Everyone. Welcome to our results presentation for the year ended 30 June 2026. I will start our presentation with an overview of the macros informing our operating environment. The global policy and geopolitical economic environment remained uncertain and volatile over the year. In fact, as reflected by the Global Economic Policy Uncertainty Index, policy uncertainty is trending higher. For the group, we have had to navigate the tail end of the impacts of the Liberation Day tariff announcements and the impacts of the US-Iran war over the past financial year. The recent spikes in oil prices is not only increasing cost of living pressures but also raising government debt service costs. These fiscal pressures are adding to the uncertainty in the global policy environment. Given the importance of these debt markets to the global financial system and their implications for fiscal and monetary policy, the group continues to monitor these developments closely.
Global economic uncertainty and financial markets volatility remained headwinds across most of the group's portfolio. However, several markets, including South Africa, Nigeria, Ghana, and Zambia, benefited from ongoing structural reform implementation and positive terms of trade. In South Africa, whilst the US-Iran war contributed to the contraction in the final quarter of our year end, ongoing reform implementation supported stronger full year growth relative to the previous year and should support a recovery within the current financial year. Although the oil price shock interrupted the steady decline in South Africa's inflation and repo rate, the improved structural backdrop and commodity price tailwinds helped support the ZAR and contain the related inflation. This allowed the South African Reserve Bank to respond in a measured way to the breach of its inflation target. That said, the increase in inflation and the policy rate weighed on affordability towards the end of the year.
The group expects one more rate increase over the next few months, but as the oil price impact fades over the next year, there should be room for renewed cuts. Our near-term strategies are anchored to this forecast macro outlook improvement. I will now move on to the group's results and unpack our performance. I want to begin by explaining how the group's performance tracked against the guidance we provided to the market when we published our June 2025 results. The earnings growth guidance provided was for earnings to grow mid-teens, and this was anchored to the operational performances we were expecting from our South Africa and broader Africa businesses. We were clear that the expected earnings growth did not factor in any additional U.K. motor provisions in FY 2026 following the Supreme Court's judgment. On this basis, earnings increased 16% at an ROE of 21.5%.
It is worth noting that almost all the income statement line items we unpacked in our prospect statement have tracked in line with the guidance, demonstrating the strong top-line growth, improved profitability and returns from FNB and RMB in particular. It is also worth noting that the dividend we are paying is anchored to this level of earnings growth, up 16% thanks to the group's strong capital position. Two material events shaped current year earnings outcomes and, as a result, defined the group's ongoing earnings base going forward. Disappointingly, in the end, the group was required to raise a provision following the final publication of the FCA's redress scheme. This impact resulted in normalized earnings contracting 5%. Remarkably, despite the size of this provision, the group's ROE remained within its target range at 18.3%.
Secondly, as we announced to shareholders in April, the group has taken a decision to exit the U.K. consumer finance businesses, given the regulatory regime and look-back risk. This means that in these results, Aldermore is now classified as a discontinued operation. The exit process has started. We expect nine binding offers to be submitted by the end of September, following which a due diligence process will start, and then final binding offers will be submitted by December. Continuing operations, namely our South African and broader African businesses, is considered the basis for earnings growth, return profile, and capital generation going forward. Markos will unpack in detail the bridges shown here. At a high level, this slide is a reconciliation of earnings and ROE, including and excluding the U.K. provisions. Importantly, on the far right is normalized earnings on a continuing basis.
My presentation unpacks the group's performance on this basis. Before I move to continuing operations, I want to cover Aldermore's performance this year. Operationally, the business continued to see positive. There was strong balance sheet growth supported by an improved technology stack, enabling greater production, improving operational leverage, and implementation of capital optimization initiatives. Credit normalized over low base in the prior year, with additional Middle East related provisions raised offsetting the good credit experience throughout the year, supported by improved collections effort. Costs increased above plan as Aldermore also accelerated the program to offshore a number of roles and incurred additional costs in the process. Additional costs were also incurred by Aldermore relating to the group's decision to exit the market and prepare for a sales process. Other than that, I think cost control remains very good.
What remains disappointing is the ongoing reduction in net interest margin. However, with a new owner with potentially a different funding base, this NIM position should, over time, stabilize and improve. This slide unpacks key highlights of the performance by the continuing operations. The call-out for me here is the growth in earnings of 13%, which is a direct result of the operational performances of the franchises excluding U.K. The ROE, which excluding the U.K., is now above our stated range. The cost to income ratio at 48% continues to reduce. We have many initiatives underway to further improve the group's operational leverage, and our ambition is that this ratio trends down to the mid-40s over the medium term. This is net asset value and NIAC or economic profits presented on a continuing basis for two of our important shareholder value metrics. Pleasingly, NAV increased by 9%.
The 24% growth in economic profits to ZAR 20 billion is truly impressive. The group's focus has always been on capturing the highest share of economic profits in the markets we operate in. This outcome demonstrates that the growth strategies of our large franchises are still anchored to growing economic profits, resulting in a high-quality earnings and superior return profile. The group's superior ROE benefited from an ongoing improvement in return on assets, which increased another eight basis points in the period, and it is back at 2018 levels. This was again a result of the quality of our operational performance, particularly the growth in investment income, a strong recovery in trading income, and improved impairment. Gearing continued to decrease, meaning that the ROE uplift is not as a result of increased gearing.
The structural composition of our ROE reflects the shape of our portfolio today, the strategies we are pursuing, and our FRM discipline. This is a snapshot of the operational performances delivered by our client-facing franchises. They have done very well this year, more than holding their own in a fiercely competitive operating environment. The main call-outs here is the earnings growth and improved ROE from FNB, the engine room of the group's earnings, which resulted from the size of the deposit franchise, which continues to grow off an ever higher base. The solid advances growth with stronger production volumes and improved credit performance. Cost management was commendable given the increased spend on FNB expanding its footprint and distribution, as well as coming up with new product solutions. RMB really had a standout year, particularly the improvement in ROE.
The SA franchises performed well with PBT up 17% and the in-country CIB franchises in broader Africa having a very strong performance. WesBank's performance was characterized by new business production at historic high levels. Earnings were impacted by an increase in impairments as a result of front book strain given the high levels of origination over the past two years. Proactive provisioning was taken for the Middle East war and the structural adjustment to the vehicle prices market as a result of increased cheaper cars into the SA market. Outside of these highlighted provisions, the credit experience for WesBank was in line with our expectations and where we are in the cycle. I will now cover the performance across our standard themes. Let me start with the strength of our origination franchise. This slide unpacks the group's current origination posture.
