Good afternoon, and welcome to everybody. In my overview section today, I will cover the operating environment in the first half of the year, which while still being difficult was materially better than the first half of last year. Developments around the recent unrest in parts of KwaZulu Natal and Traotian and their likely impact on our country, the economy, our clients and Nedbank financial highlights of our first half performance and an update on the strategic progress we continue to make in key areas. I believe these interim results demonstrate that the Nedbank teams have done an outstanding job of navigating the COVID environment into 2020 and into the first half of twenty twenty one. And the highlight is that all key balance sheet metrics on capital and liquidity are now back above pre COVID levels.
Our results also demonstrate good strategic delivery and an income statement performance that shows we are on track to meet the targets we have set ourselves for the end of 2023. I would like to thank all our committed Nedbank employees for remaining resilient and serving our clients so well during a difficult period through both the second and third waves of COVID-nineteen infections and more recently, the civil unrest we experienced in parts of South Africa. I also extend our deepest condolences to the families, friends and communities of employees and clients who have been impacted during this time. After my overview, Mike Davis, our CFO, will follow me with a more detailed analysis of the group's financial performance in the first half and he will also cover the financial performance of our business classes. In this reporting period, it will only be Mike and myself presenting.
Our customer managing executives and risk teams will be part of the usual individual investor meetings over the next few weeks and will again be part of our year end results presentations to provide a more in-depth cluster feedback over the full year. As usual, after Mike is finished, I'll come back at the close of the presentation to review the outlook for the rest of the year as well as provide reflections on the progress we have made towards our medium term targets through 2023 that we announced earlier this year. You will also notice that some slides are marked booklet slides in the top right hand corner. These are slides of additional information for investors and I will not speak directly to these slides in the presentation today. The first half of twenty twenty one was a more supportive environment for our banks and our clients than in the first half of twenty twenty.
And in particular, the Q2 of 2020, which was one of the most challenging periods across multiple fronts that I have experienced in over 30 years in banking. GDP growth expectations for 2021 of 4.2% have improved also very low 2020 base that declined by 7%. While lockdown levels in 2021 were in general more supportive of economic activity and during the first wave of infections in 2020. The 3rd wave of COVID-nineteen infections in South Africa were more severe than we had expected and the introduction of adjusted level 4 lockdown was more stringent than our base case expectation of a Level 3 lockdown in the 3rd wave. Demand for corporate credit was muted and excess cash generated by clients was generally used to repay debts, in particular from clients in the commodity sector.
On the retail side, demand for credit was more robust as clients benefited from lower interest rates. Transactional activity improved off a low base and growth in digital transactions continued to be strong as COVID accelerated a trend already well underway. The unrest in the 2nd week of July has been a big setback for our country, given the improved economic momentum during the first half of the year. And this unrest, along with the adjusted level 4 lockdown, is estimated to have shaved off 0.8 percent of GDP growth in 2021, with our GDP estimates now at 4.2% compared to 5% in late May. From a net bank perspective, I think the standout feature of our results is the excellent outcome achieved on our closing out of the resilient phase of the strategic pivot we introduced in March last year.
With all measures of balance sheet strength that we have referred to as resilience metrics, not only above 2020 levels, but also back above pre crisis levels, enabling the resumption of dividend payments. I will unpack these in more detail later. Headline earnings growth was very strong off the base. And while our headline earnings is still 24% lower And in the first half of twenty nineteen, it was up 148% for the half of twenty twenty to ZAR5.3 billion, driven by a significant decline in impairments, widening net interest margin and good expense discipline. From a strategic perspective, we've gained market share in a number of key areas, continued to grow name bank clients, improve productivity metrics and achieve excellent outcomes on risk and capital management.
Reflecting on the operating environment and in particular infection rates and lockdown levels in a little more detail. After the passing of the 2nd wave of infections from around December last year to February this year, South Africa is currently at the tail end of a third wave of infections that started in June. And as new daily infections continue to trend downwards, This has recently enabled a return to lockdown level stream. Lockdown restrictions during the second and third waves in South Africa have been more targeted than in the first wave, allowing larger parts of the economy to remain open. This is evidenced in the graph on the right being the Oxford Stringency Index.
As a result of this and helped by improved commodity prices, We've seen consistent upgrades to our 2021 economic growth forecasts. And in June, our economic units had their 2021 GDP forecast as high as 5% before the civil unrest in July and the introduction of adjusted lockdown level 4 together reduced this GDP forecast by 0.8% to 4.2%. After a slow start impacted by administration challenges and supply constraints. We've made good progress in recent weeks in accelerating vaccination levels. And as at the start of the 2nd week of August, Almost 9,000,000 South Africans have received at least one vaccination with 9% of the total population being fully vaccinated.
I would like to specifically recognize the key role played here by the B4SA teams under Martin Kingston, working alongside government to achieve this progress. Turning our focus to insights from our own high frequency data on how the COVID-nineteen pandemic played out in client activity levels over the last 12 to 15 months. In the graph on the left, we've shown client turnover data from our PoD devices and digital channels, with the gray bars representing months in 2019, the dark green bars months in 2020 and the bright green bars months in 2021. The large decline in April 2020 is clearly visible and we are pleased that overall turnover levels have now consistently returned to pre crisis levels with the first half of twenty twenty one being 19% above 2019 27% of the 2020 levels of this metric. However, the recovery has not been even across industries.
And on the right hand side, we show the progress in key sectors with hotels and airlines still below March 2020 levels and at June this year. Latest data shows that July turnover levels in total remain similar to June, although we have seen a slight reduction in Gauteng and Kuohui Hotel. As expected, restaurants, entertainment and hotels were again adversely impacted by the level 4 lockdowns. From a corporate perspective, activity remains constrained, but we have seen some green shoots in the first half. In Q1, business confidence improved off a multiyear low in 2020 and reached the 50 point mark in the 2nd quarter, indicating a neutral position, but a sharp decline could well be expected following the events in July.
Supporting this improving sentiment with positive developments on key South Africa reforms such as energy generation and the announcement of a sale of a majority stake in FAA that will hopefully, when finalized, remove any future funding burden from the FIFCUS. However, we've not yet seen any material change in corporate investment appetites and new loan origination in the first half remains slow. Again, the recent events in July will not be helpful here. In the context of renewable energy, Nedbank as the Green Bank continues to lead in this regard, participating and co meeting 4 of the emergency energy projects that have just closed with REAP round 5 likely to close in the first half of twenty twenty two. Almost all our large clients are exploring some form of self generation, led by the mining sector.
