Morning, everyone. Welcome to the presentation of the interim results to the end of December 2022 of Momentum Metropolitan Holdings. My name is Dan Moyane. I've got a very, very short introduction for you this morning, but it's a great pleasure and privilege to be here. As we get going, it's a special day, not only because we are presenting these interim results. It's the 8th of March. It's International Women's Day, let us wish all the women of Momentum Metropolitan Holdings in South Africa, the rest of the continent, in India and the U.K., and elsewhere, wherever they may be working for this wonderful group, a very happy International Women's Day. Today's agenda, we're gonna have three presenters. It's been lined up like that.
First up, you're going to have Hillie Meyer, the Group CEO, giving you an overview, followed by an update from Guardrisk. Hermann Schoeman, who is the CEO, will present that one. Finally, we'll hear from the group finance director, that's Risto Ketola, with a financial overview. These results are available to you on our website. That's momentummetropolitan.co.za. You can follow us now currently live on Business Day Television, BDTV, that's on DStv channel 412, or you can also follow us on our webcast. That's at Corpcam.com/mm08032023. Without much ado, let me ask Hillie now to come up and begin the presentation of these results. Hillie, good morning.
Hello, Dan. Good morning, everybody, thank you for your interest. It's a privilege to present the results on behalf of 17,000 staff members and our board of directors. Now, you know, I'll kick off by just emphasizing that, you know, we're very happy with the set of results, especially the earnings number in the current environment. On the graph that, you will see now, the dotted line indicates sort of the underlying earnings if some of the fluctuations that are not under management control are sort of taken out of the equation. I think we illustrate that to illustrate that the current six-month results, you know, is pretty in line with the underlying earnings.
Compare that with the last six months where, you know, obviously it was a fantastic number, but there was a lot of one-off items in that. That's what we mean when we say it's a good quality earnings currently. You know, I think one of the things we'd like to emphasize is just the benefits of disciplined capital management coming through. You know, we've been prudent and you know, I think sort of pretty conservative in managing our capital. Lately, you know, with the share buybacks, I think pretty decent dividends. As I said, all the other sort of capital efficiency improvements, I think the highlights are just the benefit from the share buyback and of course, the return on equity, which we're very, very pleased with.
The one area that, you know, I think in this set of results, we need to highlight as something that, you know, we would like to improve on is our value of new business. Now with new business actually dropping by about 10%, if we compare it with the prior six-month period, the comparative six-month period, it is to be expected. Also, you know, I think especially in our two retail businesses, there are VNB challenges. We're pretty confident that we can address, you know, many of those without necessarily relying on any meaningful or significant increases in new business, because I think in the current environment that will be very difficult and hard to come by. Those are the salient features.
I'd like to move for the rest of my presentation to move on to just a brief overview of our Reinvent and Grow strategy. The strategy that we announced in 2021 and unpacked in some detail when we presented the results in September 2021. That Reinvent and Grow strategy cover a three-year period from 1 July 2021 up to 30 June 2024. The end of this reporting period, this reporting date, December, marks exactly the halfway stage of the three-year plan, so it's probably an opportune time to just give a bit of feedback and an update on how we doing.
When I presented in September 2021, I sort of unpacked this strategy by sharing with you, I think it was about 40 objectives, which was a selection from, you know, more objectives than that. I'm gonna, you know, what we did for this presentation, we took exactly those objectives, and I'm gonna give you an update on where we are. I'm not gonna, you know, go into detail around the strategy except to say the sort of the Reinvent and Grow strategy is anchored on growing existing channels, you know, which are sort of strongholds, but we believe we can, you know, improve even more. We had to establish new channels, you know, alternative channels, more direct-to-client type channels that we had to start, establish and grow. Digital is a big theme.
Digitalization, modernizing our IT environment systems and so forth. Product and service leadership is important. Finally, transformation. Those are the pillars. If all those things work out, then we'll deliver the targets that we have set out, sort of, you know. You will see that in the right bubbles on the right. Okay, moving on to the feedback. What we thought we'd do is, you know, give you sort of a indication of whether we're on track, and if we're sort of more or less on track to achieve what we set out to do. It will be like, you know, with a little 100% in the middle of a donut, which will be blue. If we're ahead of target or we think we're gonna overachieve, there'll be a bit of green.
If we're somewhat behind, it'll be red. If we're a lot behind, it's a lot of red. That is in essence, just to make it easy. Right. Starting with some of the transformation targets. Obviously, we wanted to maintain our level one status. We've done that. We're confident that we'll maintain that. You know, you can't overachieve on that one. You know, one is the best, but we're happy that we are there and that confident we'll stay there. As far as Black representation in our management levels is concerned, the one target that we singled out in the presentation was at senior management level. Also, I just wanna mention here, these targets you know, match our five-year employment equity plan, which is a five-year plan.
It started a year before the Reinvent the Growth Strategy, ends a year after the Reinvent the Growth Strategy. We're, again, they're in the middle of the five-year period, so it's a good time to take stock. Currently we are at 42.5% at senior management level. Again, you know, we're a little bit ahead of the plan, but I think, you know, that we can't rest on our laurels because it's quite a stretch. I mean, from 30%-50% obviously is a significant improvement that we wanted to achieve, but happy with progress to date. Moving on to Africa. The sales numbers, I don't think we're gonna make the targets. Look, last year was a very good year. We did ZAR 3.5 billion of sales in 2022.
It was boosted by, you know, corporate business, which is by definition a little bit lumpy. In the absence of that this year, plus a little bit of headwinds of our normal retail business, we, you know, I think we'll do well if we end with ZAR 2.8 billion. We're not, I think, in line with our objectives as far as sales in Africa is concerned. Obviously, that plus other things would filter through to earnings. I think the ZAR 500 million was probably in hindsight, a little ambitious. Our latest sort of target, which we're now aiming for, is somewhere between ZAR 300 million-ZAR 350 million of earnings. Again, you know, we're not gonna make that target.
VNB, it's a small number in the bigger scheme of things, but it's a bigger negative than it was within the ZAR 3 million. There's a lot of work there. In essence, you know, the VNB in Africa is almost a function of whether we can, you know, get a positive VNB in Namibia. Because the number currently in Namibia is negating, I think, some improvements in some of the other African countries. Moving on to Myriad, and I'll maybe just quickly mention here because we actually launched a mobile underwriting solution and a sort of a straight-through onboarding process. You know, over the six-month period we're reporting on. That was actually accepted and it's bedding down as we could've hoped for. It's going...
