Mutual Multi-Managers now ranks first over the 1, 2, 5, and 10-year investment horizons. And Old Mutual Wealth Tailored Fund Portfolios is in the top 15% of Assisa peer groups over 1, 2, and 3 years. Across personal finance and wealth management, the team's efforts have resulted in improved sales, with growth sales gross flows increasing by 15%. Demand for offshore solutions remains strong, with Old Mutual International recording net client cash flow growth of 36%. And finally, we have concluded successfully the administration platform migration of Old Mutual Groups. unit trusts and made subsequent enhancements to this platform, which have created a truly exceptional performance for both advisors and customers. Moving on to old mutual investments, we've made tremendous progress in setting up our strategic foundation for success here. Over the last two years, Kai and his team have completely overhauled and simplified the boutique model to allow for a greater focus on specific competitive capabilities. We called this project Lego and the pieces have now all been put into place. The affiliate model is now embedded and the execution of our private market strategy is on track. This focus has allowed us to seed new product capabilities with increasing investor favor. In 2021, Alternatives and Specialized Finance invested more than R9 billion of existing capital into unlisted credit and equity assets, and we've had another successful fundraising in Alternatives of R9.9 billion that will be drawn down and invested in the future. Investment performance in our multi-asset and equity portfolios has delivered top quartile results against peers across one, three, five, and ten years. Our short-term investment performance has improved markedly and has further enhanced the competitiveness of our long-term investment performance. Gross flows and net client cash flow in this business are at their highest levels in four and five years, respectively. And this, together with improved market levels, has resulted in assets under management growing by 15%, and RFO exceeding 2019 levels by 10%, a really solid performance by Akaya and his team. One last but extremely important point on old mutual investments. I'm really proud that the team has concluded the sale of 21.2% of old mutual investment group share in future growth asset management. to African Women Chartered Accountants Investment Holdings, or AIH, a 100% black woman-owned investment company. This transaction was concluded at market prices. Although still subject to certain conditions precedent being met, it's the first step in a phased implementation of our strategy to achieve best-in-class empowerment credentials for the Old Mutual Investment Group. The next step of the transaction will be structured in terms of Statement 102 of the Financial Sector Charter and has the prospect of increasing black ownership of both Future Growth and Old Mutual Investments to 51%. Achieving this will be a real game changer for Future Growth, for CAIA's business and for Old Mutual Corporate. I really believe this provides a competitive edge for our businesses as they seek new markets and defend existing territory. We are delighted to be working with a partner of AIH's caliber and look forward to a mutually beneficial relationship. Corporate sales returned to a healthy position. as life APE sales rose nearly 40% in the second half of the year compared to the first half. Quote activity for group risk business remains high, the number of brokers testing the market for better deals for their clients. And very pleasingly, we've seen improved client and intermediary satisfaction scores, with both net promoter and net effort scores exceeding 70% by the end of the year. And these higher levels of customer satisfaction have made a positive contribution to retention risk, client terminations, and their client cash flow in H2. This was despite some challenges relating to claims processing, which we are prioritizing for resolution. Digital adoption by retirement fund members also continues to improve and was 40% higher than in 2020. We focused on improving the competitiveness of our super fund offering to support large enterprises and on integrating our risk propositions into the super fund. And management actions have seen a significant improvement in our group life assurance result. At the same time, we've invested in the SME space, which Prabhashni and her team have identified as a growth vector for the future. We're excited about Corporate's new innovative SME Go offering, which is gaining traction, giving us credibility in the small business space as we push to create value for an underserved but hungry new market. Also encouraging is Corporate's improved V&B performance in the second half of the year, as well as our existing deal pipeline, which supports positive momentum into 2022. Garth and the Old Mutual Insure team are beginning to see the results of their two-year journey to turn this business around. In that time, two of Old Mutual Insure's business units, being CGIC and Specialty, have undergone restructuring processes across technology and operations, and they've now returned very pleasing results. In fact, the overall increase in total gross premiums was led by CGIC, And we believe that a reasonable proportion of CJRC's wins are sustainable, given a dominant market share, lower risk profile, and better margins. In addition, IWAS did particularly well in 2021. All of this has contributed to an 8% growth in gross return premiums, plus an improved claims ratio. which led to a 69% rise in the result from operations and a substantial turnaround in the net underwriting result. Retail premium growth has been limited, however, despite strong sales from the new Premier product offering. The much-improved net underwriting result was achieved despite a few large risk events, such as the UCT fire, and weather-related claims in the latter part of 2021. We managed to achieve our target of our net underwriting margin being solidly within the range of 4% to 6%. The retail businesses had an excellent claims ratio, but there is a need to further improve the expense ratio and make this business more cost-effective. What we used to call our complex commercial business has now been rebranded Premier, and we've grouped it together with the specialty business, rather than with standardized commercial lines, given the differing nature of the business being written. This particular business is still in rectification mode. Old Mitchell & Schur will continue to focus on further product simplification simplifying processes and IT systems to unlock further sustainable cost efficiency across the business. The required investment in technology will delay the realization of some cost savings, perhaps by a year or two, but will not impact on our group savings targets. And finally, I'm really pleased with the acquisition by Old Mutual Insure on the 1st of January of 51% of one financial services This gives old mutual insurer access to new risk pools and to one's world-class technology for administering off-platform insurance risk. In the rest of Africa, I'm also pleased to say that the business is showing early evidence of improving. In 2021, we saw top-line growth with good margins and market share gains. However, the segment suffered considerably worse COVID impacts than in 2020, with Namibia in particular experiencing significant claims during the third wave. In addition, in most of our markets, as you would expect, higher economic activity post-lockdowns also translated into higher property and casualty claims. Despite this, The team achieved a 33% growth in RFO, excluding the direct impact of COVID. And as I have suggested, there were a number of standout positives. Value of new business more than doubled, with margins increasing from 1.3% to 2.9%. And these gains were driven by tight expense management in the southern regions and by a pivot towards corporate business in both East and West Africa. which positively impacted both sales and margins. We experienced lower credit losses and higher net lending margins on the back of stricter lending criteria and increased collections, and improving productivity levels will remain a priority as we continue to optimize our retail distribution and improve relationships with brokers across the various regions. In the context of our Rectify framework, we've worked hard to fix our control environment in Kenya, and we've recently achieved similar successes in West Africa. But as a general comment, we still have some way to go in putting in place a world-class control environment across all of our markets and lines of business in these territories. And Clement and his leadership team are alive to this need. And finally, a short comment on a business that we do expect much from, and which is also headed in the right direction, and that is our joint venture in China. The business delivered life APE sales growth of 58%, with V&B margins expanding by 50 basis points to 7.1%. Funds under management also grew by 20% to 6.6 billion rand. All in all, a pleasing performance. We are invigorated by the work done done and the progress that we've made during 2021. Our people at every level of our organization have bought into the vision and purpose of our business as much as the leadership team has, which speaks volumes to its relevance. Our competitive advantage is well and truly alive, and the end result is the greatest strength we can see across all the various indicators. And on that note, I'd like to hand over to Kasper.

