Morning, everyone. Thank you for the opportunity to present to you on the interim results of the OUTsurance Group Limited. Maybe just a quick note: we don't expect to go down, but with some of the communication interruptions experienced since Friday, should we go down, just give us a minute to restart things this side and we should be back up. But, we don't foresee that, but just in case. So, I'm gonna be providing you with an operational review, and then Jan, our Group CFO, will be providing you with a financial review. Then I'll give a brief outlook, and then we'll step over into the question-and-answer session. So to start with the operational review, we always focus on the macroeconomic trends, inflation and interest rates, and how they're impacting on our operational performance.
So starting with CPI inflation, historically, claims inflation was quite closely linked to CPI inflation, but what we've seen the last few years is a bit of a dislocation, and there's certain things driving this. And I think it's important just to briefly step over those. When you look at claims inflation, it's driven by trends in your claim frequency, but also trends in your claim severity, and these have been notable in the last few years. So first, on the frequency side, I think the most notable one, causing real growth and causing claims inflation to be higher than CPI inflation is climate change and the increase in natural peril claims that we see because of the climate change and more urbanization.
So that's been a feature, and that's also why we don't see claims inflation stepping down as fast as what you see with CPI inflation, and also why it's peaked at a higher level. When considering the severity side, there's actually a few factors also driving that. The first one is really supply chain issues, which we've seen on both the car and on the home side, driving higher claims inflation. Then there's also been the matter of vehicle theft. We've observed the theft towards more expensive vehicles, and that's also driving the severity side. We've also observed an increase in solar penetration that's further driving some real growth in claims inflation. And then even on cars, we've seen just the increase in technology, sensors and those things driving higher repair costs.
So CPI inflation, historically, quite closely linked to claims inflation, but lately, claims inflation has been outstripping that, and we foresee that to continue to be the case in the near term. Then looking at interest rates, we saw the period of cheap money sort of through December 2020 and 2021, and then a steep increase in interest rates. That has benefited our investment income, and we foresee interest rates while we expect them to normalize in the second half, we don't expect them to go back all the way to the period of cheap money. I think an important consideration is just also in our group with a composition of premium from the different countries.
It's worth noting that the float in Australia, and it'll also be the case in Ireland, is bigger relative to your premium income. As such, we expect our float to grow faster than our premium income, and there's really two reasons for that. The one is that, in both Australia and Ireland, a much larger portion of your premiums are paid annually as opposed to monthly, and that boosts the float. And the second one is really, long-tail claims, your bodily injury claims, which in South Africa that's covered by the Road Accident Fund. In Australia, that is CTP, and Ireland is part of your standard product. Now, those are long-tail claims, and you have more reserves for those, and that's also boosting your float.
So just, in terms of interest rate and its impact on our group in the long run, it'll be a bigger factor going forward. And then the last macroeconomic trend is just the exchange rates, where you can observe the general deterioration of the rand over time, and that is boosting our growth and expected to continue to do that, in the long run. So I mean, a point worth noting here is that already 62% of our premium comes from Australia, so it is quite material. Then if we were to look at the key operational themes for OUTsurance in South Africa, we saw persistent high inflation, being the primary driver of growth in our personal lines business.
You'll know that our personal lines business got very high market share, and that's why it's more linked to the economy, and as such, the high premium inflation was a bigger driver of the growth that you've seen, as opposed to just unit growth. That's why we're also saying the real growth opportunity is fairly limited because this business is so closely linked to the economy. We've seen a pleasing claims ratio performance through proactive pricing, claims cost, and product management. I think our South African team deserves a pat on the back for that one because there were quite a few headwinds to navigate, and successfully coming through that was a job well done.
High-value vehicle theft remains a concern, and I think a key part here is just in the long run safety of people and also driving affordability, and I think that's why it remains key to find solutions to that. And we observed various small natural peril events that impacted the claims performance in the six months, but despite those, you would have seen the positive claims outcome. And just for context, I mean, we had to retain all those events. None of them went into our reinsurance program in South Africa. In terms of OUTsurance Business, we've seen inflation boosting premium growth there, claims, and therefore premium inflation boosting growth. The profitability of our OUTsurance brokers was negatively impacted by the one-off take-on of the OUTsurance Life face-to-face force.
That caused a big step up in headcount there, without the necessary same productivity of the mature short-term business brokers. Also our focus on the margin and realizing break-even meant that we didn't appoint additional short-term brokers over and above those, and that would have impacted in slower revenue from there. That said, I mean, that's now been absorbed, and going forward, we expect the new normal run rate to resume. And then I think we've observed a pleasing claims improvement in OUTsurance brokers, and we've highlighted before why we believe so much in this business model. But just to highlight that again, I think the first thing is we do own the client relationships there. So it does give us better pricing power, especially in times of high claims inflation.