Against this backdrop, while there are reissues evident, we remain cautious given the potential impact of recent civil unrest on country risk premiums and investor confidence in the longer term. From a retail or household perspective, the operating environment was more supportive. As you can see on the left, compared to the global financial crisis, household have delevered, allowing them to take advantage of the 300 basis points lower interest rates over the past 12 months. This is evident in robust demand for prime linked credit products and Mike Davis will provide some more color on this later. The lower interest rates have also been beneficial to clients as debt servicing costs reduced.
And this improvement in cash flows for those who have remained employed is evident in lower credit loss ratios across all our businesses. Lastly, national data shows that households were net favored in 2020 and this has continued into 2021. The benefit for banks can be seen in strong growth in short term deposits. Against the generally more positive trends, the civil unrest and looting that occurred during the 2nd week of July in quoting the southern parts of Gauteng has been devastating. As we did during the COVID-nineteen pandemic, Nedbank's primary focus was on our staff and clients.
And we are pleased to report that due to early action and branch closures on our part, no staff were injured. Given the disruption to shops and supply chains, we have to date supported staff and communities with 106 tons of food and supplies. Our business continuity plans that were well tested by COVID during 2020 worked very well and our digital channels again proved highly beneficial. At the height of the unrest, 226 branches and 16 Boxer stores were closed being around 50% of our physical outlets and 55 of these were vandalized. As of the 1st week of August, 52 outcasts remain closed.
In addition, 325 ATMs being around 8% of our total ATMs were vandalized. All damage to our own physical infrastructure currently estimated at between ZAR250,000,000 and ZAR300,000,000 is covered by SAS Viya Insurance, the government's insurance agency, where we have ZAR1.5 billion of cover in place. And we estimate our cash losses to be around ZAR32 1,000,000. Our teams have worked really hard to support clients and to estimate the impact of the unrest on our clients' businesses and assets. And to date, it looks like the vast majority of our clients are also covered by Safria Insurance.
Importantly, in our commercial property finance portfolio, 105 properties have been damaged, impacting 55 clients. And while the extent of the damage to a number of these properties is still being assessed, all of these clients have confirmed SASSAVA Insurance is in place. And in his recent speech, the President affirmed that the state will stand behind Sathria's obligations if their own assets and reinsurance programs are insufficient to meet all valid claims. We expect loan application volumes to drop in the month of July. And as you saw earlier, Early high frequency transactional data does not highlight any material impact at a country level.
Law and order and the protection of citizens and their assets are the foundation for democracy and investment and economic growth. And business needs to urgently understand why it happens and very importantly, why it will not happen again. Failing which many businesses may not rebuild and certainly not in the same areas or indeed in South Africa. Turning to progress on our strategy to 2023. After our deliberate shift in focus to resilience in 2020, At the start of the year, we updated investors regarding our re imagined strategy and the medium term targets we have set ourselves that support shareholder value creation.
I will provide some thoughts on our initial progress on these in my closing remarks. But as a reminder, we have set ourselves key targets that we want to achieve by the end of 2023. Getting back to the 2019 levels for diluted headwinds per share and return on equity, reducing our cost to income ratio to below 54% and to rank number 1 on net promoter score after having improved to number 2 in 2020. We have identified 3 key value drivers, the combination of which will enable us to meet these targets: growth, productivity and risk and capital management. Underpinning these are 5 strategic value unlocks: delivering market leading client solutions, ongoing disruptive market activities, strategic portfolio tilt or SPT, target operating model or TOM and creating positive impacts.
The next few slides track our progress on these 3 value drivers and 5 unlocks. Starting with reflection on the first two of our 3 key value drivers. On growth, we've made good progress in gaining year on year market share in key retail products such as personal loans, vehicle finance, card and household overdrafts. While our focus on household deposits, including the price sensitive investment category, has increased. We initiated certain actions in May 2021, and we look forward to see the impact of these in the second half of the year.
In wholesale lending, we've lost some market share in some places deliberately as we have been selective in origination and optimize our portfolio in CIB. And this is already evidenced in higher net interest margins and risk adjusted returns and some from strong clients pay downs in cash flush commodity sectors where we are very active participants. From a client perspective, we're pleased with the ongoing CIB primary client gains, a 2% growth in retail main based clients, 14% growth in clients in Edbank Africa regions and 9% growth in assets under management to hit the ZAR400 billion mark. On the property side, our cost to income ratio increased slightly and pre provisioning operating profit declined year over year, although up on the second half of twenty twenty. However, adjusting for the impact of fair value movements, which normalized to 0 over time, both underlying operational cost to income and pre provisioning operating profits would have shown positive improvements.
On the key value driver, risk and capital management, this is best represented in delivery of our resilience metrics to close out this phase in our post COVID strategy. And these are to my mind the highlights of our interim results. Starting at the bottom left of this slide. Liquidity metrics such as the LCR and NFFR are now higher than pre crisis levels. And based on Q1 peer pillar 3 reporting, we now have one of the strongest liquidity positions as measured by the LCR among the large South African banks.
On the bottom right, from a credit perspective, our credit loss ratio declined faster than we had expected to be within the through the cycle target net range and our ECL coverage is now at a multiyear high of 3.4%, highlighting ongoing prudency in provisioning and notwithstanding this reduction in our credit loss ratio, we have increased our COVID-nineteen and other related overlays to ZAR4.5 billion at the end of June, up from ZAR3.9 billion in December last year. Mike Davis will highlight the breakdown of this in his later slides. Given the group's strong financial performance and successful focus on risk weighted asset optimization, particularly in CID, our CET1 ratio at 12.2% ended the period above the top end of our 10% to 12% target range and is now also higher than pre crisis levels. These metrics have enabled us to resume dividend payments, declaring an interim dividend of $4.33 per share at 2.5 times cover, slightly outside our 1.75 to 2.25 target cover range, given risks in the current environment. Turning to the BANU unlocks.