Let me start by saying that this has evolved as we become more constructive on the macros. We continue to focus on capturing an outsized share of high-quality credit, but at the same time, we are leaning in on certain growth themes. Vehicle asset finance is one of those themes, as we have seen an ongoing demand and structural growth opportunities in the market with new entrants from China. We continue to provide support to SMEs as the economic activity lifts across household and corporates. We believe this should benefit small and medium-sized businesses. Our corporate and commercial origination thesis continues to be anchored to targeted sectors, including those that are early beneficiaries of structural reforms. We continue to lean into sustainable finance as a theme.
Capital optimization initiatives have created additional capacity to support lending into a wider cohort of existing customers, particularly in retail and business banking, where FNB is generally under-lent. The strategy to expand lending to a customer cohort previously underserved by us will be supported by the Optasia partnership as they bring different credit scoring capabilities and products that we can leverage into our existing customer base. Anchored to some of the themes I have just covered, we saw solid advances growth of 7% across the portfolio, and particularly in the second half of the year. WesBank delivered ongoing strong advances growth of 14%, supported by new business volumes in vehicle asset finance and 13% in asset-backed finance. Commercial advances growth, albeit softer this year, reflects the benefit of FNB's long-term strategy to focus on sectors exposed to structural reforms and cyclical growth trends.
FNB continues to lean in to support SMEs and the community economy, where advances were up 25%. RMB's origination engine delivered a net new business production of 13% up. RMB continues to exceed the group's sustainable finance targets, with ZAR 283 billion having been facilitated since 2022. RMB continues to focus on capturing structuring and advisory fees through the origination franchise, and this has resulted in enhanced margins and ROE through the distribution activities. Distribution of assets came to ZAR 43 billion this year, impacting the advances growth for RMB, which is up 2%. Excluding RMB's distribution activities, group advances would have been up 10%, a pleasing outcome, and for me a testament to the growing set of opportunities that are available to the group's franchises for growth. This slide is a high-level snapshot of the group's improved credit performance. Markos will cover this in much more detail in his presentation.
Favorable macro conditions provided support for most of the year. In the final quarter, some additional FLI provisions were raised due to the geopolitical uncertainty emanating from the Middle East conflict. It is pleasing that despite proactive additional provisioning of ZAR 1.1 billion, the credit performance still contributed positively to the group's operational performance. Impairments would have decreased by 6% instead of being 2% up on last year. Good to see the change in profile. The group benefited from the Treasury's active management of interest rate and ALM risks. Sorry, my slides are not cooperating. Lisa, go back. The group benefited from the group Treasury's ongoing active management of interest rate and ALM risks, ensuring the group earns appropriate value from interest rates, credit and liquidity premium. In the current year, continued disciplined execution of this strategy produced ZAR 3.3 billion of NII above the overnight policy rate.
The ALM framework is set to produce resilient outcomes, taking into account various tested scenarios designed to protect and enhance the group's earnings with lower volatility. As a reminder to shareholders, the strategy has delivered ZAR 19.5 billion since inception in 2018. This graph demonstrates the strength of the group's deposit franchise with cumulative 10-year growth of 34% ahead of the aggregate money supply growth. This outcome reflects strong, diversified main bank relationships across various client segments, supported by very good product offering that enable our customers to access savings and liquidity easily throughout their life cycles. The group has deliberately focused on ensuring that savers are appropriately rewarded across the multiple savings and deposit offerings. The scale and quality of this franchise supports a superior risk-adjusted NII, which underpins the group's ROE.
A key highlight for me is the group's margin that increased by 29 basis points, supported by disciplined FRM execution across the franchises, which balance growth with risk-adjusted returns and asset mix. Asset margins contributed 12 basis points, with improvements in deposit mix and funding costs adding a further 13 basis points. The group's ALM strategies fully protected the structural interest rate position against the 89 basis points reduction in policy rates, with capital endowment, including ALM, contributing four basis points. This was partly offset by lower returns on liquid assets in the group treasury, while broader Africa again contributed positively to group margin. I will now Okay. Thank you. I will now cover the contribution from the group's diversified and growing sources of NIR. Okay. The group continues to benefit from its long-term strategy to grow new sources of non-interest revenue.
However, it is impressive to see that the fee and commission income line, despite a very high base and fierce competition pressures, it is still delivering solid growth. RMB's strategy to capture structuring and advisory fees as part of the origination strategy contributed strongly to NIR, and the global markets business recovery delivered excellent trading income. Once again, RMB's private equity businesses produce both healthy levels of dividends, ongoing earnings, and realizations. FNB's overall NIR continues to reflect its strategy to defend and grow its transactional franchise. The slide shows that the business continues to achieve steady growth across traditional sources of fees and is importantly scaling new sources of fees as some of these fees structurally reduce in the market. Digital wallets and PayShap are showing very strong growth, particularly following the decision to make PayShap its default real-time payment solution on the FNB app.
The graph in the middle demonstrates ongoing strong traction in FNB's longstanding strategy to monetize its platform by providing numerous value-added services. FNB Connect is scaling strongly with over 3 million users transacting on its platform, in addition to having 1 million users on the MVNO license doing very well. Markos will unpack in more detail the insurance performance. Profit growth was dampened by ongoing investment in distribution and advisory capacity. Pleasingly, short-term insurance reached profitability this year, an important milestone for this business, and there is still plenty of runway in both retail and commercial customer bases. Good growth continues to be generated on the group's own licenses, as reflected in the new business APE numbers on the slide. The growth in the in-force APE for both life and short term demonstrates the quality of these books.
FNB life business continues to be a key contributor to the group's NIR, having paid ZAR 9.5 billion in dividends since inception to the group. Our Invest strategy is also a key part of our net interest revenue diversification strategy and growing our client franchises. It deepens entrenchment, supports cross-sell, and generates capital-light income. Invest has not yet scaled as quickly as insurance. However, I believe we are finally seeing better traction, particularly since we took the decision to focus on servicing the needs of our own customer base. This has resulted in both inflows from Ashburton and FNB Wealth and Investments on the back of consistent investment performance and expanding distribution. Ashburton received close to 60% of its inflows from RMB's corporate client base, which has been as a result of a successful fixed income strategy.
FNB Wealth and Investments is scaling its cross-sell to own customers, and penetration is still low, so there is still a lot of runway for growth for this business. I have already mentioned the positive contribution to NIR from the recovery in RMB's Global Markets business. As can be seen from this slide, the recovery was broad-based 2024 levels. Pleasingly, the performance came from increased client flows in line with strategy. There are strong signs that this performance is sustainable. The de-risking decisions we took last year have removed concentrations and freed up capacity to maximize opportunities as demonstrated by the T during this past year. The implementation of some technology platform refinements is providing the Global Markets business with increased capabilities that is scalable.