I mean, there's no risk of someone telling us they might move the entire book if we increase a premium or something like that. The second one is that all of this business is administered on our own systems. That allows you to execute better in terms of pricing and underwriting as opposed to where you have to fit into the IT priorities of some external platform. And I think the third one, it is our own product. So when you have challenges like load-shedding claims, I mean, you can also make the necessary product design amendments without being locked into a product which is not necessarily your own. So overall, we strongly believe in this model, and we're confident that we'll be able to resume a faster scaling up of this business going forward.
In OUTsurance Life, we saw continued strong new business performance in the funeral segment, mainly driven by the Shoprite funeral partnership. We also saw encouraging growth in embedded value and VNB margin in the Shoprite funeral segment, and then we also saw favorable impact of yields, compared to the previous year. Then looking at the Youi operational themes, I think we saw elevated claims inflation continue to support premium growth, particularly on the home side. And new business activity was also stimulated by increased shopping activity because of high renewal increases that's prevalent in the market, supporting improved unit growth. And then I think a key factor we show in our presentation, we achieved 22.5% gross written premium growth, but our bottom line is not growing at the same rate, and it's really two factors driving it.
The one factor that's been listed here is we had ZAR 678 million more retained natural peril losses at Youi in the than compared to the corresponding six-month period. We also have a graph later on showing the long-term trend. So we're certainly not considering the last six months as a complete exception. It's more a return to the norm if you consider the long-term trend versus last year, which was quite below average here in terms of natural peril losses at Youi. Looking at Youi business, we've seen the accelerated growth on the back of the BZI launch on the Steadfast platform, and then we also see ongoing growth of Youi Direct, from a low base. And as we know, commercial direct tends to focus on the smaller businesses. It is a relatively small segment, but quite a profitable one.
Then stepping over to Youi CTP, we're quite pleased with the improvement shown in both the claims ratio and the cost ratio of Youi CTP. When you start a new business containing bodily injury, you have to have a high level of prudence in your reserving initially because of the low claim frequency, but also because of the long development pattern of these claims. And now, as over time we're able, as we build up more credibility, we're able to reduce the amount of prudence built in there as we have better stats, and that is quite encouraging to see the margin on Youi CTP improving quite a lot. Then if we look at the graph on the left-hand side there, you can see our group gross written premium there.
And with a change in accounting standard, we sort of focusing on the traditional short-term insurance measures as well. So our short-term or our property and casualty business, as we like to call it, P&C, that accounts for roughly 97% of our business. If you look at the premium income there on the graph on the left, you'll see the compound growth rate of 12.9%. But I think importantly, if you look sort of from 2019 upwards, you'll see quite a decent acceleration. I remember at full year 2018, our gross written premium was at a standstill. We had 0% growth, and we really had to revitalize that, and we invested in new ventures as well as stronger investment in our core businesses, our core personal lines businesses. And it's pleasing to see the accelerated growth since then.
That said, we need to point out that at the moment, there is a bit of a tailwind in terms of higher claims inflation, and also, the group premium growth was also supported by the 4% 4.6% weaker rand to Australian dollar exchange rate. Typically what we guide, through the cycle, we still think mid-teens is achievable for our business given the runway created for organic growth in our different businesses. If you look at the graph on the right-hand side, that's our new business premium, and that had a healthy step up of 38.8%. Again, that was supported by the persistent high premium inflation and the exchange rate as highlighted, but quite positively also stronger unit growth, supported by higher shopping behavior. Then if you look at the graph on the left, it's quite an important one.
We always guide investors around the volatility in our results, and I think that world has changed quite a bit. For the first reason is climate change, which is definitely driving this. If you look at the long-term trend, even if we were to go back further and look at the last 20 years, you'll see a constant upward movement here. I think the other one is also our increasing exposure to Australia, where you have more properties exposed to weather events. And I think a third factor to keep in mind here is just the changing reinsurance world, where retention levels went up significantly, and as such, insurers retain a larger portion of that.
So we always guide and say over a short period, our results can be more volatile, because of this, but in the long run, we see it as a positive as it's driving real growth in the short-term insurance industry. Over a six-month period, it's even more volatile than over a 12-month period, so once we get to the full year, you'll probably see our results being a little bit more stable. But if you look at that kink there in the last two years, then you can clearly see December 2022 being a very good year with sort of out-of-the-norm low natural peril experience, and this current year being much more normal. But then we had to retain the vast majority of those claims.