On the technology front, we continue to make solid progress on our managed evolution technology strategy to build a modern and modular IT stack. Investors will be familiar with this from previous reporting. We reached 81% completion in June with our foundation programs materially complete. We've also completed and independent external benchmarking review of our Managed Evolution program and its associated business case in the first half of this year with very pleasing outcomes. On our new platform, individual digital onboarding is fully in place and we have completed the rollout of Jurisic onboarding in our wholesale businesses and more than 88% of Jurisic onboarding is now done via the new platform called the Nedbank Business Hub.
We have digitized 6 products or client journeys, being transactional accounts, personal loans, card, investments, overdrafts and home loans. And during the first half, we started work with ForEx. Digital sales as a percentage of total sales increased from 21% in 2019 to 53% in the first half of twenty twenty and 54% in the first half of twenty twenty one. Digitally active clients accelerated, reaching 61% of total name bank clients, up from 55% the year before. The volume and value of digital Transactions continued to increase strongly, up 33% 27%, respectively, as COVID accelerates trends in client behavior that were already well underway.
It's always good to get independent acknowledgments and we were pleased to have won various awards for our digital journey and its impact on client experiences. The benefits of our digital investments are also evident in improvements in key operational metrics from our target operating model or TOM programs, highlighted by savings achieved in our TOM1 and good progress on the start of our TOM2 programs. As all products and processes are digitized, we've been able to reduce headcount and branches by 6% 7% respectively over the past 2 years, leading to savings in floor space, in our branches and in our corporate real estate. A reminder here, After achieving nearly $2,000,000,000 of benefits under TOM1, we are aiming for a minimum of $2,500,000,000 of benefits from TOM2 by the end of 2023. Building on the achievements from 2020, where various client experience metrics independently measured by Consulta, such as client satisfaction and Net Promoter Score, showed how Nedbank has improved its rank to number 2 among the big 5 South African banks.
More frequently measured metrics such as brand sentiment and brand value continue to highlight progress in 2021. Brand sentiment, as measured on social media channels, continuing to measure Nedbank consistently as the number 1 or number 2 South African bank. Importantly, Nedbank's sentiment improved strongly after the excellent job our staff did in providing COVID support to clients in 2020. From a brand ranking perspective, Nedbank retained its rank as a top 10 brand in South Africa with the number of bank brands with an estimated brand value as calculated by Brand Finance at ZAR15 1,000,000,000. Over the past 18 months, we have highlighted to investors some of our platform and beyond banking initiatives built off the managed evolution IT foundations.
2 of these that we showcase here include our super app, Avvo and our API marketplace. The number of merchants and partners on the Avro app selling products and services continues to increase, making Avro an attractive digital store with more than 17,500 partners. Registered clients increased to more than 260,000 and product orders increased by 45% over the last two quarters. With respect to APIs, our API marketplace has 7 active products in use and a key success to date is the quick ramp up to around 10,000 personal loans distributed through this new channel in the Q2. Turning to our focus of growing in attractive areas for value creation or strategic portfolio tool 2.0, We've seen a strong increase in client take up rates across most products.
Notwithstanding tighter credit criteria and lower approval rates, This has resulted in increases in market share enabled by our digital innovations and channels. The key success to showcase here is in personal loans, where our market share has increased to 11.6%. Then to play a central role in driving the sustainable socioeconomic development of our continent. And at Nedbank, Our purpose is to use our financial expertise to do good for all our stakeholders. One aspect of our purpose is demonstrated through our recently released energy policy that seeks to guide a transition away from fossil fuels, while deliberately accelerating efforts to finance non fossil energy solutions that are needed to support socioeconomic development and build resilience to climate change.
Our energy policy regarded by a number of external stakeholders as one of the most progressive amongst global banks of our size is aimed to ensure that Nedbank has 0 exposure to fossil fuel related activities that is thermal coal, upstream oil and gas and fossil fuel related power generation by 2,045 with 100% of lending and investment activity supporting a net zero carbon economy by 2,050, while at the same time accelerating funding to key sectors such as renewable energy and embedded energy generation over this period. To achieve our ambitious target for climate risk will require a significant amount of investment fee related innovation in South Africa. And this is a large opportunity for us into the future. Early evidence of this was Nedbank's launch of Africa's first green AT1 instrument earlier this year. Total of ZAR910 1,000,000 was raised through this issuance with the equivalent amount of funding to be directed to support the financing of new green infrastructure projects in South Africa.
We estimate the pricing of this green instrument to have been around 20 basis points lower than vanilla 81. On the lending side, at 30th June 2021, our renewable energy financing portfolio was ZAR29 1,000,000,000 and we have increased our board limits to accommodate future client lending support up to ZAR50 1,000,000,000 with an additional ZAR2 1,000,000,000 specifically earmarked for financing embedded energy generation by 2022. The progress we have made on environmental matters along with our track record and governance and societal matters as assisted Nedbank to stay within the top tier of all the major ESG ratings. In acknowledgment of Nedbank's leadership and progress made on ESG disclosure related issues, Nedbank was recently announced the winner of best climate related reporting, best sustainability reporting in financials and banking in particular and the overall winner in ESG Investing's Global 20 21 ESG Reporting Awards. The adoption of the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals as a framework for measuring delivery on our purpose have proven very important.
Key highlights in the first half include the following: £106,000,000 of food delivered to staff, families and communities impacted by the recent dryer thing allocating 65% of our CSI spend to education, reducing our own water consumption by 11% of an already low 2020 base, participating in the youth employment service by providing more than 1900 1 year job opportunities to unemployed youth in 2021, maintaining our Level 1 BBB E status, paying 94% of our suppliers in 30 days in support of the PayIn30 initiatives, providing ZAR5 1,000,000,000 in funding for the construction of buildings that conform with green building standards and improving transformation statistics across the group and the board level. Lastly, before I hand over to Mike Davis, on the 23rd June this year, Old Mutual announced the unbundling of 12.2 percent of its shareholding in Nedbank, subject to regulatory approvals to take place on the 8th November 2021, obtaining the remaining 7.2% shareholding. Importantly, this unbundling will have no impact on the strategy, day to day management or operations of Nedbank, our staff or our clients, very similar to the previous unbundling that was seamlessly executed in October 2018. And we would anticipate continued benefits for shareholders such as enhanced levels of liquidity in the Nedbank share and increases in our weighting in relevant indices.
