Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It's a great privilege for me to bring you the results for Capitec for half year. I think if I look at the last 6 months, a couple of things stands out. I think we had a very strong performance overall. I think the second word that comes out is STOL impact of Digital, going digital.
Then our ability to be agile. I think with COVID as well as with unrest, we've been extremely agile. And then enhancing the client experience for all clients was a big focus for ourselves. And I'll sum that up or I'll go into much more detail in the presentation on that. If any one of you want to send questions, there is the e mail address that you can send through and Andre and myself will handle that after my presentation.
If I look at South Africa, I would like to start with the socioeconomic landscape and maybe discuss that in detail. I think Let's start with the positive things. I always believe one needs to be positive and I think it's part of our success in Capitec is that we're looking for those positive things and trying to get and look for opportunities. I think if we look at the positive side, we had very strong community boom in South Africa in the last year. I think that had a big impact on the SARS revenue that came in.
But it also shows you in the last week of what has happened in China, how volatile that could be the pressure that it's suddenly putting onto communities and then also onto our exchange rate. If I look at the current account, we had a very positive current account, very low inflation and interest rates are at its lowest ever for a very long period. I think everyone is talking when is interest rates going to go up and what is going to happen with Flushing. But I think that had a very positive effect in South Africa. And the one that excites me is, basically, I believe about Before COVID, government believed they can do everything themselves.
But in all our meetings lately, it's more about how can government and private sector work together. And we've seen what has happened in France Net in investments there. I think in the energy side, there's big movements. So I think that is quite exciting if The private sector and government can work together to optimize South Africa. I think the other one that stands out for me is the resilience of the South African companies.
If you're going to look at the results of companies in the last 6 months, actually given COVID, I think everyone has done much better than what we anticipated. I think everyone, when COVID happened, everyone were talking about a 38%, 39% unemployment. Yes, it's at 34%, but it's much better than we anticipated. And there is growth coming through. And I think our individuals, the South African citizen is a strong person that actually can which stand pressure and what's happening.
And I think we mustn't underestimate that. And I think the one that stands out for me is actually during the civil unrest. I would I never thought that I would actually be in a situation where you actually say thanks to the taxi owners because they save quite a lot of buildings and shopping malls and how the communities stood together and protected property and how the community went out there and cleaned and operated. I think that just shows you about the South African culture and the way we can react if we work together. Uncertainty, yes, I think everyone talks about vaccinations.
We're very pro vaccinations. We encourage people to take vaccinations. At Capex, we've got a whole program to encourage our people to take up. At our head office, about 70% of our people has been vaccinated and we're driving that. So the question is The whole of South Africa, we need to get 3,000,000 people as vaccinated and we need to make certain that we don't have a next wave so that we can get back to normal.
I think the exit and shortage of critical skills, I think it's a big area that we need to address. Young South Africans are leaving South Africa. They're worried about job opportunities. They're worried about unrest that's taking place. And I think we need to give direction to themselves.
There's also a big shortage on critical skills. And I really believe our education system really need to look at because our education system is not producing the people that we need for going forward in South Africa. We need Engineers, we need CAs, we need business science people, we need AI people and our education system is not bringing that about. I think COVID, the inequality, that has just widened and I think that could have a massive impact going forward. And the one that I'm more worried about This whole social grant culture versus a culture of entrepreneurship and ownership and especially being an entrepreneur and being ownership, I really believe our government and ourselves must encourage our people to go out there and become entrepreneurs and ownership.
Social grants is not a long term solution. Then government's role, I think the most important for government is to create clarity, confidence. We can't have whether 1 minister says this and the other minister says that. And then the important thing is to execute, execute on strategies rather and I've seen it in our business, rather have a strategy executed and if it's wrong, correct it. But we're just talking.
So we need that clarity and business confidence so that we can invest and I'll show you later on What is happening on the savings side? There is money in South Africa to go and invest. And then the long term impact of COVID and the July unrest, it's interesting when I talk to Overseas people, we all know that massive packages that's been made available in America, Europe, etcetera, etcetera. And the question I always ask is when must how are you going to repay this and what is that going to what impact is that going to have on our economy? So I think there's positive sides and there's uncertainty.