So that gives good context, and as I said earlier, one of the two big drivers really why our year-on-year bottom line growth is not as strong as the top line growth was, the ZAR 678 million more retained natural perils. I think one has to separate that, our effort from our ability to achieve pricing adequacy and especially pricing adequacy on your working claims ratio or your attritional claims ratio. In the old days, people were also referring to natural perils as the acts of God, and I think on the attritional one's sort of the man-made losses.
So if we look at the graph there on the right, you'll see OUTsurance's working claims loss ratio improving from 49.5 - 48.7, which was quite pleasing considering all the headwinds there, and then even Youi, the working claims ratio improving from 51.9 - 50.3. So the real catch-up in terms of pricing adequacy is more in the home natural peril space where there's still a bit of catch-up to do, and that's why we're flagging that we expect claims and premium inflation to remain a bit elevated for a while longer. Then if we look at this slide, we always guide around our investment in new ventures and also our appetite around that.
Importantly, as per the first bullet there, is that you should really evaluate that on a full-year basis because over a six-month period, it can be more volatile, and there's our appetite of 10% of full operating profit. What you'll see by looking at that last bar, I think it's quite prominent how the Ireland losses are ramping up, but that is quite normal for an organic startup like that because you have the complete systems build before you launch, and it's well within expectation and not out of the norm. On Ireland, maybe flagging there, but we're expecting a launch in the next quarter, so we're approaching a readiness for launch quite rapidly.
In terms of OUTsurance Business, I mean, it's pleasing to see the sharp reduction there, and as I highlighted earlier, I mean, the move of the OUTsurance Life brokers into that segment caused a bit of a ramp-up, which if it wasn't for that, that result would have been even stronger. And then, the UE BZI and CTP is mainly that ramp-up is mainly because of BZI, and as you know, BZI is mainly a home insurance book, and that's why it's more exposed to natural peril losses, and with the step-up in the natural peril losses that caused an increase there. And as I flagged, that's why we believe premium inflation will remain elevated for a while longer. That's the operational review. I'm now going to hand over to Jan to take you through the financial review.
Thank you. Thank you, Marthinus, and good morning to all our listeners. I'm going to kick off with just taking you through the IFRS 17 transition. As you know, this is the first time that we are reporting as a group on the IFRS 17 transition, and we're also guided on our expected outcomes at the previous financial year end. So I think first of all, important context is that over the cycle, more than 95% of our earnings are typically generated by property and casualty or short-term insurance activities. So for this reason, the overall impact on IFRS 17 on our profitability in the group has been quite limited.
However, disclosure changes have been quite significant, and for that reason, we have provided ancillary disclosure in our interim results booklet to reconcile the differences between how IFRS 17 presents our information versus how we think about our management KPIs in the business, which has substantially not changed. Our tradition and those are our traditional volume measures. Overall, we've seen no impact on cash generation, dividends, or regulatory solvency in the group, and our transitional net asset value for the group was also fairly unaffected. When we consider the life insurance business, there we've applied the general model as compared to the PAA approach for the short-term activities, and OUTsurance Life has seen significant change in terms of its earnings profile as well as its transitional net asset value.
As guided before, we expect a faster recognition of new business in terms of profitability and a slower profitability emerging from our in-force business, and that's due to the fact that the increased margins which were held under the IFRS 4 regime substantially released as part of the transitional impact on net asset value, where OUTsurance Life had a 40% increase in net asset value. Again, we don't see that the dividend profile of OUTsurance Life changes because of the transition to IFRS 17. Our dividend profile for OUTsurance Life is substantially linked to liquidity management on the life balance sheet rather than accounting earnings. The second theme I wish to highlight and place emphasis on is the impact that share-based payments have had on the profitability profile of the group over the six-month period.
I think to take you back to our historical approach with regards to long-term incentives is that for the OUTsurance South Africa team, which is a large pool of participants in our long-term incentives, we historically used a share option scheme as the primary form of LTIPs within the group. With the listing transition in December 2022, we agreed to align our long-term incentives with closer to the norms witnessed in listed companies by using a conditional share plan. That transition removes the gearing effect of share options and therefore creates closer alignment to the outcomes of shareholders versus the outcomes of long-term incentive plan participants.
The change, however, was only made prospectively, and therefore we still have two cohorts of share options enforced today, and that will incrementally roll off, a cohort in September this year and the final cohort in September next year when the scheme will then be fully transitioned. Now, these remaining options have created a fair degree of volatility. We fair value the cost of these options to changes in the market price of the listed share, and as a result, of the significant increase in value that's been created in the market capitalization of OUTsurance post the listing transition, where the market cap has increased by ZAR 19 billion, we have seen that the mark-to-market of these options has created a volatility in the share-based payments expense, and in particular so over the last six months where the share price increased by 24%.
