Okay, can we settle down, please? There's a few more people that's joining, but we have people online already, so I think we should start. Okay, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and good afternoon to the Capitec family. My name is Santie Botha, and I chair the boards of Capitec. It is my pleasure to welcome you to the 2025 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Capitec. Welcome to those shareholders also present here today, but as well as those ones joining virtually. During the first six months of calendar year 2025, the world has experienced and continued to experience major turmoil, angst, and drama, which in turn has reinforced a world of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity on so many levels and across major global markets. As South Africans, we've seen no different. We were relieved with the eventual agreement of our country's Budget 3.0 by the GNU.
We continue to witness the fight for survival of our government of national unity after just more than a year. We were spectators to an unhinged, I like to call it, oval office encounter. We all contribute to enhancing our country's growth and potential in whatever way we can. In the world of Capitec, there is no ambiguity. The focus is crystal clear. The number one priority is to serve our clients to the utmost of our ability. It is about building trust in our brand with metric-driven humility because ultimately it is the scoreboard that counts. No drama, just results. Diversification of income streams is the central theme where Capitec has transformed from starting out as a mere credit provider more than two decades ago to a diversified financial services group serving more than 24 million clients today.
Our world-class, Gerrie executive team has a razor-sharp focus on fostering a client-centric culture, both internally as well as externally, by investing for the future in the constant upskilling and reskilling of our people, in world-class technology, and in client insight-driven innovation. That is just to name an important few. The take-up and advancement of existing and brand new digital offerings through the Capitec app ultimately results in sustainable long-term growth for all our stakeholders. "Better never rests" is the mantra of Capitec, and it is prevalent in the work ethic throughout this incredible business. In March this year, we announced the retirement of our group CEO, Gerrie Fourie, after more than 11 years at the helm, effective today. We also announced the appointment of Graham Lee to become the new group CEO of Capitec, with effect from tomorrow.
I will say a few words about both in my concluding remarks. Now, let's start with the matters of this AGM. Chris Otto always says, "Speed it up, Chair." I will try. As a quorum of members is present, we have at least three shareholders present, and at least 25% of votes have been submitted on proxy. Notice of this meeting has been given in an appropriate manner. I declare this meeting properly constituted. The notice convening this meeting was distributed on the 20th of June, 2025, allowing sufficient time for members to peruse the contents thereof. I propose, therefore, that the notice be taken as read. The procedure for voting, this being a hybrid meeting with a virtual component, we will vote on a poll on all the resolutions proposed in the notice.
Guidance on how to vote was included in the notice of this AGM and is available on the Capitec website in the Shareholder Center, as well as the Computer-Share- Meet-Now registration portal for online attendees. A copy of the guidance note on the voting procedure has also been made available at this venue, so please follow the instructions. We will open the voting on all the resolutions now to enable you to vote at your leisure whilst I read through all the resolutions. I will allow for questions after all the resolutions have been read. Once all your questions have been dealt with at the end, we will ask you to finalize your votes. Close the poll, and we will display the results on all the resolutions on these screens in front of you. Shareholders attending via electronic communication who wish to ask a question must select the Q&A icon.
You can then either type your message in the chat box at the bottom of the messaging screen and press send, or if you want to engage verbally, which is new, press star one to raise your hand and join the queue on the web page. The moderator will test your audio first before you speak. Please speak slowly, because the sound is not always that clear. The Companies Act requires that the audited annual financial statements, including the directors and audit committee reports, the report of our Social Ethics and Sustainability Committee, and the remuneration report be presented to shareholders. A summary of the financial statements and these reports are available on the Capitec website. Cora Fernandez, who is here, chairman of the Social Ethics and Sustainability Committee, is present to address any questions you might have at the end of this meeting.
Gerrie Fourie, our Group CEO of Capitec, will present an overview of Capitec's performance at the end of this AGM. Resolutions. We now move to the business of today. Order Resolutions 1, 2, 3. Three directors retire by rotation at this AGM, and they are all three available for re-election. Everybody ready in the back? Order Resolution number one, the re-election of Stan D’Haese as a director of the company. Stan is an independent non-executive director of Capitec and is the chairman of our Risk and Capital Management Committee. He was previously the chief operating officer and a professor of economics at Stellenbosch University until 31 May 2025. He has retired from this role and has now been appointed as the CEO of Stadio Higher Education, effective 1 August 2025.
Stan is a specialist in macroeconomics and monetary policy and has been an advisor to the South African Reserve Bank and National Treasury on macroeconomic policy. He is the chairman of the Bureau for Economic Research Governance Committee and is a past president of the Economic Society of South Africa. Stan was appointed to the boards of Capitec and Capitec Bank on 25 September 2025. Stan is present. Stan, please, will you stand? That is Stan. Please vote now. Order Resolution number two, the re-election of Cora Fernandez as a director of the company. Cora is an independent non-executive director of Capitec. As already mentioned, she is the chairman of our Social Ethics and Sustainability Committee. Cora has extensive experience and expertise in investment management and private equity.
She was previously the chief executive of institutional business at Sanlam Investment Holdings, managing director of Sanlam Investment Management, and the CEO of Sanlam Private Equity. Cora also serves on a few other listed company boards and other boards. Cora is a respected member of the board and was appointed to Capitec's board on 25 September 2020. Cora is present. Please, will you stand, Cora? That is Cora. Please vote now. Order Resolution number three, the re-election of Pete Mouton as a director of the company. Pete is a non-executive director of Capitec. Pete was previously the CEO of PSG Group and serves as a non-executive director on the boards of various companies. Pete was appointed to the boards of Capitec and Capitec Bank on the 5th of October 2007. I don't want to say that's probably when this photo was taken, but.
Pete continues to demonstrate independence of mind and objectivity in decision-making. His contribution to the board is highly valued. Pete, the real Pete, please stand up. Order Resolutions four and five. The board appointed two new directors, Raghu Malhotra and Graham Lee. Our group CEO elect during the year. Shareholders now have the opportunity to confirm their appointment. Order Resolution number four, the confirmation of the appointment of Raghu Malhotra as a director of the company. Raghu is an independent non-executive director of Capitec. He was appointed to the boards of Capitec and Capitec Bank on 1 March 2025. Raghu is an international business, technology, and finance executive with a proven track record of over three decades, driving organizational impact by elevating growth and profitability. He was integral to Mastercard's global growth and innovation journey, holding senior leadership roles across multiple geographies and functions.
Raghu was instrumental in the transformation of Mastercard from a product-led credit card business to a multi-rail solution-oriented technology organization. He recently retired as president of Global Enterprise Growth at Mastercard, and he's now with us. Raghu is present. Raghu, please stand. Please vote now. Order Resolution number five, confirmation of the appointment of Graham Lee as a director of Capitec, effective tomorrow, the 19th of July 2025. Graham will succeed Gerrie as Capitec's Group CEO. Graham joined Capitec Bank in 2003. He has fulfilled a number of leadership roles at Capitec in various divisions, including finance, information technology, credit, digital, and data. He has over 25 years of working experience in financial and technology businesses in five different countries, being Zimbabwe, the U.K., Australia, Nigeria, and South Africa. Graham is present. Graham, please stand. This is the new Group CEO of Capitec as from tomorrow.