The final point I'd like to make here is that RMB's recent operating model change to support a more client-centric strategy will also provide support to Global Markets. There is increased focus in RMB on cross-selling Global Markets products into the existing broader corporate client base, and the results are encouraging. Furthermore, the successful scaling of the corporate transactional banking will also provide further support to Global Markets growth. I will now spend some time adding a bit more color to the operational performances of the franchises that I've already called out before handing over to Markos. I've called out the excellent Oh, this clicker and me today are not doing well. Okay. I've already called out the excellent growth in PBT from FNB.
If we drill down to some of the detail, we can see that this was driven by customer growth, high advances growth in both unsecured and residential mortgages, cross-sell, and ongoing deposit gathering. When considering the customer growth per segment, it's important to provide context to FNB's strategy to focus on providing customers with products and solutions appropriate to where the customers are in their life cycle. This means that close to 300,000 customers migrate annually from the personal segment to the private segment. Hence, we refer to pre- and post-migration. Despite fierce competition, the personal segment did well to grow customers. More impressively by this segment is the growth in deposits, up 16% before migration. The private segment grew their customer growth solid 8%, driven by new customer acquisitions and migrations.
Private segment continues to focus on increasing specialist and advisory skills to unlock more specialist lending and broader lending into the client base, including a homecoming effort to ensure that all our private segment customers are well looked after by us and not our competitors. The results are evident in the record production and payouts across a number of asset classes. FNB is also benefiting from the partnership strategy, which we look to add capabilities, distribution, and footprint. Distribution has been enhanced through the Pick n Pay and Boxer partnerships. There are also some exciting product launches imminent, developed with Optasia, which will see FNB's strategy expanding its lending activities. I believe that the launch is imminent next week, Lytania. Another important growth strategy for FNB is the community economy.
We have seen strong advances growth, but just as importantly, FNB continues to strengthen its position in community-based savings through its Stokvel value proposition. Impressively, deposits increased this year by 31% to ZAR 5.7 billion on the Stokvel platform, with active accounts growing 23%. FNB commercial customer growth continues to show good momentum, generating growth in transactional volumes and lending. The commercial deposit franchise remains by far the largest in South Africa. SME lending continues to be a focus area, which was a driver to the 25% increase in advances in the community economy. Merchant acquiring activities have started to improve since the launch of the refreshed product and device offering in March post the repricing of fees in an increasingly competitive space. Since the relaunch, we have given back in pricing benefits to existing merchants a total of ZAR 150 million.
Pleasingly, sales volumes have lifted 36% since the relaunch in March, and momentum continues to be encouraging in ensuring that we maintain our market share in this space. I have already covered the strong origination in WesBank and the resultant new business strain. One of the additional call-outs I would like to make on this slide is that we saw very pleasing growth in the origination from the collaboration between WesBank and FNB's personal segment in particular. WesBank continues to grow strongly in other business activities as well that are not on balance sheet through the joint ventures and partnership arrangements with OEMs, diversifying its sources of revenue whilst enabling its partners to grow as well. Lastly, WesBank still continues to capture the majority of the economic profits in the sector in South Africa. RMB delivered a very strong operational performance across its client-facing businesses.
The investment banking division continued to deliver strong results across a wide range of lending and advisory activities, with an increasing focus on capital light activities. The South African franchise performed very well with PBT up 17%, and broader Africa contributed PBT up of 11%, which included the stellar in-country CIB growth of 53%. RMB's ROE improvements to 23% has been particularly pleasing to see, a level last reached in 2018. The HSBC transaction has successfully completed introducing over 400 entities into the group with a large multinational corporate base. The quality of the HSBC deposit book was also accretive to RMB's margin. Lastly, the client-centric operating model change in RMB, while still in an early phase, is showing very good traction with early runs on the scoreboard, increasing our confidence in the continued growth of the RMB franchise. The performance from the broader Africa portfolio is also pleasing.
Despite the macro pressures in Botswana, one of our larger jurisdictions, the overall profitability held up well, supported by good performances from Namibia, Zambia, and Nigeria. The in-country CIB franchises across the portfolio saw a very strong performance, supported by the structural reform momentum in these markets. A special call-out to Zambia this year for delivery of excellent growth across a number of metrics, including paying a maiden dividend. Thank you. Presented on this slide is a walkthrough of the group's CET1 position that has maintained at elevated levels. The group accreted capital of 79 basis points with the incremental motor commission provision consuming 75 basis points. A CET1 ratio of 13.9% at the end of the reporting period is well ahead of the upper range of the internal target range of 12.5%, which translates into excess capital of ZAR 10 billion after payment of the final dividend.
The strong capital position supports a dividend cover of 1.6 times at the bottom end of the board's target range. This cover translates into growth in full-year dividends per share anchored to earnings growth, excluding the current year motor provision, resulting in dividends being up 16%. Okay, I will now hand over to Markos. Markos.
Thank you, Mary, and good morning, everyone. As Mary highlighted earlier, the group's 30 June 2026 financial performance has been contextualized and unpacked in distinct components that reflect the financial outcomes of the group. These include the additional U.K. motor commission provision, Aldermore as a discontinued operation, and the continuing operations of the group that comprise of the South Africa and broader Africa franchises. I will unpack these and their key performance drivers individually throughout the presentation, but will first walk you through a performance bridge that reconciles the earnings lenses and how they manifest in the results. Firstly, before normalising for the provision, the group's earnings have disappointingly contracted 5%. Despite this, the ROE remained above the bottom end of the stated range at 18.3% and still resulted in economic profit generation, albeit down year-on-year.
In April this year, the group guided that it estimated a provision of GBP 750 million would be required to address the potential outcomes of the FCA industry-wide motor redress scheme. The final outcome resulted in an overall group earnings impact for both the provision raised and the related costs incurred in the current period of GBP 403 million or ZAR 8.7 billion. I will unpack the provision further in a few slides. Due to its nature and size, the group has decided to simplify the understanding and comparability of the operational performance, but separately discloses all of the relevant information related to the matter in the booklet and financial statements. After normalising for the provision, the group's earnings are up 16% and, as Mary highlighted, this is the anchor that the board utilized to declare the group's dividend for the period.
The final step is then to normalise the provision in the comparative period to obtain a like-for-like comparison of the group's overall normalised performance, which is up 10%. This can then be decomposed into two parts, the discontinued operations performance, which is 14% down in rands, by the continuing operations, which are up 13% at an ROE of 24.9%. The final bridge then reconciles the flow-through of the provision normalisation into NAV. I would reiterate, however, that the group's actual capital position remains anchored to the IFRS NAV position. What this slide is useful for doing is to assist in unpacking the discontinued operations normalised NAV, which reduced 16% in rands and was driven by, firstly, the positive impact of increased earnings to June 2026, offset by the inaugural dividend paid last year in September of GBP 125 million or ZAR 2.8 billion.
