Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Helia Half Year 2024 Results Conference Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Mr. Paul O'Sullivan, Head of Investor Relations. Please go ahead.
Hello, and welcome to the 2024 first half financial results briefing for Helia Group. I'm Paul O'Sullivan, Head of Investor Relations. This morning, we will start with a presentation from our CEO, Pauline Blight-Johnston, who provide an overview of the results. Our CFO, Michael Cant, will then go into more detail on the financial results, and Pauline will then wrap up with closing comments. At the end of the presentation, we'll pass back to the moderator and take questions from investors and analysts. I'll now hand over to Pauline.
Thank you, Paul. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us. Before I start, I'd like to acknowledge the Cammeraygal people of the Eora Nation, on whose land I'm hosting our call today. I pay my respects to the elders, past and present, and to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people here today. Helia is Australia's leading lenders' mortgage insurance provider, harnessing the power of almost sixty years' experience, having played a pivotal role in the property market since nineteen sixty-five. We are a specialist LMI provider with a differentiated, customer-focused strategy that partners with our lender customers to help aspiring homebuyers realize their property dreams and get into homes sooner.
In the first half of 2024, Helia helped over 12,000 families to buy a home, and today, we're pleased to have delivered another strong interim result for our shareholders, reflecting our operational performance and financial resilience. I'll now turn to Slide 5 to walk through the first half 2024 highlights. During the half, Helia delivered an underlying net profit after tax of AUD 107 million, benefiting from continued unusually light claims experience. Statutory net profit after tax of AUD 97 million was below the underlying profit, mainly as a result of pre-tax mark-to-market unrealized losses on the bond portfolio due to rising interest rates. Insurance revenue was AUD 195 million, reflecting the lower levels of premium in recent years and less favorable premium experience variations. I'll discuss new business volumes in greater detail in a few minutes.
Total claims incurred were AUD -10 million, as releases of reserves for previously reported claims exceeded new claims recognized due to continuing good experience. During the first half, we continued to deliver on our customer-focused strategy, investing in better understanding the needs of our customers and their borrowers. We successfully renewed a contract with a top ten lender and welcomed the opportunity to propose to extend our relationship with our largest customer. Our differentiated offering was again recognized externally, with Helia winning the Mortgage & Finance Association of Australia Best Support Large Company Award. Helia also received a Top Insurance Employer Award from Insurance Business Magazine, recognizing us as one of the best insurance companies to work for in Australia and New Zealand. In the first half, our financial strength enabled us to return AUD 177 million to shareholders through on-market share buybacks and dividends.
The Prudential Capital Amount ratio of 2.08 times, as at 30 June 2024, and strong profitability have enabled the board to declare today a fully franked 2024 interim dividend of AUD 0.15 per share. The key performance measures on Slide 6 depict Helia's results in graphical format. I won't talk through them all, but I'd like to particularly draw your attention to the underlying return on equity, which shows the value the business is creating for our shareholders, delivering an annualized underlying ROE of 9.3%—sorry, 19.3% over the first half. A key driver of the strong ROE has been the continuing low level of claims, as total incurred claims were again negative over the half, though less so than in previous periods, at minus AUD 10 million.
Despite an active capital management program over the half, Helia's PCA coverage ratio remains above the board target range, and I'll discuss our capital management principles and current initiatives shortly. Turning to economic conditions on Slide 7. The resilience in the Australian labor market continued to be a key positive for Helia. The unemployment rate remains very low, despite rising 20 basis points in the first half to 4.1%. The participation rate is just below all-time highs. Hours worked have increased modestly, and positive real wage growth is assisting loan serviceability. National dwelling values rose 3.7% in the first half and are at record levels. Dwelling values have risen in most geographies, including Western Australia and Queensland, which have historically higher levels of portfolio negative equity.
While the RBA's cash rate target was stable at 4.35% in the first half, the level of mortgage interest rates, together with cost of living pressures, are contributing to a modest increase in industry mortgage arrears. In its most recent meeting, the RBA noted that the economic outlook remains uncertain. Helia remains well positioned to manage any economic uncertainty that should arise. Slide 8 provides a closer look at the residential mortgage markets. Despite the pick up in new loan commitments, growth in the volume of high loan-to-value ratio lending remains modest, as buyers remain sensitive to movements in house prices and the high level of interest rates and serviceability buffers. Over the half, we've seen industry lending growth biased towards investor lending at the expense of owner-occupiers and first-time buyers, who are traditionally more likely to use LMI to assist their purchase.
