It's now after 10:00. I'm Michael Tilley, and I'm pleased to welcome you to the 2025 annual general meeting of Latitude Group Holdings Limited. I particularly welcome those shareholders who have joined us in the room. It's now after 10:00 A.M., and I'm joining you today from Melbourne. I would like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners and custodians of the land on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. I pay my respects to their elders, both past and present. Under Latitude's constitution, a quorum is required for this meeting, and I've been advised that a quorum is present. Therefore, I declare the meeting open. Today's meeting is being held in person, and there is an ability for shareholders to also watch a live webcast of this meeting.
To provide sufficient time to vote, I now declare voting open on all items of business. A significant number of shareholders have already voted, appointed proxies, and submitted questions ahead of this meeting, and we thank them for doing so. I'll start today's meeting by walking you through a few procedural guidelines for voting and the submission of questions. I'll deliver my address and then pass to Bob Belan, who will give you his address covering Latitude's 2024 performance highlights and financial results. Finally, we'll turn to the formal business of the meeting. Before we begin, I would like to introduce my fellow directors and company secretary, who are also in person with us today. To my left, we have Vicki Letcher, who's our Company Secretary. Next to Vicki is Alison Ledger, who's a Non-Executive Director, and Alison chairs our People and Remuneration Committee and our Technology Committee.
Mark Joiner, who's a Non-Executive Director and Chair of our Risk Committee. To my right, we have Bob Belan, who's our Managing Director and CEO, Julie Raffe, who's a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit Committee, and Philip Busfield, Non-Executive Directo r and shareholder representative director for KKR, one of our major shareholders. Stefano Tognon, our Interim CFO, and Chris Wooden, the lead engagement partner of our auditor, KPMG, are also in attendance, and they're available to answer questions related to the accounts and conduct of the audit and the auditor's report, if appropriate. The notice of meeting dated the 21st of March 2025 has been distributed to all shareholders and is taken as read. By attending our 2025 annual general meeting today, you as a Latitude shareholder or your appointed proxy will have the opportunity to ask questions and vote if you haven't already done so.
Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business, and Computershare will act as the independent returning officer. For those watching the live webcast, you will not be able to submit votes online. For shareholders, proxies, and corporate representatives in person, you'll be able to vote at any time during the AGM by completing the blue voting card that was provided to you on admission. White cards are for visitors only who cannot vote or ask questions today. Shareholders with a pink card are not entitled to vote on the items of business. I'll provide a warning before I move to close voting at the end of the meeting. Thank you to those shareholders who submitted questions in advance of the meeting today.
It is my duty as Chairman to ensure that shareholders have the opportunity to ask questions and discuss the items of business during the meeting. We ask that all questions and comments be concise, be confined to the particular item being discussed, and to matters relevant to shareholders as a whole, be informative, and be respectful. Only shareholders, validly appointed proxies, and corporate representatives who were given a blue or pink voting card upon entry are entitled to ask questions. When I call for questions, please raise your blue or pink card, state your name or the organization you represent before asking your question. I'll now move on to my address. Your company made considerable progress in 2024 towards building a more focused and sustainably profitable business, one that is well placed to capitalize on the significant opportunities before us.
It was a year in which we began to meaningfully benefit from the collaborative efforts of the board, CEO Bob Belan, and the wider management team to implement Latitude's Path to Full Potential strategy. Our strategy is highly focused on growing market share in credit cards and personal lending in our core geographies of Australia and New Zealand. The initiatives and measures implemented by the management team were supported by the shift in economic conditions that had been slowing consumer spending while adding to our cost of funds. Interest rates stabilized in 2024, demand for credit returned, consumer behavior began to normalize, and the competitive environment played and continues to play to Latitude's advantage as a scaled, focused consumer lender. Combined, these factors contributed to a 139% increase in cash net profit after tax to AUD 65.9 million.
While your board continues to prudently manage our balance sheet, the strong 2024 result enabled the reinstatement of a dividend of $0.03 per share, which represents a 47% payout ratio on the full year cash net profit after tax. Momentum in our business has carried through to the first quarter of 2025, and your board looks forward to continuing strong growth in volumes, receivables, and cash earnings in the coming years. Economic settings also continue to moderate in our favor, with an initial interest rate cut in Australia signaling the start of a downward trend expected to encourage consumer spending and support further margin growth. Rates have already reduced by 175 basis points in New Zealand. We will also continue to see the flow through and full year benefits of the many initiatives that are now in place in support of our growth strategy.