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

Thanks, Ian. I agree this is a great set of financial outcomes given the extremely challenging environment. were strong lead indicators of improved sales and productivity across the group. And on a personal note, it's been great to experience some of this recovery on the home front as well. I was really happy to be able to reunite with my family after two years. I was able to spend some time with my son who travelled from New Zealand, as well as my brother and his family who travelled from the Netherlands. Adversity builds strength and resilience, and I'm pleased to be able to show you how this is reflected in our results. We have seen a continued positive trajectory on key metrics relating to earnings, capital, and value. Overall, we were pleased with the strong recovery in results from operations to 9.1 billion on a pre-COVID basis. as a result of the sales and flow recovery in all our segments. Results from operations includes a number of wants of items which I will unpack later. Adjusted headline earnings more than doubled in 2021 benefiting from results from operations growth as well as substantial increase in shareholder investment portfolio returns across the group. Our return on net asset value improved from 3.8% to 9%, and excluding the direct impacts of COVID, was estimated to be 13.6%, which is within our target range and ahead of our cost of equity. As Ian mentioned, a final dividend of 51 cents was declared at 1.51 times cover relative to adjusted headline earnings. The dividend was supported by high levels of free surplus generation as well as a strong balance sheet with the life company's capital coverage ratios in the upper end of the target range. Value of new business was up substantially to just under $1.3 billion from $621 million in 2020 on the back of strong volume growth and acquisition cost efficiencies. The value of new business margin recovered from 1.1% to 1.9%, just below our target range of 2% to 3%. All of this has resulted in a 5.9% growth in group equity value, excluding the impacts of the net bank unbundling. We started 2021 with a pandemic provision of just under $4 billion. We raised further provisions for 4.2 billion and released 5.3 billion, resulting in a closing provision of 2.9 billion, after raising an additional 2.2 billion in the second half. The closing provisions were said taking into account the most recent experience and assumes that there will be no breakout variants that bypass immunity in future. In terms of stresses and sensitivities on these provisions, If the immunity benefit from vaccination and prior infection reduces by 25%, the provision would increase by 1.4 billion. And if vaccine take-up reduces by 10%, the provision increases by 327 million. COVID-19 resulted in additional deaths relative to our prior expectations and provisions. particularly in our personal finance, our mutual corporate, and rest of Africa businesses, whilst impacts on our mass and foundation cluster remain more muted. The net impact of the pandemic on results from operations in 2021 was just over 4.7 billion, and this was made up of 6.8 billion in excess deaths, which were partially mitigated through net provision releases and management actions. Building on what Ian mentioned earlier, let's look at the underlying performance of our businesses. In Mass and Foundation cluster, RFO, excluding the impacts of COVID-19, of $3 billion grew 50%, mainly due to higher life sales, good cost management, improved retention experience, and reduced credit losses. Personal finance was up 6%. Despite lower net positive basis changes and wants of items than 2020, benefiting from higher market levels, improved mobility experience and continued good cost management. Wealth management improved by 58% due to higher asset levels and fee income driven by positive net client cash flows as well as the market recovery. All mutual investments was up 3%. largely due to higher annuity revenue offset partially by higher expenses. All mutual corporate recovered by 13% due to higher asset-based revenue earned from improved market levels, together with releases of discretionary margins on investment guarantees. And all mutual insurer improved by 69% due to the positive claims experienced in CGIC, some provisioned releases, and good control over costs. Our rest of Africa business was up 33% with higher banking and lending profits due to lower credit losses, tight cost management, and prior year East Africa write-offs not repeating. The increase in central expenses is largely due to costs relating to our growth and innovation initiatives, which Ian touched on earlier, as well as IFRS 17 project costs share incentive costs, and property rental concessions. Personally, I was satisfied with how each of our segments have delivered in 2021 as we changed gears and positioned ourselves for growth. I'm also pleased to see the improvement in adjusted headline earnings of more than 100% as a result in our recovery in operating profits, supported by Sharehold investment returns improving substantially relative to 2020 with a 69% increase. This was driven largely by a rally in equity markets across the group. And income from associates was up with net bank earnings recovering on the back of lower credit impairments and strong revenue growth of 2020's low base, offset by a $37 million loss in our China operation. In order to simplify and understand how we get from