Slide 9 looks at the impact of these conditions on the LMI market and Helia. In the short term, Helia's written profit reflects the growth rates of lender customers, which are impacted by cyclical factors such as dwelling values, interest rates, and relative market share growth. Over recent periods, industry new business has also been impacted by increasing levels of lender waivers and self-insurance, which is not uncommon during periods of benign claims experience, as well as the impact of the federal government's First Home Guarantee. To put this in context, the LMI industry has historically written an average of approximately 170,000 risks per annum, according to APRA's quarterly general insurance performance statistics. While we're pleased that the government scheme has currently stabilized at fifty thousand policies per annum, this still represents a large number when compared to the total LMI industry.
Experience indicates that many of the recipients of the First Home Guarantee would have qualified for and could have afforded LMI insurance, limiting the scheme's effectiveness in its objective of helping homeownership. We believe a better targeted scheme, helping borrowers who would not meet traditional LMI criteria, would have a greater impact on improving homeownership in Australia, and remain committed in our efforts to support the government to optimize the effectiveness of its policies for the benefit of all Australians. In the light of the subdued new business volumes arising from economic and public policy factors, Helia continues to work to expand our footprint within the market, to explore operational efficiencies, balancing medium and longer-term investment needs with a challenging short-term environment for new business.
In addition, we continue to work with a range of stakeholders to reposition LMI and to reinforce the value of the product as a tool for accessing homeownership and building wealth, and the importance of a strong LMI market to Australians and the Australian economy. Slide 10 provides more detail on industry arrears and the strength of Helia's portfolio. While trending upward over the half, industry arrears have remained lower than expected and lower than long-term average levels, aided by favorable economic conditions and increased sophistication in the application of lender hardship solutions. Helia's new delinquencies increased in the first half, but closing delinquencies continue to benefit from favorable aging experience on the opening delinquency book. Rising house prices and low negative equity continue to provide a helpful buffer for the industry. Slide 11 walks through our capital management initiatives. Our principles on capital management remain unchanged.
We seek to deploy capital at attractive returns for shareholders, and over time, return to and operate within the board's target range of 1.4-1.6 times PCA. If we cannot deploy the capital to drive shareholder value, we will look to return capital to a stable, fully franked ordinary dividend, with any further surplus capital returned through special dividends or share buybacks. Helia continued its capital management activities in the first half, including the payment of the full-year 2023 dividends and an on-market share buyback. In the first half, organic capital generation was again strong, reflecting the profitability and low new business strain due to subdued premium volumes. During the half, the board announced a further AUD 100 million on-market share buyback, of which AUD 92 million remains to be completed, expiring on the 31st of December this year.
In addition, the Helia board has today declared a fully franked ordinary dividend of AUD 0.15 per share. Fully completed, these dividend and buyback activities reduce the PCA multiple to 1.91 times on a pro forma basis. On Slide 12, we outline Helia's approach to sustainability, which is tailored to our business and built on 3 foundational pillars across which we believe we can have a real impact. Firstly, driving financial wellbeing and housing accessibility is a core part of our purpose. In the first half, Helia helped nearly 6,000 Australians experiencing hardships to stay in their homes by working with our lender customers to support homeowners facing personal difficulties, natural disasters, and other challenges. Through our community partnerships, we support programs that help people experiencing homelessness, provide emergency shelter, and help remove barriers to future homeownership, such as educational disadvantage.
Secondly, under enhancing climate resilience, in the first half, Helia maintained net zero for Scope 1 and 2 emissions in line with its target. We have also enhanced our location risk model, including more granular identification of high-risk properties and an assessment of the potential financial impact of climate change on our portfolio and new business. Finally, our focus on demonstrating good corporate citizenship is a core part of who we are. Helia has again been cited as a gender equality employer of choice by the Women's Gender Equality Agency for the tenth consecutive year. We proudly achieved gender pay parity in 2023 and 2024, one of very few financial services organizations to have done so. In addition, Helia received endorsement of its inaugural Innovative Reconciliation Action Plan from Reconciliation Australia, a key step in our reconciliation journey.
