Good morning, good afternoon, and thank you all very much for joining us at what is our first JSE Capital Markets event. It's a real pleasure to have you with us today. This marks a significant moment for us as we bring you into the heart of our journey, one that's about driving innovation and delivering sustainable value to our stakeholders. Today, I'm excited to take you through this journey, how we're building a strong foundation, modernizing our business, and also focusing on key areas that will drive our future success. Throughout the session, you're going to hear from our leaders who are instrumental in making this vision a reality. We'll share with you how we're positioning the JSE to remain competitive, agile, and innovative, while ensuring that we continue to deliver long-term value for our stakeholders.
Over the next two hours, we'll delve into several key areas. First, we'll walk you through how we're modernizing our infrastructure, sharpening our focus on our core operations, and setting ourselves up to capture future opportunities. We'll also focus on the progress that we've made through our diversification strategy, which has really been central to our resilience and our growth. You'll hear from the team about the ongoing initiatives that we've undertaken driving our diversification, as well as the levers that we are planning to pull to accelerate the growth and innovation across the business. Our goal is very much clear and unified, creating value not only for shareholders, but also for stakeholders, clients, investors, partners, and the broader market.
And that's what today is really all about, showing you how we are executing on that vision and the progress that we've made. So let's start with a high-level view of the JSE, facts that many of you no doubt already know. As one of the top 20 exchanges globally by market capitalization, and also the largest exchange in Africa, we operate in a unique position. With a market cap of what was, in August, ZAR 18.6 trillion, and now is almost ZAR 20 trillion, JSE is much more than just a financial marketplace. It's a vital engine for economic growth, investment, and for innovation in the region. We've built a reputation as an efficient and trusted regulator, and a reputation that is supported by a market availability of 99.99%.
That level of uptime is not only impressive, but it's also on par and even exceeding some of our world's most developed exchanges. Another key strength of the JSE is the range of multi-class asset products, assets and services and products that we offer. This diversity allows us to be less reliant on the traditional trading revenues, while enabling us to cater for a much broader spectrum of participants in the financial markets, from institutional investors to retail traders. It also positions us to respond more effectively to the evolving needs of our markets. Finally, we're going to be looking at the numbers. Our return on equity and our dividend yield. Looking at this, it's really clear to see that we deliver strong value to our shareholders. We'll hear a little bit more about this through Fawzia's presentation.
We're consistently generating returns while maintaining a fine balance between growth and innovation. Having a look at the next slide, let's just take a bit of a step back and reflect on the progress that the JSE has made over the past decade. Over the past 10 years, we've seen a period of tremendous expansion and resilience. Our market cap has grown by an impressive 68% over the past decade, and this is underpinned by the strength of single name companies and major sectors. This growth reflects the confidence that both local and now growing and increasingly global investors have in the JSE, as a platform for raising capital and investment. Moving on, you'll see here that diversification has and continues to be a key pillar for our strategy, and it's one that's served us particularly well.
Over the past five years, we've significantly broadened our revenue base, reducing our dependence, as you can see on the left-hand side graph, on capital markets revenues, while increasing the contributions from other segments. As you can see in the chart on the left, the capital markets' contribution to our revenues has decreased from 45% to 37% at the end of last year. The shift has been enabled by growth in areas such as JSE Clear and our JIS, and we expect to see these areas to continue to grow as we push forward on our strategic initiatives. The performance over this period is really best reflected in our non-trading income, which has grown in this graph by 67.3% since 2019.
If we include the interims of this year, that growth is more than 80%. This represents, over this period, a compound annual growth rate of 10.8%. A rate that's particularly impressive given the challenging economic environment that we've been navigating. This growth underscores the success of our diversification strategy, but it also shows our ability to tap into new revenue streams and asset classes that position us for future growth. We'll hear from Val a little bit later about our asset class diversification and our overall capital markets drive. This is a very interesting slide because while innovation and diversification are key strategic pillars in driving the performance of the JSE, the performance of our trading market is inherently linked to overall market segments and macro factors.
Now, if you compare in the top graph, the green versus the black bars, you'll see that we had a very negative month just prior to the elections, with the risk of wait-and-see sentiment driving flows out of the economy. So quite a material increase in the negative outflows. As we shift over the last four months, post the establishment of the GNU, you can see that the green bars significantly reduce relative to the prior year, which is the black bars. So if we take now an overall look at the flows in the equities and bond market this year. As at the end of September, we reported a decrease in the equity market, foreign outflows to ZAR -94.4 billion, versus the ZAR 99.8 billion negative flows in the same period the prior year.
On the other hand, the bond market, foreign flows increased by just over 3x to ZAR 84.7 billion over the same period, versus the ZAR 27 billion positive inflows for the same three quarters of 2023. So we see there's been a clear shift, a point of inflection over the last couple of months, really driven by the Government of National Unity, and we've seen a reduction in the net outflows of our equity markets year to date. Moving on to what we've done over the past five years. We're very proud of the progress that we've made in transforming the JSE over the last five years. But this transformation isn't just about adapting to the present, it's really about positioning ourselves to meet the needs of the future.
So let me just highlight very briefly a couple of the key initiatives that have been instrumental in this transformation. In 2019, as we all know, the ITaC project went live, and this not only aligned us with international best practice, but it reinforced our commitment to operational resilience. In 2020, we formed a private placements partnership with an international fintech called Globacap, and we also launched our Sustainability Segment, both of which reflect our commitment to fostering inclusive and sustainable growth. We believe that by expanding access to capital markets, we can drive long-term value creation in ways that benefit not only investors, but society at large. Val will talk a little bit more to this area of our business later. And then last year, we began, as you all know, the modernization of our Broker Deal Accounting system.
This project, which is currently in its pilot phase, will eventually transform from old technology into new modernized Java language, and it'll also facilitate the transfer of that data to the cloud. This is a crucial step in increasing our agility, enabling us to innovate faster, and providing the flexibility that we need in a rapidly evolving digital world. Both Alicia and Tebalo will touch on this later in the presentation. Then finally, as you all know, 10 years ago, we launched our colocation services, which provided clients with the opportunity to colocate their trading engines alongside [IaaS], and thereby providing lowest latency connectivity for trading. This was genuinely a game changer in both operational excellence and in latency.
Last year, we took this a step further by providing Colo 2.0 colocation service, and this was in a collaboration with Beeks & IPC. And this service enhances our ability to deliver faster, more reliable services to our clients, and keeping us at the forefront of technology in the exchange space. Tebalo will talk a little bit more about this later. As we move to some of the key trends shaping our industry, it's impossible to ignore the transformative role that technology is playing. The financial markets are evolving at an unprecedented pace, and this transformation is being driven by a number of factors, all of which are shaping how the markets operate and how participants engage in them. Let me highlight just a couple of the most significant trends that we're seeing across the industry.
Firstly, we are witnessing the disintermediation of market infrastructures. Much of this is driven by the next block, which is blockchain and digitization. Disintermediation and the new technologies of blockchain and digitization can improve the efficiency and lower costs for participants. To remain relevant, we are modernizing to ensure that we provide platforms that cater for the evolving needs. Alicia will chat to you a little bit, in a bit more detail about what we're doing here. Alongside technological innovation, we're seeing increased M&A activity in the industry. M&A creates opportunities for exchanges like ours to expand our capabilities into new markets and to deliver more comprehensive services to our clients. The success that we've experienced in JIS is an incredibly good example of how we've responded to this trend, and Val will elaborate a little bit more on this a little later.
And then, of course, the trend towards shorter settlement cycles is another major development that we're seeing across the world. This is an area where Alicia and her team are engaging and working actively with market participants to determine the appropriate pace and the appropriate time in which we might look to reduce our settlement cycle. In addition, we're also witnessing the emergence of new marketplaces for sustainable capital formation. New platforms are emerging to facilitate the flow of capital into sustainable ventures, and this is a place where the JSE is very proud to be performing a leading role through initiatives such as our Sustainability Segment, which is dedicated towards driving ESG-focused projects. Another key driver of the change is the growth in technology, data, and analytics.
Whether it's through AI-powered analytics, big data, or advanced trading algorithms, the role of technology in market intelligence is only going to expand. And as an exchange, we must keep pace of these advances. Mark will spend some time explaining how we're responding to these developments, and in many ways, are on the forefront of that development curve. Finally, we're seeing the rise of alternative assets and private markets. Investors are increasingly looking beyond traditional asset markets with alternative assets for example, private equity, venture capital, and cryptocurrencies, and these are all gaining prominence. Val and Alicia will discuss both the JPP and the digital market solutions that we're planning, respectively. So these trends collectively represent both challenges and opportunities for the JSE.