Bob will speak further about the trends we're seeing in the initial few months of 2025. Of course, there is still more that can and will be done. In October 2024, the board of management reaffirmed their commitment to your company's strategy while reviewing progress against its goals, including rebuilding margins in which considerable gains were made in 2024, maintaining tight discipline on costs and driving further operational efficiencies, optimizing the balance sheet in uncertain geopolitical times, and creating a winning culture in the business. In recognition of the ongoing work required to maximize the potential of your company, I have at the request of the board agreed to stay on as Chairman. Today's annual general meeting was to be my last official duty until several strategic initiatives currently in train are completed.
I also gratefully acknowledge the decision of Director Mark Joiner to stay on while we complete this important work. At the same time, your board continues to evolve and to renew. In January, we announced the appointment of Ilfryn Carstairs as a Non-Executive Director, representative of major shareholder Värde. Ilfryn has had an immediate impact, bringing deep credit and consumer finance expertise to the board after more than 20 years in the finance industry. Ilfryn is also a member of the board risk committee. He replaces Aneek Mamik, who resigned in November 2024. I'd like to thank Aneek for his wise counsel during his time on the board and for sharing his deep consumer finance expertise with Latitude.
In 2024, the board and management team continued to progress Latitude's environmental, social, and governance, or ESG, approach, consulting with investors, partners, and employees to develop a sustainability framework and roadmap to guide our priorities over the next two years. We also undertook the necessary groundwork to ensure compliance with new climate-related financial disclosure laws from the current year. On behalf of the board, I would like to thank every member of the Latitude team for the enthusiasm and hard work that has gone into the past 12 months. I'd also like to acknowledge and thank our customers, our thousands of retail partners, and of course, our shareholders for their loyalty and ongoing support. Our company exists to serve you. I'll now hand over to our CEO and Managing Director, Bob Belan, for his opening remarks. Thanks, Bob.
Thank you, Chair, and welcome shareholders, colleagues, and business partners to Latitude's 2025 AGM. 2024 was a pivotal year for our company that was characterized by material strengthening across a wide range of underlying business drivers, which compounded to generate a clear and solid performance turnaround that's evidenced in 2024's financial results. Our strategic focus has and will continue to be guided by five key pillars that make up our Path to Full Potential strategy. This included executing on a targeted set of initiatives that delivered market-leading asset growth while also improving revenue margins. We also maintained expense and credit underwriting discipline, lifted our operating leverage, and further strengthened our balance sheet, all things that create the foundations for a sustained, strong performance in 2025 and beyond.
As Mike mentioned, environmental conditions began to stabilize throughout 2024, and factors that had previously been impediments to our growth began to shift in our favor. While this is a welcome change, our 2024 performance was predominantly driven by a sharp focus on delivery, with every function across the organization making meaningful contributions to last year's result. Our leaders were required to rethink the way we operate strategically, innovatively, and commercially, finding new ways to improve how we deliver our products to customers and how we meet the evolving needs of our partners. Pleasingly, the momentum from 2024 has continued in the first few months of 2025, with strong credit demand and consumer spending activity resulting in year-over-year growth in new accounts, origination volumes, and receivables balances.
Net interest margins continue to expand, benefiting from the carryover effect of prior year pricing actions, along with lower funding costs as we enter a quantitative easing cycle. These things all give us confidence in our ability to deliver sustained profit and further shareholder value in the months and years ahead. Other notable achievements in 2024 included the launch of several new marquee partnerships in our Pay division , including Amazon, Officeworks, Coco Republic, and The Warehouse Group. Very importantly, we have also extended contractual agreements with our most strategically important retail partnerships across both of our core markets. 2024 also saw the company re-enter the private label credit card market with our partnership with David Jones. This included the migration of AUD 168 million in receivables and 130,000 new customers to our business.
The pivot to growth in our Pay division has also been supported by improvements to the value proposition of our 28 Degrees Global Platinum Mastercard and the introduction of a new Latitude Low-Rate Credit Card, a segment-leading proposition that offers the benefits of low interest rates and also cashback rewards. Our Money division in 2024 delivered a particularly strong result as we focused on leveraging the power of our world-leading technology to offer customers and our broker partners a better, faster, and easier digital application experience. This led to record-high new loan origination volumes of AUD 1.5 billion and enabled us to further entrench our position as the second-largest lender of personal loans in Australia, behind only Commonwealth Bank and the number one segment share position in New Zealand. Importantly, this growth was achieved at higher risk-adjusted revenue margins as well.