adjusted headline earnings to headline earnings, there are two material adjustments. Firstly, the impact of restructuring largely comprises the recognition of tax of $1.2 billion on the full net bank stake that was held prior to unbundling. Secondly, the results for Sambabwe are excluded from adjusted headline earnings due to us not being able to access our capital. The increase in Zimbabwe's profits was mostly driven by an increase in investment returns, with the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange generating a 311% return in 2021. Despite high volumes on the exchange, we remain extremely cautious of valuation levels given the closed nature of that economy. Lastly, between headline earnings and IFRS earnings, The main adjustments include an impairment on our property at one mutual place to better reflect prevailing market conditions. Overall, IFRS earnings improved to $6.7 billion from a loss of $5.1 billion in the prior year, with the net bank impairment of $8.8 billion largely impacting the 2020 result. As previously mentioned, the impacts of COVID include both excess deaths over provision changes, as well as mitigating management actions largely related to the repricing of risk books. Results from operations excluding COVID items of $9.1 billion were higher than the results from operations of $8.7 billion we achieved in 2019. However, 2021 results benefited from other key ones of items, and in particular, in Omid will ensure $211 million represents CGIC's once-off release of reserves that are not likely to repeat in 2022. $653 million in our mutual finance related to once-off benefits and credit charges, given the rundown of the book. But as the business returns to normal lending levels, we expect longer-term sustainable credit loss ratios of 7% to 9%. and $844 million of benefits related to the continued optimization of our risk-producating strategies, following on the $1.8 billion uplift in 2020. Implementation of this strategy is now completed, and the uplift will not repeat. We have now completed our process with the regulator for the application of the accounting consolidation method which was approved in December 2021. Subsequent to this approval, we have revised the group target range from 170% to 200%, whilst the MLAXA target range remains 175% to 210%. The capital coverage for the group was 184%, and the life company was capitalized at 201%, after taking into account the final dividend declared. The reduction in coverage ratios from the prior year was driven by strong retail risk sales, a 9% increase in the prescribed equity stress, the increase of the value of Zimbabwe, which is included at a one-times coverage ratio given non-fungibility of capital, Since listing, the group has returned $75.4 billion to shareholders. This includes just under $50 billion of capital returns from the two stages of net bank unbundling. In addition, just under $10 billion of special distributions were made in the form of share buybacks and special dividends. Due to the strong cash generation from the business and our capital levels, We have also declared dividends using the full capacity of our dividend target range. We remain disciplined in our capital management and will continue to evaluate any growth opportunities in line with our strategy and return hurdle rates. We are pleased with the overall recovery in new business to just under $1.3 billion compared to $621 million in 2020. as well as the recovery of value of new business margin to 1.9%. This improved margin is proof of our sales recovery across the group, together with tightly controlled cost management. I was particularly pleased with the value of new business recovery in Massive Foundation and our rest of Africa business. The return on group equity value was 8.1%. and 10.3% if we exclude the impact of COVID. The share price continues to trade at a significant discount to IFRS NAV, eligible owned funds, and group equity value. By unbundling NetBank, we've delivered on our promise to reduce complexity and simplify, allowing for a clearer understanding of our core business. We believe that the execution and delivery on our strategy will is allowing us to strengthen our competitive position and further amplify our competitive advantage and ultimately close the gap between our market capitalization and group equity value. In summary, we have seen a strong recovery in results from operation and adjusted headline earnings before COVID impacts, an improvement in our return on net asset value to be closer to the cost of equity with the pre-COVID return already ahead of cost of equity, a recovery of our value of new business margin to be close to our target range of 2% to 3%, with our group solvency ratio remaining strong within the adjusted target range of 170% to 200%. And finally, as Ian mentioned earlier, we are delivering on our promise to meet the the $750 million of annual run rate cost reductions by 2022. This having already banked $450 million in savings from a combination of non-commissioned expenses in our life business and non-commissioned and claims administration expenses in our property and casualty business. This target excludes investments in our new growth businesses. Overall, we believe there is hard work on the road ahead but we are on track to deliver against our medium targets, which you will remember we revised upwards in June. With that, back to you, Ian.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