I think things are going according to plan. I would say we can't necessarily see it in our sales numbers yet, but it's definitely irritating our competitors because we aware of some, I think, untruths that our competitors are spreading in the market, which is probably to be expected if you know, up the competitiveness a bit. You know, to our own staff members that are listening and so forth, guys, we've got a great product here. The competitors are worried. Okay, we've been growing IFA market share in Myriad. That's a big positive. That was an important objective. We're a little bit behind. Currently, we're at 17.3%. Sort of, you know, heading towards the 20%.
Then, you know, obviously the VNB margin, I think we'll be very happy and we'll take 2.8%. We've got plans. A number of plans, you know, and we believe we can get back to 2.8%. We won't make 5% VNB margin in Myriad in 2024. Investo, there it's actually looking even better. We've already achieved the 3-year target there. The current market share is above 18%. Also, you know, we, you know, already basically in line to achieve all our digitalization and efficiency targets. I think the focus is moving now, you know, to sort of adoption and making sure that the adoption of, I think, those sort of important activities that can really improve our cost base. You know, that's what we working on.
The rollout's been going very well. It's adoption that we're focusing on now. As far as retail investments is concerned, that's mostly platform business and annuities. We've got the big replatforming project on the go. Things are going according to plan. In fact, you know, we now approaching the business end. You know, it's the more challenging part of the project because we've got about 18 months to go on that project. As we sort of, you know, get familiar with the project, I think we're confident that the replatforming exercise will meet our expectations and probably exceed some of our expectations, which is actually great if you're busy with the outsourcing project. As far as premiums are concerned, obviously last year was fantastic.
There's been a little bit of a contraction, but we're heading to above ZAR 40 billion for this year anyway. Look, a lot will depend on what the market allows next year. So far so good. As far as institutional business is concerned, also there net inflow, I think, you know, we probably going to achieve that a year ahead of the target. It's a fair bit of green there. Obviously, because of that, our cost- to- income ratios are looking good. As far as the South African institutional business is concerned, happy days. The U.K. business, our gross inflows are actually quite pleasing. You know, we're winning a meaningful number of clients. This year in particular, unfortunately, there are some clients that we lost, you know, disinvestments.
It is lumpy, so again, you know, probably a bit of a challenge to achieve a ZAR 400 million net inflow next year. We won't, you know, we'll probably be a pretty neutral net inflow this year. All in all, I think, you know, the business is in fairly good shape. I think if this is the only metric you look at, it looks bad, but overall I think the business is in good shape. This was just a very tough objective that we decided to highlight and, you know, we've now gotta live with that. MDS, Momentum Distribution Services, again, you know, the specialization initiative is on track. It's bedded down so far very, very well. We're beginning to see the benefits.
Growth in APE, again, you know, boosted to a large extent by very good retail investment sales, but even so, they achieved what we wanted over a three-year period last year already. You know, there it's more... We would like to actually boost our Myriad sales through IFAs. I know we've gained market share, but we believe there's more potential there, and we really rely on our broker interfaces and MDS in particular to, I think help us with, growing Myriad even more. It's such an important product for us. Then also, you know, because of the good sales acquisition cost ratios and so on are ahead of targets. Consult by Momentum. It's quite difficult to grow footprint in the current environment.
We're currently standing at 320 advisers, so not where we would've liked to be. In fact, we recalibrated that target. We now think 400 at the end of 2024 will be more realistic. You know, you can see from the second bullet there, even though the footprint's not maybe living up to our sort of expectations, as far as productivity is concerned and that particular measure, you know, assets on, you know, our own solutions, there we at ZAR 6 billion currently, so we will comfortably achieve that target. Momentum Financial Planning. I think this is the one area again where growth is difficult, footprint growth. We're currently standing at about 950 planners.
You know, we had plans with new- to- industry agents and a sort of a big recruitment drive. It's proving to be very, very difficult to vest young, inexperienced agents in the current environment. We are revisiting those plans. You know, I think we'll have to... I'll use, you know, I'm not a big fan of fashionable words, but we're gonna pivot. We're gonna have to pivot on what we have and what we do well in MFP. Again, you know, because of the footprint growth, we're not achieving our natural growth targets. There's a little bit of a shift away from risk business to investment business, which is good for investments.
It's not exactly what we would like from a Myriad point of view, because we already know that that's where we box below our weight in terms of our, you know, risk business that we sell through our own agency force. Finally, I mean, there's been good initiatives on the cost side. You know, so I think we about to bank what we plan to do over the three-year period. Momentum Corporate. Again, you know, you're gonna see a fair bit of green in this slide and the next one. The first one is just FundsAtWork, asset under management. We significantly above the halfway mark there, so I think we're gonna overachieve on that particular target. Also, the digital engagement, we way above the targets that we set for ourselves.
I think it'll be fair to say that, you know, we almost now the focus will move from, let's say, quantity of, you know, digital engagement to quality. You know, just make sure that it's a meaningful and you can actually address, you know, more comprehensively whatever, you know, our clients would like to do online. The, you know, the platforms are there and we, you know, working from a very good base. We're ahead of our plans there. Further financial metrics in Momentum Corporate. The cost- to- income ratio, we've already achieved the 70% target. I think this was helped by very good underwriting results, obviously, you know, that contributed to this. You know, I mean, also I think good new business flows and so forth.
Again, you know, very happy with where we are on managing our costs and cost discipline. You know, I think the insurance margin of 5% is again one of those stretching targets that, you know, we now report on, but we reasonably closed in on that target. We in fact very pleased with our underwriting results, you know. I think if we can sort of keep it where it is currently, we'd be very happy. Momentum Health continue to grow membership in a market that's not growing. You know, those targets are very ambitious, I can assure you of that. We're currently in the open scheme stand at 280 members, 280,000 members.
We think sort of through corporate action, we can probably still get close to the 360,000. Public sector, we are ahead of the halfway mark, so we're happy with that. Corporate schemes, our current membership, we haven't lost the scheme, we haven't gained the scheme, but the membership shrunk a little bit. That's just because of the pressure on businesses generally, you know, employment levels and so forth. Again, there the, you know, moving on to our one health system is going according to plan. Two close schemes converted on 1 January. The Health4Me business will convert later, you know, this financial year. In fact, target date is April. You know, that is going according to plan.
Metropolitan Life going very well in sales, but, you know, quality is the issue that we need to focus on, which we will focus on. The migration, the final migration, you know, of about little less than I think 1 million policies. The deadline or the target date is August next year. Everything in line to achieve that and to achieve the savings. In terms of sort of efficiency improvements, that we a little bit ahead of plans there, so, you know, that's going positively. There was the GetUp initiative, which is really a sort of a online direct to client, using bots and so on in the sales process. I think there's a lot of things that we learned.
