Dear ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Old Mutual Limited monitoring update for the third quarter. All participants will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity to ask questions later during the conference. If you should need assistance during the call, please signal on the operator by pressing star and then zero. Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand the conference over to the Head of investor relations, Langa Manqele. Please go ahead.
Thank you, Chris, and good afternoon to everyone. As already mentioned, welcome to the Old Mutual conference call on the operational update for the third quarter. Today's call will be conducted by our CEO, Iain Williamson, and our CFO, Casper Troskie, joined by Ronen Sobel, who is our Head of Group Reporting and Insights. That's all from my side for now, and with that, I turn the call over now to Iain.
Thanks, Langa, and good evening, everybody, and thanks for taking the time to join us. As you would have seen in the trends announcement we put out this morning, we're very pleased with the continued momentum in our top line, with life and savings sales growing well on the back of continued general productivity improvement and management actions and focus on both the mix of business and on persistency. That's driven the growth in the volumes and the sales momentum across the segments and the regions in a difficult operating environment. In our Africa regions business, we've seen strong retail and corporate sales from new business renewals and improved productivity in the East Africa region.
Overall, the Life APE sales ex China were up 13% to ZAR 9.6 billion, and with China in, we're looking at a 4% increase on the prior year period, up to ZAR 9.85 billion. If you break that down into product lines, the mix of sales is 51% in savings and investments, 42% in risk and credit sales. And from a segmental contribution perspective, we've got Mass and Foundation Cluster contributing 37%, PF and Wealth contributing 36%, and Africa regions contributing 12%, being the primary contributors to the Life APE sale. Gross flows will also continue to show strong momentum, up 8% to ZAR 146.5 billion, with higher inflows in Africa regions. Annual premium increases put through on our Mass and Foundation Cluster book, and that usually happens in July.
Higher single premium flows in PF and demand for investment in Nmibia. We have a very strong secured to flow pipeline in our Old Mutual Corporate business, and we've also secured new mandates and higher unit trust sales in the East Africa region. Net client cashflow remains under pressure as it was at the half year. We've seen strong growth in MFC and in PF, with net client cashflow in those businesses up 12% and 40% respectively, and that's, that's on PF, excluding the wealth segment. But that's been offset by significant outflows in both Old Mutual Investments and in the wealth segment.
For similar reasons to what we stated at the half year, clients continuing liquidity requirements, given the challenging economic conditions, higher contractual benefit payments from our liability-driven investment unit in the investment business, and then a large outflow from a very large index client in OMIG, who have restructured their portfolios away from the emerging markets index solution that they were using. While that's a large outflow, it's also extremely low margin business with, you know, revenue margins of two-three basis points, so the economic impact is limited. Our gross written premiums on the short-term insurance side were up 15%. That's driven by a combination of new business growth, increased prices on the back of both inflation, and particularly more producer parts inflation than CPI, and successful renewal around in terms of persistency.
The acquisition of Genric also added volume, and excluding the Genric acquisition, which we consolidated from the first of January this year, gross written premiums are up 11%. The East Africa region contributed to the growth in both the medical and the general insurance book, including new oil and gas business secured in Uganda. On the banking and lending side, we continue to take a cautious approach, and loans and advances grew by a marginal 2%, mainly in the Old Mutual Finance business in South Africa. And finally, you would have seen in our operating update this morning that our CFO, Casper, who's on the call, is due to reach our normal retirement age in April next year.
The board has agreed with Casper to extend his contract, and Casper has willingly agreed to stay on for a year longer, to the end of April 2025. We're very grateful to Casper for agreeing to do that, because of the need, we feel, for another cycle of reporting under the new IFRS 17 accounting standard, under the guidance of an experienced CFO who knows the group well. So delighted that Casper has agreed to stay with us for an extra year. That's all from me. I would like to open the call to questions, and I'll ask Casper and Ronen to help me in answering them. So Operator, if I can hand back to you to please, assist us with managing the questions that are coming in from the call. Thank you.
Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do wish to ask a question, please press star and then one on the touchtone phone or on the keypad on your screen. You will hear a confirmation tone that you have joined the queue. If you decide to withdraw the question, please press star and then two to remove yourself from the list. Our first question is from Andrew Baker of Citi. Please go ahead.
Great. Thanks, sir. Thanks for taking my questions, guys. Three from me, if that's okay. First is, are you able to provide any insight into how new business margin has developed in the third quarter? And then secondly, in the release this morning, there was a line around, management interventions to mitigate persistency pressures were starting to yield positive results. You able to give a little bit more color around what the positive results you're seeing there? And then finally, have you seen any increase in the credit loss ratio in your Mass & Foundation lending business in Q3? Any insight there will be helpful. Thank you.
Okay, thanks, Ronen. Casper, can I ask you to have a first pass at that?
Yeah. So let me start with the last question first. So on that credit loss ratio, I think it's in line with what we saw at the half year. But there is risk still, there's pressure in the system, so we are watching how, you know, our payments really carefully. But no deterioration from what we saw at the half year. In terms of the persistency, what we have seen is, you know, improvements or slight improvements in the performance of the book. But it's still, it's still, you know, there's still a bit of work required to get us back to where we want to be.