Thank you, Kasper. Achieving some of these targets will require us to work with resolve, but I'm confident that we've put in place the strategic foundations and execution steps required to deliver on our targets. Earlier, I promised to give you an update on how we've delivered against our commitment to you, our investors. I promised that we were going to change the trajectory of our customer experience. and our much-improved customer ratings prove that we are delivering against this. We said we would build a new financial services business. Given the success of Old Mutual Protect, we now have the chassis on which to continue to expand this. We promised you we would realize sustainable cost savings, and again, as I said, we are well on track. We undertook to regain Mason Foundation's competitiveness, and I think you'll agree that the numbers show that that is happening. I said we would re-energize the customer and advisor experience in personal finance and wealth management, and the palpable energy in that segment has translated into really pleasing numbers. I committed to do all we could to improve the performance of our investments business And here again, we've indeed improved performance against peers and benchmarks across the one, three, and five-year time horizons compared to where we were a year ago. And lastly, while the digital landscape is constantly evolving and our journey will never truly be complete, we are certainly delivering on our promise to embed digitalization of our business. Our work in the digital space is paying off, and I'm pleased to tell you that the number of customers that choose to engage with us digitally has increased by 28% in 2021 to 1.1 million. We've also used WhatsApp, USSD, and the My Old Mutual web-based platform to process more than 65,000 claims in South Africa, which is more than double that of 2020. We've used machine learning tools to automate capabilities and improve the service we offer customers. And as at the end of December, we had migrated 51% of our South African technology estate to the cloud, resulting in improved processing levels and reliability. And as of today, we've completed 67% of this task. Our investment into the migration and updating of our NTN systems is one of the drivers that has delivered the improvement in our sales trajectory and our efficiency gains. And this, together with the execution of our truly mutual strategy, has resulted in improved experiences for our customers. And you may ask how we measure this. We do so using the South African Customer Satisfaction Index, also known as SACSI, an independent national benchmark of customer satisfaction with the quality of products and services available to household consumers. Our 2021 SAXI customer satisfaction score moved up from 78.9% in 2020 to 82.5%. And in addition, as measured by the same survey providers, our reputational net promoter score increased from 29.8% in 2020 to 46 in 2021, an impressive increase by all accounts. The Old Mutual of 2022 is substantially rectified. It's certainly a lot simpler than it was only a few years ago, and it's already starting to be amplified. I want to reiterate we are fully committed to working with Future Growth and AIH, our new partners in that remarkable business, to raise Future Growth and the old mutual investment group's black ownership to 51%. This is part of the phased implementation of our strategy to achieve 30% black ownership for the entire group, which at the time of our listing would have been best in class. Our empowerment commitment is exactly in line with our truly mutual strategy. As we move to implement these transactions, we are clear that the benefits will far exceed the implementation costs, and we will keep you updated on developments as we move through this. We are also adding additional capabilities as we build out the financial services business of tomorrow. Our ambition of expanding our transactional capability in phases to ultimately be at scale will continue. Enhancements to our existing capabilities are being implemented, and here again we will update you on our progress. And as you've heard, Old Mutual Protect has done exceptionally well, but it needs to be further embedded in the market. We're going to use all the learnings from Old Mutual Protect to replicate its success with our savings and income product range. And lastly, I expect great things from the new growth and innovation office we launched in September last year. The team is a vibrant, exciting focus point for our aspirations, both internally and with multiple partners in various industries and sectors to drive longer-term growth. We've delivered across all five areas of shareholder value creation. We've grown revenue. We've increased our operating margins. We've improved our competitive strength. We've executed and delivered significant strategic progress. And we did all of this while improving our capital efficiency. And we delivered to our customers on the promises that Old Mutual has always stood for. As we look outside Old Mutual, we take comfort from a South African budget that was measured realistic and encouraging in its outlook. Events in Europe over the last few weeks are nothing short of a humanitarian disaster and deeply concerning for all. While none of us knows what their full impact will be, we can safely say that we have a resilient business with a well-capitalized balance sheet and strong liquidity giving us the platform to remain a certain friend in uncertain times. So looking forward, we want to build on these successes to shift gears and to accelerate our growth trajectory. So I thank everyone, both in the room and on the webcast and on audio, for your time today. Kasper and our leadership team look forward to answering any questions that you may have, and I'll hand back to Sizwe to coordinate our Q&A process.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you so much, Ian. Just as a start, before we begin with the Q&A, I'd just like to draw the attention of all our participants, both in the room, by webcast and audio, of some additional videos that we have of our MDs who will be covering a little bit more detail about their segmental performance and to be able to give you better insights into their prospects as well. And so today, we've got questions on the conference call. If the operator can confirm that she's on. We then also have participants that are in this room. If you have a question and you're in this room, if you may please raise your hand and we'll provide you with a roving mic so that you're able to ask and to also be answered. And also then we have questions on the webcast, which I have. So operator, if you are ready, I would like to start with the conference call. And we'll go around until we finish.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Of course, sir. The first question we have is from Michael Christalis from UBS. Please go ahead. Apologies. We have a question from Andrew Sinclair from Bank of America. Please go ahead.

speaker
Andrew Sinclair
Analyst, Bank of America

Thanks and morning, everyone. Well, usual three for me, please. Firstly, it was on COVID. Just really wanting to understand a little bit more about the cost of wave four of COVID and how that compared to the earlier waves and then what you're looking at in terms of how many future waves and how you're expecting the cost to further reduce for those waves. That's question one. Secondly, it was thanks for calling out all the material one-offs and 2021 results. That's super helpful. Just really wondered, I realise that we're still at an early stage, but are there any material one-offs that you have sight of for 2022 results for positive or for negative? And thirdly, it was just on margins and volumes for new business. I thought it was really good recovery in volumes for new business, but margins still a touch below 20%. volume recovery or is there anything specifically that you can call out to get to that level? Thank you. So I'll start to say that the middle of that target two to three percent level is that just continued volume recovery or is there anything specifically that you can call out to get to that?