There's a lot of capabilities that we developed, but the, you know, just the persistency of the business was really horrific. It's actually not viable to continue with the project as it was. You know, we're gonna use some of the capabilities, you know, elsewhere in the business. I won't use the word pivot again. Guardrisk is doing very well. You'll see mostly green. In fact, the underwriting target of 33% of revenue we'll probably achieve this year already. Also on the microinsurance side there, which the purpose target was to establish that microinsurance license licenses. There are already five clients that have incepted, and there's a healthy pipeline. Also here, Guardrisk Non-Life on track to achieve that ZAR 1.1 billion target.
Guardrisk Life will probably achieve that target, you know, I think, they're gonna be a year ahead. Final slide, Momentum Insure. I think the first target was ZAR 160 million of synergies through the migration and integration of the Alexander Forbes business. We moved the date, you know, two years ago already by one year. That's why we will by the end of the 2024 financial year, we will probably only achieve half of the savings. The ambition is this remains the same. We will still, you know, we still believe we can have ZAR 160 million of savings, but half of that we will achieve on the target date, which is why we're giving ourselves 50%. We've seen some nice growth in premiums lately. Happy with that.
You know, I think because of the current claims experience, you know, and our premium levels probably not being adjusted fast enough, that ZAR 30 million is out of reach. We're targeting ZAR 200 million-ZAR 220 million by 2024. We're happy with the how we're going on the client value proposition. Just in conclusion, I'd just like to make three quick points. Reinvent and Grow is on track, in particular, you know, some of the big IT projects that will deliver, I think, a lot of benefit and improvements and capabilities. We're very pleased with how that's going. As the going gets tough, we will focus more and more on what we control, focus on execution.
Two areas that we will focus on in particular in the coming months is, you know, our agency channels, Momentum and Metropolitan. Then just finally, you know, in the current environment, you know, where there's not sort of natural growth, I think it's very, very important to be competitive. We believe we are competitive. I think it's fantastic to actually. If you look at the last three, four years, we've grown market share in just about every category that I can think of. You know, it's in IFA, sales Myriad increase. You know, in the corporate side, we've gained a bit of market share. Significant gains in investment business. Health, you know, small but meaningful. Metropolitan gained market share. You know, just generally speaking, very, very happy with where we are. I think, you know, I'm gonna hand over to Herman.
Guardrisk is a meaningful contributor to the business. It's one of the very positive stories, and that's why, you know, I think it's important for Herman, to give Herman the opportunity to share with you what they're doing at Guardrisk. Thank you.
Right. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, Hillie and Dan, thank you for the opportunity to get some time, you know, on the podium to share some of the good news stories of the Guardrisk business. Just a special word of welcome to all the Guardrisk staff who I know has also dialed in specifically for this opportunity. It's great to be talking to you about a great business. A great business that has been great for I think since...
This is not a biased view, since inception, and, which I really think is still a great business. True to our federating operating model, which is, by the way, very successful in the MMH-
Environment, I was given some poetic freedom to decide on the themes that I want to bring across today. I've decided on three. The one is just to talk a little bit about the Guardrisk growth story and use some indicators, and hopefully that you can when you see the numbers and so forth, you will realize that the growth story is sustainable and the growth story is also consistent, you know, historically and hopefully going forward. The right to win. Why does Guardrisk have a right to win not only in the cell captive industry, but also moving in other parts of the industry that we are taking the Guardrisk business into now? I'll just give you some idea of life after 2024.
Guardrisk being true to its origins, being a growth business, a revenue business, what will we be focusing on in terms of growth? That's the three areas that I will actually themes that I would like to bring across. As far as the growth story is concerned in Guardrisk, I've decided on five indicators that would give a, you know, an indication of the, of the success. We've decided on taking it from 2014 when Guardrisk became a member of the family of the larger group, when we moved from the previous owners to up to 2022. That's roughly eight-year period. Let me take you back to 2014, what the business looked like and what it looks like today in 2022. The first one is the annual gross written premium.
That's always a good indicator of growth. There's a case of a business 14% annualized growth in that period, where I think the industry numbers, if you look at it, especially in the area that we operate, probably somewhere between 6%-7%. Really double the growth that we've seen in the industry, moving from ZAR 9.3 billion to in 2020 to ZAR 26.4 billion. That's a 3x increase in gross written premium over a eight-year period. The KPMG survey for 2022 using 2021 numbers also now indicate Guardrisk, the non-life part of Guardrisk, as the second largest player in the non-life insurance industry in South Africa, alongside Hollard. That was two years ago. Well, we can't wait for the new numbers to come out.
Currently, we're in the second position in that regard. Valuation. Still on a 10x multiple PE. 2.8x increase over this period from ZAR 1.6 billion, which was basically the acquisition price, to ZAR 4.5 billion. Hopefully, we can top close to ZAR 5 billion, you know, towards year- end. And I think what makes it even more remarkable is the fact that during this period, we've paid a dividend of ZAR 1.3 billion also to the group. The third one, revenue mix. Again, going back to 2014, part of the group rationale, strategic rationale for acquiring the Guardrisk business was diversification. Diversification of revenue stream, but also diversification of client profile to also get some more corporate clients into the larger group.
The third one was really to unlock the value of the balance sheet of the group in favor of Guardrisk who've been an insurance company underwriting a lot of business but taking very little underwriting exposure for its own account. That has moved from a 6% underwriting profit in 2014 to a 30% number now. Quite a substantial improvement in the revenue mix and the diversification of our revenue, which I think is one of the strongholds of the Guardrisk business. Our plan, and since we started with this about in 2017, on the underwriting side, was to write for margin between 9%-11%. In the growth phase, you know, happy to report that we have managed to keep to that underwriting margin.
Our contribution to group NHE moving from 4% to 10%. I guess when you get into the double digits contribution to the group, that's when you get invited to present at a half-year presentation and so forth, really. Yeah, the 10% I think is a double digits. That's what we're about, and that's a great number. Capital efficiency. Another way to look at it is ROE. That has improved from 13% in 2014 to 21% 2022. The way we've indicated here is the capital, the solvency or regulatory capital, as a percentage of gross premium, which you can see has substantially decreased from 85% to 19%.
The 85% was based on a impact survey that was done by the regulatory authorities at that point in time, and that was really the only credible number that was available about the potential capital requirements of a Guardrisk cell captive business. The business was acquired at that point in time. Lots of capital efficiency initiatives that we had. Also taking into account that the business has taken significantly more underwriting exposure onto its balance sheet and so forth. Despite that, you know, that ratio has come down to 19%. Hillie stats on all the other indicators for half year. I guess suffice to say from my side that everything is on track. Why do we think Guardrisk has a right to win historically but also going forward?