Our government has got a massive role to play to make certain that we've got that clarity and execution. If I look at the unrest, I think we've never spoken about it. But if you look at Capitec, 79 branches were impacted. And of that 11, we can damage was fairly low, but 68 branches was destroyed completely, so they were wiped out and we're rebuilding it. We should have about 80% of those branches rebuilt by November.
And then close to 300 of our ATMs were completely destroyed. Interesting is you never think about it during that unrest period, our biggest challenge was to safeguard the cash and our ATMs. There was about 10 days to 2 weeks that we didn't been able to go to those branches and we've lost ZAR36 1,000,000 in cash during that period. Our damage to our infrastructure, about $300,000,000 So the claim that's gone into SASTRIA is $300,000,000 we haven't received anything, but the expenses is coming through already in this half year results. Just coming back, what happened during that period, It was for us all about the safety of our clients and the safety of our people, our staff.
So those branches were closed. We didn't pray for a long period. And then interesting, for the first time, we had to make certain that our staff and even our clients has got food because Supermarkets, etcetera, etcetera, was closed. We distributed over 5,000 food parcel and a food parcel would be able to keep you with enough food for a week to all our staff. And it was quite a logistic challenge to get it out to KwaZulu Natal and Gauteng, but that was a big focus.
And then, yes, there's close to 1,000 service consultants that we had to reallocate. We reallocated some of them to our branches, about 400 were reallocated to branches and then our flexibility came out because these guys are sitting at home, but they're operating in our call centers on our direct a direct lending environment. So that multi skilling coming out and the ability to actually use those people in different areas. I'm worried about the long term business confidence in KwaZulu Natal, what is that long term impact is going to be. So I think that is that's the economy.
Just maybe a question that will come out, what is the impact on On Capitec, on the credit side, I'll touch on Nana. The effect was less than 1%. And our Cozzolu Nattel Brands is operating at normal capacity, less about 25%, so at about a 75% capacity. Gauteng is actually operating 100%. If I look at our financial highlights, yes, I think it's quite pleasing to go from, let's call it, round figures, August 19, DKK9 billion to close to DKK4 billion.
I think to be able to sit and say that in a 2 year period, we had growth of 35.5 percent. So if you take it per year, it's a growth of 16% per year. I think that is extremely good performance. There's not a lot of companies that can say that. We go through COVID, handle COVID and still show growth over a 2 year period of 35% is extraordinary.
We're paying out a dividend of ZAR12. And then in the sense, we've said that the intention of the board is that we will do our dividend ratio increased that from 40% to 50%. So I think that is quite positive. If I look at our results, our income statement, I think net lending income is up 7%. Our interest income is down 2% and that's predominantly because of the repo rate that drop of 2.75%.
And then a big switch from the term loans to the access facility. The access facility on average is about 5% lower priced than the term loans and that is to acquire better quality clients. And then you had the effect last year, we pulled back quite a lot And you lost that credit income coming through in this year. So interest income negative, but we're Quite confident and I'll go through it later on that it will be a positive going forward. And then on the investment side, we managed to invest better in government bonds, etcetera, etcetera, to have a better return on that side.
I think that one that highlights is the transactional income, up 33%. So that is, I believe, very strong to grow over in a year's time with 33%. I'll just show you how strong It is and are still amazing, the amount of new clients that we're still acquiring. Funeral plan at 5% growth. It's purely a function of claims and I'll unpack that.
So income from operations was 17%. And I think that probably the one that surprised everyone was the operating expenses. I don't think everyone expected The operating expenses to go through. Maybe just before I go to the operating expenses, there is that $71,000,000 that is we've written on the assets that we've lost KwaZulu Natal, that's about CHF109 1,000,000, the CHF71 1,000,000 is after tax. And then there's CHF36 1,000,000 in the OpEx about the cash, which I already referred to.
Then we had a massive increase in our share appreciation rights. Our share price went from ZAR800 to ZAR19900, that's about ZAR250 1,000,000 And then you had bonuses. We didn't buy any bonuses in August last year. We provided for the bonuses for half year already for this year. So And then there was investment in cloud and in machine learning as well as the Mercantile people that's coming on board.