As the market evolves, we're very committed to staying at the forefront of these changes and innovating through technology, adapting our infrastructure, and ensuring that we remain as a trusted, innovative platform for all market participants. And now, as we briefly turn to the topic of regulation, it's clear that the evolving regulatory landscape, both locally and globally, is shaping how markets operate and how investors perceive both risk and opportunity. We've outlined on this slide some of the key regulatory developments that will impact the JSE and the broader South African financial markets. First, I'll touch on market fragmentation, which has been a growing concern since the expansion and licensing of new exchanges and a new CSD.
To address this, a draft conduct standard has been developed to provide a cooperation between exchanges and to provide for interoperability between market infrastructures, with the aim of reducing inefficiencies in the market and enabling fair competition. As market co-participants, it's crucial that we all work together to support these regulatory efforts. Next is the Conduct of Financial Institutions, or CoFI Bill, as it's widely known, which represents a significant step forward in operationalizing what was initially the South Africa's Twin Peaks financial regulatory framework. The National Treasury has committed to taking this bill to Parliament by the end of 2024. Another key area is the central clearing of OTC derivatives.
While central clearing mandates implementation has been delayed until 2028, it's important to recognize that this gives us time for us to prepare for these changes and to ensure that all market participants are ready to comply when the time comes. This shift towards central clearing is designed to mitigate counterparty risk, to improve market stability, and also to align South Africa with global best practices and global standards, particularly around the G20 mandate. The Financial Sector Conduct Authority, or FSCA, has designated crypto assets as financial products. This is an interim step which gives investors greater protection in what has traditionally been a much more volatile and largely unregulated space.
The CoFI Bill, and the proposed amendments of the Financial Markets Act, are expected to provide a framework that offers both insight and flexibility for innovation, ensuring that as the crypto market continues to evolve, investors' interests remain safeguarded. On a less positive note, South Africa's recent gray listing by the Financial Action Task Force, or FATF, has had a negative impact on market sentiment. Being placed on the gray list in 2023 highlights the need for continued efforts to strengthen our anti-money laundering and our counter-terrorism financing frameworks. And amendments to the Companies Act place a higher disclosure burden on listed companies, especially as it relates to remuneration, with significant challenges for directors if the binding vote on companies' implementation plans are not passed for two consecutive years.
In sum, the regulatory environment provides a situation of both challenge and opportunity. At the JSE, we are committed to working with our regulators, our market participants, and our stakeholders to navigate these challenges and to continue to create value in an increasingly complex regulatory environment. Sustainability is very much at the heart of the JSE strategy, not just because it's the right thing to do, but importantly because it's increasingly becoming a critical driver of long-term value creation. Our role at the exchange is to enable an environment where sustainable investment and growth can thrive, and we're very proud of the progress that we've made in this regard. I'm very briefly going to walk you through how we're integrating sustainability across our value chain to create tangible outcomes for all of our stakeholders. First and foremost, we are committed to enhancing ESG disclosure.
To help meet the growing need of transparency, our Sustainability Disclosure Guidance is a critical tool that helps companies to meet investor expectations and our regulatory requirements. And it's really all about promoting better decision-making around ESG factors. Our Sustainability Segment is another key pillar of our efforts. To date, it's raised ZAR 11.7 billion, with 82 sustainable bonds listed. These numbers speak to the growing appetite for sustainable investors, as companies and investors alike recognize the importance of aligning financial returns with positive social and environmental outcomes. Internally, we're also focused on enhancing our own sustainability performance. As a business, it's very important for us to lead by example.
Our internal staff ratings have grown tremendously and are at an all-time high, and we're very pleased to have grown from what was Level 3 BEE in 2019 to the current Level 1. Moreover, our Net Promoter Score, as you can see in the graph on the bottom right-hand side, has seen significant improvement, from - 28 in 2019 to 33 in 2023. This dramatic shift in the NPS score really underpins and demonstrates how we are growing trust and satisfaction among our stakeholders, who recognize that the value that we are delivering through our sustainability initiatives and others is very important. Ultimately, for us, sustainability isn't really just a buzzword for us. It's a solution that is underpinning everything that we do.
By integrating sustainability across our entire value chain, we're ensuring that the exchange remains resilient, forward-looking, and is poised to deliver well into our future. Turning now just briefly to the slide 15, I wanted to just quickly highlight our performance, both in the ordinary dividend per share and our overall performance over the last five years. So while we continue to operate in a dynamic and volatile market, the JSE continues to be resilient, and we are very pleased to have been able to maintain quality earnings, which is underpinned and supported very much by the success of our diversification strategy. Then, as you know, we are committed and continue to be committed to our payout ratio of 67%-100% of our earnings.
Then on the right-hand side, you can see that the JSE Limited share price, which is in green, has grown by more than 45% over the last six months, very much in line with that point of inflection I spoke about in the foreign flows just after the introduction of the Government of National Unity. So it's clear that the sentiment towards South Africa is shifting, and post largely off the back of successful and business-friendly Government of National Unity elections. And of course this all translates into potential upside for the JSE. Thank you very much. I'm now going to hand over to Valdene, who will run you through some salient points relating to our capital markets.
Thank you. Thank you, Leila. Good day, I'm Valdene Reddy, I'm Director of Capital Markets. In this division of the JSE, we look after largely all the trade-related and product-related activity of the core functions of the exchange, and as we grow and diversify the exchange, looking to grow along the value chain in capital markets products. As highlighted by Leila, we run a multi-asset class exchange, and within that, the primary focus is that of capital raise and trading. As mentioned, we are looking to supplement that with services such as colocation and new markets, to add and enhance and deepen our market services, and then adjacent to that, add businesses and services that not only give us diversification of our revenue, but also enhance our product offering to our clients along the value chain.
Specifically within capital markets, we wanted to just highlight some of the areas in terms of how we price and make our money in these areas, and what would be some of the dependencies and drivers in terms of revenue generation. In the primary market space, largely this comes from the capital raise on the public markets, which is the listings in the equities and debt markets, as well as structured products. Here, we largely make our revenue line in terms of a value-based fee model, and within that, it is really market cap dependent in terms of issuances.
In adding new products and services, such as our actively managed ETFs or actively managed certificates in our structured products, we sell those as packages, as we enhance the structured products suite, but they are not large revenue contributors, but add in terms of diversification of product. In the secondary market trading, we run our cash equities, cash bonds, and five derivative markets. Most of those are either value-based or contract-based, and so larger trade activity or heightened trade activity adds to the revenue contribution for the group. As Leila mentioned, not only does the asset class diversification support the business through cycles and ebbs and flows of trade activity, but also business diversification as we move away from trade-related revenue lines to more annuity-based revenue lines to complement through the cycles.
Supporting that, but specifically from a capital markets arena, we've added services such as colocation. Colocation has been on a decade-long strategy to deepen and to mature, and we've recently added Colocation 2, which is best-in-class shared infrastructure services and optimizing some of the solution in the cloud. To bring a best innovative offering with, we've partnered with global providers who invest heavily in the development within this space, but also gives our clients the ability to flex their cost spend by moving some of the goods to the cloud, as well as not heavily capitalizing, but sharing in the infrastructure of a global provider. We've also, in the defense of the delistings narrative, and I will come to that, specifically in the capital raise slide, we've launched the JSE Private Placements.
What we've seen over the past decade is a shift globally between public and private markets, in not only asset growth, but also in the capital formation between private equity and private debt away from public market issuances. Our response to this was a defense, not only to the delisting space that we felt over the past 20 years, probably, but also to provide a home and a marketplace for new capital alternative raises, and JSE Private Placements has stood next to our public listed offering, but will take a long time to incubate. Here we have a similar pricing model to our public markets. It's a listing fee or a set up fee, and then we have a value-based fee on closure. Then a new market, which we look to explore. At the moment, we've launched carbon markets under JSE Ventures.
But as we look to diversify away from traditional asset classes and look to the demand of new asset classes, carbon market was an area that we felt strategically aligned to national agenda objectives, and will be a potential supply demand for the continent to unlock economic paths for the country, as well as across the region. It is a long incubation period as there's net zero commitment set globally, and as the compliant market converges to the voluntary market. But the JSE launched a voluntary carbon market in partnership with the world's largest player in the secondary market trade of voluntary carbon credits, and we will see this mature over the next five years. We are in conversation with some of the largest emitters, as well as the big projects who are leaning in to generate carbon credits.