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of detailed information available. You know, many of our competitors are not part of public or listed in the groups or entities. Some are. Some of the details are not readily available. KPMG produces an annual report and some of the other audit firms as well that we can use their data for comparative purposes. Yeah, the first one is the cell captive world is alive and well. Despite some popular belief, I think Hillie raised the point about competitors wants to spread some other stories, very similar in the cell captive environment. The business is in demand. We've opened 34 new cells.
We've got a total of 278 cells in the Guardrisk business, of which 34, 35 were opened in the last five years. The business is alive and well. There's some very good names and great names amongst those 34. There's seven cell captive licenses in the market that we compete with. Sometimes we think there's only one or two competitors because there's only one or two other names that maybe make the media, but there are seven other competitors, so it's quite a highly competitive environment. As far as the cell captive world is concerned, the market share has grown from 2014 to 2022, from 12% to 15%. I think it's quite in a large market and a growing market.
That's quite a substantial growth from a market share as an industry, a cell captive industry. As far as Guardrisk is concerned, 7% growth in that eight-year period in market share from 52% to 59%. Quite substantial, I think. As far as the regulatory environment is concerned, yeah, for the first time, the cell captive environment industry has now received some recognition in the formal insurance legislation. The 2017 Insurance Act reference actually cell captives and some arrangements for them, really recognizing the role that this industry has played in the wider insurance industry, especially as far as innovation and alternative thinking and methodology is concerned.
Um, yeah, for twenty-five years, Guardrisk has operated under general insurance laws, and it's great to now have almost like being on the podium here, but to have a little bit of space, you know, in the sun as far as the laws are concerned. The conduct standards that were recently issued, very conducive. Very supportive of the cell captive environment, uh, especially as far as matters like transformation is concerned, uh, uh, enabling insurtechs, uh, startup, scale-up businesses, small businesses to actually come to life through the cell captive, uh, structure. And that's why I think there's a lot of support from the regulator as well. The SCR calculation is now embedded into our capital, into our balance sheet. You know, after, uh, after a number of years, it's now stable.
We can now actually put a proper capital development plan forward to the group. Also important now for our clients, that they can also be in a position in terms of themselves to adequately plan for their capital going forward. Reinsurance partnerships, very important element in our business. We're a large buyer of reinsurance in the South African, but also in the international market. The two graphs that I used there is two big events that happened in the non-life insurance industry. The one was the during COVID, the business interruption claims. There was a lot of publication about that specific environment. Guardrisk was the first one as you may recall, that had to come forward and say, "Do we pay the claims?
Don't we pay the claims?" Sort out the technical matters, and we had to have our reinsurance to support us. Our reinsurance panel was the first one to have to make the decision, not only in South Africa but in the world, to pay those claims. They backed the Guardrisk business when we didn't want to wait only for the court cases, but when we had to make a decision to pay those claims. 92% of claims in that event during the COVID event was paid by our reinsurers, and we only for net account paid 8%. That's an indication of the good, strong relationships we have with reinsurance, but also the conservative nature in which we are actually approaching the underwriting account. KZN floods, the second one, I think that's still fresh in the memories.
Again, similar pattern, 2% for our own net account, then 98% was picked up by our reinsurers. I think the great story about this is that we've already now, after those two events, we've gone through renewal of our reinsurance structure. There's still one or two that still need to come. We know how tough the reinsurance environment is, I'm pleased to report that we've managed to renew all our treaties in Guardrisk up to obviously the end of February, and with much less punitive terms than what we've expected. Strong relationships with reinsurers locally and internationally. Continuous innovation, some guys call it pivot. We just say, you know, it is continuous innovation for Guardrisk. Three items that I would like to highlight there. Microinsurance.
Hillie touched on the microinsurance license that we that we got. That was in April 2021. We really see the microinsurance license playing a role in providing a platform for small businesses, for entrepreneurial initiatives. We talked about startups, scale-ups, but specifically in the transformation environment. Where I think from an ownership point of view, it's very difficult, you know, to sell shares of a large insurance company to to really a black empowerment, not the large groups, but smaller ones. In the cell captive environment, cell owners, transformation owners get 100% ownership of the cell, and they get 100% access to all the economic benefits that flow from the cell captive.
Fantastic vehicle, and that was also recognized by an independent survey that was done by the Centre for Financial Regulation and Inclusion, and those reports are available publicly. General insurance, the GGI business, we started that in 2017/2018. Good, strong brand. We wanted to leverage on that brand, pivot on the brand, take it to the general insurance market with our brand. Our distribution for the cell captive business, very similar to the distribution channels, the general insurance market. Yeah, we're doing well with that business. LAUNCHPAD, very excited. Been some publication and some media coverage over the last two weeks about LAUNCHPAD. That was, yeah, as I said, launched two weeks ago.
That's where we really want to provide a platform and an ecosystem for insurtech businesses, the startups and the scale-ups, to access the ecosystem of Guardrisk that we can together with them. We can't develop all the tech that's out there. There's lots of clever people out there with tech. We want to get them in our ecosystem, where we can assist them with our deep insurance expertise and also give them access to our wide distribution channel and our client base. Happy to say that the board recently approved quite a large investment for us in that environment. We're not a VC fund, but we will invest alongside the entrepreneur and maybe a larger VC fund as well. Synergies between us and the group.
Important element initially, again, when the transaction was done in 2014 and so forth, the management team were given some very stiff targets to achieve as far as synergies are concerned, and very happy that all those synergies were revenue related. There were no back office synergies and no cost synergies that we had to achieve. That was all, you know, revenue. That's, I think, where the sustainability also comes in. As far as reinsurance is concerned, on a annualized premium basis, we place about ZAR 500 million , ZAR 560 million of reinsurance premiums into the group onto the life license, the larger life license that predominantly in the employee benefit business, where clients want to their own sales. Assets under management, 43% of our unitized portfolio is Momentum Asset Management. Again, 2014, Momentum Asset Management wasn't on our panel.
Retail investments. Over the last two to three years, we've given the retail investment business about ZAR 5 billion of endowment- link business, utilizing the capacity of the Guardrisk Life license. My last slide. So what does life beyond 2024 look like? You can see that from a Hillie's point of view, we point that Hillie made, we have basically achieved our targets, the Reinvent and Grow targets and so forth, starting to think about life after 2024. All the focus areas are revenue-r elated. The first one, the Guardrisk reinsurance vehicle. We're one of the largest buyers of reinsurance in the local insurance industry, between ZAR 6 billion- ZAR 7 billion premium per annum, of which between ZAR 3 billion- ZAR 4 billion we think there's margin to be made about that.