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

The way for provisions we obviously did see some some lower claims experience coming through on deaths relative to the other waves. You know, when I went on leave in December, I had a very big number in my head and we were able to reduce that number a little bit. We also were able to implement some management actions at the year end and include that actually in our proper modelling, which also helped reduce the the provision that we raised at year end. But we have modelled claims for, for example, in PF for the next eight waves. In Mason Foundation, our basis, mortality basis, is quite conservative, so you don't sort of notice any additional provisions after the second or third waves. In our corporate business, We obviously rely on repricing. So we've set up best estimates across all our insurance businesses at the end, and then we've raised some additional discretionary margins, and this is fully set out in our booklet in our retail business. Just because of the heterogeneity of the claims that we saw, we've also raised an additional discretionary margin in our corporate business, and how we set that up is sort of a one in ten risk event. For retail, it's been set up as sort of a full year experience, and in our corporate business, we've set it up as 50% of that variance, given that we are able to reprice our corporate book. In Mason Foundation and in the Africa business, we felt that we already had sufficient discretionary margins at the year end. So we have modelled forward-looking waves. We have updated our assumptions relating to expected deaths, and we've also updated our sort of final expectation of vaccination rates, which we've reduced from 70% to 60% in our final provisioning. I hope that answers your first question. Andy, just remind me of the second.

speaker
Andrew Sinclair
Analyst, Bank of America

Super helpful color there. So the second question was just on one-offs. You called them out for 2021. I realize we're still only in March, but just any sight that you have on any one-offs that you're expecting in 2022?

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

Andy, I'm not aware right now of any one-offs. I mean, I think the biggest one-offs we would expect is And we've seen that in January. We've only seen January data, but we are seeing slightly lighter death experience than the provisions we've set up at the year end. So, you know, the ones will be mainly related to COVID experience. Obviously, we started the year with a strong end in our asset levels. which would have helped most of our businesses in terms of the margins that we earn, but obviously the recent turmoil in East Africa and the drop in markets is going to negate that a little bit. But I'm not aware of any other big one source, unless any of the BU leaders, and I see them all shaking their head, not aware of anything else.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you, Kasper. Thank you, Casper. Andy, you had one more question. I think it was on margins, if I'm not mistaken.

speaker
Andrew Sinclair
Analyst, Bank of America

Yeah, just on margins, just essentially what will it take to get to the middle, say, of the 2% to 3% margin target range?

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

Yeah, so if Prabhashni sells a lot of new business, we're not going to get there because the corporate margin is a little bit lower than the rest. Sorry, Prabhashni. But Clarence is expecting to be able to improve his risk margin based on improving volumes in 2022. And Karen, happy if she wants to answer, but she is looking at, you know, the mix of business, especially in the risk book, to see whether we can improve that going into 2022. Those are the two big leaders. Karen, I don't know if you want to add anything.

speaker
Zoraida Ibrahim
Chief Operating Officer

Thanks, Kasper. I think... Personal finance is probably the area where we need to do the most around our margin. We focused in 2021 very much on getting the productivity levels back and the activity levels back. And I think that has happened well. But what we did see was a gravitation of customers towards the cheaper end of the product spectrum. So for us getting that mix and upselling to the more complex markets, the benefits, the kind of critical illnesses, the sickness benefits, as opposed to vanilla life and lump sum death benefits will be quite important. I think the second thing to be aware of is that we actually did do, in personal finance, an expense allocation exercise in 2021, and we have actually shifted our allocations between the life and non-life products So that did have a bit of a one-off kind of reset of margins in the life space.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you, Kieran. Super helpful.

speaker
Andrew Sinclair
Analyst, Bank of America

Thank you.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thanks, operator. If you can just hold for a bit, I'm going to go now to the webcast. We've got one question from Jared at AllWeather. He's a biocide analyst, and he asks, is the ex-COVID-19 impact on RFOs? well, the RFX COVID-19 impacts, a base of which you can grow going forward?

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

I'll take that, Cesar. I think you need to look at the slide which I put up around the impacts of other items. So that gives you a more sustainable base from which to grow. And that's particularly why we've highlighted those items because they are not going to recur. So we had a big negative impact of COVID, but we also had some positives that are not going to recur. So you should rather look at that. I think it's around $7.5 billion as the sustainable base of which to grow without factoring sort of additional, as we said, we're not aware of additional one source going into 2022 at this stage. So that's a better view to use.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Casper, I'm going to offer the opportunity for any participants in the room who have a question with us here in the venue. Okay, if there are none, operator, we can go back to the chorus call, please.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you, sir. The next question we have is from Michael Christalis from UBS.

speaker
Michael Christalis
Analyst, UBS

Hi, guys. Can you hear me?