I think you should turn around again for everybody to see. That is Graham. Order Resolutions 6 to 9, amendments were made to the Companies Act, some of which became effective in December 2024. In terms of the Act, the members of the Social and Ethics Committee must be elected by shareholders. The current members of Capitec's Social Ethics and Sustainability Committee are Cora Fernandez, who's the chair, Nadia Bethai, Stan D'Haese, and Ishmael Moola, who is our Executive for Risk. Shareholders now have the opportunity to confirm their membership of this committee. Order Resolution number six is the re-election of Nadia Bethai as a member of the committee. Nadia is present. Nadia, please stand. That is Nadia. Please vote now. Obviously, everybody's CVs, I'm not because otherwise we're going to be here for a long time, is in our integrated annual report.
Order Resolution number seven, the re-election of Stan D'Haese as a member of the committee. Please vote now. Order Resolution number eight, the re-election of Cora Fernandez as a member of the committee, and Cora is obviously the chair. Please vote now. Order Resolution number nine is the re-election of Ishmael Moola as a member of the committee. Ishmael is present. Ishmael, please stand. Everybody can see you. That's Ishmael. Please vote now. Order Resolution number 10 is the reappointment of Deloitte as a joint external auditor until the next AGM in 2026. Leeton Nunes, Deloitte's engagement partner for Capitec, is present. Please vote now. Order Resolution number 11 is the reappointment of KPMG as joint external auditor until the next AGM in 2026. Javi Corbet, KPMG's engagement partner for Capitec, is present. Please vote now. Order Resolution number 12.
Authority to issue loss-absorbing capital securities and ordinary shares upon the occurrence of a trigger event. Please vote now. Order Resolution number 13 is the general authority to issue ordinary shares for cash. Please vote now. Order Resolutions 14 and 15 is the non-binding endorsement of the remuneration policy and its implementation. Order Resolution number 14 is the endorsement of the remuneration policy of Capitec. Please vote now. Order Resolution 15 is the endorsement of the implementation report of our remuneration policy. Please vote now on that as well. Those 15. Are our order resolutions for today, and that ends that section. Special resolutions, we have three, and we need a 75% approval on that, 75%. Special Resolution number one is the approval of the non-executive director's fees for the financial year ending 28 February 2026. Please vote now.
Special Resolution number two is the general authority to the company to repurchase and its subsidiaries to purchase up to 5% of the ordinary shares issued by the company. Please vote on that special resolution now. Finally, Special Resolution number three is the authority for the board to authorize the company to provide financial assistance to related companies and corporations. Please vote now on that. We have now concluded on all the resolutions for today at this AGM. It is now question time. I will now read the questions. This is from. No, hang on a minute. I am first going to take questions from the people in the room. We have a microphone over there and a microphone over there.
If you have a question, can you please go to the microphone and introduce yourself, where you are from, and then ask it, and we are here to answer your questions. Anyone in the room who would like to ask a question that is not clear either in the report or something that you would like to know? Okay. Can you please just walk to that microphone, if you do not mind?
Good afternoon. Ian Burkhart, individual shareholder. In 2002, one could buy a Capitec share for less than a rand. Now it is trading around ZAR 3,400 a share. Have you considered a share split?
I am going to ask Gerrie, as outgoing CEO, to actually answer that question because he is one of the founders since inception.
Short answer is no. The longer answer is we have probably discussed it about six, seven, eight years ago.
If you split the shares, all it is just more shares that you are working on. ZAR 3,400, if you have got 3,400 shares, is the same value. Look at the value that you created. No, we are definitely not considering it.
It is accessibility to more shareholders to be able to afford to buy Capitec shares.
You can go on, you know, a small shareholder, you can go on to easy equity and you can do a partial share where your share is split.
Yeah, but I mean, I do not want to own a third of a share. I am sure I am not alone in that.
It is not an option at the moment. If you want to discuss it further, we can do it maybe offline as well. I think the question has been answered.
No, absolutely.
Thank you.
Are there going to be further questions after Kerry's presentation?
No. I think every shareholder should ask one question. Let us allow other shareholders as well.
Santie, I am already standing here. Can I just ask a second question? Okay. Or I'm going to get back to my chair and walk back to here.
Okay.
Everything seems to be about the app. I spoke to Kerry two years ago after the AGM about the fact that there were things you could do on the app that you cannot do on internet banking. Since then, more and more things have been put onto the app that are not available to people who use internet banking. If you want to get a dongle for your internet banking, it's quite difficult now because very few branches have them.
Are you attempting to put all clients onto cell phone banking as opposed to internet banking?
I assume it's coming again. Yes. I think what we've just approved this morning in the board meeting is for ZAR 30 million. What that is going to do, it's going to take the app and put it on a tablet or on your computer. The online security is not what it should be. It's difficult to support both. You will have the full functionality that you've got on your app. You will have on your iPad or on your computer to make certain that you are safe and secure.
Timeline?
Probably in the next six months.
Thank you.
Thank you. Thanks for those questions. Very probing questions. Very good. Okay. Anything else? Any other questions from people in the room? No more questions. Okay. Thank you.
Now, let's have a look at some questions via text. The first question is from Mafluli Mlube from Estrian Insight SA on behalf of various pension funds. His question is as follows. This is obviously also the first time I'm seeing this. Board diversity, sustainability, expertise, and remuneration alignment. Board diversity has improved but remains 64% male and 64% white, with only one director holding explicit sustainability expertise. How will the nominations committee A ensure that future board appointments fill critical green skills gaps? B, what targeted interventions will the nominations committee implement to accelerate transformation, particularly at the board and top executive levels, given the South African socioeconomic context and Capitec's strategic ambitions in underserved markets? Clearly, I will answer that question as I chair the directors affairs committee, and that's the nominations committee.
We have specific targets on both gender and race, both from a board as well as executive management and lower levels committee that gets monitored. We have made major improvements across the board if you look at our integrated annual report. That is something we monitor very, very closely. At executive level, there are targets. It's part of the short-term incentives of executives in terms of how we promote transformation in the business. That's a priority in Capitec. In terms of the green skills gaps, we have training at board level as well. In fact, we're having a training session on Tuesday, particularly on ESG across the spectrum. This is at non-executive level.
I have to say, in terms of the Social Ethics and Sustainability Committee chaired by Cora, an inordinate amount of work is done on exactly that, with key measurements and targets that we look at at board level as well. That is the first question. The second question is executive remuneration quantum and ESG misalignment. While Capitec's FY2025 financial performance was impressive, CEO remuneration rose nearly 60% to ZAR 104.8 million, driven by full LTI vesting and share price growth. However, ESG metrics in the LTI plan remain vague or absent. Why has Capitec not embedded specific measurable ESG targets, for example, carbon intensity, diversity goals, financial inclusion KPIs, into long-term incentives, especially in a sector where ESG is material to risk and reputation? I am going to start, and then I am going to hand over just briefly to Cora.
In terms of ESG, in the non-financial component of our short-term incentives, there are specific targets for executives on exactly that. In terms of targets, I think furthermore, Cora, you can maybe briefly elaborate on that. [audio distortion]—microphone, sorry.