We can consolidate some of that onto our own income statement, and that margin is sustainable. We've, our reinsurers have made some good money over the last 10 years, and despite some of the big events, the volatility is very, very limited. I think it's purely because of the size and the magnitude of that. We're looking at that. Guardrisk Life, you know, it's been publicized that there's one or two clients that is moving on into their own licenses and so forth. Glad to say that we do not have a concentration in the Guardrisk environment. There we will also look at retaining risk and do bolt-on transactions where we can also beat the IRR hurdles quite substantially, similar to in the non-life business.
Loanspare I touched upon, and that embedded insurance 2.0 really want to move our third-party cell captive business into a world. A lot of international trends show us that embedded insurance is the way to go. I think that's it from my side. Big thanks to all the Guardrisk staff, you know, for all your support all the years, all your commitment and absolute passion for this business. It's great to work with all of you. Yeah, thank you everyone. Risto, let me hand over to you. Thanks.
Yeah. Thanks, Herman. Guardrisk is such a good business. Maybe it would be good for our share price if I just asked you to come back here and talk about it for another 20 minutes. Anyway, let's give you a slightly more balanced view of what everything that's going on. Yeah, financial results for the six months. Now, this is the usual opening slide with our key financial indicators. What is a bit different here is I added in black bar there. That is a December 19, six months. Now remember, COVID actually broke out in February 2020, and there was market turmoil in February and March 2020. That is like the last six months of normality in my eyes before COVID happened.
It is very pleasing to see that all our metrics are well ahead of that base level. Through COVID, we kept on telling all our stakeholders, particularly our staff, like, "Let's focus on what's under our control. You know, let's make sure service is okay. Let's deliver on projects. You know, let's make sure that we get, you know, on the front foot in terms of products and pricing, and we'll come out stronger." I'm now claiming that we are coming out stronger, just based on that sort of the last red bar versus the pre-COVID levels. In terms of growth rates, 46% growth in earnings to ZAR 2.2 billion. The per share growth rate's a bit higher because of the buyback program, so it's 49% growth. Dividend growth, very pleasing, 43%, ZAR 0.50 per share dividend.
I suppose we could have paid a slightly higher dividend. We did decide to also implement the ZAR 500 million buyback program now. We're gonna be paying out ZAR 750 million in dividends, that's ZAR 0.50 per share, plus another ZAR 500 million as a buyback. The total distribution to shareholders is ZAR 1.25 billion in respect of the last six months. Our ROE is back above 18%, which I think is a good result in context of financial services in South Africa. Embedded value growing steadily but surely. I mean, that has been a very volatile time period. 11% growth year-over-year.
You add back dividends, and you get to about a mid-teens growth rate, which is similar to the ROEV in the last six months of 15 odd %. I do think that our ROEV is now stabilizing in the mid-teens rather than low teens as we're coming out of COVID. The only negative numbers really are the sales volumes and then VMB and margin. I'll go into a bit more detail on that just now. As per usual, I'm not gonna talk through every business division on its own slide. I'll sort of spend a bit of time on this in the next slide, give you maybe a 60-second overview. These four operations are really the entities that operate under the Momentum Metropolitan Life legal entity balance sheet.
When you think about the big life company at the center of our organization, it's these four entities. There's some sort of general trends that apply to all of them. The first thing is that mortality has largely normalized from, you know, back to pre-COVID levels. You know, if you run from the left, Momentum Life had a ZAR 400 million improvement in mortality profits. Metropolitan Life, ZAR 50 million improvement. Momentum Corporate, sort of ZAR 100 million-ZAR 150 million improvement in risk experience. obviously in investments is annuity book, so they had a small negative from the improvement in mortality. Overall, probably ZAR 500 million, ZAR 550 million improvement just across these four divisions coming from mortality. The other factor that affected all of them is investment variances.
That term includes a number of items. It's the level and the shape of the yield curve. That requires some higher degree actuarial thinking. A key one is the market impact inflation. I think we must realize that the market impact inflation has shrunk a bit in the last 12 months. That was quite positive for us in terms of our expense reserves. It also includes the impact of point-to-point movements in equity markets in that six-month period. I'm giving a bit of a long story because there was a positive driver for almost all of these businesses. In Momentum Life, investment variances were ZAR 250 million better. In Metlife, about ZAR 50 million better. Momentum Corporate again, about ZAR 50 million better.
Mortality and investment, let's call it, variables, they really benefited earnings across these four divisions. We look at some of the more business unit specific items, I suppose I'll start in Metropolitan Life. I told you mortality was good and investment variances were good, yet the earnings didn't grow. Clearly there's something in that zero. The missing bit is ZAR 100 million of persistency related losses, broadly speaking. That was the one disappointing part here. That persistency really arises from two quite distinct buckets. One is what we call NTUs, not taken ups in insurance jargon. That is where we go through the whole sales process of finding a client, explaining to him, you know, getting application forms, issuing policies, loading the guys on our systems, but there's no premiums ever paid.
You know, effectively it's a wasted effort in terms of that sales activity. The level of NTU is very high. It literally cost us ZAR 10 million in the six-month period. That's when we talk about quality of sales. I mean, that's one of the key metrics to measure whether sales are functioning well. The other one is a bit more vanilla lapses across the duration and the type of products. That's maybe economy related. The NTU is something that we really think is under our own control to a large extent, and it's getting quite a bit of attention. When I show you the weakening VNB in Metlife, that also plays a role there.
In Momentum Corporate, we speak a lot about mortality, but within there's also a very good six months again from the disability book. Those of you that have been following us for longer, disability business used to make perennial losses year after year, and there was a lot of debate about the economics of that whole business in model. We had levels where profitability, I think is satisfactory to all parties, including shareholders. That's been a major turnaround in the way we perceive the commercial merits of that business line. Moving on to the outside of the life business operations. First one here is the health administration business. That growth rate is flatted by the change in the minority interest. We sort of got a bit higher percentage of earnings in the current period.
Beyond that, I would say this business is doing very well in a tough environment. We had fee income growth of 9%, and that was a sort of a combination of inflationary increases to admin fees, but they're growing lives, which I think is quite unusual in this market. They grew Momentum Open Scheme, Momentum Health. We grew in the low-income market products, and we also grew in public sector through Gems. You know, so we're showing surprisingly good unit growth in terms of lives and health, so well done to them. The operating margin shows you that it wasn't sort of bought growth. It was at good marginal revenue contributions. Non-life insurance, two very different stories here. Now Herman came and spoke about Guardrisk.