And even in the wake of the liberalization of energy reforms in South Africa, have also launched products of Renewable Energy Certificates that can be traded in the secondary market. And here we will have a similar structure, which is this trading fees based on a per credit basis. Lastly, as has been highlighted to Leila of the diversification of the group revenue, through the acquisition of JSE-JIS, which is JSE Investor Services, and later supplemented with the acquisition of Investec's Share Plans business, we have launched JSE Investor Services, which is largely a transfer secretary, custody, as well as a Share Plans business offering.
Not only does the support in goods and services that we can offer to our clients, in particular our listed clients, our issuers, but also adds diversification to the group revenue, which Fawzia will cover later, where JIS now contributes 7% of top line group revenue to the JSE, as well as decent profitability and CAGR growth in that EBITDA line year-on-year as the business and services grow. If I focus on the three key revenues of protecting our business, growing and diversifying our revenue, we segment this largely into three big chapters of heading. One is on capital formation, two is on liquidity and market quality, which we feel is a strong differentiator, not only to competitive exchanges, but also as a destination for developed and emerging market trade activity.
And lastly, in launching new products and services as we supplement and complement the core capital markets businesses of the exchange. In capital formation, a huge part of our focus has been on generating new listings, whether it is equity, debt, or structured product issuances. What we've done to complement this is, despite the macro challenges we faced in the past decade, we've done a concerted effort with our Issuer Reg team, which Andre will cover later, to really reform and rightsize not only our product offering, but the ease and attractiveness of listing at the JSE and in South Africa. We've done a whole raft of exchange offer regulatory reforms in our listing space to enhance the equities issuances. And while it hasn't manifested in fresh IPOs, it's given us product offering that makes us competitive both locally and globally.
And we've seen the manifestation of that in the additional capital raises that we've seen, as well as the increase in secondary listings on our market or new listings on our market through unlocking value. We've also grown our debt segment. In particular, we'd like to highlight our Sustainability Segment, where we launched it in 2017 with Green Bond, but have supplemented that by adding in sustainability bonds and social impact bonds in 2019 and 2020, and see that as a fully fledged, diverse segment in the debt space. Not only does it give us an awareness and a positioning to stronger ESG focus, but we see that these instruments are commanding decent demand, not too compromising on the yield, and will be the first choice of issuance for our debt market, as we grow that space.
On the structured product side, we've worked closely with our regulators to bring in new products. The two that we'd like to highlight is the Actively Managed Certificates and Actively Managed ETFs. Over the last decade, we saw a shift from active to passive management. But what we see now is more of a hybrid formation, as has been evidenced with the demand for the AM ETFs, where we even see our local buy side and international community coming to issue more product that is listed on exchange, has better price formation, more transparent, and is more cost effective, and we see this as a growth pipeline for more product on exchange. We will continue to work with our issuer reg team to ensure relevant, fit-for-purpose product.
We will continue to geographically diversify the capital formation initiative as we chase new jurisdictions of which to attract secondary listings. Where we feel that we won't generate fresh IPOs, we believe firmly that there's a huge benefit to our market to increase our addressable universe in the number of listings, so there are many initiatives between the London Stock Exchange, Amsterdam, Singapore, Hong Kong, the Middle East, such as Saudi, New York Stock Exchange, to name but a few, where we are chasing new secondary listings to enhance and deepen our addressable universe in the capital formation, but also in the secondary market trade activity, and lastly, we will continue on SOE and SA Inc. roadshows. What we've seen is a disinvestment for the projects over the past 10 years in South Africa.
As investors become more aware of South Africa or reinvigorated interest, we will supplement that with showcasing a stability in our macro and a positive trajectory in the reforms that have been put in structurally for South Africa, and then through the JSE. Really an outlet through public markets, trusted capital markets, for mechanisms in which our foreign investors can reinvest into South Africa. We are working on a whole SOE pipeline to bring these instruments to market. While they are a long way away in terms of equity and debt issuances, the frameworks that we are proactively leading, both on a regulatory as well as on a structural perspective, will stand quite good testament in terms of bringing new equity and debt issuances from the public sector to public to the JSE.
On liquidity and market quality, this is really where we make the largest part of our revenue at the exchange, both in trading as well as in the Post-Trade Services. In the liquidity and market quality, South Africa, and in particular, the JSE is top 20 in the world, we have a long-established pipeline with international clients. Through our Colo initiatives, continue to see growth and diversification through adding in new clients from geographically diverse regions. Where previously the South African market was known to have a good footprint of foreign investors from the European, U.K., and U.S. markets, we're seeing that extend now to the Middle East, India, interest from China and Saudi, Hong Kong, as well as new regions such as Germany and Amsterdam, as we've seen Brexit shifts with capital flows out of the U.K.
We will continue on that strategy to diversify our clients, but also to deepen our market quality and liquidity, to stand us differentiated not only to alternative venues and fragmentation globally, but also to the local competition and exchanges. That said, it is imperative for us to ensure that we have the right balance of client, but the right product and trade mechanisms to ensure deep markets and market quality that is not, that does not add elements of toxicity, but of good execution. And so we are very pedantic about new trade types and mechanisms. One, to service the deep institutional base of South Africa, but the balance in which to also keep up with the change of flows, add in new clients, such as low latency clients, and then also respond to a slight uptick in the retail market that we see.
I will cover a few of the market quality metrics shortly, but this is a high area of precision that we focus on, 'cause it really is the bread and butter and the backbone of the exchange in generating the core services and trade activity. The regulatory reforms and technology enhancements within this space is equally important, one, to increase the appeal of South Africa, but two, to ensure that we have resilient markets, competitive and comparable markets. Not only is it easy to convert new trading clients into our market, but it also gives us a value proposition that stands as strong and comparable as we are attracting new clients into our market and as we command more dual listings. We have 30% of our counters that are dual listed, and as mentioned, we'll continue to add to those counters.
Lastly, the new markets and services is really to support the group's strategy of diversification of revenue. In the carbon market space, we are focusing on new markets such as carbon markets and JSE Private Placements, as well as new goods and services, which is JIS. I will cover a little bit more deeper in JIS, but to highlight with carbon, we are looking to launch the secondary, voluntary market, voluntary carbon market trading. As mentioned, it's a long incubation period, but this can stand as a new marketplace for our exchange as that develops and grows.
With JSE Private Placements, while we are focusing right now on the digitization and automation of private markets, and just on the capital formation, we have product services with the international fintech that we've partnered with, such as secondary market, secondary round activity, and liquidity, as well as digital registry services and data sales that we can sell out of a private markets marketplace. In terms of the capital formation of the JSE, as mentioned, we look at this as a multi-offering exchange. Within the public markets, we focus on the equities market, debt, and structured products, and in the launch of JSE Private, now the private markets under equities and debt. With the public markets, equities remains our biggest trade activity, both in the primary market as well as secondary market trade activity.
We see a solid pipeline of companies listing, either through M&A activity, regulatory reforms, transfer from other exchanges, such as the U.K. or even some of the local exchanges, as well as a pipeline of fresh IPOs. This year, we've seen four new listings and a pipeline of another three that are likely to come to market. We've seen a massive uptick in the secondary additional capital raise between 2024 and 2023, and as the macro rehabilitates and looks more promising, we see a pipeline through our sell-side universe that we look, that is quite promising to come to market over the next 18 months. On the debt side, we predominantly issue government bonds, and that is the biggest market for us.
Even though we have inflation cycles correcting and tapering globally, South Africa has always stood quite strong on our yield issuances and in terms of the yield returns that we give on our debt market. With the macro improving, improvements on the FATF gray list, South Africa slightly improving on the credit downgrades from the worst that we've seen ourselves, this will stand as a strong market for us and will be supported by some of the product issuances that we bring. Then, as highlighted earlier on, the Sustainability Segment has been a great offering and will continue to grow that. On the structured product side, we are actively managing growing our ETFs and AMCs, and this is a growth pipeline.
And on the private market side, long incubation period, but we see this as an alternative to capital raise, and we'll continue to focus in areas such as infrastructure, SMEs, SOEs, and other projects. This slide really captures the asset class diversification of the exchange. If you highlight from 2019, it was core focus, from our division, was on the trade activity, from capital raise to trade activity. So if you look at the big blue bar, we have 46% in our equity market that contributed to capital, capital markets yield.
But if you look on the complete right-hand side, first half of 2021, we have equities as 34%, but that really just came from the dilution of revenue from the addition of JIS, which now adds 20% to the division and about 7% to the group, and then also the growth in colocation services as I highlighted, which is now 4%. In terms of the market quality and innovation, these are metrics that we measure quite closely. If you look at the JSE, the caliber and quality of our market is really important and what we position. The average value traded, while it's been cyclical in our equities market, has stood quite strong, both in performance and absolute terms, not only to the continent but to the rest of the world.