So we are watching that closely, and we'll have to assess how we see the trajectory of improvements from here onwards into next year, at the year end. I think that's the crucial part. How quickly does the reduction in the inflation rate that we've seen and the other pressures that are affecting consumers dissipate? Because that's one of our key assumptions that we need to assess in this running into the year end. Sorry, I forgot the other question.
On the VNB margin.
I think on the VNB margin, the only factor I would mention is that we, the margin is sensitive to the mix of business between our businesses. So if you look at the individual business units, I think we're comfortable with that, you know, margins have remained intact. But we're probably gonna see a bigger contribution from our corporate business, which has a lower margin. So the mix of the margin will be different between the businesses.
Great. Thank you so much, guys.
Thanks, Casper. I'll just add one thing on the persistency. I think the way I would summarize it is that, it's, it's probably stabilized from the half year. The lead indicators from a, a collection success rate perspective on first-time collections and, and that sort of thing have improved. But as Casper says, the, you know, the forward-looking view still needs quite a bit of work to establish how we, how we deal with that at the year end. So we haven't, we haven't landed on a call on that yet. Thanks. Operator, could we take the next question, please?
Of course, sir. The next question is from Michael Christelis of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for the time. Three from me as well. Can you comment around the underwriting profitability of Old Mutual Insure during quarter three? And also specifically with respect to last week's significant hail event in Johannesburg, how big do you think that could be given the higher cap limits? The second one is just around PF and the volume of risk business being sold in quarter three. How is that tracking relative to, you know, the first half or possibly Q3 last year, if you can? And then last one, mortality profits, particularly in corporate, where you had really strong positive variances in half one. Can you give us any indication of whether those have kind of been sustained at those levels, or if they've started to come down materially yet? Thanks.
I'll have a go at the first one, and then I'll ask Casper to assist with the others, and also maybe to emb ellish. The underwriting profit in OMI has held up well. In particular, referencing that the hailstorm that you're referring to, it's a bit too early to yet assess the full likely runoff of claims. We saw a very fast first registration of claims literally within 48 hours of the event, and we've only seen a trickle since then. So, and the number, but the last number I had was circa ZAR 50 million-ish odd of claims had come in. That number could easily be, you know, be double that, but we don't know at this point, you know, where that's gonna land. We'll probably know in a week or two's time.
Q3 itself was still relatively good. There wasn't, you didn't have any major fire or, or
There were no material events to kind of write home about. And in fact, we built up... Let's just say, we built up a bit of a buffer. So usually, what happens seasonally with the book is that you do build up a bit of a buffer in Q3, and then you get the hailstorms in Q4. We got the one a bit early, but, you know, I think we're in a, we're comfortable with the position we find ourselves in.
Understood. Thank you.
Casper, do you wanna comment on sales volumes in PF and on the corporate mortality profit development?
So, I don't have a detailed breakdown of the sales volumes in PF, but I'll just give-- So we have seen continued strong single premium guaranteed annuity sales and higher recurring premium saving sales. So the guaranteed annuity sales are high margin, so that will help the margins in PF. The sales, you know, were up circa 14%, so for the nine months. I think that's pulled back a little bit from where we were at the half year, if I remember correctly. I'll just try and get some... Oh, Ron, do you have it, so-
Yeah, I'm happy to comment. We are seeing a shift between more risk business and less funeral business, which was in line with the goals that we were trying to drive. The risk business sales year to date are up 8% on the prior year within retail.
In corporate mortality? Are you still there?
Yeah, yeah, I'm just having a look. But we haven't actually seen anything out of the ordinary in the corporate mortality in the business.
Sure. Does that mean that very strong mortality profits that you saw in half one are continuing? So I'm just trying to understand your comment.
We specifically not commented, Michael, on profitability metrics at this stage. So, I can't give you more detail than that.
I think, I think what we can say, Michael, is that the pattern of the pattern of renewals on our corporate book is such that a big chunk of them happened in April, and there are some in July. But, you know, there's not a material amount beyond that in the third quarter. So you wouldn't see much, you know, you wouldn't see a material impact on the overall book one way or the other, just because of the pattern of when the premium increases happen.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from Byron Lotter of JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Hi, everyone. Just two questions from me. On, on corporate new business, you've mentioned that you've secured, you know, there's some business that you've secured that, are waiting regulatory approvals. And I wonder if you can give us timelines on the realization of that business. And then secondly, just to go back to, you know, your operating earnings, or your results from operations. I, I wonder if you can give us any sort of high-level guidance for the second half of the year. I mean, I know there's a lot of, moving parts, but I, I just wonder if you can give high-level guidance, and can we expect a similar performance to H1 broadly, or is it going to be slightly better or, or worse? I'm just wondering if you can help us with that. Thanks.
On the corporate pipeline, as you know, these things are very hard to predict. There's a material deal that won't flow this year. So at best, we'll see it flow next year, but we may actually see essentially, if you like, the forward recurring premium part of it flow next year, and the back book even only flow the year after, depending on how long the regulatory process takes. So that's the level of uncertainty we're dealing with around that timeframe. That's about as good a guide as I can give you. Casper, anything to say on the? I mean, we've not, we explicitly haven't disclosed much on RFO, but anything you wanna add on the broad trend?