Thank you for that. Santie, I think we have acknowledged and we have communicated to a few shareholders that we are still in the formative years of our ESG journey, and we are focusing on disclosure. I think there are ESG targets within the LTI. Career as an SIK. I think the communication, the way we set it out in the integrated annual report, needs to be expanded. It is not clear. Currently, the only one that is obvious is the market conduct one. Thank you.
Thank you. This third question. We still—Mafluli Mlube. Overconcentration of HEPS in SDI and LTI plans.
Both the SDI and LTI structures rely heavily on HEPS as a primary metric. This duplication may lead to inflated reward without strategic differentiation. How does the board justify using the same financial metric across short and long-term plans, and are there plans to introduce additional long-term strategic KPIs, such as digital adoption, fraud reduction, or market share in informal sectors to ensure forward-looking performance alignment? I think important here, HEPS, headline earnings per share, is really how well a business performs, both in the short term as well as long term. That has always been Capitec's scoreboard, and it plays a very important role. I also think what you have seen over the last few years, we do have non-financial measures in the SDI. The non-strategic measures do have strategic clear objectives across various areas.
Vusi, I do not know—Vusi, as Chairman of the Remuneration Committee, I do not know whether there is anything you would like to add to what I have just said.
I would definitely like to add that we do have—I do not have anything else to add, except we do have non-financial measures, and they do cover those things. We do acknowledge that from a disclosure point of view, we can improve on those matrices, but they are there. In the upcoming reports, you'll see we'll disclose a bit more, but they do exist. Thank you.
Thank you, Vusi. Okay. The fourth question is another environmental question. I actually think what will be worthwhile, as we say, we're in the beginning stages of our ESG journey, is the question is about rising operational emissions versus reduction targets.
I would suggest that Mafluli come and sit with us from a sustainability committee, and we can go through the detail because there's very specific questions about CO2 emissions that he's asking about. I think instead of having this question in front of a broad audience, that we actually unpack this properly. Okay? Any other questions? Via text. There are no more questions via text. Are there any questions from incoming calls?
If you wish to ask a question on the phone, please press star followed by one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Currently, there are no questions on the phone.
No questions on the phone. Okay. If there are no further questions, we will close the poll and display the results of the votes on the screen. Can we please have a look at order resolutions one to five first, please?
If you are ready. Okay. Just talk amongst yourselves for one minute. I see the hand is up. Let's just wait. Order resolutions one to five. Ready? Okay. Order resolutions one to five. All passed with a requisite majority. Can we look at six to ten? Down a bit. All resolutions six to ten have passed with a requisite majority. Eleven to fifteen. All resolutions have passed with a requisite majority. Okay. Can we look at the special resolutions? The three special resolutions? Okay. All the special resolutions have also passed with a requisite majority vote. Thank you very much to the team at the back. Ladies and gentlemen, as all our agenda items have now been dealt with, I would like to thank you all for attending our AGM and also for your interest in Capitec. I now declare the official AGM closed.
Before I hand over to Harry, please allow me a few extra minutes. In closing, let me start with Graham Lee, the new Group CEO of Capitec, as I said, effective tomorrow. For those shareholders that have not met Graham as yet, I'm sure you will get the opportunity to do so in the next few months. Graham will not be doing any talking today, but will have many opportunities as the Group CEO going forward. In Capitec, which is very important, succession planning has always been viewed as an investment rather than a contingency. Graham's track record in business speaks volumes with a wealth of experience and achievements across various global markets and industries. In recent years, he has been in charge of the exceptionally performing retail bank, or as it's now called, personal banking division of Capitec.
We wish Graham well in his new role as Group CEO, steering the next chapter of this incredible business. Also, congratulations and good wishes to Basani Mahluleke. Where is Basani? Please stand up, Basani. Who will be taking over from Graham as Executive for Personal Banking. Best wishes, Basani. Now, Gerrie. Now, Gerrie. Gerrie Fourie is one of the founders of Capitec and was handpicked by Mouton 25 years ago. He has been the Group CEO of Capitec for the past 11 years and will do his last presentation as Group CEO of Capitec today. Over the past six plus years, I have had the privilege to have worked with Gerrie and have observed his modus operandi firsthand. He's an entrepreneur in his thinking and a phenomenal leader and CEO. His approach to business is unique, and he sets a very specific tone from the top.
I would like to brand it as the Gerrie Fourie Top 15 on how to build a world-class business. Here it is. Number one, first and foremost, it is about the client and solving in the client's best interest. Two, it is about the careful selection of an A team of fellow leaders at all layers of the business, with zero tolerance for non-performance. Three, it's about building a pipeline of diverse and serious talent, also future talent, in brand new prospective areas. Think ahead, stay ahead. Number four, it's about getting the basics right, not sweating nonsense, and not allowing any politicians inside. Integrity is non-negotiable. Trust is everything. Five, always living your fundamentals and building from your strength, never venturing into areas where you do not have the know-how, critical skills, or expertise.
Six, if something new looks worthwhile, experiment first, be it in the form of a small stake, a pilot, or consumer insights. Number seven, which I think is very important, know and understand enough of the detail of the business to know when even the experts or specialists talk nonsense. Never stop asking those very difficult questions. Number eight, know the levers and the profit pools so that at a glance, you know when the numbers are out of sync. Nine, be involved and visible on all important matters. Show up, check in, sometimes when people don't expect you to be there. Number ten, communicate, communicate, communicate. Everyone as far and wide in the business must know and understand the essence of the business. Eleven, be disciplined and punctual. Meetings in Capitec start on time, and therefore you always show up on time.
Twelve, vision and strategy are important, but nothing is more important than decisiveness and execution excellence at speed. Everyone in the business must live that. Number thirteen, care deeply about everything, with empathy and humility. Fourteen, treat the business as if it's yours. And finally, fifteen, love the business, love the brand, love the people, in equal measures. Those fifteen points make for an exceptional leader and CEO, and that is Gerrie. Sure, from myself and everyone in the room, thank you, Harry, for dreaming big and for changing the lives of many South Africans for the better. Also, for showing South Africa and the world what is possible with dedication and focus. Thank you. Over to you.
Thank you, Santi, for those nice words. Yeah, it's been an incredible journey.
I said to the board this morning that the one thing was my passion was to be an entrepreneur and to build things. And my 25 years in the bank was to build and achieve what we've achieved. If I look at my presentation, I'm going to go a little bit memory lane. I'm not deviating a little bit, so I'm going to talk a little bit about the past. I'm going to go a little bit into results, and then I'm going to talk about, I think, the most important, what makes us different. And then to talk about the future. But I couldn't not help to put Mafululu's favorite quote on when we started. That was at the AGM in 2003. He said, "Capitec will either be a small failure or huge success." Now, you can judge.
I don't think we are a small failure, so I'll leave that around. The other interesting quote that he said at that AGM, the share price was ZAR 6, and a shareholder asked, "Is the share price not too high?" And [audio distortion] famous words says, "I'm going to keep my shares." I still get that question quite a lot, and I can tell you I'm going to keep my shares. I think if we look at the Capitec evolution, I think it's just good to maybe spend some time. 2001, when we started, the four words that came out that put in microlender, I actually said we were a cash loaner because we were lending at 30% per month.