With that, I'll now hand over to Mike Davis, our CFO, to take us through a more detailed review of the group's financial performance in the first half.
Thank you, Mike, and good afternoon, everyone. After a tough 2020, I'm pleased to report a stronger financial performance for the group in half on twenty twenty one, driven by significantly lower impairments of widening net interest margin and good expense discipline. Half on 2021 was much better a much better period for banks and our shareholders. Looking at the key drivers of value creation in our bank, Net asset value per share increased by 8% year on year to around ZAR194 per share, implying a cost to book ratio of around 0.9 times. The group's ROE improved to 11.7%, but is still below the group's cost of equity of around 15%.
And as Mike mentioned earlier, we resumed with dividend payments. The group's profitability improved as seen in very strong growth in HE, DEHPS and EPS, albeit off a low base. This growth is in line with the ranges provided in the trading statement that we released on 4 August 2021. Our balance sheet remained resilient with strong capital and liquidity positions well above regulatory requirements and our current loss ratio decreased to 85 basis points with total coverage increasing to 3.41%, a multiyear high. Turning to our usual waterfall graph where we show the key drivers of headline earnings increase.
NII increased by 6%, but NIR was down 3% on the prior period. Impairments decreased by 57% and was the key driver of higher AG as seen in the large bright green bar. Associate income increased off a low base and expenses were well managed at 6%. Looking at our results over a 2 year period, which includes 2019 in the gray bars being the 1st period for pre crisis, NII is up strongly and impairments have returned broadly to similar levels. NIR, however, still remains below 2019 levels in part impacted by fair value adjustments, including the effect of the group's macro fair value hedge accounting solution that normalizes to 0 over time, but declined in 2021 after increasing in 2020.
Excluding these fair value changes, NIR growth would have been positive at 8% year on year. Two additional insights on this slide. The volatility in impairments highlights the impact of IFRS on both the half one twenty twenty and half one twenty twenty one impairment charge, while expense growth for the 6 months includes a strong increase in incentive costs as profitability improved. Excluding this, expenses were very well managed and up only 2%. Turning to the balance sheet.
Gross banking advances declined by 7% year on year, impacted by 19% decline in CIB banking advances as our corporate clients used excess cash to reduce their facilities while new loan growth remained muted. This was offset by ongoing momentum in RBB as banking advances grew by 7%. I will unpack the underlying dynamics on following slides. Within CIB, in the graph on the left, we show how the level of loan repayments remain high, illustrated in the teal green bars below the line. This was driven by a reduced need for liquidity as corporates remain cash flush.
The second driver is the muted demand for new loads, although slightly up in half one twenty twenty one when compared to the second half of twenty twenty. In addition, a key focus of CIB was on the optimization of the portfolio, which is evident in a higher net interest margin and also higher risk adjusted returns. The advances pipeline remains resilient with encouraging activity energy, telecoms and the infrastructure sectors. Providing a little more insight on RBB lending developments and starting with the 2 top graphs, Home loans and motor vehicle loans continued to show relatively strong growth on the back of lower interest rates and lower asset prices. Application volumes in general remained higher than the 2019 levels shown in the gray bars.
In the bottom graphs, personal loan application volumes grew strongly from half and higher take up rates, while card also recovered nicely in the second half of twenty twenty and has continued into 2021. On the other side of the balance sheet, deposits declined by 1% on a year on year basis and the decline in loans and advances of 7%, resulting in an improvement in the group's loan to deposit ratio to 87%. A key dynamic within the deposit book remains the shift from term to short term deposits, evident in Carcin and core interim deposits growing by 23% 8%, respectively, compared to fixed deposits and NCDs that declined by 17% 27% respectively. Turning to the income statement. NII increased by 6%, driven by a 35 basis point increase in the net interest margin.
The increase in NII was better than expected coming in ahead of the full year guidance of growth of between 0% and 3% we provided at the start of the year. The key drivers of the NIM increase include a 16 basis point endowment benefit from higher cost and capital levels, partially offsetting the impact of interest rate decreases from 2020. The benefit of asset pricing continued and along with asset mix benefits as higher margin RBB loans grew faster than lower margin CIB loans contributed to a 54 basis point increase. Active balance sheet management added a further 8 basis points. Turning to an IR, growth declined by 3%.
The key drivers include commission and fees increasing by 5%, primarily as client transactional activity recovered Trading income decreased by 27% off a very high 2020 base. Trading performance, however, was solid and normalized to around 2019 debt bills. Insurance income increased by 21%, driven by an enhanced asset liability management strategy and improved investment performance in our insurance business. EBITDA revaluations reflect the non recurrence of negative revaluations in 20 20 and fair value income declined by more than 100% given the unwind of the half one twenty twenty gains as a result of the group's fair value hedge accounting solution ahead of expectation. Having a brief look at transactional volumes in RBB, We continue to see the impact of client behavioral shifts away from physical channels to digital channels.
This is evident in branch teletransactions Bats have not recovered post the initial COVID-nineteen related lockdowns in April May 2020 and volumes for the 6 month period are down 18% on the prior year. In contrast, polyps and digital volumes have increased by more than 30% each since last year. In our insurance business, our retrenchment or loss of income claims have improved year on year trending toward 2019 levels. Funeral claims, however, remain high as we continue to feel the impact of the 3rd wave of COVID-nineteen infections. On a positive note, markets have rallied over the past few months, positively impacting all of our Nedbank bulk businesses and in particular Nedbank Insurance who benefited from increased investment performance.
In Asset Management, Our assets under management increased by 9% to ZAR400 1,000,000,000 supported by positive net flows of ZAR9 1,000,000,000, particularly in lower risk cash and fixed income funds. As you can see on the right, we have maintained steady market share and our local best of breed funds over the past decade. In today, we have shown growth with the obvious fluctuation during challenging times. And lastly, our cash franchise has seen substantial growth as clients have moved from equities to low risk products. Turning to impairments, the Group's balance sheet ECL strengthened to $26,600,000,000 driven by the half on twenty twenty ZAR3.3 billion impairment charge and ZAR650 1,000,000 post write off recoveries.