So very much in line with our expectations. And if you look at the half year results, that figure is actually below our budget. If I look at the income ratios, very strong income ratios. We're basically covering all our OpEx through our Net transactional income and funeral income and the one that stands out for me if I look at our net transactional and funeral income to net income at 51%. So what we're basically saying is that our other income is starting to become bigger than our credit income and that gives you opportunities to grow.
And then the cost to income ratio, that is 44.6 If you look at the specific figure, if I take out the riots of CHF140 1,000,000 and I take out the share appreciation rights and certain of the other bonuses that dropped to about 42%. February, we were 41% and it's our aim to make That ratio gets back to 40%. Then capital adequacy, yes, I think you can see there very strong Capital gives us a lot of opportunities to grow the business and that growth from 30% to 37% is basically a retained income, but at 37% capital adequacy gives you a lot of confidence on how strong we are on our balance sheet. Drivers of those earnings, I think a couple of Figures, I think, is actually quite interesting if you look at our client growth. If you look at from August 'eighteen to 'nineteen, it's 2,000,000.
If look for August 'nineteen to 'twenty, it's 2,000,000 new clients. If you look at August 'twenty to 'twenty one, it's another 2,000,000 clients. So it's quite Scary, how the brand has been accepted and how the brand is growing because to add 6,000,000 clients over a 4 year period. I think that's an incredible achievement. The very other strong one is our digital side.
Our digital side increased with 1,600,000 clients from 7,300,000 to 8,900,000 clients. Then our savings side is $5,500,000 to $6,300,000 so $6,300,000 of our clients as they've got a fixed term or flexible saving product. Funeral, you can see that steady growth, dollars 1,500,000 active policies and then you can see on the credit side, there's an uptick of 100,000 clients and that is purely due to the access facility that is acquiring quite a lot of new clients. Interesting again, everyone's perception is We're giving credit to everyone, but only 1,100,000 clients of the 16,000,000 has got credit with ourselves. So just to make certain that everyone got their perception on how strict we are on the credit side.
If I look at digital, we've been voted the best digital bank in South Africa. We're very proud of it and it's something we drive very strongly. I think if you look at there's a strong shift also from behavioral shift from USSD to app. Our app clients is now 6,000,000, up 46%. And the one that COVID has got a big Impact on is online shopping.
We've got over 1,000,000 clients to that's using the app to do online shopping. And I think that figure is just going to grow as we're going forward. It's interesting if you look at the stats, the app logins, basically all of these figures are greater than 100% growth. App logins, 840,000,000 logins over 6 months period. So it's over 120,000,000 logins per month, People going into the app, the number of transactions, dollars 600,000,000 You will ask why the transactions is less than the logins for the transactions, we only count transactions where we earn income.
So balance inquiry, we don't count. So that's why there's a difference. And then tap to pay starting to grow very nicely with $34,000,000 transactions and I'll elaborate on that later on. And then RTC, real time clearing, We've got a 37% market share in the market and that is growing very strongly and that is for us is our answer to moving people away from Cash, because our OTC is priced at ZAR7.50 per transaction, makes it very attractive be able to pay a person and that person have got that money immediately. On simplicity, affordability and transparency, our fee structures, I still believe, is the most Affordable and simplistic and transparent, I think you can see there the transactions that's for free.
Electronic payments on the app, EFT transactions is ZAR1 and then ZAR7.50 to draw cash and do RTC and then you've got a ZAR5 monthly fee. So that's your fee structure, Very simplistic, very transparent. And there's a couple of nice things that we're looking at to even give more value to our clients going forward on the transactional fee income. This is just how the transactions has moved, COVID, because I think it's interesting to look at that. I'm going to start off with February 20.
We did about 600,000,000 transactions per month. You can see COVID has dropped down to about 500,000,000 transactions. And then you can see August 21, we had $750,000,000 transactions. But you can see what happened is this big The percentages maybe don't display, but if you look at how big that blue bar is, you can see how big transactional digital is and you can see how strong The card swaps, card payments is going through and I think a big driver of that is the ability just to tap your card and make a payment. So very strong growth from 35% to 41% and then cash is coming down.