Secondly, a large impact is due to rand translation off the back of a stronger rand at June this year. Finally, as the group under IFRS classifies the Aldermore Group as an asset held for sale now, it was required to perform an impairment test of the goodwill recognized at the acquisition of Aldermore. However, to determine any potential impairment, the group had to prepare a probability weighted accounting model of various potential valuation outcomes, as the exit process is not yet at a formal offer stage. The impairment calculated is ZAR 3.7 billion, which results in ZAR 3.8 billion of remaining goodwill carried on the Balance Sheet at 30 June 2026. As a final technical call-out, in accordance with SAICA and JSE rules, this impairment is reported outside of headline earnings and hence is also not included in normalised earnings.
The detail of this can be found in the group's headline earnings reconciliation. To conclude on this slide, I also want to note that the discontinued operations normalized NAV of ZAR 42.9 billion comprises a normalized consolidated view of the Aldermore Group, and that the underlying actual 30 June 2026 standalone reported book capital of Aldermore is GBP 1.65 billion or ZAR 35 billion. Mary has already covered some of the key performance metrics of the group, and call-outs from my side are the improvement in the normalized ROE and ROA across both total and continuing operations, driven by good top-line growth and improved operational leverage. Furthermore, the group remains well capitalized at a CET1 ratio of 13.9% and as noted earlier, despite the decline in earnings of 5%, this strong capital position allowed for the dividend per share to be increased by 16%.
Turning to the U.K. Motor Commission provision outcome, at the end of March 2026, the U.K.'s Financial Conduct Authority published its final policy statement related to its industry-wide U.K. Motor Finance Consumer Redress Scheme. Whilst the group remains firmly of the view that the final scheme is disproportionate and unfair, it disappointingly had to raise an additional pre-tax accounting provision of GBP 518 million. In addition, the redress scheme has subsequently been challenged by other lenders and the consumer body, which resulted in an extension of the potential start date of the scheme. This results in additional interest and operating cost considerations in operationalizing the scheme. This increased the group's guided undiscounted provision from GBP 750 million- GBP 807 million. But notably for IFRS reporting purposes, this provision is discounted to 30 June 2026, resulting in a final balance sheet provision of GBP 756 million.
Management has prudently struck the provision in accordance with the detailed requirements as set out in the FCA policy statement, and its judgment related to the take-up rates is broadly similar to those noted in the proposed underlying redress scheme estimates. In summary, the net earnings impact to the group for the current period is ZAR 8.7 billion, with a cumulative provision raised to date of ZAR 16.4 billion. Mary has given some reflection on the U.K. operations performance, and I will unpack this further. Aldermore's NII grew 1% as margin pressure offset strong balance sheet production, with advances in deposits up 13% and 12% respectively. Advances growth included the acquisition of Octane Capital, which adds adjacent higher margin bespoke bridging refurbishment and development property finance opportunities. The lower interest rate environment weighed on unhedged capital endowment, and deposit margins were impacted by market-wide competitive pricing pressures.
Advances margins declined due to balance sheet mix, with stronger growth tilted towards lower margin property lending during the period. The net result of all of this was a NIM contraction of 19 basis points in pounds. The CLR normalized up to 25 basis points from a 10 basis points print in the prior period. That included FLI costs of living releases, as well as cumulative positive impact from the previous arrears in the loss-give portfolio. Overall credit performance was in line with expectations with an improved NPL ratio of 3.03%, and Aldermore also strengthened its collection capabilities, which are reflected in its improving arrears and post-write-off recoveries. This good credit performance was then offset by deterioration in the forward-looking macros as a result of worsening inflation and rate outlooks post the Middle East conflict escalation in the fourth quarter.
This resulted in an additional FLI being raised of GBP 12 million. Operating expenses were well managed at 2% up despite some large non-recurring costs of GBP 18.1 million related to its offshoring and restructuring program, which resulted in the offshoring of more than 800 roles. This will enable the business to operate at a structurally lower CTI over the next three to four years as the offshoring contracted savings profile realizes. In addition, in preparation for the FirstRand exit process, Aldermore incurred additional costs of GBP 4.8 million. As an overall conclusion, the Aldermore Group continues to execute on its strategy to reduce the cost-to-income ratio to under 40%, diversifying growth, specialized lending, and adjacent activities, and trend its ROE up towards 15% over the next four-year period.
I will now unpack the continuing operations, which produced a strong performance with normalized earnings increasing 13% off the back of strong top-line growth and positive cost jaws. NII increased 8% with all balance sheet activities leading to improved outcomes despite the rate cutting cycle and the average repo rate declining 89 basis points. Lending NII increased 7%, driven by resilient growth in average customer advances with an improved production across most portfolios, particularly in the second half of the year, as well as margin expansion driven by advances mix. In addition, RMB's distribution strategy is a significant contributor to the group's lending asset margin expansion of 12 basis points. Transactional NII increased 8%, reflecting increased transact product offerings and customer acquisition, which is offset by the net endowment impact of lower rates that included the positive outcome in the ALM strategy that Mary highlighted earlier.
Investment deposits NII growth of 11% was underpinned by targeted customer engagement, pricing enhancements, and continued shift in customer preference towards higher yielding savings and investment balances. Despite lower rates, the group's capital endowment increased 5%, driven by stronger earnings from the ALM portfolio, which included investing more of the group's capital into a structural bond portfolio. Group Treasury NII increased 42%, benefiting from balance sheet growth, reduced institutional funding costs, and improved deployment of foreign currency funding. An important call-out is that whilst NII growth in Group Treasury is very positive, the overall margin of the group has been negatively impacted by two basis points due to a change in balance sheet composition towards lower yielding liquid assets. Finally, FNB broader Africa's NII grew 6% despite ongoing macroeconomic pressure across the portfolio, mainly supported by strong average deposit growth up 12%.
Mary has already unpacked advances growth, and this slide highlights the second half pick-up in production as easing inflation and lower rates allowed for better customer affordability. Annualizing the second six-month growth reflects the improved run rate across most portfolios. Furthermore, RMB's advances growth appears subdued at 2%, but as Mary alluded to earlier, it is a direct result of the RMB distribution strategy, which resulted in an improved RMB advances margin of 10 basis points. The growth was further subdued by rand strength against the dollar towards the latter part of the financial period. The deposit franchise continues to deliver excellent outcomes, once again exceeding expectations and is up 10% for the period. This good performance reduces the need for more expensive institutional and other funding, which grew 3% overall.