As well as on the quoted spread, where you see the quality of execution at the JSE, quite remarkable, not only to the global peers, but also to our local competitors. And this speaks to the execution quality at the JSE, which through our enhancements of trade types and client mix and services, is something that we've managed to grow, enhance, and scale. Further to add is the auction activity. Globally, you've seen a massive shift to off-exchange venues or various auctions. At the JSE, we have about 25% now on average, going through our auction. It's a meaningful period where people can get execution done, but it still means that throughout the day, we have 75% of trade activity that you can access through our lit trading hours, and that's quite a compelling metric.
The last quality metric that I wanted to highlight was on full probability, so where we get compared against our top-line pricing, full probability is the second order of market impact in terms of how likely it is to fill your execution at the JSE. If you look, we have quite high stats, especially relative to our local competition, but also very comparable to our global peers, where we have dual-listed counters, and common names. The last area I want to focus on is JSE Investor Services. As mentioned, this was an acquisition through Link Market Services in 2020, and further enhanced by the acquisition of Investec's Share Plan business in 2021. This offers registry, custodial services, shareholder management, stakeholder engagement, and share plans management that we can enhance.
It's of strategic importance to the group and to our division, and we will continue to grow this organically and look to diversify the product offering. To summarize, we are a multi-asset class exchange. We're focusing on new clients and geographical diversification to enhance our primary exchange services, but also our business. We will enhance utility services such as colocation and additional products to enhance the revenue, as well as adding in new markets, such as carbon and JSE Private Placements, which we wish to scale, and then further grow goods and services along the value chain, such as JSE Investor Services. All of this encompasses the capital markets strategy to scale new markets, drive new client acquisition, and add to goods and services in the value chain, and support the group objectives of diversifying and defending our core. Thank you.
I'd like to hand over to Alicia to cover the post-trade elements.
Thank you. Good morning, everybody. I'm Alicia Greenwood. I'm the Director of Post Trade Services at the JSE and also the CEO of JSE Clear. I'm going to start by telling you a little bit about our work that we're doing in the digital assets market space. The JSE is proactively investigating the trading of digital assets and adding these innovative digital instruments to our portfolio and offering to our investors. Digital assets, of course, include things like crypto, CBDCs, derivatives of cryptos, and also tokens of real-world assets or of financial instruments. I'm sure you will be aware that there has been an explosion of trading in crypto and more especially in the African continent, where the growth of crypto trading has exceeded the growth rates globally. This activity has largely been through retail investment interest.
However, in 2024, we have seen a material uptick of activity in the digital asset space by very large global institutional companies such as BlackRock, such as ARK, who are not only listing crypto-based ETFs in particular, but are also holding material positions in these types of assets. This uptick of institutional business has really been driven by some key accommodating decisions taken by U.S. regulators, the SEC, early in 2024, and that really has set, I think, the tone globally for increased interest, particularly among institutional investors, and exchanges are offering services to that particular investor base, so there is definitely, for us, an opportunity to investigate these markets further and to expand our offering, and not only to our existing investor base, but also to attract an investor base that we do not hold today.
JSE is working on two particular initiatives. The first one would be to list crypto-based derivatives, like the ETFs and the ETNs we see elsewhere, on our traditional platform. We've seen this strategy being taken by multiple credible, large exchanges across the globe, and it is an interesting approach because it requires very little build to no build or infrastructure development, within the exchange or within our community. It does, however, require us to work on a listings and a regulatory framework within which these instruments will be traded and governed, and that is what we are busy with at the moment.
The second initiative in this space that we are proactively investigating is to establish a blockchain-based infrastructure as a separate, parallel digital exchange on which we are able to target both retail and institutional clients, and offer them a very wide range of these digital instruments. Both of these initiatives will, of course, require us to overcome some of the regulatory hurdles and some of the gray areas that exist in our South African regulatory frameworks around these spaces. But we are certainly doing our due diligence and working closely with our regulators to make sure that we mitigate and address any concerns and risks that are highlighted. We have been extremely encouraged by the very positive response that we've had from our community of stakeholders, as we've discussed these various initiatives with them.
And so we do believe that there is significant market interest to make both of these initiatives a success, and to grow meaningful liquidity pools in the digital asset space over time. Right, moving on then to Post-Trade Services. If you'll indulge me, I am aware that many of the audience may not be very familiar with what exactly Post-Trade Services does. So I thought I would spend a little bit of time just providing with a bit more detail as to what it is that is involved in Post-Trade Service management. There are a number of activities relating to administration of trades, clearing, settlement, and risk management, that occur in the Post-Trade Services area of responsibility in between the timeframe that a trade has matched to the timeframe that a trade has actually settled.
That timeframe can differ from instrument to instrument, and in some cases it can be as short as a day. In other cases, like the derivatives market, those positions can be open for a number of months. So Post-Trade Services is responsible for managing all the open positions before they settle, and of course, we manage the risk that buyers and sellers may renege on their responsibilities before the trade is actually concluded. And so, a lot of our focus is on making sure that we avoid and/or minimize any losses that may occur due to settlement failures, or in fact, due to counterparty defaults during the period that the trade is open.
These, of course, are core activities to any financial market infrastructure, and the JSE indeed has a very proud history and an exceptionally good track record in managing settlement and systemic risk in the markets that we offer to our investors. We have had negligible failed trades over the past multiple years, and certainly no material losses off the back of any issues relating to settlement or counterparty defaults. And this, of course, is a very essential track record for us to have, because it promotes our ability to offer and manage safe and credible markets. And to, of course, attract and retain investors through this confidence in their ability to participate in safe markets, and to choose South Africa and the JSE over the various other investment destinations that they could also have access to.
Post-trade activities vary across the different markets that we manage, and we do have a range of bilateral, clearing approaches in the cash markets today, while we have CCP clearing or central clearing in the derivatives markets. These two risk types are quite different from each other. In the bilateral, space, each buyer and each seller faces off directly to the participant on the other side of the trade, and therefore, they fundamentally hold the risk that that opposing party may default, either outright or may default on the particular settlement of the trade.
CCP clearing is quite different in that the clearing house or the CCP actually legally interposes itself between each buyer and each seller, so that each buyer and each seller now faces off directly to a clearing house that is transparent, well-regulated, with well-publicized risk management capabilities, and also a balance sheet behind it. CCP clearing is most definitely the global best practice approach to managing markets, and this has evolved since the days of enormous losses faced through the Lehman's default back in the '80s. But as things stand today, the JSE does still operate both of these models in the various markets. This is a function of the history as to how we've evolved over the years, and our acquisition of BESA and of SAFEX for the bonds and the derivatives markets a few decades ago.
It is most definitely our stated intention to translate the bilateral markets into the centrally cleared market space, so that we bring all of our markets into a standardized approach, which gives us the ability to offer various value propositions to both our investors, who can benefit from the benefits of netting in a portfolio basis rather than expensive silo-based approaches and also operational efficiencies. From the JSE's perspective, of course, it does allow us to build out on our clearinghouse, JSE Clear, and to benefit from efficiencies of reuse of infrastructure sets. So JSE Clear is the CCP of the JSE, it's been in existence for over 20 years now, and this is certainly the foundational financial market infrastructure that we will develop all of our further Post-Trade Services strategies into. It is a separate legal entity.
It is separately licensed. And you can see from the metrics put up on the screen, that we do have a very strong network of clearing members who are all Grade A banks, as part of our network, are supporting us as we manage the risk of the market. And we also have a material amount of margin resource to mitigate and to manage any potential losses that may arise from the derivatives market. So this slide represents the three key projects that we are currently working on within Post Trade Services, and you will see from project number one, we are on the path of expanding our clearinghouse, JSE Clear, to now also offer Bond Central Clearing, as a service offering to the bonds market.
The Bond CCP project, as we call it, started in 2023. It is a multi-year project, as is typical for these sorts of projects, because we do require extensive involvement and technical development within the JSE, as well as within our network of seven clearing banks, and we do also require a specific regulatory license to operate the CCP for the bonds market. That project is going along extremely well, and we anticipate to be live with this at the end of 2026.
The value that this project will bring to the market is, of course, improved risk management in the bond market itself, increased safety, but it is also a mechanism for increased participation, in particularly the National Treasury Bond ETP market, by participants who are uncomfortable with the bilateral risk management approach and who would prefer or who are mandated by their regulators to participate in a CCP risk management approach. Obviously, for JSE, we are able to leverage our existing infrastructure and our existing operating model in JSE Clear, and bringing in additional asset classes such as bonds, and in the future, equities and perhaps OTC derivatives. We will also be able to reduce our cost-to-income ratio and increase our diversification profile.