It's just interesting if you look at the August 21 figure On value, cash is still the highest at $1,900,000,000 digital at $1,000,000,000 and then card at $800,000,000 So that just gives you implication of the value of transactions has taken place. If I look at Credit Life Insurance, the road map, Everyone asked us what is happening and a lot of things has changed. With COVID, We were always using GuardRisk to help us with our insurance. And suddenly in May last year, we had no cover. Nobody wanted to take on the retrenchment risk as well as the death risk given COVID.
So we had to increase our premiums In May, we increased it to for government ZAR4 per 1,000 and non government ZAR4.50 per 1,000. We managed to get TETRIS renewed in August 2020. And then in May, that death rose expired. So on credit, we fully self insured. And then in August, we reduced our prices on insurance because we are seeing a better performance coming through.
So our rates are now ZAR3 for government and ZAR4 for non government. What is interesting, you can see the retrenchments are PIPED in November to 14,000 claims for that particular month or 15,000 claims. And then you can see on the debt side how it's actually how it's climbed. Interesting, if you look at the August 'twenty one figure, which is not included there, there's still 2,000 claims that needs to be processed. So that August May figure, you actually need to increase by 4,000.
But you can see we're starting with retrenchments, we're starting to get back to normal levels, 4%, 5% versus if you look at November 2019, February at around about 4%. And if you look at the debt lanes even starting to get normal. So I think now with Level 3 that's going normal, we should see that returning to normal implications. If I look at the funeral income, still a very strong performance, our profit up 360,000,000 and it looks like every 6 months we do a profit of 360,000,000 If you just go back in the history, we've sold more than 600,000 policies. And it's interesting how The policies are still $600,000 but the average premium has increased from 18 months ago from about $190,000,000 to $238,000,000 And it's also a drive.
We had a lot of questions from analysts on book persistency. And what we're definitely seeing is in the beginning, our persistency, which is at about 40%, It's pulled back because of lower income clients and their persistency rates are extremely low, around about 20% 20% to 25%. So we're working on to make certain that we're selling the right policy to the right client. And then you can see the Claims ratio, with COVID, you can see how that is speaking, but we're still very positive about the product. You can see it's gone through 3 waves we're still profitable over that.
So it's a big focus for AerieForce going forward. And we're still the market leader with the highest cover and the lowest average premium and 18% of all new policies sold is done by Capitec. SAVE, Yes, I think that's the interesting one. We've been in COVID and we've been in riots. But if you look at the BA900 and you look at South African Totality, We had saved in 2019, dollars 2,000,000,000,000, that's gone up to $2,400,000,000,000, 18% growth.
So there's ZAR400 1,000,000,000 that it has been safe. And you would have thought given COVID and that we have to support everyone that that money would have moved out. So that's why I'm saying if the government can create confidence, Clarity, this money can go back into the private sector and can go into the economy. So there's a big opportunity. We've increased our market share with 1.4% and I think it's just the strength of the brand and then we're acquiring more and more people over the age of 55 and plus and high income clients that is giving us that ability to grow that.
We've paid $2,100,000,000 in interest out to clients, still one of our big Positioning statements is that if you from the first cent you put in that savings account, you are getting an interest from 2.25% to 8.15%. Then credit, I think that's the one that I think we've managed extremely well. If we look at the capital advanced, you can see that we're now back to pre COVID levels. We advanced in August 2019, dollars 18,000,000,000 That's up to $20,000,000,000 in August. So we're $2,000,000,000 higher and we've gone up from $12,000,000,000 to $18,000,000,000 And if you look at the provisions, you need to remember on that $8,000,000,000 is That upfront provisioning of between 5% 8%, which is about a ZAR500 1,000,000 effect on those provisions and you see the strong growth on the book.
I think on pricing, we still on clients that actually Not bank with us, but it's got a Global One account on pricing is about 17% lower than the opposition. And then we've made the brave step to for our top end clients to go to repo. So our top end clients unsecured gets a rate of 7%. I don't think there's a lot of people that says that their models are strong enough to go unsecured at 7%. If I look at reschedules, Our book back to normal levels.