Notably, FNB's SA retail and commercial deposit franchises continued to deliver a strong performance and collectively now contribute in excess of ZAR 1 trillion to the group's SA funding portfolio. RMB's domestic deposit franchise delivered robust growth up 15%, driven by a focus on growing operational balances through primary bank clients, as well as the take-on of the HSBC deposits, which contributed an additional 4% to balances. The increase in institutional funding reflects ongoing investor demand for marketable FirstRand paper and is further supported by higher national treasury tax and loan balances, particularly in the latter half of the year. Debt securities growth includes the commencement of the group's issuance of FLAC as part of FirstRand's strategy to replace maturing senior unsecured debt instruments previously issued by FirstRand Bank, with FLAC now issued from FirstRand Limited.
All of these NII outcomes result in an impressive 29 basis points increase in group margins and are direct outcomes of the deliberate pricing and mix strategies via its FRM capabilities. Turning to the group's impairment charge, which increased 2%. Notably, this outcome was achieved despite the group raising a significant ZAR 1.1 billion of additional FLI provisions in the last month of the year. Given the change in macroeconomic outlook to GDP, inflation, and rates from the Middle East conflict and related oil price disruption, Mary's macro slides positioned this change visually, and for ease of reference, I will refer to this as additional FLI in the rest of the presentation. Excluding the impact, the group impairment charge would have decreased 6% with the group's overall credit performance remaining resilient and provisioning seen as appropriate for the current environment.
In addition, the group's continuing operations TTC range is based on its current portfolio mix and is set at 100 basis points- 130 basis points. At 105 basis points, the group delivered an outcome at the bottom end of this range. Unpacking impairments further using a six-monthly rolling CLR and impairment charge, as well as separately disclosing the additional FLI impact better reflects the overall improved credit performance of the portfolio as actual rates and inflation eased. This is particularly evident in the second half of the year with an annualized CLR of 91 basis points and a significantly improved rolling six-month impairment charge at ZAR 6.2 billion. In addition, the group's balance sheet provision stage mix and coverage remains prudently struck for the cycle and is broadly similar to the prior year. I will now unpack the drivers of the impairment charge in the underlying portfolios.
The overall SA retail impairment charge increased moderately at 3%, while the CLR declined to 192 basis points, moving into the lower end of the portfolio's TTC range. The retail secured impairment charge reduced 9% with the CLR reducing to 55 basis points and comprised a diverging performance between the residential mortgages and WesBank VAF portfolios, but both remain in line with the expectations for the cycle and their respective book growth. The residential mortgages CLR printed a negative 2 basis points benefiting from slower advances growth coupled with better-than-expected house price index data, lower rates supporting customer affordability, and slowing debt counseling inflows. These benefits were partially offset by the modeled additional FLI provisions. WesBank VAF impairments increased 29% with a CLR of 177 basis points, but the increase is predominantly spoken for by three main outcomes.
The strong advances growth of 15% and what I call good impairment growth in the form of front book strain, which also included a measured easing of underwriting criteria as the cycle became more supportive, but also then requiring higher performing provision coverage. Underlying uncertainty and lack of historical data related to used vehicle price impacts of low-cost new entrants to the South African market. Lastly, the last item is the additional modeled FLI provision required that I have mentioned before. The retail unsecured impairment charge increased 7% and was driven mainly by front book strain and additional modeled FLI provisions in personal loans. Furthermore, card produced an improved credit outcome off the back of better customer repayment behavior.
Commercial impairments declined 3% to a CLR of 92 basis points despite continued good advances growth of 9% and is reflective of the improved underlying credit performance across the portfolio, as well as the non-repeat of the two large defaults I called out in the prior year. The corporate impairment charge increased 26% and the overall portfolio remained resilient and in line with expectations. The increase reflects the impact of a few large exposures migrating to stage three in both the IBD and private equity portfolios. These were counter-specific circumstances and are not considered pervasive to the portfolio. This increase was then partly offset by the debt-to-equity restructure I noted at the interim presentation, which has a 3 basis points impact to the printed CLR.
Finally, considering the macro backdrop, the broader Africa in-country portfolio impairment charge performed better than expected, declining 13%, mainly driven by lower write-offs in Namibia, improved customer affordability, and better collections resulting in improving arrears. This was partly offset by strong advances growth in front book strain, particularly in Zambia's corporate and commercial portfolios, as well as an increased impairment charge in Botswana due to the current country-specific pressures. The group delivered a significant increase in NIR of 12%, with growth benefiting from the continued execution of the NIR diversification strategies Mary covered earlier. Pleasingly, group NIR exceeded ZAR 65 billion with an improved NIR mix and a reducing contribution from fee and commission income. Total group fee and commission income grew 6% with a mixed performance between FNB and RMB. FNB increased 8%, driven by customer acquisition and continued growth in transactional volumes.
This helped offset some of the structural pressures from changes in the payments landscape that Mary mentioned earlier. RMB IBD's knowledge-based fee income continues to grow strongly off a high base, but this was offset by lower trade and working capital commitment fees and less trade-related structuring opportunities compared to the prior period. As a final call-out, the asset management business delivered a strong growth in management fees, driven by a 35% increase in AUM, with total management and fiduciary fees now greater than ZAR 3 billion. Mary summarized the insurance operational performance and drivers. These resulted in a solid top-line performance up 12%, but then offset by higher insurance service expenses that reflects the good book growth, increased weather-related claims, and higher acquisition and servicing costs. These additional costs included an increased investment in distribution capacity and advisors, as well as investment in improving system capabilities.
The net result of this is insurance income printing up 8% year-on-year. The 42% increase in trading income was as a result of a strong rebound in the global markets business. Mary covered this earlier, but my call-out is that with the global markets reset having delivered a promising performance in year one, as all the asset classes benefited from higher structuring activity, improved flows, and growing market-making opportunities. The investment income slide speaks for itself, with an impressive income growth across all activities. Private equity contributed strong growth from realizations and dividend income during the period. Its equity accounted earnings also remained resilient, considering the sizable realizations over the past two years, and the unrealized value of the portfolio is still around that ZAR 8 billion level.
Other investment income includes a strong group treasury performance as a result of changes in market dynamics, which resulted in a value unlock from the rebalancing of its bond portfolios. The WesBank associates, TFS and VWFS, performed well, with good advances growth coupled with disciplined cost management, leading to better equity accounted income for the group. As a reminder from the interim presentation, VWFS benefited from a once-off ZAR 150 million funding and liquidity benefit during the period. Lastly, Optasia's contribution to NIR reflects the group's share of its earnings at 20.1% for the five months and 26.1% for three months of the year. As Optasia is listed and has not released results, the group share of associate earnings are based on its best estimate using Optasia's latest trading update. Operating costs are up 9% and slightly ahead of expectations.