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Yes, Michael, clearly.

speaker
Michael Christalis
Analyst, UBS

Thanks so much for the time, guys. Three questions from me as well, then. I noticed your sort of commentary around math having regained its competitive advantage. Yet when I look at your sales growth in funeral, where your sales are in funeral relative to, say, pre-COVID F119 levels, you're still lagging behind those levels where your two largest competitors in that space are above. So I'm just sort of curious as to how much more there is to go in terms of this growth rate and whether you're bullish you can get back to those or how quickly you can get back to those pre-COVID levels. Secondly, just on the mutual finance sort of banking expansion that was discussed in your capital markets late last year, you spoke a bit about deploying some capital there. Can you give us an update on what's been done, what's been deployed, what what the plans are there and how you think that develops over the near term. And then the last one is just around your COVID provision. Can you just talk about the effective sort of expectation around the release of that provision? In other words, I think Casper mentioned you've modeled a further eight waves, just to clarify, is that eight more waves or is that total eight waves? And how quickly can we expect that provision to be written back if by some sort of magic, COVID is behind us. Thanks.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you, Michael. Please, Dr. Clarence, MD of Mason Foundation.

speaker
Clarence
Group Executive – Mass and Foundation Cluster

So, can you hear me? Yes. So, Michael's question is, we are far off 2019 in terms of funeral sales. And my reading of it is that we are about 2% below 2019, or roundabout there. And The 2019 levels, we achieved them with over close to 4,900 advisors. And the advisor numbers that we had in 2021 were around 3,009. So, you know, you need to factor that part of the equation. Then secondly, we are now building up the advisor force, but in a different way. We have introduced new channels, which is our franchise channel as well as our low-income channels. foundation market channel, and we've got advisors built up to about 500 extra. That should help us in terms of continuing to see the recovery in terms of our risk sales, in particular, funeral sales. And then the third element of it is that we, as we communicated at our Capital Markets Day, we are shifting focus away from being predominantly on funeral, but also doing underwritten life. And our aim is that, you know, over a three-year period, our underwritten life should constitute about 20% of our overall sales. So there is momentum. And if, you know, probably when we get to interims, you will see that actually we will have recovered beyond 2019 when it comes to risk sales. So I'm quite comfortable that, you know, that recovery that you saw last year of about 40% growth on 2020, it is sustainable for a year or two before we get back to single-digit numbers of growing in that funeral space. Thank you Clarence.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

The next question was around transactional. So Michael to your question on what we're doing in the transactional banking enhancement. Essentially the investment to date over last year has primarily been in a team of people with skills in that arena and in essentially technology capability to put down a properly digital chassis for payments, essentially, and that piece of work is progressed in terms of both having the team in place, the core contracts with key providers signed from a technology perspective, and work progressing. So that's where we're at.

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

Michael, on the release of COVID provisions, we obviously agree a release pattern is upfront with our audit committee for discretionary margins. So the discretionary margins that we've set up at the end of 2021, we have agreed will, if not utilised in 2022, will be released at the end of 2022. The best estimate liability will obviously be updated at each and every reporting period for what our view is at that point in time. So if things, you know, we've seen a little bit better experience relative to our provisions starting out in 2022, if that continues, it will obviously allow us to adjust our best estimate liabilities, you know, at the next reporting period. So that's how we'll deal with the best estimate liability. And as I said, with discretionary margins, those will be released or used in 2022. Thanks very much, guys.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Operator, before we move to the next person on the chorus call, I'd like to ask just a couple of questions I have here. One is from News24, Lundi Obtelezi. She asks, you mentioned that the joint venture in China is the business that you are most excited about. I remember in 2017, there were reports that Old Mutual was considering selling its 50% stake there. How different are the prospects for that business now? Why the renewed excitement? I thought Old Mutual planned to focus on sub-Saharan Africa post the managed separation. So that's the first question. And then the second one is, how have you dealt with the impact of the pandemic on your frontline staff? So I'll stop there for now.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

Okay, so with regard to China, I think we are still excited about the prospects for that business. I think the numbers I quoted should give you a good indication that we've got reason to be excited. I don't think anyone wouldn't be excited by 58% sales growth at 7.1% V&B margins. The competitive advantage that that business has against China most foreign joint ventures in China is that we have a license that spans nine large cities in China. So the addressable market is absolutely enormous. The business is tiny from a market share perspective, but it does have the prospect of growing quite strongly. Obviously, given what's happening Russia and Ukraine at the moment. We are just keeping a little bit of a close eye on the geopolitical context around the Chinese business, and we'll take appropriate decisions around any required capital allocation, certainly in the short term, just keeping an eye on that. So that's the only reason for some measure of caution around how we think about that for the immediate future.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thanks, Ian. And then the second question on frontline staff I'm going to give to Karen. She would like to respond?

speaker
Zoraida Ibrahim
Chief Operating Officer

We've dealt with the impact of COVID in our frontline staff in three ways. So number one, keeping them as safe as possible. Number two, enabling them to work. And number three, helping staff who fell ill or had bereavement to deal with it. So in terms of keeping our staff safe, we've had very strict protocols in place. We issued all our advisors with screens. We allowed them to work from home as much as possible, and we actually set up and invested in a lot of digital technology to allow them to work remotely with their customers. So, you know, the WhatsApp claims lines, the ability to meet with customers, digital signing, et cetera. In terms of keeping them safe, we've been very aggressively encouraging vaccination, and sort of allowing them to work from home. And then our staff who fell ill, really helping them with a care line, helping them with packages, and really helping deal with funeral arrangements and the like where people were bereaved.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you very much, Karen, for that response. I'd like to ask a question also that we've received around further detail around the black economic empowerment transaction done in the old mutual investment business. If you can provide any further detail on that and, you know, what prospects are for it.