It was actually quite incredible to think that we've actually done it, but we had a clear vision of where we were going to go and what we were going to do. We were a challenger. I think we are still, if I look at it, I think we were crazy to say we take on the four traditional banks. As you all know now, we're much bigger than them on client numbers, 24 million, FNB, Standard Bank, Absa, Nedbank, other banks are 7, 8 million. But it just shows you what you can do, getting the fundamentals right because the company has been built on fundamentals. Everything we did in the beginning was just that financial friend of the client. Where we are now, we are a fully diversified company. I think everyone and I will unpack that in detail.
You can probably see we are not a bank anymore. We are a financial services organization spanning over a wide variety of services that we provide our client. We are leading the financial space. If you look at our recognition and everything we have done, the way we have changed the financial services space, we can really say we are the leader. Interesting, what has happened is when we market, we were also very functional, product price, etc., etc. Lately, what is done, I think I am getting soft, was more emotional connectivity with our clients and really connecting with your clients and then growing our client base, making certain they understand what we are standing for. It all starts with your purpose. It is interesting when we had our purpose many years ago and a start, we said we want to be the financial friend.
Then we said we want to be the best bank in the world. That was all retail based. Probably about three, four years ago, we said, "Given that we are now a diversified company, what is our real purpose? What are we telling our people? Where are we going to go? Where are we going and what are we going to do?" I think this actually tells really what Capitec is all about. It is to make a meaningful difference. I want to stand still on that word because we use it in whatever we lead and everything we do. Are you making a meaningful difference? Are you making a meaningful difference in South Africa?
Are you making a difference in people's lives by creating very simplistic, accessible, affordable financial solutions for our clients? That is basically what we are doing for, and that is just what we are striving to do, is to make a real meaningful difference in our clients' lives. Our vision, what is our vision? Where do we want to go? It is an interesting one. It is all about trust. When we started, we had to build a brand. If you build a brand, the two words that come out and I am standing there, it is consistency and integrity. It is doing the same thing over and over and over so your client really understands what you are doing. For us today, everything that we are doing is about creating trust, making certain our clients trust us, understand us so that they can do their financial services with ourselves.
More importantly, as we are going, making certain we have data. Our fundamentals, and I have said that many times, we took seven months to define what our fundamentals are: simplicity, accessibility, affordability, personal. Experience. Every single thing that we are doing is to make certain that we actually are living those fundamentals. If you look at complex things, if you really want to know if a person can know his job, is if he really can take a very complex thing and actually portray it over to you in a very simplistic, straightforward answer that you can actually understand. That is what you are doing to our client base. I think a very good example is our point-of-sale machine that you have seen.
We sent our team over to China, and they spent about three, four weeks there to go and find the best possible machine that can handle the best software. I think everyone has seen that particular machine, the way the paper comes out, the feel of it. We went in and said, "We are going to change the whole pricing of point-of-sale machines." We have actually gone in and said, "We have got two machines, the Pro and the Print, and we are reducing that pricing." The most important, everyone knows we have got a retail shop. Nobody knows what is the commission rate that you actually are paying. What did we go and do? We said, "We will be transparent, and we will fix rates for everyone." It just shows what is our DNA, and that is what we have done six months ago.
It just shows our passion for what we are doing. If you look at that vision and purpose, I want to share just our last year, what we have actually done, living our purpose and our mission. It is interesting. We talk about our community. We do not always talk about what we are doing in the community, but every single person in the bank gets an extra three days a year leave to go and do whatever community work they can do. They go and do. They find schools. They go and teach. There is a very famous picture of Vim. I do not know this. I am seeing Vim actually sitting and giving maps. It is just our passion for our community and giving back into our community. There are over 5,000 projects currently running in the last three months supplying back into our community.
If I look at our journey, if I look at our journey, I will break it up into three phases. If I look back at the last 24 years, I think the first phase, and it is an interesting phase, is building a bank. We were a microlender. Nobody gave us a chance, and we had to build. You built that with trust and confidence. It is quite interesting if you look at those pictures. We actually only had two things to say, that we will open a loan or give a loan in 10 minutes, and if you swipe it is for free. We had basically nothing else to actually tell. We were proud of what we were actually doing. I see Raghu from Mastercard. I must tell that story.
Riyan was adamant that we need to have a golden card, and all our clients will have a golden card. We went to Visa. Visa said no. Mastercard said no, but they will make a plan. They came out and said they broke all their rules and said, "But Capitec will have a golden card." Close to 25 million clients later, we're probably one of their biggest clients ever, just to think differently. I think if you look at building a brand, it's all about consistency, consistency. It's about the consistency delivering of your products, your people, your processes, making certain that we deliver. That first 10 years was all about building the brand and building Capitec. It was basically in 2012 that people didn't ask anymore, "Who is Capitec?" I think the next phase for me is an interesting phase.
The first one is we said we need to create a unique client experience. We said we need to create side-by-side consulting. Now, for the people that don't know, if you go into a branch, the computer is not between yourself and the client. It's sitting here. The client and the consultant are actually looking at the screens. That is creating a unique experience. If you do, for example, an affordability assessment of the client, the client can actually see, "Yes, your income. Yes, your expenses. I can afford it. I can't afford it." It's not a computer that says no. You can see why you can't afford it. It was completely new. Until today, I haven't seen another company that has done side-by-side consulting. In 2012, we went and said that our branch needs to look completely different.
You can see the branch, and I think everyone has seen the branch. It's interesting now that was done in 2012. It's still now 2025. Whenever I go in a branch, I'm still extremely proud of the way the branch looks and portray the image of Capitec. Probably the most important is switching to digital. What we said is our transaction volumes in our branches, we're killing ourselves. We couldn't give service to our clients. We said we need to create an app. The app was created in 2014. That gave us the opportunity to really scale. Let me maybe explain it. People ask me, "But you've got time and other people that's just digital, and you still believe in branches." We've got 880 branches. What has happened is we've moved 90% of our transactions. We've moved over to our app. Now only 10% in the branch.
Our branches are now selling and connecting with our clients. There's still 6 million clients coming into our branches every single month. You can see it whenever we launch a product, there's an immediate takeoff. Our 10,000 consultants understand those products and sell that into the community. A tremendous opportunity that we've created. If you ask myself, the most important thing, we've got 24 million clients and 880 branches. If I look at 2021, that's where in 2017, we actually said we're not going to be a retail bank. We need to be a financial services organization. As you all know by now, we've got four business units, and I will unpack the four business units. We've diversified completely. We've also said we need to be tech-driven and cloud-driven. We were building everything ourselves. We said we're creating legacy systems.
We brought in Investor of Cloud, AWS, Microsoft, SAP, etc., to build. The other big thing that we've done is because our data was everywhere. Credit had its own data, Marketing had its own data, etc. Now all our data is in the cloud. If I'm looking for my data, I press my name, I get all my data, all my interactions with the bank. That gives us power to really talk to our client and work with our particular clients, the insights that we've got out of all our data. We've expanded our leadership structure tremendously over the last couple of years. Suddenly, there's a group ExCo. There's a retail ExCo. There's a business bank ExCo. There's an insurance ExCo. There's a strategic initiative ExCo. We're sitting now with a senior leadership of about 40-50 people with an average age of 45.