The second area in Post-Trade Services that we are currently doing material projects in is the equity markets. There is, of course, quite a number of initiatives, quite a material amount of transformation we'd like to bring about in the equity market over time. But this will take its time. It is a complex environment. We have developed a roadmap of initiatives to ultimately get to a marketplace that is cleared through the CCP and that has compressed settlement cycles. As Leila alluded to earlier, the global trend is to move to shorter settlement outcomes, and that is on our roadmap for the equity markets. The first two projects in that roadmap, of course, are the two that I've listed here, being the BDA systems modernization and the BDA pricing model review.
The BDA system, I think most will know, is a system that executes core functions for us in the equity markets, and it is essential that we make sure that that system remains resilient and open to further innovations that we wish to bring to this market. The value of us modernizing the code is really that we optimize our operational efficiency, and that we create a technical platform that is more flexible, that is more modern, and allows us to implement innovation going forward. The fee model is a project in which we will transform the basis on which we charge from a model that is currently based on system usage to one which is a more functional model based on the functional services or offerings that is derived from the JSE.
It will be beneficial to our client base to change the pricing model from what we have today to this functional model, because it will most certainly provide them with enhanced levels of transparency and predictability in the fees that they pay to the JSE to execute equity trades in our markets. Both of these projects are currently underway and will conclude in 2025 and 2027 respectively. It's important to note that most projects in the post-trade space, especially the ones that I've highlighted here today, do require partnership and joint technical development with our community of external and interconnected stakeholders. So it is very critical for us to make sure that we have collaborative planning, collaborative design, and collaborative implementation with that wide net of stakeholders.
In summary then, all three of these projects are critically important for the JSE as we fulfill our role as a financial market infrastructure, and we meet the associated responsibilities that we have to ensure that our investors are operating in a safe, resilient, and stable marketplace. This, of course, is not only the JSE's responsibility, but it is in the best interest of investor protection and of investor interest in the South African marketplace as a whole. Thank you. I'll hand over to Mark Randall.
Thank you, Alicia. Good morning, everybody. My name is Mark Randall. I'm the Director of Information Services at the JSE, and I'm gonna spend a little bit of time speaking about the division, and about some of our forward-looking, both views and strategy, so our Information Services division really owns the data assets of the exchange. If I look at allocation of workflow, we focus on two core outcomes, namely FMI data operations, the first one, and of course, data monetization being the second core outcome. If I start with our FMI data operations, this function really is about providing the core data workflows that support both trading and clearing within the exchange. Each of these data workflows is run and operated by a dedicated and specialist team within Information Services, with the idea that each team owns the full life cycle of each data workflow.
So at the core phase, that could really incorporate things like data capture, data interpretation, quality management, qualitative and quantitative analysis, and of course, data governance more broadly. It further includes specialist customer support, incorporating both education and consultation around methodology. If we look at the actual services that manifest in terms of public-facing, we include our SENS service within Information Services, things like tradable instrument reference data and corporate actions, closing prices and valuations, and of course, market data statistics and analytics. Ultimately, we also leverage on this capability, not just for supporting trading clearing, but also for delivering self-service business intelligence back into the organization in order to really drive data-driven decision-making.
We do see that a large proportion of Information Services headcount, core technology, and indeed, general running costs, is dedicated to servicing these, FMI data operations functions from a shared services point of view. That does mean that the majority of our data products, if you look at a granular level, are not purely focused on revenue generation, but also on providing trusted data to support our trading and clearing functions, and ultimately, investment decisions by our stakeholders. When we think about how we monetize data, I think in principle, exchanges monetize their data through product licensing or data licensing, where the commercial policy of the license is really aligned with the specific use case of the client and how that data is being used to generate value for that client on the ground.
When I think about licensing implementation, there are several use case questions that we would ask before settling on the right price item. For instance, is the client distributing the data or redistributing the data, or is it already used in-house? Is that client working with the data real time, or do they use it on a delayed basis, or an end-of-day basis, or even a historical basis? Does the client display the data to the individual staff members on a trading terminal, or is it being used in some kind of application or algorithm? And finally, what kind of directly billable services is the client using to generate data, but or rather, value of the data IP? And here we think about things like index creation, CFD trading, or running trading platforms directly.
So if you consider the full range of physical data products as well as separate licensing use cases that we consider, our data prices contain more than 500 distinct items. Having said that, we see material revenue concentration in really two categories of data product. The rest is more in the FMI data operations that I mentioned earlier. The first category is around real-time data in the equity market that is used to really drive and report on price formation and drive trading. And the second one is our benchmark and index data business through our long-standing partnership with FTSE Russell, a part of the LSE Group.
At a broad level, data sales are a material contributor to overall JSE revenue, attracting just shy of ZAR 450 million last year in terms of top line. Since we do maintain both a rand-based price list and a dollar-based price list for our international clients, we see that around 60% of this total revenue is dollar-denominated. This, of course, can create volatility in the Information Services reported revenue number in line with forex volatility, but does provide a really healthy, and I think a key natural hedge for the group's dollar-denominated liabilities.
I must add, however, that many of our international vendors that are paying on the dollar-based price list are also delivering their services to customers within South Africa, not just globally, meaning that a dollar-based revenue line for the JSE may not necessarily or strictly align with complete geographical diversification in addition to the currency diversification that we see. From a client perspective, capital markets data, the way it's distributed into the market, is generally aggregated, normalized, and distributed by a number of large multinational data vendors. And here you'll be familiar with names such as Bloomberg, Refinitiv, IRESS, FactSet, Morningstar, iStat services, and so on. There are many of them.
This does create a concentration in the exchange billing profile among the largest clients, typically in the data vendor space, despite us having more than 500 individually named clients on our books. However, over and above the data vendors, we are seeing some increasing interest from clients to access data directly from the JSE, particularly for some of our more niche or emerging datasets, but often really just trying to procure the data closer to its golden source and reduce some intermediary costs. This does create an opportunity for the JSE market data team. This trend does span our brokers, but we're also seeing increasing opportunity for new clients in the space of asset managers, asset owners, media houses, and other ecosystem service providers. Information services revenue is generally contracted and linked to a recurring billing model. This may be monthly, quarterly, or annually.
As such, this revenue does not directly fluctuate with daily market values or daily trading patterns, and therefore provides an essential revenue diversification to our core trading and clearing revenue. Having said that, though, in the medium and long term, data sales, of course, are tightly linked to the number of participants that we see active in the SA capital markets and the broader market wallet size. So we do see that this has the direct result that we are unlikely to see accelerated growth from our existing or traditional set of data products, despite this being the bulk of our revenue base. On our next slide, we do see that there are many comparison points between the JSE and other exchanges globally.
We have seen many, and some of these quite high profile, ultra-large global exchanges progressively and aggressively chasing revenue diversification through acquisitions. Some of these exchanges have focused acquisitions in the data space, others are focused on technology or other opportunities. Some of these largest exchanges have also established very public and strategic partnerships with the top three cloud hyperscalers and are spending a tremendous amount of energy in evaluating the size and opportunity in the cloud space, and we are watching their progress very closely. Looking at tier two exchanges, and these are often exchanges that are critical providers in their home countries or regions, but haven't necessarily grown into some more multinational business lines and typically have a smaller balance sheet than some of the tier one exchanges.
When we compare ourselves to these exchanges, we note that there is a very wide range of maturity when looking at their data infrastructure and data services. Many of them are only now starting to grapple with the same strategic data opportunities as the JSE, as well as the trade-offs that we all experience between investing to grow our core business lines versus new strategic opportunities. Having said that, it is extremely rare for an exchange in 2024, of any size, to not be having design conversations around their ability to deliver modern data products and services in line with the emerging customer demands. I believe that the JSE's delivery in building truly innovative data products and services positions it very favorably compared to many of these peers.
When we look at large developed markets, the proliferation of exchanges and new trading venues in particular, that are not traditional licensed exchanges, has steadily increased the number of data sources that our ultimate end clients need to consume and consider. Data aggregators and distributors have helped the market process this complexity, but the rapidly increasing number of data sources and trading venues has driven up costs for the end user at a far higher rate than the growth experienced by individual trading venues. This has triggered public and regulatory pressures on data costs and consolidated tape services in the Americas and in Europe.
From a JSE perspective, we have been very intentional around how we cost our core trading data, and I did mention the concentration in core equity trading data real time, ultimately referencing an inflation level as our standard. However, for data services that can be delivered by any market player based off of public market data, the JSE does have far more flexibility in terms of pricing, of course, subject to normal competitive market forces. We have really spent a tremendous amount of energy over the past three years investing into the way that we think about modernizing our data infrastructure. Starting, I think, with the key objectives for the strategy, our approach really is to completely recraft our existing data infrastructure, ultimately creating an adjacent capability for us to rapidly innovate and deliver new products and services.