Now, this increase in expense is being expressed over the performance metrics of only a six-month period, and therefore the impact is exacerbated on our cost-to-income ratios as well as the operating profit of the group. Importantly, the listing transition has not changed our remuneration philosophy in the group. Our LTIP schemes are calibrated to certain expected outcomes, and we need to see this increase in expense as well as an outlier that's linked to the listing transition and value creation, since that period. But I'll then step through the details of our financial results. Looking at, first of all, the OGL Group consolidated results, I'll remind listeners that we refer to OGL as the listed company and OHL as the holding company of the group's insurance interests.
OGL still holds a portfolio of technology investments as well as asset management investments, which were prevalent investments before the listing transition of the OUTsurance business in 2022. We refer to that pool of assets as the central or RMI Treasury Company. So looking at the normalized earnings performance of OUTsurance Group Limited, here we've seen a 0.5% increase to ZAR 1.411 billion. The normalized ROE was 21.6%. When you study our interim results booklet, you'll see that the OHL Group has generated an ROE of 26.1%, and the differential in ROE between the listed company and the insurance group is attributed to the holding company assets that are still in the RMI Treasury Company. Once those instruments are monetized, the ROEs will converge between the listed company ROE and the OHL ROE.
Our normalized earnings per share was also up by 0.5%, diluted earned normalized earnings per share down by 0.1%, and our dividend per share is a positive 7.7% up, and we'll explain the reasons for the departure in the dividend growth profile compared to the earnings profile later in this presentation. When we look at the bottom table, we'll see that the insurance group, or OHL, had a 3.3% reduction in its normalized earnings, which are attributed to the key themes being the higher natural perils claims as well as the impact of the share-based payments expense. In the central and RMI Treasury Company component, you'll see that the strain has reduced from ZAR 58 million to a profit of ZAR 4 million, and that's on account of the reducing profile of head office costs that is associated with a simplification of the listing transition.
Right then, looking at the property and casualty group, and, for our regular followers, given the introduction of IFRS 17, we have created a subgroup called the property and casualty group, which is in essence an aggregate of the OUTsurance short-term business in South Africa, the UE Group, as well as the OUTsurance Ireland business, which will be trading by the next time that we report our results. This allows us to keep our volumetric measures, as explained earlier, which are not necessarily as applicable for the life business post the transition to IFRS 17. So Marthinus touched on the strong 22.5% growth in our gross written premium as well as the 38.8% growth in annualized new business premium written. The operating profit was lower by 19.1% for the property and casualty grouping on account of those two key themes mentioned earlier. The normalized earnings result was down by 11.9%.
The claims ratios increase from 54.4% to 59.1% is wholly attributed to the increase in natural perils claims that we experienced at UE. Also at play is a lower positive reserve run-off experience in this six months compared to the prior six months at UE, and that's further detailed in our results booklet. The insurance cost-to-income ratio was 30.4%. If one does adjust for the excess of share-based payments expense, and that was the, to the extent that it's higher than expected, the cost-to-income ratio would be 28.7%, which, it illustrates, only a marginally higher cost component. Our combined ratio was 90% compared to 83.5%, in the prior period. Looking then at OUTsurance, OUTsurance, has two, main operating divisions, being OUTsurance Personal and OUTsurance Business. Marthinus spoke to the key operational themes impacting these business units.
What we have under gross written premium for OUTsurance Personal is 8.9% growth that's largely stimulated by inflation. If one excludes the effect of the FirstRand homeowners cover book, which is in the process of run-off, then the growth number translates to 9.8%. From an operating profit perspective, here we've seen a very positive outcome of 18.1% growth in operating profit. We don't allocate the excess share-based payments expense to this level. When you study our results, you'll see that is captured in a central segment that rolls up in the overall OUTsurance South Africa result, and therefore the result in an operating segment is not skewed by that effect.
The 18.1% improvement in operating profit is attributed to the strong premium growth, but also, as shown in the adjacent growth graph, the reduction in the claims ratio from 52.2% to 50.9%, which is a really pleasing outcome, delivered by the management team. Then moving to UE, in our results circular, we have split UE into three segments, being the personal, business, and CTP components. The latter two components represent 8% of UE's premium income but are also fast-growing segments of the group. For the purpose of this presentation, we focus on the UE Group's aggregate performance. Here we've seen in Rand terms 31.5% growth in gross written premium, and if one considers the growth in Australian dollars, it's up by 25.6% stimulated by the high inflation environment but also good organic growth emerging in the personal direct business.