I want to explain this to you because I've never done that before, the magic of Capitec, of what we've done. It's the Capitec flywheel. What makes Capitec different? The first thing is if you look at what we've done right in the beginning, we said we're going to create unique products and unique pricing for all our clients. We were the first bank that said all clients will get exactly the same products and will get exactly the same price. No differentiation, no pink card, no blue card, no golden card. Everyone gets a gold card. Everyone's pricing is exactly the same. The product's exactly the same. What is the effect of that? Client growth. I think we all know the client growth by now. That enabled us to invest in the technology and data to really understand and support our client base.
That gives us then insight into our client on how they behave and what they're doing so that we can actually create value to themselves. The result of that is increased revenue. With that increased revenue, we actually then plough it back into our pricing, into our investing in new products. The interesting thing is if you go and look at our per unit cost, it's actually come down over the last couple of years. That allowed us, if you look at our app, for example, we have not increased prices on our app for the last eight years. We have just reduced our prices on our retail space and business banking, which is costing us about ZAR 600 million for the company. Why? Because of your economics of scale that we actually could create. The question is, did we create value for our clients and our stakeholders, shareholders?
I think the answer is yes. Interesting enough, when you leave your office, you clean up your office. I went through all my business plans of the bank, and I had from 2003 up to 2016. From there, we went digital. Everything was digital. I had the privilege to just read through all the business plans and just understanding again, what did we say? What are we doing? I just thought it would be good to share with yourselves if you go and look at where we were in February 2003. That was our financial results in 2003. Our net interest income, ZAR 290 million. Our profit, ZAR 30 million. Our cash and investments, ZAR 160 million. Our deposits, ZAR 50 million, ZAR 49 million. Look at the clients, 25,000 clients. Our branches, 266. Our ATMs, only 58. Our employees working for ourselves. I hope they were working for us.
1,200, 1,180. 2015. You can read yourself. It is quite interesting to see. I think what the interesting part for me is if you look at our headline earnings, ZAR 2.5 billion. If you look at our net loans and advances, our book ZAR 32 billion. Our deposits, ZAR 41 billion. We were sitting with clients, 6 million clients, 668 branches, 3,000, 3,500 ATMs, and 10,000 people working for ourselves. It is interesting how it has changed. If I look at this year or the year that has passed. Our results for this year, you can see our transactional income. Interesting. No transactional income in 2003 and only ZAR 2.6 billion in 2015. ZAR 18 billion of transactions in 2020-2025. Our credit side, ZAR 11 billion. Net loans and advances, round figures, ZAR 90 billion. Our deposits. A staggering ZAR 175 billion. Our clients, 24 million clients. Our branches, 880.
Our ATMs, 8,800. I know there is a lot of people say we have not got enough ATMs. The average of the other banks is 3,000. It just gives you a sense of what the scale is that we work with. We are sitting with 17,000 people working for ourselves. I think we can be proud of what we have achieved. I think everyone knew by now, we have grown our headline earnings last year with 30%. This is a couple of very interesting stats just to give you. Interesting, if you look at our net interest income, up 54% because the year before that, we have actually opened up with Ukraine and Russia. We did not know about Putin. We had to pull back. You can see our net interest income up 54%, at ZAR 11.9 billion. Our credit loss ratio, 7.5%, down from 8.7% in 2024.
Our ROE, the figure that everyone looks at. People are going to ask me, "What should our ROE be?" It was at 29%. I think we can be proud to say we're operating at this pace and we're actually giving back to our clients, to our shareholders, a return of 29%. The most important one is 67%. Close to 70% of our income is not coming from credit. It's coming from other income. We've diversified completely away from a traditional bank. A traditional bank's credit income is plus minus about 60%. Only plus minus 30% of credit income is driving our income. 70% of our income is coming from other income. I'll unpack that as we go along. I just want to quickly show there again. You're seeing there our net interest income, ZAR 11 billion. If I look at our transactional income, up 17%, ZAR 14 billion.
If I look at our value-added services, up 64%, ZAR 4.4 billion. Our funeral side, ZAR 1.9 billion. If I take out the extraordinary items in our OpEx, that was with Everfin coming in and bonuses that we've paid, our OpEx is up 14%. How is Capitec made up? Where's it coming from? I've explained the 24 million clients. I've explained the 880 branches, how important it is, and our ATMs. That's the heart of Capitec. That is actually driving Capitec. If I look at personal banking, personal banking contributes 45%. I'm excluding value-added services or strategic initiatives, and I'm excluding funeral. ZAR 6.2 billion is coming from personal banking, up 27%. If I look at strategic initiatives, ZAR 3.2 billion. What is scary is that income was zero five years ago. ZAR 3.2 billion, Hank is sitting there. He's driving strategic initiatives, ZAR 3.2 billion.
Then we're looking at funeral or insurance, insurance in totality, ZAR 3.5 billion. Tremendous growth in that particular area. Business banking, up close to a billion, ZAR 700 million. I'll unpack that. Very strong growth, contributing 5%. I believe there's a massive amount of opportunities in this particular area. Everfin, our international business, for the people that don't know, we're operating in Poland, Mexico, Czech, Latvia, and Spain. Interesting, I was in Mexico now about a month ago. You don't think how big the business has become. You walk in, and I thought I was going to talk to about 60 people, and it was 140 people working for us in Mexico. In Everfin, internationally, we've got now over 600 people working for ourselves.
Myself and Hank are on our way next week, and we're going to Poland to go and look at that whole East Bloc countries to say what opportunities there are for us in that particular area. Our client base, what is driving everything? If you look at our client base, 24. 24 million. It's very close to 25 million. I can't give the figure. Otherwise, we'll bring out a sense. I was hoping with my 25 years, I can say 25, but we are so close to it. We'll probably go through in the next month or two. 13 million people are using our app. 11 million is on Vans. Our banking clients, just over, very close to 9 million. Our business banking clients, 200,000, growing with about 15,000-16,000 clients per month. Our retail clients are still growing with about 150,000 clients every single month.
For me, that's a scary number. I've given up at 15 million to where that figure is going to go. It's how do you actually optimize that particular. One figure that I want to mention that's not on the slide is only 1.3 million clients are taking credit from ourselves. That's because of how strict we are on the credit policy. What is interesting is in your high-income earners, ZAR 50,000 and more, we've got now a 15% market share. That figure is growing, as you can see, at a very strong growth of 26%. 51% of people in the age group between 18 and 65 has got a Capitec account. If I look at the youth before 18, you can see there 51% of them are actually also having a Capitec card, and that's our future clients.
The whole emerging market, all the informal businesses is a great opportunity for us going forward. The one big drive we've got is to move people away from cash. I hate cash. I really would like all our shareholders here to think about to hate cash. It's very simple why we hate cash. If you draw ZAR 1,000 and you spend it, I don't know where you're spending it. If you swipe, we understand what you're doing, and we can add value to your lives. To take cash away is one of our big objectives in the bank. If I look at what have we done, and I'm not going to unpack each one of them, but this is all our payment mechanisms that you can make use of. Capitec Pay, you've got PayWallet, you've got international payments, you've got Pay2Sell, Scan2Pay, PayShop.