Write offs remain conservative and increased from around R3.1 billion dollars in the prior 6 month period to R3.9 billion The increase in ECL is notwithstanding a ZAR16 billion decline in gross loans and advances since December 2020, supporting an increase in our total coverage for the group to a multiyear high of 3.41%. The 57% decline in the impairment charge to $3,300,000,000 in the first half of twenty twenty one was driven by a few factors. These include a 7% decline in gross loans and advances, a significantly better collections experience as benefited from the 300 basis point rate cuts in 2020, macroeconomic benefits coming through in the IFRS models as GDP growth forecasts improved during the period and the decline in D3 and D7 loans. Despite the decline, We increased the level of judgmental and macroeconomic overlays to $4,500,000,000 which I will unpack shortly. Our credit loss ratio decreased from both the half one twenty twenty level of 187 basis points and the half two twenty 20 level of 154 basis points to 85 basis points, which is now within our through the cycle target range of 60 to 100 basis points.
The decline was supported by a reduction in credit loss ratios across all clusters. As noted earlier, D3 and D7 loans declined. These 3 loans, which are loans provided to clients that were in good standing ahead of the COVID-nineteen crisis and were temporarily impacted, produced further from the peak of ZAR 121,000,000,000 in July 2020 and the ZAR28 1,000,000,000 at 2020 year end. At just over $9,000,000,000 the remaining D3 loans are in CIB and these are expected to mature in the second half of the year. D7 loans or restructured loans outside of D3 reduced from ZAR13 1,000,000,000 at December 2020 to ZAR9 1,000,000,000 as client loans cured and exited their monitoring period, resulting in a release in related provisions.
As mentioned earlier, we increased our COVID-nineteen and macro related overlays $3,900,000,000 at December 2020 to $4,500,000,000 The key changes include an increase in the central provision to account for risks not yet reflected in the data and impairment models, including the adjusted level 4 lockdown as a result of the 3rd wave of COVID-nineteen infections. CIB increased overlays to absorb the negative GDP impact of adjusted level 4 lockdowns and the recent unrest of 0.4% each to provide for D3 and D7 migration risk in the portfolio and for additional risk in the commercial property portfolio. In RBB, overlays were released, primarily those raised against D3 loans in 2020, while overlays using stressed forward looking information remained broadly intact. From a coverage perspective, the stage 1 coverage ratio increased marginally to 0.69 percent driven by stage migration. Our stage 2 coverage ratio increased to just over 7%, driven by the additional ZAR250 1,000,000 central provision and CIB overlays as well as migration of specific watchlist clients with high coverage.
And our Stage 3 coverage ratio increased to 36.3 percent driven by D7 loans curing and CIBC Stage 3 clients with load coverage migrating back into the performing book. Turning to our usual deep dive in commercial property. The commercial property sector continues to perform ahead of expectations. Collections remain healthy, liquidity better than expected and increases in vacancies and our client portfolios manageable having increased by between 1% 3%. We have worked closely with our clients during the recent unrest and the sales rate cover is in place for all damaged properties and we do not expect any material adverse impact on our portfolio.
The recovery in the commercial property sector is best illustrated in the SA listed property index as shown in the graph on the right. The index declined by 39% in 2020 and then recovered year to date by 13% of multiyear lows. The recovery continues to be supported by strong balance sheet, robust interest cover ratios and clients benefiting from the 300 basis point rate cuts. Reflecting on our own portfolio, We get comfort from having a high quality, well diversified and very well collateralized portfolio. After rebalancing more than 5,000 200 properties representing 79 percent of our portfolio that started in the higher LTV buckets.
Our average for Fadia LTV increased to 52%. After taking an additional $294,000,000 overlay, Our credit loss ratio ended the period at 46 basis points, slightly below the full year 2020 credit loss ratio of basis points. The levels of arrears in this portfolio remain extremely low at just ZAR11 1,000,000. Turning my focus to costs. Expenses increased by 6% impacted by an increase in incentives that are aligned to the improved profitability metrics.
Excluding incentives, expenses increased by just 2% as a result of good cost management, a focus on efficiency and discretionary spend. Store costs excluding incentives declined by 1%, reflecting the impacts of an average annual salary increase of 3.5% and a decline in headcount of 4%, largely due to natural attrition. Computer processing costs increased by 13%, but importantly, the rate of growth in the amortization charge is slowing as our NE journey matures. In the 1st 6 months, we realized the first benefits of our target operating Model 2 program, savings of $106,000,000 as we target $2,500,000,000 by 2023. Associate income from our investment in EGI increased by 2 55 percent to ZAR270 1,000,000 and our carrying value remained relatively stable at $2,100,000,000 EGI's most recent performance reflects good strategic and financial progress and we are encouraged by further improvement as evidenced in ETI's half one results that were released on 26 July 2021.
The ETI Group continues to benefit from a strong position in West and Central Africa, where ROEs in the three regions are all above 19%. From a risk perspective, NPLs are declining and capital ratios improved materially with no need for SEK1 capital for the foreseeable future. ETI Nigeria, however, remains a drag on performance and we continue to work together with the ETI Board to improve this position. With respect to capital, our CET1 ratio increased from the 10.9% reported at December 2020 to 12.2%, driven by higher levels of profitability, slower wholesale balance sheet growth and ongoing RWA optimization. Our CET1 ratio is now above the top end of the group's board approved target range of 10% to 12% and above pre crisis levels of 11.5%.
On the back of the strong capital position, but taking note of the ongoing risk environment, the group declared a dividend of 2.5 times cover or at a payment ratio of 40%. We would expect to reduce our covered to within our target range for future dividend payments. Turning to the performance of our business clusters. CIB grew earnings by more than 100% and increased its ROE back to above cost of equity. AI increased by 2% under the net interest margin increase, but offset by lower levels of loans and advances.
Impairments declined by 72%, driven by an improvement in macroeconomic factors, notwithstanding additional overlays. NIR was up 8% despite the high 2020 trading revenue base as equity revaluations normalized. All the business clusters, including CIB, reflect higher expense growth that has been driven by higher incentive costs. RBB also increased HE by more than 100% and its ROE improved to double digits at 13%. The performance was driven by good advances growth and a higher net interest margin, materially lower impairments and a recovery in NIR on the back of improved levels of client transactional activity.