In addition, this would allow us to monetize new JSE data assets that we haven't previously exposed, as well as creating new classes of data services for our existing data client, and ultimately targeting new clients in new geographies. The ultimate goal of the ITaC modernization strategy is to maintain an elevated annual revenue growth rates in the division across the medium term, and to increase the relative contribution of these new types of data services to overall JSE information services revenue off the current low base. On the infrastructure side, we have really prioritized cloud infrastructure over our legacy on-premises infrastructure when we think about the future of data delivery.
This kicked off with a project to copy all of our market data assets from our core transactional data systems into a cloud location that is really optimized for data delivery and data analytics. By the end of this year, 2024, we will have transferred all of our core trading and market data across all six of our markets into the cloud, and from early next year, we will shift our focus to prioritize post-trade data going forward. Our Market Data Connect platform is our new data shop for our information subscribers to interact with us on a digital self-service platform and ready to do a self-service management of all of their JSE market data procurement needs.
This includes a full-service offering, all the way from a catalog interaction, contracting and licensing, fulfillment of their orders through API delivery tokens, and ultimately, billing and self-service administration. Our Foundry platform has been built as a cloud-native mechanism that we are using internally to fulfill data orders and deliver the data from our internal cloud data store directly to licensed and entitled customers. We have designed this from the ground up as a brand-new platform to solve for many of the historical pain points that our clients have identified around data products. Things like flexibility of formats, and content, things like security, access to history, and a general support for, really modern data workflows that they are looking for in the cloud.
Over the next few years, the intention is to replace all of our legacy data products, particularly end of day, with a new equivalent Foundry product. But we are also taking this opportunity to flag data assets that we are not monetizing today and create new products around that with the intention of revenue growth. The technology itself, as I said, will also attract new direct clients to the JSE and support our ambitions for geographical diversification by leveraging hyperscaler backbones where possible. In parallel to this core data infrastructure replatforming that we're seeing on the left of the slide, we also continue to investigate parallel data services that ultimately create credibility, I would say, for the JSE as a provider, both of analytics as well as alternative market data.
Our flagship and standout success here has been our JSE Trade Explorer product, which delivers rich analytics directly to the desktop of our equity market trading members. Creating commoditized analytics at source on private market data has provided access for our equity market brokers to truly world-class execution quality metrics as a subscription service. This initiative of an exchange democratizing analytics really across the full range of broker sizes is a world first for exchanges and positions the JSE as an innovative leader in this space, which we intend to continue to capitalize on. We have further established a joint venture with big xyt, our analytics partner, and our intention there is to offer this Trade Explorer product to other exchanges globally, and we are currently in the business development phase of this initiative.
Other themes where we're spending energy relate to sustainability data and how we help our listed companies capture and contribute that data in a structured and simple and multipurpose way. Things like listed company data, and we think about helping listed companies convert their unstructured financial statement or other type of data into really structured, machine-readable, and query-ready data. And we believe ultimately, third-party capital market data assets will find a home on our new infrastructure platform. Our ability to deliver consistently against these themes over the past three years in a way that has not impacted the broader organization has really been due to our ability to find and integrate world-class, but truly specialist partners and other providers.
We will, of course, continue to protect our core advantages and IP around existing client relationships, existing distribution channels, our deep understanding of our core market data assets, as well as the market infrastructure. But at the same time, we will also continue to accelerate delivery through working with best in-class partners around technology and analytics, ideally to support our forward-looking growth trajectory for information services revenue. Thank you. That brings me to the end of the information services section, and I will hand over to my colleague, Tebalo Tsoaeli, to speak about technology. Thank you.
Thank you, Mark. Good morning. I'm going to be taking you through some of the latest developments that we're focusing on from a technology perspective within the JSE. So at the JSE, we continue to explore ways through which technology can be leveraged to modernize and accelerate growth of our business, and at the same time, create value for our clients and shareholders. To support our strategy of diversification, we've embarked on a journey of developing technology services that will generate alternative revenue, and at the same time, complement the existing revenue that we're seeing from current traditional exchange services. To achieve this, we've adopted a partnership model whereby we've partnered with global specialist technology providers to accelerate the delivery of market infrastructure services for our capital markets ecosystem. In 2014 , JSE Colocation was launched.
A solution that provides market participants with rack space and power-only offering in the JSE primary data center. 2023 saw the launch of Colo 2.0, in partnership with Beeks & IPC. A managed infrastructure service solution that provides market participants with cloud-based colocation services to take advantage of low latency connectivity. For the remainder of 2024 and going into 2025 and beyond, we will launch additional marketplace infrastructure services to further deliver value for our market participants. Such services will include Colo 2.0 secondary solution in partnership with Beeks & IPC, and at the same time, we'll be focusing on introducing JSE-FIX Hub, which is a low-cost order routing network, in partnership with Rapid Addition.
We'll also introduce JSE Network Alliance, which is a low-cost, low-latency network that provides our market participants with access to over more than 150 venues globally. And lastly, as part of our next generation infrastructure setup, we will be partnering with AWS to leverage their edge computing technology to deliver the next generation marketplace infrastructure for our capital markets ecosystem. Through our partnership with AWS, we will be leveraging AWS edge computing to address several common challenges within the capital markets ecosystem. From a low latency perspective, as the race to zero latency persists due to explosion in volumes and investor participation, we will continue to invest in improving latency for our market participants through the adoption of AWS edge computing. From a resilience perspective, resilience is in our DNA.
We need to continue to operate a market that is supported by technology that is modern, hyper scalable, ultra resilient, and highly performant. Synchronization and time stamping is key in our environment, as we need to operate a market that is fair and equal. This is a concept that we've mastered within our traditional market infrastructure ecosystem. We intend to introduce this concept into our cloud-native market infrastructure as we start adopting and bringing the cloud to the market, to the capital markets ecosystem. Through our partnership with AWS, we will build the next generation marketplace infrastructure to power a truly cloud-based capital markets ecosystem of the future that is modern, hyper scalable, ultra resilient, highly performant, and accessible to a wider base of market participants.
Through the creation of this truly cloud-based market infrastructure, we will definitely ensure that our market participants start to realize more benefits through the adoption of cloud-native infrastructure, e.g., reduction of unit cost processing and lower all-in costs, flexible and scalable compute and storage, elastic on-demand resources with pay-as-you-go pricing, reduce round trip latency, faster trade execution, and increased liquidity. Over the next decade, we will be embarking on the era of innovation as we seek to bring the cloud to the capital markets ecosystem. Through our partnership with AWS, we will start building the next generation marketplace infrastructure that is set to power the capital markets ecosystem of the future. The next generation infrastructure ecosystem will be made up of a combination of elements that are available within the AWS edge computing stack.
Namely, the AWS Outposts, AWS Local Zone, and lastly, the AWS Direct Connect, which is an ultra-low latency connectivity that allows multiple data centers to connect at the lowest latency available. We will leverage hybrid cloud capabilities of AWS Outposts to bring edge computing directly into our data center. At the same time, we will focus on ensuring that we bring performance uplift for our matching engine, resulting in reduced round trip latency, improved price discovery, and increased liquidity. We will also turn the data center into the first private local zone and make proximity to our markets accessible to a wider market participant base.
We are looking to run several proof of concepts in 2025 in partnership with AWS, to explore how we can leverage their AWS Outposts technology, together with their Local Zones technology as well, as we start to lay the foundation for our next generation market infrastructure. Lastly, while the primary focus will be on creating value for our market participants through the creation of the next generation marketplace infrastructure, we will start adopting the use of generative AI to become a lot more efficient as an organization. With generative AI going mainstream, JSE will leverage AWS's generative AI capabilities, such as, you know, Amazon Bedrock, Amazon SageMaker, and Amazon Q. These are capabilities that we intend to explore within our risk management space, market surveillance, and issuer regulation. Thank you. I will now hand over to Andre to talk you through issuer regulation.
... Good morning, everyone. My name is Andre Visser, and I'm the Director of Issuer Regulation at the JSE. Over the next couple of slides, I will briefly take you through the JSE's duties and responsibilities as a listings authority. But very importantly, to try and demonstrate to you as well, how we collaborate with the market to make sure that we've got a fit-for-purpose listings framework, but also a framework that's competitive with our international counterparts, so that we can attract international listings. In doing so, one of the objectives, obviously, is to make sure that we not only retain existing listings and doing work around that to make sure that our framework is appropriate for those companies, but also have a framework in place where we can attract both local and international listings onto the exchange.