Turning to Slide 13, we outline Helia's strategy to achieve our vision of being the unparalleled leader in LMI. The path to homeownership is as challenging as it's ever been for prospective homebuyers. We have a deep conviction in the value of LMI in helping Australians access homeownership sooner, thereby building financial and emotional security. Over recent years, we've seen a number of alternative home access financial solutions emerge. Having assessed these models in detail over recent years, we remain convinced of the need for LMI, and further, of the relative attractiveness of the LMI solution against these alternatives. As such, whilst we continue to watch the emergence of alternative paths to homeownership, we have refocused our immediate efforts on growing the LMI industry and our share within it. We articulate our strategy in four key strategic objectives: One, grow and defend our LMI market share.
Two, grow the market for LMI. Three, drive operational agility and risk maturity. And four, deliver results through world-class performance. Consistent with this strategy, during the half, the company successfully renewed a contract with a top 10 lender, and we continue to focus on customer renewals and new business opportunities with non-customers, harnessing the momentum we have built over recent years. We continue to work with lenders to expand risk appetite, including opening up investor lending to a 95% LVR, reviewing and updating high-risk locations, and removing underwriting restrictions in high-density postcodes. Helia is proud of the pivotal role it plays, and the LMI industry has played in the Australian property market since 1965.
In many ways, this has been an underappreciated service, and we're intensifying our efforts to reposition LMI with homebuyers, brokers, and lenders, reinforcing the value of LMI and the importance of a strong LMI industry to government, regulators, and other key stakeholders. As a complement to our LMI activities, in the first half, Household Capital, in which Helia has a 26% ownership interest, continued to grow its position in the reverse mortgage market, which included executing an innovative funding structure for future growth. We remain encouraged by the potential for this business to grow profitably over the coming years, providing greater financial choice to Australia's retirees. On that note, I'll now hand over to Helia's Chief Financial Officer, Michael Cant, who will provide more detail on our financial results.
Thank you, Pauline. It's very pleasing to be able to present another strong result, and one with very similar themes to the last few periods. I'm gonna start on Slide 15 with the income statement. Statutory net profit after tax for the half year was AUD 97 million. Underlying NPAT, which removes the unrealized gains and losses on the shareholders fund, was AUD 107 million, down 22% on the prior period, but still a very strong result. Insurance revenue was down 11% on the prior period, while claims experience was, again, extremely favorable, with total incurred claims of minus AUD 10 million, leading to an overall insurance service expense of AUD 42 million. Reinsurance premiums of AUD 12 million were considerably lower than the prior period due to lower levels of reinsurance coverage.
Investment income for the half was up, reflecting the higher interest rate environment, but total investment revenue was impacted by modest unrealized losses on the bond portfolio. Slide 16 shows a breakdown of the insurance revenue into its major component parts. The 11% fall in insurance revenue is due to a combination of premium credit experience variations, which I'll elaborate on later, and a smaller volume of in-force business following two soft years of gross written premium. Slide 17 shows the trend in new business. Gross written premium was at similar levels to the last two half years and remains soft. The industry volume of high LVR lending remains at a cyclical low, compounded by an increase in the level of waivers and self-insurance from some lenders.
As Pauline has outlined, the federal government Home Loan Guarantee Scheme continues to have a significant negative impact on the volume of new business for the LMI industry. While overall GWP was weak, it was pleasing to see a noticeable pickup in volumes from bulk insurance on mortgage securitizations. Slide 18 shows a breakdown of the insurance services expense. As I noted before, total incurred claims were negative AUD 10 million. That is a benefit to the P&L. Incurred claims from the current period were AUD 36 million, but at the same time, there was a sizable AUD 46 million positive impact from a reduction in the liabilities for prior incurred claims. Total expenses, including other expenses and the amortization of acquisition expenses, were up AUD 1.8 million or 2.8% versus the prior period.
On Slide 19, you can see some more detail on claims and delinquencies. The level of paid claims remains extremely low at less than a hundred for the half year. The stock of mortgages in possession is also very low, suggesting there is unlikely to be an imminent pickup in the level of paid claims. As Pauline noted, new delinquencies for the period were up 23% on the prior half year, as higher interest rates and the cost of living started to bite. The overall number of delinquencies has risen by 15%, half on half, with continuing good experience on cures and aging. The overall delinquency rate of 0.63% of the portfolio remains relatively low.