In my first AGM address two years ago, I committed to building a more efficient business where company capital would be invested into a smaller set of high-yielding opportunities. I'm pleased to report that we are delivering on this pledge, with our re-engineered cost base now allowing us to largely offset inflationary pressures and free up more capital for targeted growth in focused investments, specifically in marketing and technology. This, along with strong top-line growth last year, drove a 300 basis point reduction in our cost-to-income ratio, a metric that I expect to improve further as expense discipline is maintained, new operating efficiency opportunities are pursued, and as earnings continue to build. We also capitalized on favorable public and private debt markets last year, which helped optimize our funding costs.
We raised $1.6 billion of new term funding and refinanced $2.7 billion in private credit facilities on better terms, while also further diversifying our investor base and extending our debt maturity profile. We maintained a 12-month liquidity runway with $1 billion of headroom available as of the 31st of December to support our continued and expected growth in receivables. Tangible equity ratio, a key measure of a company's financial strength, also improved, ending the year at 7.1% and above our 6%-7% board-mandated target range. Maintaining top and bottom-line growth momentum across both of our pay and money division s over the next two years remains a key priority for this management team, and we will continue to pursue a range of organic opportunities within our core products, partnerships, and business operations to achieve that.
At the same time, we'll look to enter new customer segments and business sectors that enable us to extend our core capabilities, especially where we believe we can rigorously compete and win. In support of this agenda, we will pursue local and global strategic partnerships that provide innovative technologies to better assist our customers and further streamline our business operations. While there's still much work to be done to fully embed our Path to Full Potential strategy, we're encouraged by the considerable progress that's been made in 2024 and will continue to take all necessary actions to ensure this momentum continues through 2025 and beyond.
The changes that have been made to ensure Latitude reaches its full financial potential are being led by a globally experienced executive team, further bolstered last year with the additions of Areti Rapakousios , our General Manager of Internal Audit and Operational Excellence, Steve Rubinstein, Executive General Manager of our Money Division, and Campbell Morrison, Executive General Manager of Enterprise Services. We're also very pleased to be welcoming our newly appointed CFO, Guillaume Leger , on the 16th of June this year. Guillaume brings deep international consumer finance experience, leadership in publicly listed organizations, and we're thrilled to have someone of Guillaume's talent and global perspective joining us in this critical role. Let me take a moment to thank again Stefano Tognon, our Group Treasurer and Group GM, Corporate Development, for ably leading our finance team as Interim CFO since the 1st of January.
These executive appointments reflect our unwavering focus on attracting and retaining the best talent needed to advance our strategic agenda and to win in the marketplace. It would be remiss of me not to mention the extraordinary commitment and significant contributions that our Chair, Mike Tilley, and all of our board members have made in shaping the future of our company, and we want to thank them for their unwavering support. Let me finish by extending my gratitude to all of my Latitude colleagues for their outstanding contributions last year. I also want to thank our customers who every day choose Latitude products to make purchases important to their lives. Finally, thank you to all of our shareholders for your belief in this leadership team and in our strategic direction. I will now hand it back to our Chairman.
Thank you, Bob. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now turn to the formal business of the meeting. Before we move to the agenda items, I would now like to address any questions in relation to the presentation I gave today or other business of the company. There being no questions, we will move on. Prior to the commencement of today's meeting, valid votes have been received representing approximately 87% of the issued capital of your company. On the screen, you can now see the proxy votes received prior to the meeting for each of the resolutions. Where the Chair of the meeting has been nominated as a shareholder's proxy, all undirected proxies will be voted in favor of each of the resolutions.
There are voting restrictions for some resolutions, as outlined in the notice of meeting, which apply to those who have an interest in the resolutions and their related parties or associates. The first item of business is to receive and consider the annual financial report together with the directors' and auditors' reports for the year ended 31st of December 2024, a copy of which has been previously provided to shareholders. There is no requirement for shareholders to vote on these reports, but we do open it up for questions. Do we have any questions on the first item of business, the consideration of the financial reports and statements? Thank you. There being no questions, please record your items of business for which voting is required. Item two relates to the adoption of the remuneration report. The resolution being put to the meeting is displayed on the screen.