speaker
Kai
Chief Executive – Old Mutual Investments

Hi. Thanks, Cesar. I mean, I think there's three things to consider about that transaction. One is we concluded the transaction at market prices. So from a shareholder's point of view, it's a value for value trade. And in fact, if we think of the strategic value of what we've done there, we've put future growth in a position to be extremely competitive in the space where clients are increasingly asking, especially in the institutional space, increasingly asking to deal with 51% black-owned fund managers. So that puts us in an incredibly strong position competitively. The third thing I'd like to highlight about that is something that Ian referred to, and maybe I'll embellish that a little bit, which is we've structured the transaction as a statement one or two transaction. So what that means is the selling entity derives the same benefit from ownership points as the entity involved in the transaction. So old mutual investment group as the selling entity will derive the same level of ownership value, which means it takes both businesses one step closer to being 51% black owned. So I think it's very good for the ecosystem, very good for our clients, and we've done it at a price point and at a cost level that is negligible for shareholders.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you, Kaya. Operator, if I can go back to the chorus call for the next question.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

Thank you, sir. The next question we have is from Mwari Kabam from Avior Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

speaker
Mwari Kabam
Analyst, Avior Capital Markets

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for the opportunity. Potentially I'll ask my questions one by one. It's going to make it a little bit easier. The first question is, do you believe the repricing of risk products across the industry is had a beneficial effect on your competitiveness and sales volume in the second half?

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

So we would like to take that. Kieran again. And Clarence.

speaker
Zoraida Ibrahim
Chief Operating Officer

Yeah, so Clarence might want to add. I think the repricing, there are two kinds of repricing. So repricing to be more competitive, in particular, pockets of business where we wanted to grow market share. That, I think, was positive. We, on the risk side, did look at particular cohorts of people where we wanted to gain market share and adjusted pricing. But then repricing to take into account unvaccinated people and COVID effects, I think on balance was actually probably difficult for us. So not all competitors did it at the same pace. some were also less obvious about how they did it. We were quite public about it. So on balance, I actually think that hurt us a little.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thanks, Karen. No further comments on that question, Warwick. If you can move on to the next question.

speaker
Mwari Kabam
Analyst, Avior Capital Markets

Great. Thanks for that. You've got a call option to increase your stake in old mutual finance from 75% to 100%. Do you intend... triggering this option and does the legal proceedings from Business Doctor Consortium have any effect on your ability to call that option?

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

In short, it's a put and a call, Warwick, so I would expect that one way or the other that transaction will be concluded. It's just a question of the time and the process that's envisaged in the contract to kind of get your resolution on the valuation for that transaction to take place. The business doctor litigation is something that is separate, but is, you know, in my mind is clearly motivated by trying to influence effectively the valuation at which that transaction would take place. So, you know, it is something we will need to manage.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Okay, thank you again. Warwick, last question.

speaker
Mwari Kabam
Analyst, Avior Capital Markets

Thanks. Last one, just in terms of the Mass Foundation cluster, your savings and investment product sales levels are still well off 2019 levels. I appreciate that you've had some change in product mix and focus areas, but do you believe that you could get your savings and investment product sales levels back to 2019 levels?

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you. Should we give that to Clarence, please?

speaker
Clarence
Group Executive – Mass and Foundation Cluster

He's over there. So the intention is not to get back to that level because it was a deliberate action, first of all, to try and push risk more than savings. The reason for that is that from a savings perspective, the margins are very thin. And the savings product plays two roles for us. One is just a retention mechanism. Then secondly, it also helps cover some of our distribution expenses that enable us to ride better margin risk business. So we took a deliberate action not to increase the volumes by increasing minimum premium for the savings product in 2020. And we again implemented another minimum premium increase in February of 2022 with the intention to continue shifting our advisor force towards more and more risk. And then we also changed our REM model for the Tide Advisor Force in order, again, to drive them more towards the risk side without pushing too much of the savings. The reason why savings, besides the whole thing around margins and everything, is that contractual savings are a little bit difficult for a mass market customer in the low-income space. And, you know, there's a lot of what I call value destruction for customers. That's the reason why we had to make some of these changes. particularly around minimum premium, in order to target the right type of customer rather than everybody in that space.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you, Clarence. Operator, we're going to move to the next caller.

speaker
Operator
Conference Call Operator

At this stage, sir, there are no further questions on the chorus call line.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Okay. If that is the case, then, Operator, I'll move on to the webcast. There are two questions. Well, there's one from PSG Wealth, from Fisogule Mbuho. He asks, what is the return on GEV in 2021 relative to 2020? That's the first question. We then have a second one, which is, what is the old mutual strategy on ESG? We then have, and that's Peter Crawford. We have Zayim Kumandan, who's asking, how are you thinking about acquisitions over the next few years? Are there any specific areas... where you'd like to add more scale or new business ventures, and any potential of any further buybacks secondary to M&A. So ahead of M&A, yeah.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

Kasper, do you want to do the first one? I'll do the other two.