You can see our reschedules before COVID was DKK2.5 billion and it's gone up We're over DKK10 1,000,000,000. We're back at DKK3.3 billion. And if you take off the DKK40 1,000,000 of reschedules For the unrest, we had $2,900,000,000 so it's very much in the same ballpark figure. I think the whole behavior incentive that we've done has worked out extremely well. We've paid out close to $200,000,000 in the last 6 months.
So you can see a very strong performance from that side. And then our arrears, we had in August 'twenty one, we had industry problem on Debbie Check, which had an effect of about $250,000,000 on our arrears. If I look at the September figures, it's back to normal. So that's why I've got that dotted line there. And you can see our arrears is basically 3.7 versus 3.6 in August 2019.
So our rears are actually back to normal levels, which I think is an extremely positive trend. If I look at the access facility, I think it's one of our better products and we're very proud of it. It's gone now to 32% of our Capital Advance and maybe just to unpack how that product is working. If you use it, You pay ZAR50 or ZAR60 per month on your monthly fee. If you don't use it, there's no monthly fees.
On your application, your initiation fee is from ZAR100 to ZAR300, maximum of ZAR300. If you take a term loan, it's normally 10% of the lending amount up to ZAR1000. And if I look at the pricing, the credit card is priced at 7% from 7% up and access facility is priced from 12%. And ROE on the access facility is lower. We started a couple of years ago with the experiment of 20% ROEs and to see what impact that has got on higher income clients.
The access facility is priced at 20% and that's why we're seeing a big drive in quality clients that's coming So interesting on the behavior, other people are using the access facility. Last year, we were at 59% of the access That's been used. Only 49% of the access facility has been used. You can see how conservative the people are using the access facility access facility. And then the interesting one because everyone thinks we're just swapping the term loan to access facility.
The clients that's consolidated their firm loan and switched to an access facility is smaller than 11%. The majority of people are new credit Our clients or people that had credit with ourselves had a break for a period and now coming in to take up the access facility. And then on risk management, only 27% smaller than 27% of the applications are approved. And then daily risk management, we've got the ability to look at your exposure on the access facility. And if we see risk, we can actually reduce the term or the rand value and 13% of our limits has been reduced, making certain that we can manage the risk of the access facility.
What is happening with the clients? If I look at our performing book, you can clearly see what we're doing here is, Mahmedj, let me explain it. This is our performing clients in our performing book. We're looking at cash stress. What we're saying, if you earn ZAR100 And your commitments is more than ZAR80.
So you've got less than ZAR20 left on your salary. We saw you in cash stress. So it's a very good indicator if there's stress in the economy because those people that has only got less than 20% left On the income, somewhere they're going to fall short. And what we're seeing a massive improvement on all industries, if you look at August 'twenty last year and August 'twenty one. And the one that actually surprised me is if you look Travel and leisure, that has dropped from 27% to 13%.
I think what also helped us here quite a lot is that pullback in the lower incomes because they were hurt the most So we did that already in 2019 as well as small and tiny companies. We pulled back quite a lot and that is what you're seeing here. So Our clients are actually performing much better than anticipated. Then the one that we're seeing now is debt review. It's interesting if you look at debt review, the number of of our book, it's below 0.3% of it, but we're starting to see an increase in debt reviews, especially in government.
And that's normally where people are under stress. No alarming signs yet, but it's starting to creep up. We've already adjusted our credit policies to take that into Horizon, so we've got profiles of clients which we believe will go into debt review and we've already pulled back in those particular area. And then the one thing that I think gives us a bit of reality in South Africa, I'm going to first talk about household dependence. That's where and it's predominantly young people and this study was done by Alt Mutuals.
That's where young people Has got dependents, other people that they need to look after. And what is interesting that has grown from 35% to 51%. So a big percent of our people in South Africa is actually need to look after somebody else. And we see it in our consultants, Young generation between the age of 20 60 and they've got dependents that they need to look after. And when we look at our own staff and we look at their financial health, we're actually seeing exactly the same.