No, Iain, I look, there's nothing that I'm aware of that materially affects our operating profits, but we still have to go through our year-end process. So it's very difficult to say whether that's gonna stay that way. What we have seen, obviously we've seen lower markets in the second half, so we did have tailwind from markets, market improvements in the first half. So we're gonna have to see where we end up from a market level perspective, 'cause that does impact our business, especially the fees that we earn and obviously the terms that we earn on our assets are quite sensitive to that. And we have seen markets reduce a little bit in the second half.
So, I'll just think about that. On Corporate, and I just want to add that there are two big deals. So we anticipate that one deal might land this year, and at the end set with the second deal that, you know, potentially the recurring piece landing next year and the full burden landing the year after that.
Yeah. Thanks, Casper. Operator, more questions, please.
One more question. We've got one more question in the queue, and that is from Warwick Bam of RMB Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Thanks, Iain, Casper, and the team. Thanks for the time. Just in terms of the... You spoke about several African markets experiencing severe currency depreciation. At the half, Malawi was quite a material contributor to profits and just give us a sense of the cash you've historically extracted out of the rest of Africa portfolio and whether there's any dependence on this cash, and whether there could be any detrimental impact in terms of cash and distributions at a group level.
Iain, you want me to try that?
Just checking, Warwick, if he's just got the one question.
Yeah, I'll leave it there for now. Thanks.
Okay, thank you. Casper, please go ahead.
So, we've generally extracted dividends from Namibia, Malawi. The contributions from other countries have been smaller. So and generally, you know, our Africa portfolio, we've over time, invested more than we've extracted. So from a half year perspective to now, I think the one clear country that we have seen deteriorate, obviously, is Malawi, and we've seen quite severe currency devaluation. So we are watching that closely, and it could impact the fundability of trends in the short term from, you know, the impact from Malawi. But, you know, the real contributor to cash flows in this, in the home office has been from Namibia, and there's no impacts at this stage.
Casper, would you consider changing some of the disclosures to specifically highlight some of these movements in Malawi?
I think what we are doing, Warrick, is in line with our new definition of cash generation. We are giving you more visibility of the dividends that we receive from, you know, from our operating businesses in the center. So in line with that change, we will be giving more visibility on the cash generation. So, yeah, we should be able to give you a little bit more sense. And then we do give you disclosure on which parts of the capital that we have invested in those we consider as non-fundable. So that is already disclosed, if you look at our capital disclosures... how much we've taken out of capital for what we believe are non-fundable pieces.
So that was already so anything that we, you know, that we see as non-fundable is already impaired, you know, you know, in front disclosures, so you could go and look at that.
That's helpful. Thanks. And then just the last one, Ian, any updates on the transactional banking business, and I guess the launch thereof?
Yeah, look, it remains very much on track, as we've said previously. The regulatory process is sort of moving along. Basically on budget and on track in terms of the build part of it. So the tech build is actually, you know, very close to being done in terms of the kind of core infrastructure. The regulatory process, as you know, we've submitted Section 6 and Section 16. We've had a round of feedback from the regulator. It's not heavy. We're dealing with that and expect to be able to go through the next gates early in, you know, probably first quarter next year. And then we'll take it from there. But so it remains on track as per the timelines previously communicated.
We're likely to be, you know, we're likely to be able to, if things carry on this way mainly from a regulatory approval dependency perspective, we should be launching to market end of next year or early 2025, which is pretty much always been the timeline.
Thanks very much.
Thank you. We do have a question from Jarred Hudson of All Weather. Please go ahead.
Evening, Iain and team. Thanks for the update. Just a quick question, Iain. We saw the news yesterday about the Two-Pot retirement reforms and the implementation date have been moved back to next year. Can you just give us a comment on operational readiness to deal with that and the potential impact that you expect?
Sure. So we had been working towards that March 2024 date anyway. And we did - I think it is fair to say, we did take our foot off the accelerator a little bit when we saw the initial relaxation announcement. So we will have to do a little bit of scrambling to put the thing back on track. But we think it's doable. The challenge is gonna be really at the regulatory clarity level. Because there's no regulatory clarity yet enshrined in legislation and regulation on some key items, it's actually hard to know what's expected, you know, what you actually need to do on certain of these things and, or on certain aspects of it.
And I think the other problem that you've got is that the pension funds themselves can't change their rules until the legislation is enacted, so that they've got the enabling legislation to change the rules. So I actually think that not for reasons of operational readiness, but for other reasons, the timeline, if it goes ahead in its current form, it's gonna cause some chaos. So we have, you know, we have been in communication. But let's just watch this space. I think operationally we can be ready. Whether the broader system and the expectations of the citizenry around what actually happens on day one are well managed is the thing that I'm worried about.
Thank you.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, we have no further questions to you, and I'd like to hand back to Langa for some closing remarks.
Today, the conference call is now closed.
Thank you very much. Ladies and gentlemen, you may now disconnect your lines.