Please note that a vote on this resolution is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? There being no questions, would you please record your vote now if you have not already voted? Item 3A relates to the election of Mr. Ilfryn Carstairs as a director. Details of Ilfryn's qualifications, career, experience, and other interests are set out in the notice of meeting and in the director's report. Unfortunately, Ilfryn is unable to make it today as he has a commitment overseas. He has, however, recorded the following video on his election.
Good morning. My name is Ilfryn Carstairs, and I'd like to thank you for considering my candidacy to the Board of Latitude there today at the meeting. I'm currently the Co-Executive Chairman of Värde Partners. I previously have served as its Chief Executive Officer, Chief Investment Officer, and Chairman of its Investment Committee, among several other roles over a 19-year career with the firm. Värde is an asset manager that operates globally in various credit-related investment markets. We have a long history of investing in several forms of consumer credit and alongside originators of consumer credit, such as Latitude, both as a shareholder and as providers of financing to those businesses.
Having overseen the investment process at Värde, I hope to bring the knowledge of the financial aspects of consumer credit, as well as the experience of seeing many different consumer credit business models operate globally and bring that experience to the board at Latitude. More broadly, I've had, through my executive duties, experience with managing the business and setting the strategy and market approach for Värde, which I hope provides some further knowledge for the Latitude management team to draw upon. I appreciate the opportunity to serve Latitude and its shareholders as a director, and I thank you for your consideration in that here today. Thanks very much.
Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? There being no questions, would you please record your vote now if you've not already voted? I'm going to hand over now to Julie Raffe, who's going to act in the Chair for the next item of business.
Thank you, Mike. Item 3B relates to the election of Mr. Michael Tilley as a director. Details of Mike's qualifications, career, experience, and other interests are set out in the notice of meeting and in the director's report. I will now hand over to Mike to speak to you about what he brings to the collective capability of the board.
Thank you, Julie. Firstly, it's a privilege to be the Chairman of Latitude, and I'm appreciative of the opportunity to be continued to ask to serve the company and its shareholders. In the past, I've served as CEO of Challenger Financial Services from 2004 to 2008, and prior to that, I was the Deputy Chairman of Challenger. Prior to Challenger, I was Chairman and CEO of Merrill Lynch in Australasia and Chairman of their Mergers and Acquisitions business across the Asia-Pacific region. I was the non-executive director of ASX-listed Orica Limited from 2003 to 2013, the founding Chairman of ASX-listed Hotel Property Investments, and a company called Tubi. I have a postgraduate diploma in business administration, and I'm a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.
Thank you, Mike. The resolution being put to the meeting is displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments in relation to this resolution? Thank you. There being no further questions, please record your vote now if you have not already voted, and I will hand back to Mike. Thank you.
Thank you, Julie. Item 3C relates to the election of Mr. Mark Joiner as a director. Details of Mark's qualifications, career, experience, and other interests are set out in the notice of meeting and in the director's report. I'll now hand over to Mark to speak to you about what he brings to the collective capability of the board.
Thank you, Chairman. I've been a Director of Latitude since the period before it floated as a public company and have a deep understanding of the business. In my executive career, I was the Executive Director Finance for National Australia Bank from 2008 to 2013, having previously worked for Citigroup in the United States and as a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group in Australia and the United States. I'm a Chartered Accountant and hold an MBA with distinction from the University of Melbourne Business School. I'm currently a director of Insignia Financial Limited's asset management businesses and Chairman of ASX-listed PEXA Limited. I'm appreciative of the opportunity to continue to serve the company and its shareholders as a director.
Thank you, Mike. The resolution being put to the meeting is displayed on the screen. Are there any questions or comments in relation to Mark's re-election? There being no questions, would you please record your vote now if you've not already voted? Ladies and gentlemen, that now concludes our discussion on the items of business. In a couple of minutes, I'm going to close the voting, so please ensure that you've cast your vote on all of the resolutions. I'll pause for a few minutes to allow you to finalise your votes. Is there anyone that would like to cast a vote that has not had the opportunity? Okay. Thank you, everyone. I'll now declare voting closed. The voting results from this meeting will be released to the ASX and posted in the Investor Relations section of www.latitudefinancial.com later today. That concludes our meeting.
Thank you for taking the time to join the directors and myself today. Your ongoing support is greatly appreciated, and feel free to join us now for a cup of tea or coffee. Thank you very much.