Staff costs make up around 64% of the total group cost base and increased 9%. This increase is mainly due to staff inflation, variable costs, and headcount growth. Professional fees increased 14%, reflecting additional investment required for platform-related projects, including one-off costs for the HSBC deal implementation. Computer expenses increased due to higher software licensing costs from the expanded use of cloud, AI, and software services for ongoing digital transformation, partially offset by the impact of a stronger rand on foreign currency IT spend. This increase also includes a ZAR 290 million impact from the upgrade and deployment of a system in Ghana. The group continues to focus on its operational leverage and has matured the embedment of costs as a finite financial resource in its FRM frameworks. This will ensure that it is able to continue to deliver on this positive cost Jaws story reflected in the graph.
Since 2022, the group's cost-to-income ratio has declined by 4%- 48.5%, with the continuing operations at 48%. In summary, the group absorbed a large impact to earnings from the additional U.K. motor provision. It has been a transitional year for the Aldermore Group strategy to improve returns and its sustainable growth trajectory, and the continuing operations delivered a very strong overall earnings outcome and ROE for shareholders. I now hand you back to Mary as she concludes with the group's forward-looking prospects.
Okay, we're almost there. Thank you, Markos. I'll now cover some forward-looking topics. I want to start by confirming that the group has revised upwards its guidance for earnings growth and ROE. The new targeted range for ROE has been moved from 18%-22% to growth guidance to high single digits to low double-digit growth. I want to emphasize that these are through the cycle targets, which means that at any given point in time, depending on growth opportunities, we can choose to be at the upper end or the lower end of the ROE range. I think key priority going forward is going to be focusing on growth. I'd like to share some of the insights from our strategy, which I hope will be able to give you insights on why we feel confident to revise our guidance going forward.
Firstly, we have refined our strategic framework, which reflects the exit from the U.K. to focus on South Africa and broader Africa. We believe this pivot in strategy and resource allocation should, over time, unlock higher levels of earnings growth and enhanced ROE. These jurisdictions are characterized by improving macroeconomic environments, stronger GDP growth prospects, new trade and capital flows, and of which will provide further growth opportunities for RMB, FNB, and WesBank, and I believe they're strongly positioned to capture those tailwinds. We've also created new enterprise-wide enablement capabilities, which will contribute to swifter execution of strategy and speed to market and unlock operational efficiencies. In South Africa, we need to protect and grow our large, valuable customer-facing franchises.
It's clear from this slide the size and quality of these franchises, and there's always been a niggling doubt expressed that it becomes harder to grow businesses like this, particularly with tough macros. I think the operational performances delivered by our crown jewels in the past and in the year under review demonstrates that there is growth runway, and some of the strategic interventions we have executed on are beginning to either gain traction or scale. What we can see from this year's results is that we can grow customers, lend to those customers, cross-sell multiple financial services products and solutions, and in that process, protect and enhance client franchises and returns. We are focused on ensuring that we have greater relevance to our customers and add value to their lives and businesses. This is key to retention and growth.
The other shift in our strategy is that the management teams that manage the large SA franchises are now mandated to grow in broader Africa, working with the in-country businesses. This has always been the case for RMB, but different for the other franchises. The segment leadership success is therefore much more closely aligned to the future success of the broader Africa portfolio. Over and above the imperative to protect and grow the jewels in the crown, we also have multiple new strategies that will provide good growth runway over the short to medium term. This slide unpacks these opportunity sets, which span across all franchises. Most of them are already under execution. Firstly, there are businesses where we are underweight our natural market share of the market. This would include corporate transactional banking, invest insurance, and global market businesses.
Despite its success so far, there is still a great deal of growth to unlock from the insurance business. Penetration of insurance solutions is still low in the retail and commercial customer base, and the same can be said for our invest activities that are also at a much earlier stage of execution. In addition, ultimately, these present exciting open market opportunities for the group in the longer term, growing beyond our existing customer base. The group's strategy to partner to augment its own capabilities for scale expanding distribution is nascent, but it is showing encouraging growth. FNB is rolling out the first of our products developed with Optasia this month, but we are excited by the optionality this partner brings to the group. We also continue to look for other partnerships. As I mentioned earlier, scaling our corporate bank is also critical.
In particular, it will bring access to more client flows and more clients to enable cross-sell across our commercial and corporate clients. This will place our global markets business on a very strong footing. We continue to look for bolt-on acquisitions to scale in-country franchises. Zambia is an example of a greenfields business that has scaled quickly, and the recent acquisition of Standard Chartered's business there will add a further 80,000 customers, a sizable ZAR-denominated balance sheet, and enhance the wealth customer proposition for this business, which we intend to take to other markets. Finally, we are exploring opportunities to enter new markets on the continent as we expand our footprint. This should not be seen as a flag-planting exercise, and we will not necessarily enter these markets through acquiring banks only.
As I mentioned under the strategic framework, we have created two enterprise-wide groupings, one that houses the technology capabilities of the group and one that manages the group's shared services. Group technology and engineering, which is run by Kevin Mitchell, the Group Chief Digital Officer, is mandated to provide technology capabilities that are common to all businesses and are considered group platforms with the necessary prioritization to ensure we support growth initiatives that has existed when these capabilities all lived in separate franchises and separate businesses. This better allows our technology teams to be more effective and operate efficiently, both in group technology and engineering and in the segments. Gert Kruger was recently appointed the Group Chief Operating Officer, and he has responsibility for the shared services portfolio and works closely with Kevin on overall enablement.
Importantly, this construct allows the group to organize and embed artificial intelligence capabilities in an organized manner, driving efficiencies and speed through AI-enabled development capacity in technology and engineering, where these tools have been rolled out across more than 3,000 engineers in the group. AI is also being deployed to enhance customer experiences and products and in group business services, automating business services and our processes. Pleasingly, there are several use cases that have moved into deployment this far, and we believe that the dividends from an efficiency perspective and customer experience for our customers is going to be enhanced. I believe that the creation of these groupings and clarity on their mandates means that the legacy duplication and inefficiencies created by old silos will be eliminated. This will unlock great operational leverage, which is one of our key commitments to shareholders.
The refined strategic framework does not shift our capital allocation philosophy. The group's view of FRM as an enabler to our segments and a pillar of its value proposition to shareholders is clear. The consistent execution of strategy via segments with disciplined FRM has shown to deliver value to shareholders over many years, the outcome of which has been our ability to grow net asset value at a CAGR of 8% and grow dividends at a CAGR of over 14%, returning ZAR 200 billion to shareholders over the last 10 years. Also remembering that this period included the COVID stress period and the U.K. provision. Really strong outcomes from our FRM disciplines. The reason I wanted to put this slide up is to deal with two questions. One, what are we going to do with the excess capital?