And the one that I've never heard of, but you're never too old to learn is the sandwich generation and that's where you as a person needs to look at younger people and older people. And you can see that increase from 34% to 43%. So there's for sure still if we don't get the economy growing, there is pressure on the South African household. And I think it's if you lose 1,000,000 jobs, this is the result that you're going to get. If I look at our credit loss ratio, Coverage of provisions, you can see a very strong growth.
We're basically back to about a $2,000,000,000 level. And remember, in that $2,000,000,000 level is that extra SEK8 billion that we've sold if you compare this year with last year. So we're back to normal level. And if you look at your ECL ratio, can see it's gone up to 28% and we brought it back to 26%. In our sense, we're saying we're still holding back about $3,200,000,000 for economic forward looking, that we need to have certainty before we will release that.
So that is why that's basically the gap between the 26% and the 20%. So I think overall, a very strong performance on the credit side. Business Banking, The whole migration or integration of Mercantile is working 100% according to plan. We're still acquiring 1300 new clients per month. We're now close to just over 100,000 clients.
We had very strong transactional recovery, Very strong performance out of the ForEx division and then there is higher OpEx due to the building of the new bank. Loan growth has been very stable, but lately we're starting to see appetite and opening up on the credit side and then you can see the ECL coverage ratio, we've actually increased it from 5.5% to 6.1% and that's just being conservative given what's happening in economy. And the question I will always get is, are we on track? Yes, we're on track. I'll set quarter 3 next year to rebrand.
So we're positive. We actually had a discussion with the Board yesterday and we're optimistic that we're on track and we're bringing something unique to the market. Client strategy, now talking about the value that we're adding to clients and I think this is a big shift that has taken place in the last couple of Months adding more value to the client. I think if we look at this, we normally open up everything in a branch. So the branch was everything.
Now suddenly we've moved that on the digital side, on the app, you can do everything. So I'm showing you here, if you want to join Capitec, you could open up your account in 5 minutes. We take a partial biometric of yourself. We go to the Department of Home Affairs, pick out you, identify yourself and open account in 5 minutes. Then you can get a free virtual card, so you can start transacting because you've got a virtual card, you can do online shopping and then you can your physical card then gets delivered to you 3 days later.
You activate LiveData and I'll unpack LiveData now, now. You activate LiveData immediately. Then you can start to digital payments, Scan to pay is on the app. So you can pay where you see Masterpass, SnapScan and Zappa by just taking Your phone and show it to that QR code and you can pay. Interesting, if you look at our head office here, you can do no payments with cash or card.
You must use SnapScan you must use our Scan2Pay. Shop online, you do it with card and QR payment and then the mailing RTC is also available year on the card. And one that excites me and I'll share it with you is November, we're giving all 16 at that time, we will be at 17,000,000 clients. We'll give each person a QR code. So you'll have your own personal code and if Arden has to pay a card card and he banks for Capitec Bank, I will snap his QR code and you will be paid because I feel sorry for them because nobody of us is actually carrying cash anymore.
Then if I look at credit, you can do the credit estimate on your app. If you're happy with the estimate, you can't it goes straight through to our Capitec direct system. On WhatsApp, you load your payslip and your documentation that is necessary And any one of the products gets given to you. And even if you want a credit, that credit card gets delivered to you within 3 days. So a very Slick process from that side and then home loan application as with Essay Home Loans where you can register for a bond and you can carry you can get a home loan.
And the last, Sabin and Insure, you know our partnership with EasyEquity, that's going extremely well. You can open up a flexi and term flexi a fixed term and a flexi term savings account and you can set up your funeral plan. So you can basically do anything that you can do in a branch, you can now do on our digital app and then you will have the support of the branches and client care. And then a strong focus is for us on the client engagement side. We're communicating on plusminus €50,000,000 for interactions per month with clients to say to them, how can you paint better, how can you live better to optimize the client experience.
Then the one on partnerships, I think that's the one strong message that's come out in this sense is partnerships and how important partnerships is for us. Capitec home loans with SI home loans has done extremely well with over 1,000,000 clients that has already got bonds or in the process. We've paid out $1,600,000,000 already. So that has been accepted very well in the market. And what is interesting is if the person takes a Capitec home loan from ourself, he's taking a credit card or access facility as well.