Expense growth was also impacted by higher incentive costs, but partially offset by ongoing cost optimization. Nedbank growth increased AG by 51% and its ROE remained well above the Group's cost of equity. Insurance results were favorably impacted by improved investment returns as mentioned earlier, and the implementation of an enhanced asset and liability matching strategy offset by significantly higher life claims. Asset Management experienced a good overall performance on the back of positive net flows and strong growth in assets under management. And Wealth Management reported a strong recovery in earnings as a result of credit impairment recoveries, while the impact of record low international interest rates continued to negatively impact international earnings.
A turnaround in the performance in our Nedbank Africa regions was driven primarily by a more than 100% increase in associate income from our investment in ETI. In SADEC, HE remained slightly negative as NIR declined by 14% on the back of reduced high transactional activity and lower levels of FX gains versus the prior year. NII Decreased as muted loan growth was offset by a lower NIM and impairments declined. Thank you. I hand back to Mike as he covers the outlook and make some closing remarks.
Thank you, Mike. I will in my last few slides provide an updated outlook for the rest of the year and high level progress towards meeting our medium term targets to 2023. Importantly, as we look forward, we are building off a strong base with the resilience phase of our post COVID strategy now delivered. The external environment, although more supportive than last year, remains risky, volatile and uncertain. And after a bounce back in 2021, longer term SA GDP growth rates are expected to remain weak.
As a result, and as of the last few reporting cycles, forecast risk remains high as we have not yet reached herd immunity as new waves of the virus and new variants thereof are likely to recur and a similar risk could reignite, particularly if the root causes are not properly understood and addressed and those responsible are not speedily held to account. The current economic forecast from our group economic unit shown on the right hand side for 2021 GDP growth by nearly 1% better than what we expected at the start of the year and much better than the low base in 2020. As I said earlier, our latest forecasts do include estimates for the negative GDP impacts from the recent civil unrest and from the move to adjusted lockdown level 4. Interest rates are forecast to remain flat in 2021 before increasing 100 basis points in 2022 and inflation is expected to remain moderate at around 4.5% or the middle of the SARB target range over this period. Credit growth was slow in the first half of this year, but is expected to recover slightly in the second half of the year to just below 3% before increasing to higher but still modest levels in 2022 to 2024.
South Africa's fiscal position remains challenging, but it's been better than expected over the past 12 months as the country has benefited from a strong commodity cycle. Care will be needed to ensure this cyclical outperformance in tax revenue is not used to structurally shift the already high government expense base. Turning now to our usual format of shorter term guidance for the full year 2021, updated now at the half year from the initial guidance we gave earlier in the year. For net interest income, after growing 6% in H1, we now expect full year NII growth to improve from the initial guidance of 0% to 3% and to the above mid single digit growth being around 5% to 7%. The key risk to this is advances growth, particularly in wholesale into the second half of the year.
We expect our net interest margin to contract slightly from the higher than expected H1 levels. Our credit loss ratio, which was 85 basis points in H1, is now expected to be around the top end of our through the cycle target range, somewhere between 80 and 110 basis points for the full year. This guidance is lower than the 110 basis points to 130 basis points initial guidance we provided at the start of this year. While we seek to retain conservatism into the second half of twenty twenty one, risks from further macroeconomic deterioration, civil unrest, large unexpected corporate default remain. Non interest revenue growth is expected to move from a decline of 3% in the first half or an increase of 8%, excluding our macro fair value hedge accounting movements to growth below mid single digits, say 2% to 5% for the full year.
Key lists include transactional volumes that may fail to recover further after the events of July, higher insurance claims and any significant slowdown in trading revenue. Importantly, fair value movements are likely to be less volatile from now on as we have enhanced our hedge accounting methodologies. Expenses, as always, will remain tightly under control, that are expected to grow above mid single digits, primarily as variable incentive related costs increase off a lower base in line with the group's improved financial performance. Capital and liquidity levels are expected to remain strong and around the top end of our targets and well above regulatory minimum. After having declared a dividend in the first half of twenty twenty one at 2.5 times cover, we expect the final or H2 dividend to be declared within our target range of 1.75 times to 2.25 times cover.
At our results presentation in March, I shared with investors our medium term targets for the end of 2023 that you can see here for DHIP's ROE, cost to income ratio and net promoter score. All these targets remain in place and meeting them should provide ongoing support for shareholder value creation. While it is early days, as we reflect on our progress in the 1st 6 months of this year on our journey to the 2023 targets as shown at the bottom of this slide, achieving the DHECs target of about R25.65 has become slightly easier given the faster than expected H1 DHECs growth and in particular, the faster than expected reduction in the credit loss ratio. Achieving the RME target of above 15% could become more challenging if a faster headline earnings recovery builds equity faster than planned and therefore after any capital management actions dilutes ROE, while the cost to income and net promoter score targets remain appropriately stretched and ambitious. In closing, while we remain vigilant in a difficult environment, I am pleased that we can close off the resilience phase of our post COVID strategy with key balance sheet ratios on capital liquidity and coverage or at or above the top end of targets and above pre crisis levels, enabling the resumption of dividend payments to our shareholders.
Our re imagined strategy is firmly in place and we continue to focus on digital innovation, client satisfaction metrics, unlocking benefits from Tom 2.0, leveraging our balance sheet to grow clients' transactional income and deposits through SPT 2.0 and creating positive impacts as we use our financial expertise to do good for all our stakeholders. For the full year in 2021, after a strong H1 deHex growth performance, we already have reasonable certainty that full year BHES growth will be greater than 20%. And our trading statement today highlights the same expectations for Hess and EPS. As usual, once we have more certainty around the extent of these increases and ranges, We will provide an update to shareholders via Send. Lastly, after our share price underperformed peers in the first half of twenty twenty, We have outperformed so far in 2021 and we will continue to focus on value creation for shareholders through ongoing dividend payment and delivery on our 2023 targets.
Thank you and may you and your loved ones stay healthy and stay safe. We will now open for questions. And just a reminder, we have 2 methods by which investors can ask questions. Firstly, on the telephone lines and we will go there first. And secondly, on the webcast where people can type in their questions and we will answer those questions once we finished on the telephone line.
So I think for the sake of the experience of people who do want to ask questions on the webcast, Please can you start typing your questions in right now? And if we can go firstly to the telephone lines to see if there are any questions.
Thank you, The first question comes from James Stark from RMB Morgan Stanley.