And also, very importantly, be able to create listings frameworks that allows for product innovation. In that regard, we work closely with the capital markets team and with other teams within the JSE, to make sure that if we want to launch new products onto the JSE, that we've got a framework in place that's fit for purpose, that looks at the demands of the issuers, but also deals with the aspects of making sure that there's sufficient protection and disclosure for investors. So very close collaboration with the market and with internal parties within the JSE. Val spoke earlier about some of those products, like actively managed certificates and actively managed funds. And Alicia also touched on the potential creation of a listings framework for crypto-referenced assets.
So in that regard, this team plays a key role in developing those frameworks, in close collaboration with internal teams and then obviously externally with the market as well. So if you look at this slide, on the bottom left, obviously, I've spoken about this, the JSE is the listings authority, so we've got the legal mandate to set and enforce the listings requirements. In doing so, we obviously set clear transparency and disclosure standards for the equity market, the debt market, and the specialist securities market, so across all those asset classes. But what's quite important in setting these standards is obviously finding the appropriate balance between what investors may require from a transparency and an investor protection perspective, but also to make sure that we look at the needs of issuers that want to list companies on the exchange or list products on the exchange.
So finding that right balance is critical in the work that we do. And then finally, if you move to the right of the screen, obviously everything that we do is to make sure that we've got a listings framework that remains competitive and fit for purpose, so that we can attract companies to list on the exchange. If you look at the slide, what we're trying to demonstrate with this slide is to show a very clear change in direction from our part, specifically over the last couple of years, to be far more collaborative and proactive in our approach. And that obviously is focused on trying to increase our competitiveness. So the slide gives you a few data points in terms of issues that we've been busy with over the last couple of years.
If we start on the left, in 2021 , the JSE published a consultation paper on cutting red tape. That process and consultation was done in response to concerns that were raised in the market about the level of regulation. So we were responsive, we tried to engage with the market, get an understanding of what the issues were, and then based on that, made certain proposals to essentially cut the ease of complying with the listing requirements and cutting the red tape. Many of those proposals have subsequently been implemented, which has provided significant relief to companies from a compliance perspective. That process was followed in May 2022 by a further consultation paper that we published, and that was basically proposing a number of initiatives to transform our listings framework.
Many of those initiatives, which includes matters like the introduction of dual-class shares, lowering the free float requirements to attract more companies to list on the exchange, in line with our international counterparts, has subsequently been introduced, and then two significant projects that we proposed at the time was one was market segmentation. And obviously, the intention with that project was to try and deal with the delistings that we've been seeing, specifically on the smaller end of the main board, specifically, so a project where we tried to segment the main board into distinct sections, to make sure that we've got a more fit-for-purpose framework for some of those smaller companies on the main board. The second initiative that we proposed at the time was what we referred to as the simplifications project.
And the idea behind the simplification project was to take the entire set of listing rules and essentially simplify it into plain language, to record concise regulatory objectives, to make it easier for companies, investors, and practitioners to apply and understand, which will hopefully lead to a better compliance regime and making it easier for companies to comply with, with the requirements. It's a significant project, and you'll see later on in the slide that we've made some very good progress on this, on this project. In June 2023, again, demonstrating our commitment to collaborate with the market and not design requirements in a vacuum, we partnered with an independent research house to assist us in conducting a survey among stakeholders.
We specifically target all our listed companies, all our sponsors, and all the investors that we have in our database, to try and get more granular input into what the segmentation framework should look like. That was a process that was very well received by the market. We got very good insights from the market on the proposals that led to a successful implementation of our segmentation reforms. In September 2023, we started the process to simplify the listings requirements. As I mentioned earlier, it is a massive project from a regulatory perspective. We decided to adopt a very different process. Normally, we would draft the changes, publish it for consultation, and then implement.
Given the magnitude of the project, we decided to create a centralized public consultation portal, and we actually decided to put these requirements out on a piecemeal basis, as opposed to taking a big bang approach. Again, a process that was very well received by the market. It provides market participants with more time to consume the information, assess the relevance of the information, and then provide constructive comments on the requirements. Very well received by the market. I can confirm that process has now been completed, certainly the JSE's public consultation process, and we are aiming to submit that to the FSCA before the end of the year. Perhaps just the last point to touch on is what we did in September this year. We further expanded our secondary listings framework.
It's important to confirm that from a JSE perspective, we don't allow secondary listings from just any jurisdiction. We need to be satisfied that the primary jurisdiction is a reasonable and a sensible jurisdiction to accept listings from, that the framework is acceptable to the JSE. So we do quite a bit of work and due diligence and engagements with those exchanges to determine whether they're acceptable. And in September, we added all the Euronext exchanges, all the exchanges in the Euronext stable, to that list of approved exchanges. And we also added the Tadawul Stock Exchange, which was shortly after the JSE signing an MOU with the Tadawul Stock Exchange.
I can just confirm that was post-2021 and 2023, where we added the Singapore Stock Exchange and the Hong Kong Stock Exchange onto our list of approved exchanges. In this last slide, I'm trying to sort of demonstrate to you our commitment to enhancing the regulatory landscape. If you look at the bottom of the slide, the three sort of blocks, that's the sort of cornerstone or the foundation in terms of how we approach regulation. I think trying to be more proactive and responsive with stakeholder engagement is a key element for us. Having a fit for purpose and competitive listings framework is a very large focus of ours, and then, very importantly, collaborating with the markets to develop frameworks for the listing of new and innovative products.
Balancing that innovation with a safe and secure environment to list those products is obviously key for us. So if you look at the top end of the slide, to give life to those principles at the bottom of the screen, we issued three consultation papers since 2021. Again, demonstrating our commitment to collaborate with the market, not to design regulation in a vacuum. There's been more than 10 formal market consultations on proposed reforms that we've introduced since 2021. In terms of the simplification project that I spoke about earlier, that process has been completed, the internal process and the public consultation process, and if you look at the outcome of that, not that that was the intention of the project, but we've managed to reduce volume of the listing requirements by 50%.
That's a significant improvement in terms of what we've got at the moment, and will go a long way in assisting market participants, listed companies, sponsors, issuers, and investors to apply those requirements. That, as I said, will be submitted to the FSCA for approval by the end of the year. Webinars, we've been quite deliberate to engage with the market on a more regular basis, giving them feedback on matters that we are busy with. So we hosted three market webinars during this period. And then from a Fast Track perspective, given that we've added eight exchanges to that list of approved exchanges, it now brings that list to a total of eighteen exchanges.
That basically gives the foundation for Val and the capital markets team to go out and attract companies from those jurisdictions, which means the JSE can start accepting secondary listings from all eighteen of those exchanges, ultimately providing investors with more choice. And then perhaps just the last point that's worth highlighting is showing our responsiveness to some of these issues. Regulation can never be a static document. It's something that has to move and adapt to changes in the market, has to adapt to innovation. In terms of market segmentation, specifically, once we identified the need for regulatory relief on the small end of the market, the actual process to get those changes drafted, consulted with the market, and implemented, with the assistance of the FSCA, we managed to implement those changes on market segmentation within four months.
So in conclusion, I think what this slide shows is that the JSE is committed as a listings authority to be far more proactive. I think the slides have demonstrated that, being more responsive with stakeholder engagement to ultimately ensure that we've got a fit for purpose and a competitive listings framework. Thank you very much. I'll hand it over to Fawzia.
Thank you, Andre, and good afternoon to everyone. In the next few slides... Sorry. I'm Fawzia Suleman, the CFO of the JSE Group. In the next few slides, I'm going to provide an overview of our performance over the past several years, and you will see that our performance has been driven by a consistent focus on optimizing shareholder returns, and this has been supported by steady growth in revenue as well as strong EBITDA margins. Firstly, total income has grown at a CAGR of 5%, moving from ZAR 2.3 billion in 2019 to just under ZAR 3 billion in 2023. This growth has been achieved despite global economic volatility, and our focus on strengthening the core of the business, along with the strategic expansion initiative, has enabled us to maintain this momentum.
Looking at EBITDA performance, we see that our EBITDA margin has been consistently robust over the five-year period... The slight dip in margin in 2023 reflects investment in future growth initiatives, but the long-term trend demonstrates that we continue to operate efficiently. This speaks to our disciplined cost approach, disciplined approach to managing costs, while we invest in areas that enhance future growth, such as digital infrastructure, modernized systems, and new service offerings. If we look at the graph at the bottom of the left-hand side, we see that one of our key commitments to shareholders has been delivering consistent dividend payouts. Over the last five years, we have continued to distribute a high percentage of earnings to our shareholders, with payout ratios averaging over 80%.