Importantly, the strong property market, together with the seasoned nature of our book, has resulted in very low levels of negative equity at only 0.5% of the overall portfolio. Slide 20 contains some further analysis on claims incurred. New claims incurred for the period of AUD 36 million reflect the level of new delinquencies, and also include an estimate of IBNR claims. While new delinquencies were up, cures remained favorable. Cancellations through either property sales or loan refinancing also continued to have a positive impact by releasing reserves on policies where Helia has gone off risk. This good experience contributed AUD 26 million for the period. In addition to the good experience, there was a AUD 19 million dollar benefit from changes in the actuarial reserving basis, which I will expand upon later. Please turn to Slide 21.
The expected insurance service result, if experience exactly matched the actuarial assumptions, was AUD 83 million for the half year. Experience variations represent the difference between actual and expected. The largest of these would typically be claims. In the half year just gone, there was another very significant positive experience variation of AUD 66 million from this source. The premium experience variation on the Slide primarily relates to policies which top up. Top-up loans receive a credit for the LMI premium that they had originally paid, and we account for this as a refund on their original policy. Any difference between the actual and expected level of premium credits generates an experience variation. Over time, we would expect this to be close to zero, but it can have a little bit of volatility from period to period.
The half year, sorry, had more top ups than expected, leading to a negative premium experience variation of AUD 6.5 million. On Slide 22, you can see the breakdown of the investment revenue. Net investment revenue of AUD 41.3 million represented an annualized return of 2.9%. This comprised AUD 61 million in income, up 21% on the prior period, together with AUD 18 million in realized and unrealized losses, mostly on the fixed interest portfolio due to rising bond yields. The net running yield on the portfolio at June 30 was 4.7% per annum. The net insurance finance expense, which is summarized on Slide 23, measures the impact of interest rates on the insurance liabilities, both the unwind at the discount rate and also the impact of any change in discount rates.
We duration match the investment portfolio backing the insurance liabilities. Accordingly, the interest finance expense provides a partial offset against the impact of changing interest rates on the asset portfolio. Please now turn to Slide 24, which shows the balance sheet. The major change of note since December 2023 has been in the tax balances. There has recently been tax legislation passed that aligns tax and accounting for insurance companies. Accordingly, there has been a significant drop in the deferred tax asset, along with corresponding changes in the current tax liabilities and current tax assets. While the balance sheet changed materially, there was an overall zero impact on the tax expense for the period. The Helia investment portfolio is summarized on Slide 25. There has been minimal change in the portfolio over the half year.
The technical fund, which backs the liabilities, continues to be invested 100% in fixed interest assets, which are matched with the duration of the insurance liabilities. The shareholders fund is also predominantly fixed interest, but does have a modest allocation to equities and infrastructure assets. Slide 26 shows a breakdown of the insurance contract liabilities, split into the liability for incurred claims, or LIC, and the liability for remaining coverage, the LRC. Both components contain risk margins at a 75% probability of adequacy. The LRC also contains a sizable component for expected future profits, referred to as the contractual service margin, or CSM. On Slide 27, you can see a breakdown of the liability for incurred claims. Despite a rise in the number of delinquencies, there was a fall in the total level of reserves for reported delinquencies.
This is due to a reduction in the average reserve per reported delinquency, which was attributable to a combination of rising house prices, as well as some favorable shifts in the mix of the delinquencies. As I noted before, there were also some positive impacts from changes in the reserving basis, as we continued to gradually release some of the special loadings that were put in place for reserves during the COVID period. We continue to hold a sizable liability for reserves for loans that have been previously delinquent, but are currently fully up to date. The reserves for these potential re-delinquencies fell by AUD 15 million over the period, largely due to continuing high levels of cancellations. Slide 28 shows information on our CSM balance. The total liability for CSM, or expected future profits, is AUD 636 million.
There was AUD 15 million of CSM added by new business, which was significantly less than what was recognized in the period, primarily due to the low levels of new business for the half year. There was also a AUD 19.8 million increase in the quantum of CSM due to assumption and estimate changes, mainly a modest lightening of future claims assumptions. Slide 29 outlines the regulatory capital position, which remains very strong, with a PCA ratio of 2.08 times. The regulatory capital base fell by AUD 87 million over the half year, reflecting the fall in net assets due to ongoing capital management activity.