Maybe the next step is we split Guardrisk as its own segment. You get that when you get to 15% of earnings, so maybe at year-end. Yeah. Guardrisk results were actually very pleasing. They were flat year on year. Remember last year there was a ZAR 50 million one-off gain through a corporate action where they bought one of their underlying cells at a discount to NAV. We had to recognize an accounting gain of ZAR 50 million on that transaction. The real growth was really ZAR 50 million, which is sort of high doubled. Well, it's a very good growth rate for the time period, and that was driven by ongoing good underwriting results. The more negative story within that non-life insurance is Momentum Insure, where earnings went from roughly break- even to a loss in the current six months.
We all know that it's been a very tough environment for most non-life insurers. The weather has not been conducive, the load shedding definitely not conducive. We also have seen increases in some categories of crime and things like that. It's a tough environment, but it doesn't change the fact that we just cannot make losses on an ongoing basis. We are taking quite aggressive repricing action. You know, if we sort of look backwards, maybe we could have repriced early and a bit more aggressive. Anyway, we are doing that, and obviously the lap rates are good. The clients have stuck around through the repricing exercise, and we think they will continue to stay on our books even as we move further on that.
Africa, it's a big recovery, but the ZAR 120 million is probably still 2/3 of where I think this business should be. Maybe ZAR 150 million-ZAR 200 million is a better par value for this operation. The star performer in the last six months was really Lesotho, whereas Botswana and Namibia are still not operating quite at their potential. Later when I show some of the dividends coming to holdings, the Africa dividend really is a Lesotho dividend because of the performance in the last six months. New initiatives. The main item here is India. India's losses narrowed by about ZAR 60 million-ZAR 70 million, six months on six months. That is a good trend.
We definitely prefer that trend than the other way, but we were hoping that the losses would narrow even a little bit more. Now, top- line growth in India is not a problem. We are growing very rapidly. The claims ratios remain above target, though. There's a number of factors, but maybe one sort of a broad, easy- to- explain one is that post-COVID, we are seeing the actual cost of hospitalizations remaining high. You know, the hospitals are using more sterilized equipment. There's COVID tests. There's been like a 10% top-up that seems almost permanent now in the post-COVID world. We are looking at, well, first of all, pushing back a little bit on those increases, but secondly, repricing some of these products. We are still very optimistic about the India business.
Obviously, the India macro story has rebounded post-COVID and is very promising. Shareholders. This is really a combination of three quite distinct items. We have about a ZAR 13 billion-ZAR 14 billion shareholder investment portfolio, which is like bonds and cash and a bit of properties. A very stable portfolio that serves as our risk capital for the group. On that, we earn a stable investment return, which was about ZAR 300 million in the current period. I'll show you on the next slide. We have a ZAR 2 billion VC fund, which has been a good story for the last few years. The last six months, less so. We had a small negative return on the VC fund. The VC environment has become a bit tougher. We always expected that.
I mean, it would have been pretty naive to expect 30%, 40% returns every six months. The last item is that there's a small amount of very good value for money head office costs that get taken off of the investment returns. Okay. This just shows you the different components. The light blue is really the stable return on the life company risk portfolio and the dark blue is the VC fund gains that went from great to so-so. Okay. Sales volumes, these are down 10%. I think the first story that this picture tells you is just how big Momentum Investments is. You know, Momentum Metropolitan Holdings, we do have a massive exposure to the middle and affluent market.
You know, if you sort of describe us, one of the first things you'll think about is, like, big IFA market share, big player in the wealth platform industry. You know, so there's no way of hiding around the fact that we are heavily exposed to this affluent market segment, and sales volumes did drop by 17%. We've seen sales drop here across most of the players that have reported so far, and it is quite curious that, like, offshore sales, it's almost like a switch was turned on-- off, where we went from very high demand for the offshore products to now quite modest the last few months. What is pleasing behind the scenes of that decline is annuity sales remain strong, and the margins are very good on annuities. So that protected the VNB impact in investments.
The other negative here is Momentum Metropolitan Africa. Last year included some very good corporate sales. This year, they didn't repeat. Even adjusting for that, we are under a bit of pressure on the retail side as well. There's clearly a lot of work to be done here. The last negative category I'll put here is Metropolitan Life. Hillie had a slide earlier that showed very green in terms of gross activity. The activity is very good, but because of the high not taken ups, we're actually not converting it to net sales. You know, that high activity level is not really pushing up ultimately the premiums coming into the group. Because I described it earlier as a bit of wasted effort. It's actually a negative. You sort of lose the revenue recognition, but you incur all the expenses.
You're never gonna recover those. On a positive side, Momentum Life is a bit of a positive here. As mentioned earlier, this has been a tough environment, particularly the affluent risk market. The 3% is probably a decent number, you know, compared to the overall industry. Momentum Corporate, very pleasing six months, and that's quite broad as well. We had good flows into FundsAtWork, which remains, in my unbiased opinion, the number one umbrella fund product in the market. We also had good annuity sales, structured investment sales. You know what I mean? So it wasn't just a one-hit wonder. There was quite broad support across the corporate product set. Moving on to the margin. I'll flatter ourselves and call this a stable margin.
Our margin remained reasonably stable at 1%, and the stability is really around the Momentum Investments block. Because it's such a big part of the volumes, the fact that the annuities kept the margin at 1%, means that the group margin was basically stable. Momentum Corporate, I mentioned the good flows, and this shows you that they're good margins as well. I mean, this is an industry where particularly large deals, the margin can differ very much deal by deal. I think it shows that there was some good discipline in the current period to get the margins, let's call it the right level. In terms of negative items here, Momentum Life remains close to a zero margin, and that includes both the Investo and Myriad products, which are both pretty close to the break-even margin.
Hillie mentioned earlier, a lot of work being done around there, including some new product launches, looking at the agency sales and things like that. Metropolitan Life, I already mentioned that the poor quality of new business resulted in the shrinking of margin. I would also note that we have cut the fees on some of our savings products, which means that the savings margin is also a little bit lower than in the past. Lastly, on Africa, again, I think Hillie did allude to it. That is really a Namibia problem, where Namibia has a negative VNB. Their [uncertain] VNB is actually quite good, and Botswana is also positive. It is really about turning Namibia around to get this right. Embedded value, just one slide.