Two questions from my side. Firstly, just on your credit loss guidance, the 80 to 110 basis points range. Can you first give us some color of the conditions you would need to see playing out during the rest of the year to achieve a curve loss ratio towards the bottom end of that 80% to 110% range. And perhaps if you can forward it into how we should think about Your base case, miles case and positive outcome scenarios. I mean, does that fit the book end of the range, is it linked to that scenario?
And then the second one is on your ROE target of 15% by 2023. If you can give us some context around the shape of Half from your 11.3% now to 15% over the next 2.5 years. I mean is it linear, concave, convex? And also what kind of loan growth underpins achieving that 50% target? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you. If I can start with James' question. So firstly, on the credit loss ratio where our outlook is between 80 basis points to 110 basis points. If I heard you correctly, you wanted to know what conditions would enable us to achieve towards the bottom end of that.
I guess, in short, more of the same, the 15 in the first half of this year could enable us to come in towards the bottom end of that target range. Although forecasting in this environment is difficult, it is an environment where we feel Wherever possible, we want to on the top end of being conservative in respect of provisioning and impairments. And obviously, from an impairment point of view, I would say less than the macro outlook in the current environment given that we're already halfway through the year, I would think it's any large single corporate impairments that is currently not on our radar screen that may cause us not to come in at the bottom end. In respect of the return on equity trajectory through to 2023. Again, it is early days.
We're only 6 months into that forecast. But what we have done is earnings in the 1st 6 months have certainly been stronger than we thought they would be. As a consequence of that, Earnings for the full year are likely to be stronger than we thought they would be. And that means that equity will build up faster than we thought it would be, all other things being equal. So that will put some pressure into that ROE trajectory.
And certainly, we would expect in our current forecasts that it is more hockey stick or back ended towards the back end of the period late 2022, early 2023 rather than material uplift in the balance of this year from the June position. Thanks, Mike. Just to clarify
on the loan growth required That's 15%, I can see a macro forecast. I mean, would you be required to grow faster than overall markets to deliver that?
We would expect to grow some market share to be able to deliver that. That's correct.
Thank you.
Thank you. At the moment, we do not have any other questions on the audio line. Can we perhaps go to questions on the webcast?
We can and I will read those off the webcast. We have 3 questions. The first one is from Chris Stewart at 91. Overlays of ZAR4.5 billion are arguably unsustainably high and will need to be utilized as the cycle matures further. Simultaneously, the credit loss ratio in home loans, business banking and wealth are unsustainably low.
How do you see these conflicting forces evolve in the group credit loss ratio in the second half of this year and then into 20222023. So perhaps just to touch a little bit on what I said earlier, we absolutely wanted to be at the top end of conservatism on provisioning and impairments in this current environment. So the ZAR4.5 billion of overlays and central adjustments will absolutely need to either come through our underlying models over time, enabling us to release the associated central provisions or be utilized over time. Clearly with that as a background, what have we done? If you look at our forecast, we are saying that our current expectations are that the credit losses in the second half could be slightly higher than the first half, but still well within our through the cycle target ranges.
And certainly, again, while it is early days, looking further out to 'twenty two and 'twenty 23, we would expect credit losses to move towards the middle of our target range, bearing in mind that we are in an environment where Retail loans are growing slightly faster than corporate loans and within retail loans, personal loans are growing slightly faster than other loan categories. So notwithstanding those giving you negative mix in the credit loss ratio and positive mix in the margin, we would expect to trend towards the center of our through the cycle target range. The next two questions I'm going to ask Mike Davis to answer. The first one is from Charles Russell at Citi. Thanks for the detailed and informative presentation.
Firstly, with the early repayment of corporate loans and facilities, Why have you not seen an increase in corporate deposits? Secondly, how confident are you about achieving the less than 54% cost to income ratio? And could we elaborate on the key assumptions? And then alongside that, there is a question from Trobeni at Intelladex saying, can you provide more color on the nature of the deposits that sit at the center, especially as they have declined by 29%. And there is a link between those two questions, so Mike can ask you to deal with both of them.
All right. So, first of all, Charles, thanks for the questions. So, in terms of the first question, Just to note that you actually have seen growth on a relative basis in terms of the corporate book as it relates to deposits. When you consider the fact that when you look at the segmentals, you'll see that corporate advances are down significantly higher than corporate deposits. Obviously, when we retain cash from corporates or at the margin, We would do so dependent on the requirements or need for such liquidity.
So to the extent that we don't need expensive or marginal cash, We certainly wouldn't simply hold it on balance sheet. But certainly when you look at the correlation between the advances and deposits side of the corporate business, You do see exactly that playing out. The second part of the question, as it relates to confident about achieving the cost to income ratio of 54%. I think in certainly communicating the medium term targets and setting the 54, We recognized right upfront that it was probably one of the more difficult targets to meet in the medium term. And the assumptions that we have in our business planning to get to that sort of level is that we need reasonably strong growth in both Top line revenue growth both NII and NIR.
A little bit to James' question around advances growth and assumptions around growth in terms of the book over the 3 years or 2.5 years. And we need to contain costs that just below mid single digits. So those need to Play out over the next two and a half years to achieve that metric. And then in terms of the reference to what deposits are held in the center. So in terms of funding that's held in the center, it includes the NCD portfolio.
Why? Because it's effectively, it's a marginal source of funding. In other words, we make no positive funding spread on the MTD portfolio. So None of our business clusters wanted, so we retain that in the center. We do allocate the cost thereof on a HACB type basis into all of our businesses.
It makes through our FTP process into the cost of money that we internally transfer across the organization. And the reason the book's fallen is when you reflect on Note 12, which gives you the detail of our deposit base, you'll see there's been a significant decrease in the TD portfolio really as clients have had appetite to move into more structured type products as opposed to bearer documents. And as a result, that's been driven by market appetite. Just to note that also in the center, we retain the Senior unsecured debt, the subordinated debt in the AT1 capital, you'll see that in the center in the segmentals. And again, just to remind everyone that We certainly do TP the cost of senior unsecured debt, Tier 2 capital and AT1 capital through again either our TP process or our capital allocation into our frontline business units.
So the cost associated thereof doesn't simply sit in the
center. Okay. Thanks, Mike. Just moving on to further questions. It's a question from John Storey at JP Morgan.