The APRA capital requirement, or PCA, fell by AUD 144 million, mainly due to a reduction in the probable maximum loss, or PML, as a result of lower new business, high cancellations, and portfolio seasoning. The reinsurance capital credit of AUD 369 million represented 34% of PML, which is well below historic levels and provides capital headroom for the future. Capital walk is shown on Slide 30. During the half year, there were dividends and buybacks of AUD 177 million, which exceeded the NPAT for the half year. The PCA ratio also benefited from the run-off and seasoning of the in-force book, which was greater than the capital strain on new business. The business is continuing to generate large amounts of organic capital.
Notwithstanding the sizable actions taken to return capital in recent years, the capital position remains above the board's target range. There is significant ongoing scope for further capital returns, and we are committed to getting back into the target range over time. I would now like to hand back to Pauline to wrap up the presentation.
Thank you, Michael. I'll now turn to Slide 32, and the outlook and full year 2024 guidance for Helia, based on current economic expectations. Helia is well positioned to continue to deliver its purpose of accelerating financial wellbeing through home ownership, and to continue to deliver value to our shareholders. As we look ahead, full year 2024 insurance revenue is expected to be in the range of AUD 375-415 million. The key driver of profitability will be the timing and magnitude of future claims, which is driven by the economic environment, and by nature, very difficult to predict. As we have noted a number of recent times in recent periods, our claims experience has been unusually low and is not expected to continue at these levels in the medium term.
Over the course of the second half of 2024, total incurred claims are expected to increase, but remain well below Helia's expectations of a through-the-cycle total incurred claims ratio of approximately 30%. Factoring in the above, the full year 2024 annual ordinary dividend is expected to be at a level similar to 2023, reflecting the board's preference for stable ordinary dividends. Turning to Slide 33 to wrap up. Helia is Australia's leading LMI provider, and the delivery of our strategic focus to improve the LMI experience of our customers and their borrowers is solidifying this position. We are managing the cyclical impacts of the current environment and pursuing new opportunities to achieve our vision of being the unparalleled leader in LMI.
Our deep expertise and responsible financial management have positioned the company for profitable growth with sustainable returns in excess of our cost of capital, creating value for our shareholders. This strong return on equity, combined with capital releases from the back book, allows the business to deliver value for shareholders while still investing in our strategic agenda. It has enabled Helia to deliver superior total shareholder returns over a sustained period, the second highest amongst our listed financial services peers over the period 2014 to 2023, since we listed, and the highest over the last three years. We look forward to continuing to deliver against this vision for the benefit of future generations of Australian homeowners and our shareholders. On behalf of the board and senior leadership, I would like to again thank all of our people at Helia.
Our dedicated team helps us fulfill our purpose and vision, and their passion and commitment collectively delivers the customer outcomes and strong results we've announced today. Thank you to our customers for your continued support and collaboration to make homeownership more accessible for Australians. And finally, thank you to all our shareholders for your ongoing support of Helia. With that, I'll open up to any questions.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. Our first question comes from the line of Simon Fitzgerald from Jefferies.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my call. Just wanted to firstly ask a little bit about the repositioning of LMI, Pauline, in terms of what your sort of thinking is there?
Thanks, Simon. Glad you asked. It's one of my personal passions. As you know, it's often spoken about somewhat negatively, LMI. But actually, the more you look into it, the more you realize, not only is it an incredibly powerful tool for Australians to access the property market, and therefore, you know, one of the largest sources of wealth in Australia is accessing the property market. It's also very efficient at doing that, and we've spent quite a lot of time, as I said, looking at alternatives such as shared equity or rent to buy. The customer value proposition actually is better under LMI because it's a more efficient tool to achieve the same outcome.
So we've with that realization, we've got a passion to see that the rest of the world falls as much in love with LMIs as we have. Now, that's a hard sell, obviously, but it's partly around making sure that the government understands the true value, and we've done a lot of work in that over recent years, and particularly some of the messaging that they used to talk about LMI when they first brought out the First Home Guarantee was quite negative. That has moderated over the last 12- 24 months. Not yet positive, but certainly come back to more neutral, and in addition, we've had some success with some of the financial commentators starting to understand the power of LMI for helping people get into homes earlier.