If I think of what's happened in the world in those, what's that, is that 24 months or 30 months? It's been very volatile, yet our EV has grown very steadily. It's something to note about the defensive nature of our capital management, our balance sheet, ALM matching, diversity of operations, conservative valuation approaches on certain items. It means they've been able to grow EV six months, six months, six months, which is a, I think it's a good achievement. I mentioned earlier that the ROEV for the last six months is 15.6% per share. The last item to highlight here is when we launched our strategy, we always said that we do wanna diversify the group a bit away from being just a life company
I mean, there's nothing wrong with life insurance, but I think it's always good from a risk perspective to diversify. If you look in the light blue and the red, those non-life operations have gone from ZAR 8 billion to about ZAR 13 billion in two and a half years. That's a good achievement. A lot of that has been Guardrisk and then India in terms of driving that growth. Okay, solvency, important item. We remain at the upper ends of our internal target ranges, which is a comfortable position to be in. It really explains that and liquidity, which is also strong at the moment. Explains why I've been happy to pay a, quite a big increase in the dividends of ZAR 0.50 per share.
As I mentioned, we will do another ZAR 500 million of share buybacks over the next four months as well. I mentioned earlier that we're distributing ZAR 1.25 billion in totality to shareholders. If I look at the previous six months, that was ZAR 1.75 billion. On a rolling 12-month basis, we're gonna be distributing ZAR 3 billion to our shareholders, which again, I don't think is a bad number for a ZAR 30 billion market cap company. It's like a 10% cash yield. It's decent. Let's look at other topical financial matters maybe. Maybe that item's missing there. Cash generation. This was included at the year-end last time. It was a hit with a certain audience, my primary audience, so it's back by popular demand.
As I said last time, out of a 100 odd legal entities, there's really four that pays the bills here. The first one is the South African Life company in the top left. Guardrisk pays good dividends. Thank you. The health business pays good dividends. Even Africa, you know, Africa's had a tough time, but you must remember that in Africa we have some loss-making businesses. That's like Kenya. You know, we had a business in, in Mauritius, you know, Tanzania. There's always been these stable, profitable companies like Lesotho in that portfolio. The dividend's actually okay compared to some of the earnings metrics. Africa is actually more important in terms of cash flow than maybe in terms of group earnings. If I just show you what happened in the last six months on these four main cash generators.
I won't call them cash cows. To me, that's like a compliment that most of us get insulted. Okay. SA Life business, we paid a dividend of ZAR 1.5 billion for the last six months. Earnings went from ZAR 1.5 billion to ZAR 2 billion. What happened here? I suppose you combine the fact that our solvency position is very strong. You combine the fact that we have a lot more certainty around the way COVID will play out, and then also liquidity. We were quite comfortable to increase the dividend a bit more than the earnings increased. Very good dividend from the Life co. I wouldn't consider that unusually high. I mean, I would say probably ZAR 1 billion- ZAR 1.5 billion is not a bad estimate of what could be paid out every six months, yeah.
Guardrisk paid 60% of its earnings out. Health had a reasonably good dividend, and as I mentioned, Africa, that's really Lesotho ZAR 85 million coming through there. Those are the four normal cash generators. Under other, there's a whole lot of other things added up to ZAR 28 million, not much. Small disposal of ZAR 11 million. We disposed of a small software company. India, I included here, even though it's zero, because that used to be minus ZAR 200 million every six months. Remember we brought in a new investor into that joint venture, and they have basically funded the next three years of growth. It's a good reminder that there's a cash flow benefit from that transaction to us, our shareholders. Momentum Insure, we injected ZAR 200 million. We have internal solvency targets, 1.4-1.6 SCR for this business.
We injected ZAR 200 million to get it back into that target range. Then, one for the connoisseurs here, MM Finance Company. That is normally under other. Unfortunately, it was so big or maybe fortunately for me, gives me something to talk about. It was so big, I had to take it out. This is actually a legal entity that provides funding to all our lending activities in the group. You know, I look at Dumo, they do pension-backed home loans, which I think is quite popular now with all the home improvements and so on. When they grow that lending book, we finance it through finance company. We got Guardrisk Premium Finance. In the corporate space, premiums are big, hundreds of thousands, millions of rands.
We'll actually pay the reinsurance premium or the premium, and then we'll recover it from you monthly. Yeah. We do a lot of lending activities in the group, and we centralize it through here. I suppose that ZAR 153 million just shows you there was a net increase in our lending activities. In totality, from operational perspective, we generate ZAR 1.5 billion of cash. That's about two-thirds of earnings. Again, not a bad number to think about what is the cash generation versus earnings in most time periods. We decided to spend ZAR 749 million on dividends. That's ZAR 0.50 per share and then a buyback of ZAR 500 million, and then ZAR 200 million is left over. We don't start bank account at zero for the next six months. Okay. That's the capital flows, share buybacks.
Not much to say here except that we bought back 45 million shares in the last six months at an average price of under ZAR 17. We bought them at sort of 55% of EV on average, and that added about ZAR 583 million to remaining shareholders in terms of embedded value. If we can buy another 25 million shares now with the ZAR 500 million, ZAR 20 a share, it will add another ZAR 279 million. In totality, it's about ZAR 800 million of value add through the buyback program. IFRS 17. We are a June year-end, whereas some of our competitors are December year-ends. We will probably give you a little bit less information in this March period than the December year-ends would.
I think it's only fair we give you some directional views. We will then report our first set of IFRS numbers this time next year. I suppose the one key message is that we do expect group earnings to be a little bit lower, and what I mean by small negative impact, less than 10%. Our life insurance earnings do look to be lower under IFRS 17 than currently. The irony of it is that it's actually got to do with the prudence in our previous accounting approach. A big part of our current earnings is release of second-tier margins and sort of discretionary margins that we built up over the years. We move to IFRS 17, we're gonna have to recognize all of that on day one gains.
Our net asset value is gonna go up by a couple of billion rand on day one. That money would have been released slowly over time under IFRS 4. A small decline in earnings. Big jump in our book value on day one. The, obviously, the implication is our ROE will decline somewhat. ROE is very important to us, and under the IFRS 4 basis, we were targeting 20%, and we got to 18 now. I think we'll probably reset down to about 15% when we implement IFRS 17. You know, we still need to do all the math, but I think we can sort of try work back towards an 18% ROE under the IFRS 17 basis in due course. In terms of EV, impact is insignificant, and the last number I saw is less than 3%.
Also at VNB level, the aggregate group VNB is largely unchanged. Next point is very important. The life company pays most the bills, and the life company dividends are based on our SAM results, our regulatory results. That is not changing with IFRS 17. The expected dividend flows from the life company to the group are unchanged, which by definition means the dividends to our MMH shareholders unchanged. The short version there is expect the dividend level to remain unaffected. The cash- generating ability of the group is unaffected by the accounting policy change. Sorry, accounting standards change. Lastly, business strategy. As important as us finance people think IFRS 17 is, the reality is, in the business units, every single operational or strategic deliverable that they're busy with remains extremely valid.