It's all methods that we actually use to get people to actually use electronic payments so that we can get data that we understand our clients better and we can create value. Interestingly enough, 14% of our transactions are cash now. That figure was two years ago, 28%. Interesting that 5.9 million is actually flat. If you divide it by the number of clients, it's actually coming down. Very important factor for us. What we are developing is that you will have one pay button on your app. The moment you press that, we will then help you and assist you on what is the best method to pay, what is the most secure, and what is the most cost-effective way to pay a particular client, to assist our clients in what is the best option.
Going forward, I think it's interesting to look at the stats on the payments space. If you look at card payments, that's what we all use, card payments, the value spent, ZAR 544 billion, 2.2 billion transactions that's coming through it. On Samsung Pay, Apple Pay, etc., etc., ZAR 34 billion that's been spent there, 159% up. E-commerce driven by our Capitec Pay side, up 47%. And that's ZAR 97 billion. What for me is very interesting is the whole PayShop and Pay2Sell with the ability to pay somebody else with your cell phone number, how that is growing and making it easier for people to do a proper payment to somebody else. What is interesting is 17 million of our clients are actually swiping their cards or using electronic payments side. Vans, value-added services, that is airtime, data that you actually buy.
It is Lotto, it's vehicle license, it's bill payments. Gerhardus is sitting here in front of me. You can see the growth that's coming through there, up 34%, 1.4 million transactions that's come through. I just looked at the number this morning. By the end of May, we were sitting at 1.2 million transactions for five months, and we still got seven to go. You can imagine where this figure is going to look like by the end of this year. I think I've given you our market shares. Quite interesting is that 41% of prepaid electricity in South Africa is bought through Capitec. It goes onto his app, and he buys prepaid and electricity. 41% of South Africa buy via their eyes. If you look at electricity, 27% is used, bought through Capitec.
Then digital vehicle licenses, I think the best thing not to go and stand in a queue is that. For you that are worried about the ZAR 50, we've just reduced the ZAR 50 to ZAR 10 now to go and do it. You've got no excuse not to renew your license. Capitec Connect, the one that I'm extremely excited about. I think if I look at the telecommunications in totality, it's complex. People that's not on contract don't know what they're paying for. There's specials the whole time running. If you've got this, then MTN's got a special, then Vodacom on a special. Everyone is, don't know what's happening. That's what we actually said. We need to disrupt that market and bring in transparency and simplicity. You can see what we've done here is we brought out very simplistic pricing.
You can see you can get a gig for ZAR 25. You can get 10 gig for ZAR 150. I challenge you, you're going to struggle to beat those prices. What is interesting is the 1.6 million clients that's active is now just over 2 million. Tremendous growth is taking place in that particular area. Petabytes, 13.4 petabytes that our clients have used. I don't know what a petabyte is. I said the easiest way to explain it for the team is to tell me how many movies that is of an hour and a half. It's 3.1 million movies for an hour and a half. What is quite scary is in May, our client base has used 2.5 petabytes just for the month. If you multiply that very quickly, it's over 30 petabytes.
That will be about 9-10 million movies that you can actually watch for an hour and a half. It just gives you perspective. I'm really excited about this business and where this business can grow. Insurance. A couple of points. As you all know, we had a 30-70% partnership with Sanlam. We were there with 30%, we 70%. First of November, we took it completely over. We own now 100% of our funeral plan. First of November, it's actually quite scary if you think about it, is that we were running on these systems. First of November, we bring in 3 million policies straight over onto our systems to run on our system, handling the claims, handling the process. Catherine and her team have done a tremendous job making certain that we can handle that. You can see now what's happened.
Now, 2.6 is actually what is written on the Sanlam agreement. Close to 600,000 is now where we get 100% of the profits. Life, 100,000 policies, we're selling about 15,000-16,000 life policies per month. What is quite interesting, also disrupting that particular market, you're going to get a life policy up to ZAR 3 million. It's made available to you three, four, five steps, then you've got it. What is very nice is, and you can't see it on the screen, is the client can decide, is the money going to himself, to his funeral? What is going to his wife? What is going to his children? What is going to education? So that he's got control of where the money is actually going the day he dies. He is in control of making certain the money is properly spent. Business banking.
As you all know, we bought Mercantile in November 2019. We actually rebuilt business bank in totality. Unfortunately, I didn't know about COVID. Carl was a bit lazy in the first year running COVID. We've actually completed that rebuild. We've reduced our transactional fees, as you know, on exactly the same level as retail. It's the first in South Africa, I think the first in the world, whereby if you pay Capitec. One rand, Capitec to another bank, two rand, a debit or a three rand, RTC six rand, and drawing cash, 10 rand. Business bank and retail exactly the same pricing. Interesting that it focuses close to a ZAR 300 million that we've given back to our clients. What is interesting, if you look at this particular graph, their profit is ZAR 700 million. They've grown even while we were building.
They've grown with 33% year on year for the last four, five years. In that particular area, we've now changed our building to grow, and all focus is now to grow the business banking side. We've gone above the line. We've got teams going out to our client base. We're focusing on certain towns. I'm flying to Nelspruit next week, Thursday, Friday, working with the business team, seeing business people. I think what we've built is very similar to what we've got on retail. All clients are treated the same. It doesn't matter how big your balance sheet is, how big your income statement is. Everyone has got the same products, the same offer, the same pricing that's actually going through them. That's all being supported by our relationship suite that is available 24/ 7.
If you've got any problem or any questions or everything, you can either call or work with WhatsApp, working with those particular relationship clients to make certain that you get the necessary service. I'll touch on the emerging market later on, but I'm very excited because what we're doing is we're actually focusing on the small and medium-sized businesses. We're not going to focus on the commercial businesses. We leave that to other banks, but we're focusing on the SME side of businesses. I get this question, can we still grow? I believe we've got very strong foundations. We've actually just built the foundations for a big portion of our businesses. I'm going to start off with our supporting functions, marketing, risk, finance, etc., etc. They all world-class. Our data and tech world-class. They've got the foundations to help in the volumes.
Interesting, if you look at insurance, in total insurance, we've got about a 5% market share. In business banking, we've got a 1% market share. If I look at strategic initiatives, I think our market share can still grow there tremendously. I'm looking at Herod. We probably had a 20-25% market share. We should go up to a 40% market share. The most important thing, if you look at personal banking, is the tremendous potential we're sitting in that 24 million clients that we need to optimize. If you ask me, I believe we've got tremendous foundations and a tremendous amount of opportunities to grow. I'm quickly going to share with you new solutions that we've launched and sharing with yourself what's happening. I think building trust is for us critical. We're spending a tremendous amount of time on anti-fraud and security.
We've probably got about 300-400 people working on fraud alone. We've spent this year close to ZAR 200 million on fraud. I've just sat with international companies, and we for sure are leading it. We're not winning it because as you close a gap, there's somebody else coming in. It's a very important aspect for us to actually work on this. For me, very important is as you're coming into the branch now, you are recognized as you're coming into the branch so that when you go and sit in front of a consultant, you will really be helped. In-app calling and chat, I don't know if we've seen it now, but you can actually now, while you're on your app, you can click. In-app calling, and you phone directly to our call center. In the past, you would have phoned ourselves. You don't have data. There's a drop-off.