Shareholders can take comfort in knowing that we will deploy it to ensure that we invest in strategies that are going to create value in the end. We will look at organic and inorganic strategies. We have got quite a number of plans that are underway that we are hoping to execute on, and hence the excess capital is retained within the group. The second point I wanted to also just cover is the point around what are you going to do with the proceeds from the Aldermore sale? The short answer is that we will go again through the capital allocation framework and have a look and see if there are opportunities that the group can deploy the capital into for better returns. If there are no such opportunities, we certainly will not sit on the cash from the disposal.
I hope that is as much time as we have to spend on that particular topic. The management team certainly knows what to do with excess capital, and we know how to return it where that is required to shareholders. In closing, FirstRand is on track to deliver another strong operational performance in FY 2027, meeting the new ROE and growth commitments. We expect to deliver earnings growth around the midpoint of the earnings range, which we have announced. High single-digit growth in NII, a strong NIR trajectory, and improving credit outcomes. The combination of a growing top line and an increased focus on managing costs will result in positive Jaws, something this management team is fully committed to.
In closing, let me start by thanking Harry Kellan, who has been with the group for more than 22 years and has been a great custodian in the various roles that he has played with the group. Harry, I hope you have been sitting here feeling very proud about the delivery of the FNB franchise, which you looked after over the last two years. When you step down for early retirement, we wish you all the best for the journey ahead, and we hope to see you around. We miss you, Harry. Lastly, thank you to our customers across the group. Your trust in us inspires us to innovate to support your current and evolving needs. A thank you to the employees of FirstRand across all our jurisdictions.
You are the people that are responsible for delivering the good results that we have just unpacked today, and you are the people that are going to ensure that we meet our shareholder commitments and customer commitments going forward. I will now pause to take any questions if we still have any time left. Thank you for joining us. Okay. Are there any questions in the room? Should we start here? James's hand is up.
Good afternoon. Congratulations on a strong operating performance. Three questions from me, two on credit and one on NIR. The two on credit, just regarding the revised credit loss ratio range, 100 basis points- 130 basis points. Apart from the U.K. impact, have there been any other changes through the cycle ranges at a product level? The second credit-related question on WesBank and the adjustment for vehicle price. Then just on NIR, particularly impressive expansion in trading and fair value revenues. How should we think about growth in that dimension going forward? Thank you.
Okay. Markos.
All right. Thanks, James. The range has remained 100 basis points- 130 basis points, and we've called it out before at that level. The main change was in retail, where it's increased by about 10 basis points, I think, in terms of its range. Mainly off the back of the unsecured growth being faster than the secured over the past period. So it's just an adjustment, but it's small enough that it doesn't impact the group range. On the WesBank piece, okay, this is an out-of-model adjustment the team have had to build because we don't have the data available yet to see what vehicle prices are going to do. But as you can expect from FirstRand, we've tried to be conservative.
NIR?
The last point on NIR on fair value, RMB's rebounding markets were strong in the year. If you go back to look at historical levels, there is still a bit of growth and runway left there for their team, and they continue to execute on a plan where, let us call it reset one is done, and they are in phase two of that now.
Okay.
Thank you. That broadening of the CLR or 10 points in unsecured, does that reflect a greater appetite for unsecured?
Yeah. So it would reflect that unsecured is going to grow faster than secured in the portfolio. That would mean in terms of it, there is a slight tilt towards that portfolio, and it would come from some of the growth activities Mary mentioned, like Optasia and the lending activity from that over time.
Do you have the infrastructure to manage that credit risk?
Yes, we believe we do.
We believe we do.
Yeah.
Okay. No further questions in the room it would appear. Should we go online? Oh.
Thanks, Mary. We have questions from Baron Gomo and Charles Russell. We will start with Baron's question. He has got two questions. Where do you expect net interest income growth to come from in FY 2027, volume, margin, or mix? What could derail that? Second question, what specific cost levers will drive the targeted improvement in the cost-to-income ratio next year while you continue investing in technology?
Okay, Markos, I think those also sound like your questions.
Thanks, Mary. What is the first one? Where do you expect growth?
Where is NII going to come from?
Oh, yes. The NII growth will be predominantly volume led. I think the margin, if you look at the 29 basis points, we have already achieved a step change in a rate cutting cycle. There will probably be some reduction in margin from the current levels, mainly off the back of growth in the denominator to NIM being lending assets. The group has plans there, and if you think that most of RMB's call it distribution strategies in the base. You should see growth from their portfolio, which is slightly lower margin than the average of the group. But it will be led by both deposit growth and advances growth predominantly from that perspective. The last point to make is some of the margin will annualize in from this year. The growth that you are seeing in the second half of the year will annualize in as well through that point.
Lastly, on the cost levers, I think in the variable cost base that we have, there is still a lot of room for us to improve, and we are investing quite a bit in use cases around AI initiatives that can free up some of the capacity there. Some of those are actually before you get to people related, they are actually more professional fees and other costs that we incur. So that would be a tactical immediate lever. On the structural side, there is work to be done around the new position Mary put forward around the technology enterprise-wide activity and the business services area as well.
Yeah. I think in short, I would just say broad-based.
I think across the group, we need to make sure that we are efficient, and I think there is proper focus on that.
We have got questions from Charles Russell. He has four, so I will just ask the first two. Can you comment on your investment in Optasia, touching on the weak equity market performance over the last few months and possible end state ownership percentage, assuming 26% is suboptimal? Second question, can you unpack the disparity between the 7% core loan growth and 2% average interest-earning assets growth?
Yeah, right. Let me take the first one. On Optasia, I think we are quite happy with how the partnership is unfolding. If I may remind shareholders, we said at the point in time, it was a platform that looked attractive to us, okay? But the platform can look attractive to us, it does not necessarily mean that we will be able to unlock all the value from it. The initiatives of the past year have been very encouraging, launching products. We remain quite comfortable with that. I think I am not in a position to say what our future plans are going to be. I think on comments on the price, I think they release their results next week. Optasia release their results next week. Maybe that is a good question to pose to them.
But for us, it was a financial investment that allowed us to partner with, I think, a lending tech company that so far is delivering on the promise of what we were looking for from them.
Okay, then I will unpack the advances growth question. If you think about closing advances growth, it has got quite a few impacts in it. There is exchange rate. On the average, there is timing of the distribution of the RMB portfolio, which plays into that average rate. Of course, last year's growth and origination. The second piece is the strong origination was all in the second half of the year, which also then averages in as well.