speaker
Kasper Trosky
Chief Financial Officer

I'll just have to get the team for this here. As I said in the presentation, it was 8.1 and I think 10.2 if you strip out COVID impacts. Also, just remember that when you calculate a A return you need to adjust for the big distribution that we made for NetBank during the year. I'm trying to see if the team's got Colostia's number, but we'll send that through, post the call.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Sure, we can do that. And then in the ESG strategy, followed by the M&A strategy.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

I'll talk about the ESG. So we are putting out our integrated report and our climate report literally at the beginning of next month, so you can get full detail in there. But in summary, we consider the nature of our business and the competencies that we have. Essentially, we've got three core competencies ultimately. We're an asset gatherer. That means that we gather assets into scalable, investable amounts, and then we can put those into portfolios. We're a risk pooler, so we can pool risk on behalf of clients and help them to manage that risk, and we are an investor fundamentally. And if you take those activities and think about what that means from an ESG perspective, we believe that from the E on the environmental side, the biggest influence we have is as an investor and in how we manage ultimately influence portfolio investee companies to behave in such a way that drives towards net zero carbon emissions. And that is our strategy, is essentially to use that capability to advantage, to drive through necessary change in behavior in the world and to think about what new startup capability, we are prepared to fund and not prepared to fund to drive change over time. So that's essentially the biggest lever we have from an environmental perspective. We can do a little bit on the operational side. We've got buildings, we consume water, we consume a bit of energy, but we're not a massive carbon emitter in our own right. But having said that, many of our flagship buildings across our portfolio of property are five- and six-star green-rated buildings with significant attention paid to things like solar energy, water recycling, and waste management. From a social perspective, I think many people are familiar with the fact that we really do believe in long-term sustainability of communities. In our core business, it's about serving our customers responsibly, making sure that they get access and that we give them good advice in thinking about their own affairs. And then if you like, from an after-profit perspective, a lot of what we do drives around financial inclusion and financial education for the community at large on an after-profit basis. And then finally, from a governance perspective, very much just standing up for good governance and making sure that it's embedded into everything that we do as an organization. So I think that's our potted summary, but you get a fuller articulation of that if you have a look at the reports we put out in the next couple of weeks.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

So excuse me, I have to remind you what the third question was. Happy to do that, Ian. How are we thinking about acquisitions over the next few years? And are there any specific areas we'd like to add more scale in your business ventures? And then there's a couple of questions actually on this theme around where buybacks rank relative to acquisitions.

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

Okay. All right. So, you know, in a sense, we see organic and inorganic growth as complementary to each other as part of just being able to compete. And so what you saw with the one acquisition in Omnitool Insure, for example, You know, it was clear strategic logic. It makes sense from a capital return perspective, and it doesn't create massive risk from an integration or transformational point of view, you know, in terms of the scale of the acquisition. We will absolutely pursue opportunities like that, and there are a number of areas that we have identified where either we could scale up complementary capability inside our existing businesses, or drive for scale in markets where we are currently subscale. And I think one of our competitors on record in the last week of saying financial services is a scale business, he's right. But it's not a scale business across borders, to be clear. It's a scale business in country. It's very hard to drive scale efficiencies in a regulated business across borders. So actually, the way to think about it in my mind is if a business is small in a particular market, there may well be disproportionate value in thinking about accelerating the growth of that business through inorganic means. So, I mean, that's a short summary. I think we've demonstrated that we're disciplined about how we think about this. We have been in a number of conversations recently. In the last year, particularly in our rest of Africa portfolio, none of them have met our criteria for what we would require to see in order to consummate any sort of transaction. So we will continue to be patient. But it does remain a part of our growth strategy. And then briefly on the new growth and innovation side, an alternative name for the portfolio which has been used is what we call innovation at the edge. And it's essentially looking at two growth horizons, a slightly shorter-term horizon, sort of three to four years out, mainly through partnerships and partnering for complementary capability, and then a slightly longer growth horizon, probably in the five-plus-year category, which is more around building capability from scratch. But it's unlikely to be capability that's competitive to our core as such, but more complementary to our core business. So that's essentially the framing of how we're thinking about it.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thanks, Ian. And the last one, capital returns versus investment. Sorry, capital return? Well, M&A versus buybacks. What's our preference?

speaker
Ian Williamson
Chief Executive

Oh, the buyback issue. Yes. So I think, you know, share buybacks will remain on the agenda. There are certain of our shareholders who have a stated preference. Large shareholders have a stated preference for special dividends. So we would, you know, we will balance our thinking depending on, you know, where share price is at a particular point in time. And if we have deployable surplus capital that we don't have a more attractive use for, certainly buybacks would come into consideration.

speaker
Sizwe
Director of Investor Relations / Moderator

Thank you, Ian. Operator, we've reached the end of our time here together, so I would like you guys on the call to disconnect if there are still any people. But otherwise, for those in the room and in Johannesburg and via the webcast, thank you all for your time and joining us today. Those who are in Johannesburg with us physically, we ask you to just remain behind while we close off the end of the proceedings. Thank you.

Disclaimer

This conference call transcript was computer generated and almost certianly contains errors. This transcript is provided for information purposes only.EarningsCall, LLC makes no representation about the accuracy of the aforementioned transcript, and you are cautioned not to place undue reliance on the information provided by the transcript.

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