When would Nedbank start to see the real cost benefit of TOM2 coming through, especially in the context of the FY 'twenty three cost income targets and outline cost savings. So John, as you saw in H1, we had just over $100,000,000 of benefits from TOM2, some of the big restructurings in our retail business that are the main drivers of the run rate in TOM2 benefits going forward are already underway effectively as we take our retail business from what was historically a product led business supported by segments and channels to become a segment led business supported by products and channels. And certainly, you will start to see continued benefits into the second half of this year, but then a meaningful acceleration as we get into 2022 and into 2023. There's a question here from Chris Stewart again from 91 on do we believe the South African banking sector can sustainably grow non interest revenue at or in excess of nominal GDP? And if so, how?
Mike, do you want to pick up that one?
Yes. So Thanks for the question, Chris. So I mean if you unpack the component pieces of NIR, I certainly think that it would need to be supported by growth in, For example, trading income, insurance income, revaluations in terms of moving NIR to growth levels Sustainably above nominal GDP. I think when it moves to the commission and fees line, I think there is going to There's always going to be pressure on that particular line, particularly as more of our clients self-service through digitization. And I think commission and fees is going to be tough to certainly grow at nominal GDP.
Thanks, Mike. And then, the last question currently on the web is from anonymous and it's in under what circumstances would you consider a top up the dividend given the solid CET1 ratio. So certainly, I don't think currently we would consider in this terminology a top up. But clearly going forward to the extent that our capital is in very solid position as you said, We do have the 1.75 times to 2.25 times target range within which to declare dividends. So we've said that in the second half, we expect to be declaring within that range.
And clearly going forward to the extent that we continue to be capital generative in an environment of strong earnings growth, muted risk weighted assets growth, we would have the opportunity to boost dividends by paying at the lower end of that target cover range. I think we've dealt with all questions on the web. I'm just refreshing here to make sure that there aren't any more. Let me just check. Any other questions then on the telephone lines?
At the moment, we have no further We now have a question from Mark DuDoyt from Oystercatcher Investment. Please go ahead, Mark.
Could give us any insight to the corporate loan growth post results period? I mean, I'm guessing that the right, it probably is still muted, but I mean, are you seeing any kind of pickup in activity there?
Mark, so I think it's absolutely too early to tell. As you heard me say in my presentation, We don't think the rising is going to be helpful towards corporate loan growth at all. So I would fully anticipate that in the period post reporting, you would see similar trends to what we saw in the pre-thirty June environment. Okay. Thank you.
And then maybe just
on the net interest margin, I mean, your margin is better than what I expected. And is that more driven by kind of The mix between high margins in the retail and business banking business and less On the loan growth and the corporate activity, what's driving that is better than expected
EBIT margin? Mike, if I can ask you to pick that one up?
Yes. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Mark. So Mark, on In the Analyst book, as you know, we do a detailed unpack, but essentially it's a couple of factors. One is that we've seen strong growth in actual capital levels as a result of stronger profitability having to absorb a dividend within the period.
So you'll see strong growth in absolute levels of capital retained earnings. Secondly, you also identify very good growth in Casa, obviously transactional deposits. So both of those give us an absolute benefit in terms of endowment as a result of volumes, which to some extent offsets the impact of the 300 basis point rate cuts. We saw run rate take through the full first half of twenty twenty one. The second issue is you've just correctly highlighted as we get RBB growing at 7%, but CRB grew minus 19% in the first half.
RBB generates across the portfolio, higher margin business than CIB. So you've got a mixed benefit playing out RBB, CIB. Then within RBB, We've seen market share gains in card overdrafts, personal loans, in other words, unsecured lending, which comes with significantly higher margin than, say, something like home loans, where we've lost a little bit of share. And then we've also gained within that business market share from a That perspective, again, when comparing that to something like home loan. So you're getting mix within RBB, unsecured secured, you're getting mixed benefits secured MFC versus home loans and then you're getting mixed benefits in terms of RBB versus CRB.
So, and then the other point is that we are seeing as a result of an appetite for both household and corporate and SME depositors to place money in the short end. You've seen obviously, given an upward sloping curve, a reduction in terms of mix from a deposit perspective. So there are a number of reasons why you're seeing a far wider margin than we had
All right. Any other questions on the phone lines after putting together a 100 and 6 page booklet. I think our finance teams are desperate for some more questions on page 132 or something like that.
Yes, we have another question that just popped up from Bankole Ubogu from Bank of America. Please go ahead, Bankole.
Good afternoon, Just a quick one. It's probably a follow-up from the questions before. If I look specifically at the center, You saw quite a big increase in net interest income year over year. Which part of your Net interest income dynamics, your moving parts of that relate to, I think that's just my only question. Thank you.
Mike, do you want
to pick that up?
Yes. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, Pankoli. So it really relates, you'll see an increase in the capital retained in the center, and that's largely as a result of the drop in advances within CIB. So remember, we sweep all the capital into the center and then based on risk weighted asset calculations, we allocate that capital into all of our frontline businesses based on the risk that they consume.
And given the fact that they have seen a reduction in loans and advances growth, that capital then makes its way back into the center. And then you would have also seen quite a larger decrease in risk weighted assets as they relate to market risk. Again, that gets swept back into the center. Obviously, to the extent capital is retained in the center, we earn endowment on it, and you'll see high levels of NII sitting in the center as a result.
All right, any further questions?
Yes. The next is a follow-up question from James Stark from R&B Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, James.
Thank you. It's actually following on from Mark's question on NIM and the guidance that it moderates from 1H levels. I mean, I'm guessing are we correct to assume that the only thing different from a mix versus 2H versus 1H perspective going forward than is the dividend and having to fund the dividend?
Jay, so that in terms of guidance, I mean, one of the big Forecasting assumptions is that we are going to see growth in Siabi. So to the extent that we grow Siabi advances, they come with a lower margin. And as a result, you'll get some of that unwinding into the second half of the year.
Thank you.
We have no further questions in the queue.
Okay. I think we've got one other question that's just come on the web from Chris here at 'ninety one. How would you rate your chances of meeting your FY 'nineteen target in FY 'twenty two and not FY 'twenty three, perhaps a year early. Chris, I'd say it's too early to tell. I'll hedge my bets.
But certainly, it has been a better start than we had thought when we set those targets. Right. Again, just to say a big thank you to everybody. We'll be engaging with many of you over the next couple of days. Stay healthy and stay safe.
Thank