Thanks. The last two is, what is your outlook for the 2027 PE realizations? That is the first one. Second one, can you comment on GM performance Q3 versus Q4, as well as growth prospects into 2027?
Let me just repeat that last one.
Can you comment on the global markets performance for Q3 versus Q4, as well as growth prospects in 2027?
I think growth prospects for global markets, we have already covered. Emrie, I am going to give you the opportunity to talk about private equity realizations and maybe just the performance of markets over those two. Before Emrie starts, let us just also say that the private equity earnings at ZAR 3.8 billion, it is quite a high base. From our perspective, if we maintain that run rate, we would be doing very well from a combination of lots of things. I think we want to move beyond just realizations, but looking at that as an overall portfolio. Em, do you have the mic?
I do.
Okay.
Thanks, Mary. I think Mary's quite right that the level of private equity contribution is more or less where we want it to be. There is obviously cyclicality in the realizations. We are much more consistent in how we think around both realizations and investment. One, the timing of when the realizations actually get implemented is not always in our control. Having said that, we have a two to three-year outlook, and we feel confident around our ability to continue realizing our assets in that portfolio. On global markets, pleased to say that the performance continued to be strong in that part of our business. For me, it is really about, Markos mentioned, the reset of strategy, and it's much more of a fundamental change to that business.
Where historically it was very focused on institutional clients, and we have now successfully expanded that focus into our broader client base. I think it is a much more strategic shift than opportunistic event-based revenue. It's looking good so far for the year.
Thanks, Emrie. This is a business that we are still building. In years to come, I would like it to also be a kind of business that if you have the kind of market dislocations that we saw in the third quarter of our financial year, that should be able to be evident in our business. We got our fair share of what was available to us for the size of our franchise for now.
Thanks, Mary. We also had another question on surplus capital, but I believe you've answered that on your last few slides. Can I just ask if there's questions online first, or should we Okay.
No, it's good.
In the room. Thank you.
I get the impression that following your Aldermore unhappiness, you've undertaken a very basic, broad overview and restructuring of the group in terms of where you are and where you're going. Would I be right?
There are perhaps three points to that. Aldermore is a business, good business. We're in the process of selling that. We've always actually been constructive and hopeful that we can get it in better shape, and we're in the process of doing all of that. So that's Aldermore. We had always said we're getting it into a better shape so we can have options for the group. When the decision in the U.K. with the FCA scheme went the way it did, it just took away the kind of a supportive environment we would need to get the business in better shape and have options in future. So in a way, it fast-tracked. We had to sit back and review the operating environment there, and our conclusion was that, I think it'd be difficult for us to justify deploying more capital into that jurisdiction.
So jurisdiction versus Aldermore, separate points. The group operating model or reoperating model was probably in the making for quite some time. I think we moved from being only franchise-led to being customer-centric. Then we didn't really complete the full journey because sometimes these big changes, you must take them in phases. So I see our current client operating model, and models also in RMB, as a completion of the process to move away from just only franchise, but rather having customer franchises that use all the brands as opposed to the brands being the businesses. So short answer is really that all of this is perhaps just part of a much longer story of, I think, planned changes on where we're going to execute and what are we going to do differently, because the environment keeps changing, and I think our business keeps evolving.
Can I just ask if there's any questions on the conference call?
We have a question from Harry Botha of Bank of America Securities. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good afternoon. Could you please provide more detail on the credit loss ratio guidance for 2027, possibly at a segmental level? It sounds like you see a higher credit loss ratio than the 91 basis points in the second half. Is there anything else other than the front book strain that you're concerned about? Then second question is just around the Insure and Invest market share gains. Are there any immediate strategy changes that you're making or just continuation of the product buildup that you've flagged?
Yes, I think it is a difficult one with credit with this current situation with the Middle East. I guess we have provided for some of that risk profile and our guidance towards the bottom end of the range implies that we go back to that run rate we had in the previous six months.
Effectively, if inflation continued to remain low and rates where they were, you would see that continue. But we do have a rate hike coming relatively early in the period, and inflation is running higher than where it was. So that affordability gap that customers had in the past six months has shrunk. I think that will weigh in. The uncertainty actually lies more in demand. The appetite and the rails we have and the credit capability, and collections are all fine. It is actually whether there is softer demand now off the back of some of this pressure when customers start to see rates going back up and inflation higher, that is actually the bigger risk factor.
I think the telling point will be, can we not have to realize some of those FLI provisions because the environment does not get as worse as what our models say it is?
Yeah. Okay, and then on Invest and Insure, the question is, are we planning on doing more or closing down some of the lines of business, I heard? On Insure, obviously, I think our big focus there is just really scaling. I think that is a straightforward mandate there into a different segment. Invest, there is still a bit of work for us to do. I am encouraged about the inflows, I am encouraged about the focus on distribution by the businesses. We are certainly in a much better place. But there remains opportunities for us to convert that top line profitably, I think into our earnings. And so we are focused on improving the operational capacity of that business, actually, really. So there has been investments in platform, but we believe we are not there yet.
Is it something that we would look at to see how we can have a platform that enables better customer engagement? I think those are things that we are looking at. Then I think the last opportunity is actually really provided by our client operating model, where we can actually now look at Invest as one product house, obviously with many building blocks inside there, but I think that allows us to perhaps be able to better leverage the skills of the various teams. Going forward, Bheki Mkhize is going to look after that entire Invest cluster. Let's see what he produces over the next year in terms of thoughts of how we leapfrog.
We have one more question from Chris Stewart, just came through online. It says, "Post the disposal of Aldermore, you become a very SA-centric business from an earnings perspective. Given low structural growth in the SA economy, does this worry you in terms of your longer term growth prospects?
Thank you, Chris. I hope you are getting better. I think as I said earlier on, that we've continued to generate good growth in SA. I think we've done it in an environment that's had tough macros. The key for us is really just making sure that we stay disciplined, that I think we look out for opportunities to grow. That doesn't change. Chris, I think our outlook as outlined is one of a cycle that's going to be more supportive. It's perhaps a bit derailed at the moment, but we think the macros will lift and some of these reforms are actually going to have positive effects. In that environment, our strong franchises are well positioned to play into that. We are not so negative on our ability to grow in South Africa.
What is actually really important, though, for the group to get right, I think, is to gain more traction from our businesses or at least the places where we play on the continent. I think making sure that we are capturing a meaningful share of activity from the continent, is something that becomes really a priority. If you wanted to feel that SA is going to be lower growth, we need to participate more strongly in markets where there are stronger growth prospects.
We have no further questions. Thank you.
Okay, this brings me to the end. Thank you very much to everyone who sat through this very long presentation. We appreciate your attendance.