Normally, if he had a bond with another Bank, he would have taken a credit card at that particular bank. So we're getting that business as well. And then on purpose, I've spoken a couple of times Purpose, we've launched actually Purpose in May, so you can see what has happened. We've got rebar cars. CTM, we've launched in May.
The Stadia Group on education, University of Stellenbosch, also education we're launching on October And then with MediClinic on the medical side. So we see this as a big growth opportunity to start working on the purpose side and provide value. We see that on purpose, we will be about 2% to 3% lower than a term loan or access facility really giving that benefit to the client. And maybe just The importance is, if you do a purpose, the only difference is it doesn't get paid out to yourself or to the individual, but it gets paid out to the 3rd party and that gives us better scoring capabilities. And there's quite a lot of new partners that's coming on board in the next couple of months.
Then Live Better, that is maybe just explain that. If you look at Global 1, we've got Five accounts, we've created a 6th account and that's your Live Better account. So whenever you get a benefit, that benefit gets paid Live Better account and you get a higher interest rate of 3.5% on it. What is also quite interesting, the benefits gets paid to you on the 10th of each month. We're creating a little better day, creating excitement of the client.
What we're doing now is you've got 2 options On your app, where you can actually move all your savings, your interest and all that interest is going into your Live Better account or you can do a round up. So every time you swipe, You can choose ZAR2, ZAR5, ZAR10 and all of those roundups actually going into it. So it's all in the old days, you had coins, you put it in a jar and you For something, it's basically the same concept and it's quite interesting. We've acquired 2,200,000 clients has already joined. We're joining about 100,000 clients per week And the savings that's accumulated is $55,000,000 And then Shell, if you fill up, you get $0.20 per liter and that currently is still going into the vCard, but from January onwards, it will also be paid in the Lufthera account and then Discrim is 2% on cash back.
And you can see some of the other partners that we also have partnered with. So I see there's a big opportunity because you've got the power of 17,000,000 clients that you can give value to. So I think there's a nice opportunity for partnerships with retailers, etcetera, etcetera. Then lastly, the future, I think if you look at for us, it's about Scale and personal service, if I look at the people side, we still believe a branch is very important for ourselves. For me, it's quite simple.
A human being can strategize and can connect with somebody else. A computer can compute and work out algorithms. So how do you actually put that together to get to the right answer? Cross skill and remote service model is for us important. So I don't see in the next year or 2 that Capitec people will be appointed in this particular position.
They will be appointed in a cross skilled position so that you work, let's say this month in this department and next month in another department, because I think it creates excitement, it creates a skill component. I think that will give us that flexibility and agility to be much stronger in the market. Then you've seen we're still looking for people. We still it's quite scary. The current vacancies that we are looking for is 500 people.
Of that 200,000,000 of 200,000 is for the branches And then another 300,000,000 is on the tech side, data side, etcetera. It links on to digital and data. We should be by the end of next year, we should be about 90% fully on cloud and that gives us that ability to do machine learning and AI much quicker and faster. And then a very big focus on payments and e commerce, I've spoken about the Capitec QR code, we've got a separate division that's just focusing on payments and e commerce. Then on partnerships, I think I'll explain that we started off with products, you had Sundance, you had Easy Equities.
Now it's about partnerships on the LiveData side, on the purpose side, the technology side and products. So what we're working on is create that unique client experience is to be able to say what are we good at and what is our partners good at and make certain that we deliver to our client what is best for the clients. And then business bank, we're building a digital business bank and that focus will be on the SME market. So we're quite excited in that particular space. So yes, I think overall, thanks a lot.
I think we from our side Are fairly happy with the results. I think it's a good set of results, especially how we recovered from COVID and unrest. Thank you very much. We'll handle questions now.
Good morning. There's only one question so far from Enno for Mark and he wanted to know whether the dividend of 50% is permanent or whether it's just for this period. The intention is definitely to change us going forward. We just have to look at the regulatory Potential changes that are being discussed at this point in time. So I think one can work on 50% going forward.
We've got no more questions. Any other comments, Ravi?
None. Thanks a lot. Thank you very much.