We've seen, for example, Effie Zahos on The Today Show, giving some case studies about how, in the right circumstances, it can be a very powerful tool. So there's much, much more to do. We're increasing our efforts with brokers, particularly because they are obviously key, a very trusted source for people trying to get into homes. But we think that there is a real opportunity here. It's slow, and it's a lot of work, but we do think that there's a real potential.
Yeah, so it sounds. I guess I took that as repositioning the product in some sort of way, but it sounds to me like you're trying to manage the perception of LMI by the sound of that, in terms of a campaign.
Yeah, it's changing the perception from a nasty tax the bank charges you at the last minute to pay for their risk management, to actually an investment in getting into the property market. And it's fascinating. When you speak to. We've done a lot of customer-centric research, and you speak to some of the borrowers, and they talk to you about the power of one particular borrower. I remember sitting at a kitchen table saying how powerful it was that she paid, I don't know, AUD 20,000 of LMI, and she got into a house 12 months earlier, and the house went up AUD 100,000, and she was just an absolute advocate. And so we've got to change that paradigm from a nasty tax to actually... Now, I've got to be careful saying this.
I don't have a license to say this, but the best investment you're ever gonna make, in many ways. Helping people sort of realize that, that opportunity.
That sounds fair. Just on the capital walk, Slide 30, just wanna make it clear that 208-191, the 191 shouldn't be a reflection of where you believe it will be at the end of the year, even though it includes the buyback and the dividend, because there's no sort of mention of any sort of capital release over that period, correct? It's just an illustration of what that would be had you completed the buyback and paid out the dividend, yeah?
That's correct, Simon. Yep.
Yeah. Okay, fair. And then could you also, Michael, split out the unrealized gains and realized gains for me? I was just trying to have a bit of a think about what the actual mark to markets were... On the investment portfolio.
Yeah, I don't have that detail, Simon, but I would be confident the vast majority of it is in the unrealized element in the bond portfolio, with a particular-
... bit of a modest run up in interest rates leading up to the thirtieth of June. Mm-hmm.
Sure. And just a couple of really quick ones here, finally. In terms of the bulk flows that you received over the half, is there anything unique about those? I know it was from securitization, but is there anything about the risk dynamics of those portfolios you can talk about?
No. I mean, yeah, the non-bank lenders and the smaller banks are probably bigger users of the securitization. I think the opportunity is largely a function, and it comes and goes, that market, a little bit, where the pricing for securitizations is and where the mortgage insurance, you know, improves the equation for the lender. So we've certainly seen in the last sort of 6 months, LMI coming back into favor a bit more in that market.
And, um-
Okay, and then just-
The one thing that's different about the portfolio, Simon, is that they are often lower LVR loans, 'cause they're refinancings, and we have a lower average LVR on those.
Yeah, perfect. And then just on the CBA contract, at the time that you first announced that, you were tendering for that or re-tendering for it, there had not been an RFP delivered at that stage, I believe. I'd imagine you would have got something on your desk at the moment, and I was just curious whether it still includes the same sort of components as it previously did around about that 50% mechanism.
So, unfortunately, we can't obviously discuss any confidential conversations with customers around potential new business or extension opportunities. I know you understand.
Yeah, I do. All right, just thought I'd try. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. At this time, I'm showing no further questions. I would now like to turn the conference back over to CEO, Pauline Blight-Johnston, for closing remarks.
Thank you. Thanks, everyone, for joining us today. We are delighted to be delivering another strong result, and that Helia remains in a position to be able to confidently support Australian homeowners to get into their homes. New business does remain weaker than we would like. Part of that, as we've talked about before, is structural, part of it is cyclical, and we are doing a lot as an organization to impact the things that are within our control and to help people understand the value of the product. Partly, that helps grow the market, but that has also helped us to grow our market share with customers, and we will continue to focus on that.
We do believe there still remains a great opportunity for LMI, and as I said, the more that we've looked at alternatives, the more we really believe that LMI is a very elegant and important solution in Australia, and we're committed to making it as effective as it can be. We do continue to work hard for our shareholders. We've been pleased to be able to return capital, despite the economic outlook remaining still a little bit uncertain, and we do believe there's still a way to go through this current cycle. We do believe that we will see increased delinquencies over the coming months and years. We are well positioned to manage that, to continue to invest in our strategic agenda, and to continue to deliver to our shareholders through the returns and dividends.
Thank you for your support, and we look forward to continuing to deliver to you.