I mean, the new accounting lens changes nothing in terms of what's really important in the group. There's no need for any strategy or product changes at this stage. Okay, that brings the financial section to a close. I'll just make some general comments. We have made this point a few times. The good earnings today is because we didn't get defocused or lose our way through the chaos, particularly early parts of COVID, and now we're reaping the benefits of that. The second point, this word is a good word, we are very privileged. We can do decent dividends, we can do buybacks, we can buy businesses, we can invest in our own operations. I mean, we generate ZAR 3 billion-plus of free cash flow every year.
Lack of money is never gonna be an excuse for not getting things right here. You know, it's maybe what we do with it, but we'll obviously try our best. We are privileged to have all these options in terms of how to move forward. This wording is from the last six months. Several exciting, and I was thinking exciting is an interesting word. Depends who you are. You interpret it differently. There are a lot of projects on the go. Wealth re-platforming. There's even modernization in Guardrisk. There's a few projects in AfricaMet. You know, there's like, there's more business units that are busy with major technology and digital projects than there aren't. Okay? I think the delivery on those will determine our competitiveness in the next three, five years thereafter.
You know, delivery on these projects are very important right now. The millions of customers we've built up over decades and their loyalty to us. Where we do see the economy struggling and a lack of confidence is in sales. It is hard to get people to commit to long-term investments or even into long-term risk products at this stage. I underlined there, we have to win market share. I don't think the addressable market is growing. I don't think there's many people, if any, coming into our sort of segment on a net basis. We have to outsmart the competition. Lastly, it will be very rude not to congratulate staff. I sometimes tell Hillie that my job is the chief storyteller, so here I am.
The staff actually write the story. Thank you and congratulations to you for all the hard work. Also thank you to our clients and our financial advisors who make it all possible. Thank you.
Thank you, Risto, and thank you, Herman, and thank you, Hillie. Ahead this afternoon, Hillie and Jeanette and Herman, everybody and Risto have got a very busy afternoon with media interviews that have been lined up. As usual, as we conclude here, we take a look at some of the questions that have come through our Corpcam platform. If I may, the first one, we're just gonna take two questions and then let you, let you go, Hillie, Risto and Jeanette. This one is coming from Donata at MIPFA. It says: In Momentum Insure, you mentioned that you will be repricing aggressively, while some of your peers had already done that. How far are you behind your peers in that aspect, and how much impact are you expecting the repricing to have on your volumes? Herman.
Thank you, Dan. I think if I have to try and put a period on it, I would say between three and four months that we've been behind the pricing initiatives of our peers. Again, if we talk about aggressive pricing, it's probably the third one that we will be putting in during February, March, that we have put in during February, March. We're already in the high teens, in the double digits in terms of repricing of renewal business as basically all the other insurers. We can only reprice a in-force book over a 12-month period. As renewals come up, because we guarantee premiums for a 12-month premiums. The aggressive repricing comes with new business. We've already had the 3rd one that we've introduced over the last couple of months.
How quickly will it take to catch up? Probably year and a half to two years, I think will be fair to say that we will catch up. The positive, if there is any positive, if you think about it this way, is that with the competitors who reprice, started to reprice early three to four months earlier than us and also fairly aggressively and so forth, we've seen some good growth maybe in our business. Our retention levels have certainly improved. Despite the aggressive repricing that we've done, our client retention levels, our lapse rates have actually improved and remains one of the best in the industry. I think, that's a positive sign also of it.
It will actually over a 12 to 24 month period, I think we'll catch up.
Thanks, Dan.
Okay. Thank you very much, Herman. Next up from Warwick Bam at RMB Morgan Stanley. The question is: Can you expand on the reasons for the deterioration in the NTU experience? That's the not taken up experience in Metropolitan Life. Secondly, when do you expect corrective action on the higher NTUs to take effect? Hillie, Risto?
I mean, the NTUs come from lots of areas. Sometimes it is also just hard selling, you know. There has been some issues in the advisor force that we had to also exit some advisors for, let's say, fraudulent behavior or sort of selling that isn't consistent with our principles. A lot of it really boils down to management of the channel and to get the guys to follow our best practice in terms of sales. I mean, we've seen cases as far as people creating companies to do stop order business. Obviously, that is not acceptable. What's made the situation a bit harder financially in this period as well is that there's often a couple of months lag between an advisor leaving and us actually making the policy NTU.
Often the advisors know beforehand there's a problem coming, and they leave, and then we can't recover the commissions. We also had what we call clawback losses in the last six months, just because we more advisors have left before we try and recover the commissions. There's a number of issues, but I would summarize them as channel management being maybe the key term.
Okay. Thank you, Risto. Final question. It's from Michael Cropper, Ex-Chequer Fund Management. Well done on reaching the cost to income ratio target early. Is there scope to improve this much below 70%?
Yep. Okay. Thanks. Thank you. I think as Hillie mentioned, the cost to income ratio has largely been a factor of our underwriting performance. If you looked at the actuals for half year, we're sitting at about 56%. Given what we expect in terms of pressure on premiums as we go forward, if we can keep that at about 65%-70%, I think that will be a very strong outcome for us. We are looking beyond 2024 to actually target around 65%. A big variable here is really around the ability to manage underwriting performance effectively. Then secondary to that, just continuing the discipline that we've maintained around expense management with expenses growing below inflation for the last three years.
Thank you, Dumo. I thought that was the last question, but Michael Christelis just snuck in last one. He's from UBS. Why limit your buyback to 75% of GEV if your GEV is supposedly conservative, Risto? That will be the last question.
Yeah, Michael. The EV is not supposedly conservative, it is conservative. I mentioned our ROEV is, let's say, mid-teens, 15% at the moment. If we're buying back at a 25% discount, you gross it up to, I don't know, 21%-22%. We just felt that 75% of EV is the level of where it's almost like a no-brainer that your buybacks are almost a better option than anything else. Once you get to that 20% expected return corridor, there are other investment opportunities out there, like in the cell captive space.
You know, I think the point we're making, you know, is that once we get to 75% of EV on the share price. We will maybe continue doing buybacks, or we maybe look at doing something else internally or maybe some small bolt-on acquisitions, depending on the opportunity set at that time. Mm.
Thank you very much, Risto. That concludes the presentation of the interim results of Momentum Metropolitan Holdings on this very important day, March the eighth, International Women's Day. I hope for the awesome women of the group for the rest of the day is going to be a beautiful one. Risto, Hillie, Jeanette, and the rest of the executives now are going to be engaging with media for the rest of the afternoon and investors as well. If any analyst still has some more questions, please, those can be directed to the investor relations team at Momentum Metropolitan and will be addressed as the afternoon progresses, as the next day progresses. Thank you very much for having joined us. Enjoy the rest of your afternoon.