Looking at earnings per share, we see an encouraging trend of growth, rising from ZAR 8.15 per share in 2019 to ZAR 10.19 per share in 2023. This growth in earnings reflects our focus on enhancing profitability while still driving operational excellence, and increasing earnings per share directly supports our ability to continue to offer strong returns to our shareholders and also reflects the success of our strategy. Now, as you've heard from all of my colleagues today, revenue diversification has been a key pillar of our long-term strategy. The ability to grow non-trading income is critical for reducing reliance on the traditional capital markets and smoothing out our revenue volatility. Over the last five years, we've made significant strides in this area.
As you can see on the left-hand chart, non-trading income as a percentage of total operating income has steadily increased, growing from 29% in 2019 to 37% in 2023. While trading income remains an important part of our revenue mix, this shift highlights the success of our efforts to diversify our revenue base, driven by growth in areas such as information services and JSE Investor Services or JIS that Valdene spoke about earlier today. Our non-trading segments are expected to continue contributing to the JSE's top line growth as we invest further in these areas. The chart on the right provides further context, showing that our total income has grown from ZAR 2.26 billion in 2019 to ZAR 2.94 billion in 2023.
Now, this reflects the successful implementation of our strategy, with trading income growing consistently through asset class diversification, while non-trading income has steadily expanded. This balanced growth approach positions us well to capitalize both on traditional and emerging market revenues, sorry, emerging revenue streams. We will continue to focus on high-value services, and we anticipate sustained growth in non-trading income, further cementing our resilience in the face of market fluctuations. Now, looking at cash generated from operations. The JSE has demonstrated consistently strong cash flow over the past five years. In 2023, we generated ZAR 1.1 billion in cash from operations, up from ZAR 880 million in 2019. This strong cash generation is as a result of disciplined cost control, operational efficiencies, and strategic growth investments.
This allows us to fund our ongoing modernization efforts while continuing to return capital to our shareholders. Our cash balance has remained strong as well. In 2023, we ended with a cash balance of ZAR 2.6 billion, and this positions us well to meet future growth opportunities and to navigate periods of uncertainty. This level of liquidity also provides us with the flexibility to deploy capital in strategic initiatives without compromising on our ability to meet regulatory requirements or to address short-term volatility. On the CapEx front, we have continued to invest in maintaining and upgrading our systems and infrastructure. Over the past few years, we have made targeted investments to enhance our systems and to drive innovation.
In 2023, our capital expenditure was ZAR 33 million for growth initiatives, complemented by ZAR 122 million dedicated to maintenance and enhancement of our existing systems. These investments ensure that our systems are modern, efficient, and future-ready. Our reg cap position has also remained stable, and this highlights our commitment to maintaining a strong financial position, meeting regulatory requirements, and ensuring long-term sustainability of the JSE. In this next slide, I'd like to double-click on our regulatory capital. Maintaining adequate regulatory capital is a key priority for the JSE. This underpins our ability to navigate market fluctuations and to maintain operational stability. Alicia spoke a little bit about that earlier today. As mentioned in the previous slide, we have maintained strong levels of cash over the past few years.
Our regulatory capital, which stood at ZAR 1 billion at the end of 2023, ensures that we continue to meet our capital adequacy requirements, reinforcing our financial stability and protecting investor interests. The consistent focus on capital management ensures that we can support both our growth ambitions and our regulatory obligations, creating a balance that is vital for sustainable long-term success. In summary, the JSE's approach to capital management is characterized by prudence, resilience, and also has a forward-looking perspective. In this last slide of my presentation, I'd like to touch on one of the most important aspects of the JSE strategy: our disciplined approach to capital allocation. This ensures that every rand that we invest is carefully directed towards generating long-term value for our shareholders. This means that we must invest in initiatives that support the growth and modernization of our business.
For financial year 2024, we have provided CapEx guidance in the range of ZAR 145 million-ZAR 165 million. This allocation includes both maintenance CapEx and growth investments that will allow us to continue modernizing our infrastructure, adopting new technologies, and expanding our service offering. These investments are essential to ensure that the JSE remains competitive in an increasingly digital and globalized world, and we are committed to doing so in a cost-effective manner. Next, we turn to shareholder returns. The JSE has consistently prioritized returning capital to our shareholders, and our dividend policy remains a key feature of our commitment to value creation. We maintain a payout ratio of between 67%-100% of earnings, ensuring that our investors benefit from the strong cash generation that I spoke about earlier.
This balanced approach allows us to reward shareholders while also reinvesting in the future of our business. Our approach to mergers and acquisitions is strategic and is focused on bolt-on opportunities. We look at transactions that align with our core business and enable us to enhance our value proposition. The goal is to diversify revenue streams, find synergies that drive efficiency, and capitalize on growth opportunities in adjacent markets and services. When evaluating M&A opportunities, we apply rigorous assessment criteria, including: what is the expected return on investment hurdle rate? What is the growth potential of the target, and how well the acquisition aligns with our broader strategic objectives? Realizing synergies, particularly in terms of EBITDA growth, is critical to ensuring that any acquisition meaningfully enhances our financial performance.
The chart on the right-hand side illustrates our split of capital allocation over the past five years, and as you can see, we've made prudent investments in capital expenditure while continuing to direct capital to M&A opportunities where appropriate. We have also consistently directed capital to maintaining shareholder returns. In conclusion, our disciplined capital allocation strategy is fundamental to how we create value. By balancing investment in growth, shareholder returns, and targeted M&A, we ensure that we are both building for the future and delivering value today. And with that, I'll hand back over to Leila for the concluding remarks. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Fawzia. Now, as we approach the end of today's session, I wanted, before we shift into Q&A, just to reinforce and bring back together what each of my executive colleagues has shared with you. I want to just take a moment to reiterate our firm commitment to a consistent strategy, 2026, which is predicated on three key pillars: protecting the core business, transforming our business, and partnering for a sustainable marketplace. These, of course, are all driven, or directed towards generating high quality, and sustainable, earnings.
Of course, you've heard from my colleagues across all of the detail, and I'm not going to repeat any of that, but just really to say that our approach to delivery has been laser-focused on our strategic priorities, and I'm very proud to say that we're well on track to deliver each and every single one of our projects that we've planned. The first of these projects, of course, as I spoke earlier, around protecting the core, many of them around transformation and then sustainable outcomes. We heard from Alicia, who spoke about Post-Trade Services, the modernization of the BDA platform, the introduction of a new BDA billing model. She also spoke to you about our Bond CCP technical build-out.
The information services business was covered by Mark, who's been with the organization for many, many years, and he spoke to you about migrating the data to the cloud, delivering market data products on our new and very exciting marketplace, and then, of course, onboarding clients both to our local JSE Trade Explorer and then also, of course, our big xyt ecosystems, and then, of course, Alicia did discuss our approach to digital assets, which began with the project that we led on Project Khokha with market participants in the banks, and is now expanding to a more meaningful play in the digital space. Valdene discussed in some detail the secondary solution for Colo 2.0, expanding JIS, and then, of course, the growth of our carbon markets.
On the infrastructure side, a key area that continues to embed our resilience, our latency, and also diversify our revenues. We're very excited about the JSE-FIX Hub, our Network Alliance, and of course, the expansion of our already very well-founded relationship with AWS into what might culminate in an Outposts and a Local Zone. And then finally, before focusing on Q&A from the audience, I just really want to close by reinforcing the very strong value proposition of the JSE. We remain committed to transforming and modernizing through ongoing partnerships and innovation. This has become a core in every single part of our business. The cornerstone of everything that we do is really around protecting the core and ensuring consistent resilience and stable markets.
We've also maintained a strong record, as you heard from Fawzia, on our dividend policy. And, our robust cash generation and our balance sheet, not only ensures that, we're able to, underwrite and ensure settlement assurance, but also ensures that our regulatory capital and our overall capital buffers are substantial. Looking ahead, we remain firmly focused on transforming the business through continuous innovation, partnerships, and targeted acquisitions, that are value creative. We're not just reacting to changes in the industry, but we are actively shaping the future of our capital markets, and we're ensuring that we remain at the forefront of our global trends. So by continuing to invest in, technology, pursuing our strategic, opportunities, we're positioning the JSE to continue to deliver sustained and high quality earnings.
Despite incredibly challenging macroeconomic conditions in the environment and a very difficult trading landscape over the past couple of years, we're very excited about the year, the road ahead. We're very excited about the strong foundation that we've created, and also by the shift in, the overall political, and, macroeconomic environment, both globally and within South Africa. With that, I'd like to thank you again for joining us today. Thank you for your questions.