Now it's for free. It's in your app, and you can talk. I think if you look at that app screen right on the left, you can see we're on the call with you. Capitec is on the call with you because with Amazon Connect, we know exactly that it's a Capitec person talking to yourself, making certain that you are secured. I've spoken about our pricing. Interesting is how you grow, but you also fall into the trap. We had 30 different pricing points, but we've reduced it to the six. Show me again how important simplicity and transparency is for ourselves. On credit card, accessible credit card, young people, people just starting, haven't got a credit card, they need credit. What have we done? We've actually created and said you can have credit for ZAR 600 for three months. You repay it over three months.
You build up a credit history, and we're slowly growing yourself up from that particular end. It's interesting. We've given out 50,000 credit cards in a month and a half into that particular market. We've also given, for every single person that's on a credit card, you get 1 GB of data for free. We've given out over 57 TB. We've given away already by rewarding people on their credit card. We pay as you earn, what I call cash flow lending, especially in the SME market. What you're sitting with for SME, he hasn't got assets. You need to understand his cash flow. How do you understand his cash flow? You need to look at all his inflows, his cash that's coming in, his EFTs that's coming in. If he swipes, you need to understand that. You provide lending on that.
What we are doing is now, whenever there's money coming in, we agree with the client. Let's say it's 5%. We deduct 5% on any inflow so that he repays his loan. That is the first in South Africa. We're now piloting with about 10,000 clients. We have created the SBV with SRM loans, whereby we're financing at ZAR 5 billion to grow our home loan book. Our home loan book was in the region of about ZAR 3 billion to say, how can we actually grow that? We're using our credit data from our credit teams plus that of them to optimize mortgages and offering mortgages into the market. Our notice deposit, I think everyone has seen, we've launched our seven-day and 32-day deposits. In the first six months, we attracted ZAR 1.3 billion in savings in those particular products.
The two that I think are quite exciting—Herod promised me this morning we're going to launch on Thursday—are cross-border remittances, where people can move money across. It's a ZAR 100 billion market, and it's on average between 5%-10% commission. How do we offer value in those particular areas? I think it's quite exciting to go into that particular market. If we look at Connect, to actually port from a Vodacom to ourselves is a nightmare. What we've now said is, if you've got a registered Capitec number, you will get 20% off on your data cost. We encourage people to use their own data. On emerging markets, my favorite 10% quote: I think what is important is I really believe that our unemployment rate is not 32%.
I believe if we work the informal market, if we use all our data, we're much closer to 10% than what has been said. For me, it's not about the 10%. If we want to unlock the potential in South Africa, we must grow entrepreneurs. If you want to grow entrepreneurs, the biggest entrepreneurs that we've got currently are in the emerging market, what we call emerging market or informal market. I'm amazed working in those particular areas to see the size of the market, what is actually taking place in that particular market, and how people are operating. I could tell you numerous stories of how successful and how the size of that particular market. What we're doing here is to say, how do we unlock the emerging market potential? How do we give these people point-of-sale machines? How do we actually give them very low banking fees?
How do we give them banking capabilities? How do we give them credit so that they can grow their businesses and develop? One of the stories that I can quickly tell: a person bought juices for ZAR 2. He sold it for ZAR 5, then bought another case. We start financing himself. He's now employing about three, four people. He's bought a bucket, and he's now looking at building a new sponsorship in a particular other side of Fimbisa. I believe in South Africa, we must actually focus on this particular market and grow. We had very positive communication with the different ministers and Stats SA working on this to say, how can we actually get the data and how can we actually grow this particular market? This is a very big focus for ourselves.
I want to share this video with yourself just to get a feeling of what we're talking in the emerging markets. Terwis again is the best. Into Visa, and we're proud of it. The reason for me to decide to start this business is just because I was nearly killed because my job, I was transporting money around South Africa. What about my kids? Then I decided, no, man, let me start something which I can stand up by myself, knowing every day that I will be with my kids at all times. The only thing which I need my kids to remember is just how much I love them and how much I care for them. I'm hoping to see this business progressing so that even when I'm no longer, my kids will take over and operate the business.
Going forward, I want to see Terwis again having many branches nationally. Together with Capitec. I think if that doesn't touch you, then I don't know. You understand where our heart is, what we want to develop. It's interesting when we started the bank, 80% of the people were unbanked. Now 80% is banked in the retail space. In this particular market, 70% is unbanked. I believe we can fulfill our vision and bank the emerging market and help them to grow and develop South Africa. The question I always get is, what makes us different? It's an interesting question. I'd like to share that with yourself to say what makes us different. I think the first thing is you can see there Michiel. In the townships in Visa talking to a retailer, understanding our market, working in the market.
Our ExCo team was now in the last three, four months selling point-of-sale, business accounts into the market, understand what's working and what is not working. I think the first thing that comes out, we're not a bank. We're a retailer. A retailer thinks client, then risk. A bank thinks risk, then client. We're a retailer. We don't think profit. We think client and what value can we create for our clients. When we develop products, we've got a six-pager that we actually go and sit and say, you start with what is your media statement, what does the client want to be, then you develop your product, and then you go and deliver that particular product. In Capitec, every single thing is measured. Every single client touchpoint is measured. Every interaction is measured.
We create a product health score and a CSAT score by which we actually measure and understand 100% if our client is happy, yes or no. Our average now in the bank is 86%, where people are extremely happy with our service. We know exactly what is the 14% that we need to work on. I can give you the CSAT scores per process, per product that we know and understand what we need to have. You need to actually have that obsession to work with your clients. The next one is the ability to deliver. We have a very structured way of operating. We start September, October. We look at September 5-10 years from now. We look at October one to three years. We write our business plans. We convert that into a budget.
We have three cycles of four months where we make certain that we deliver on those cycles. There are very clear objectives. All the performance management is done in those cycles. We have a MOS, Management Operating System, whereby we measure every single step to say, have we delivered on what we said we are going to deliver? That is part of our DNA. In very simple terms, if you move, we will measure you. I think the other important thing is every business owner that owns a business, owns an income statement, has a dedicated IT team that is supporting them to actually deliver on where we are going. I have said it before. I thought an engineer is just a person building a bridge or a road, but now we have 750 engineers, cloud, data, etc.
We do not move without engineers, making certain that we are optimally structured from an engineering point of view. It is quite scary if you look at this on delivery because I thought, how do I get it over to yourself that you understand what we do? This is actually the scale of our delivery. If you look at 2014, we did 1.1 billion transactions in 2014. In 2020, 10 billion transactions. Last year, 19 billion transactions in a year. You see how that graph is going. That is the ability to scale from our IT platforms. If you look at our data, 1.5 trillion records of data a month that is coming in. 250 billion per day. It is quite scary if you think through it. If you look at the card transactions we process in 2025, 2.2 billion.
If you look at our card payments overseas, this is card payments overseas. It is not local. It is overseas, internationally. It is 15,000 every minute. People swiping. If you look at our daily app logging, it is 19 million. The point I am trying to illustrate is if you look at our delivery side, the capability that we have built and the volumes that we actually are using, and then the data insights that we have. People is everything we have. That is the most important. What really makes Capitec is our people. If I look at, and I've spoken about how client-obsessed we are, we don't see ourselves as a mature company. We see ourselves as a startup that is obsessed with our client base. We put client experience first. We've got a tremendous amount of energy that we want to portray.
We measure people on their energy, and we embrace change and innovation. We work as one team. On ownership, I hate committees. I love people that make decisions, but they make decisions on what is best for the bank. Committees, it's just I'm too scared to make a decision. Somebody else is going to make a decision, and then they move it from committee to committee. To take ownership and to really be the CEO. I think the last and most important part is everyone is rewarded on the group's performance, not on that business performance, but the group. What that creates is no silos, but we work together as one big team. I think that is important. We've said a lot about what we really want is that every single person in the bank is the CEO of what he is doing. He must own it.
Then one that we've never shared before, a lead better, leadership principles. What do we expect from our leaders? How must I behave? Where must I go? Every single leader that's been appointed in a position will go through a psychometrical test over a day, making certain that the leader understands our culture and understands our leadership traits and is fit for what we want to achieve. I'm not going to unpack it, but I think it goes lead with the why, and the people understand where we are going and what we are doing. I think think big, innovative, execute with speed. Raise the bar, challenge yourself to be better, quicker, faster for our client base. That's the DNA of the way we operate in Capitec, our CEO principles and our leadership principles. The question then comes out, what is our long-term strategy? Where are we going?
What do we focus on? Maybe just, we've developed this over the last three, four years, and it's crystal clear where we want to go. The first one is focus on culture. I think I've spoken enough about culture, client, delivery people. Focusing on it so that a company can become 100 years, 200, 300 years old. Because the founders leave, the next generation must take over, but they must take over with a real culture in their hearts going forward. Develop an ecosystem between our four businesses. How do you create the ecosystem to bring our 24 million clients, to our business banking clients, to our strategic initiative clients, and how do you bring them back into insurance? You create a Capitec ecosystem with a reward system that if you're part of the Capitec family, you are rewarded for what you're doing.
That's a massive project that we're busy doing on. Because what is a business client looking for? He's looking for clients. We're sitting with the clients. It's how do we bring the clients to that particular area? Becoming a leading payment provider. Most important is, and I think everyone, I've stressed the importance of payments because then you understand the client. You can add value to the client. How do we make payments easier so that we encourage people to actually pay so that we can understand clients and we can add value to clients? A single service platform. If I look at business banking as on their own system, retailers on their own system, and we're busy bringing all of that together under one system so that you can have a single view of our client.
It's going to be a two-year project, making certain that it doesn't matter if you're business bank or retail. You've got one system, and we can really understand who the clients are and what they are doing. Grow SMEs. That's business banking, growing the emerging markets, really unlocking that potential. I really believe focusing on your small and medium businesses in South Africa that's not been looked after to make certain we can give them the service that we're giving in the personal service. Sites. Becoming a real data company, insights-driven. You've seen the data that we're sitting. I believe if you look at the company going forward, tech and data is going to be critical because data is going to make certain that we can add value and we can grow the company. That insights and also then using AI to actually optimize. The experiences.
AI is part of our lives. We're using it right through the organization. It's quite interesting. There are debates on it. Interesting. We're sitting with all our products, and people ask, but how does our consultants know what is happening and how can they actually service a particular client? Very easy. If a client asks a question that a consultant can't answer, types in the question, AI tells the bot, tells you exactly what the answer is, and you provide the answer to the client. We're handling about 4,000 calls a month via AI, making certain they're giving the right insight to our particular clients. Our long-term vision. This is not now. I think the first couple is for the next four or five years, but it's to really establish a global brand. Henk is looking after that.
I'm going to spend a lot of time on it, but how do you build a Capitec global brand? Are we going to be a bank? Are we going to be a tech company? Are we going to be remittances? I think those are all the questions. Which countries are we going to go in? Long-term, five years from now, where are we going? That is our long-term strategy. On a page, crystal clear, with very strong focuses on delivering on those particular areas. Now we're getting to the end, the thank you side. I think if I start, I need to thank our clients, and you'll probably ask, why will I thank the clients? The most I've learned in my 25 years with a bank is working with the clients. Asking them questions, asking them questions about the product, asking why they do certain things.
And a lot of strategies have been developed asking your clients. It's interesting if I was out in the market and I heard the same thing two, three, four times, then I know we should do it. Really, thanking them for their input and still today giving us input where we're going. To our shareholders, yourself sitting here, we started off as a small company with a bold vision. I think if I look at the vision that we still got, we've still got a long way to go and do. Thank you from your side. To the Capitec team, yeah, and I almost concentrate, yeah, it was just a tremendous 25 years working with yourselves, the energy, the passion of that team. I think if you look at the team, how the team has supported us delivering on what we need to deliver, it's just incredible.
I think the easiest way to explain it, it doesn't matter if the system is down or something is wrong, there's no ask. 22nd of August, 2021, or 2022, we were down for three days. It was all, but our people worked three, four, five days non-stop without sleep. Nobody asked for overtime. Nobody asked for extra salary. This is the passion. If you go into a branch, our consultants don't close a branch at five. They close a branch when the last client leaves. That is our family. Then my executive team, you are the best. I think any other company in South Africa would like to have any one of you as a CEO to lead that particular company. We're privileged to have you to lead us. That is one team.
We had many debates, many discussions, many long hours, but it was always about solving problems and creating something unique for our clients. To the board, Santi, to you and the board, it was a privilege working for you in the last 11 years. Thank you for the support. I actually thought this morning, everything I asked, I got. It sounds for the cut, but I was just thinking and said, in 2020, COVID is happening, and we cut back on the budget. I then said to our team, now we're going to grow. All other companies said, we're not going to grow. We're actually making certain that we survived. We grow. It was scary in that three years with all the uncertainty, we invested an extra ZAR 6.8 billion. That is what has created the four businesses.
I think that boldness, that decisiveness that the board has helped us to actually execute. Thank you very much, Santi, to the board and Michelle and everyone that is on the board. To my family, my two sisters are here, my wife. Yeah, difficult part. I believe it is all about teamwork. If I look at teamwork in a marriage, I had the privilege to lead Capitec and to grow Capitec. There was no one moment that she said no. She just took all other things away from me, all the admin, all the other things that need to be done so I could focus on Capitec. Rain, from my side, thank you very much. For the whole family, my dad is here, my biggest supporter. Thank you very much. There is our ExCo team. They are all sitting here.
If you want questions, you want answers, you can ask them directly. I am going to leave this up so you can look at the picture and then go and ask questions. To Graham, he started in 2002 as my business analysis. He could not talk a word of Afrikaans, so I had to focus to get him to talk Afrikaans. I think if you look at a leader going forward, you need four things, especially running a bank or financial organization: a very good insight into tech, really understanding tech, and how you use tech to optimize the client. You need to understand data. You need to understand strategy, and you need to understand how to execute strategy. Last, the most important, a passion for people. I believe, not I believe, I know you have got all four of them.
It is a privilege for me to hand over the baton to yourself and go and lead Capitec into the future. Thank you very much.