The operating profit result was down by 31.6%, and that is the effect of the natural perils, and therefore the operating result has decreased from ZAR 945 million to ZAR 610 million. The fact that interest rates have increased substantially over the course of the last two years, that has played a buffering effect of absorbing some of the natural perils strain experienced, with UE's investment income overall more than doubling, over the course of the six-month period compared to the prior interim period. Our combined ratio for UE was up to 94.4%, and that is as a result of the increase in the claims ratio to 64.4%. Encouragingly, we have seen a decrease in the cost-to-income ratio from 31.2%-30%, and that's based on very cost-disciplined cost management at UE as well as the positive effects of the higher turnover growth in the business.
Then we'll move to OUTsurance Life's results. So pleasingly for OUTsurance Life, we have moved from a ZAR 15 million restated IFRS 17 result in the comparative period to ZAR 57 million in the current period. The improvement is largely driven by a change in the underwritten life business, where in the comparative period we had a fairly severe yield movement which weighed on the results of that period, but also we had the startup strain associated with the face-to-face initiative, which was discontinued in June 2023. The funeral business, including our share of the Shoprite JV, that's improved from a ZAR 18 million profit to a ZAR 33 million profit, and importantly, that is also our strongest driver in new business growth, and margin improvement in OUTsurance Life in total. The central component to OUTsurance Life also contains excess share-based payments expenses for participants within the life insurance company.
Overall, OUTsurance Life improved headline earnings from ZAR 13 million to ZAR 70 million for the six-month period. Our contractual service margin, which is IFRS 17's representation of the future profits contained in your in-force book at measurement date, has shown a pleasing 31% increase stimulated by strong new business growth, particularly in the funeral segment over the course of the last year. Our embedded value, similarly, increased by 29.7%, and our VNB margin improved from 7.4% to 9.6%. The funeral business is having a positive mix effect here, which is inherently a higher VNB margin component, and with that mix change over time, we have seen improvement in the overall VNB margin of the business. Importantly, that VNB margin illustrated here excludes the historic effect of the face-to-face channel, which weighed on the VNB margin at the time of reporting.
Then I will conclude with a view on our capital position as well as our dividends. All our operating companies are trading in very strong solvency positions at the time of reporting. A new addition to our solvency coverage is the OUTsurance Ireland, which has received a substantial component of the capital that it will require up until it is self-productive from a capital perspective. The group's future capital commitments are more incremental and spread over a fairly long period of time, to support the business. From a dividend payout ratio perspective, starting at the bottom right of this graph, OHL, which is the biggest driver of the dividend in the OGL Group, increased its dividend payout ratio from 64.5% to 67.6%, with a growth in the absolute dividend despite the decrease we have seen in normalized earnings.
The reasons for the fact that we could increase the dividend, is due to the fact that UE has, paid a higher dividend payout ratio compared to the prior year. We've also seen a resumption in dividend flows out of the life insurance business, where previously we managed the business in accordance with the liquidity strain of the face-to-face initiatives. With that no longer being in place, we are able to right-size this balance sheet, and we have started that process in September 2023 already. We also have less uncertainty regarding the reinsurance markets, which we're seeing are softening, and therefore, compared to last year, this time we had a higher degree of prudence, to gear up for the reinsurance renewal season compared to, this time, around. So overall, we are seeing a 7.7% increase in the OGL dividend per share to ZAR 0.612 per share.
That concludes the financial review. I'll hand back to Marthinus to take us through the outlook.
Thank you, Jan. Then, to look at the operational outlook for the remainder of the 2024 financial year, as highlighted earlier, we expect elevated premium inflation to persist in the near term because of those catch-up relative to the natural perils, especially in the home segment. We forecast that interest rates have peaked and what will likely show a gradual decline starting in 2024. Currently, investment income continues to benefit from that, and as I highlighted earlier, just note the long-term mix change, where we expect float to grow faster than premium income. Reinsurance markets are showing signs of softening, with reinsurers making stronger profits, both on their underwriting accounts and on investments. As such, we expect a more normal reinsurance renewal.
Then we've created good runway for organic growth given our low market share in key segments. Just to highlight that, again, Youi Personal, we estimate around 5% market share in Australia, commercial less than 1%, OUTsurance Business South Africa around 4% market share, and then in Ireland we'll be growing off a zero base. So good runway for organic growth that's not dependent on economic growth locally and abroad. Then we also highlighted the influence of climate change, solar penetration, and electric vehicles, but even just the vehicle technology in general that's likely to continue to drive real growth and cause insurance's share of GDP to grow somewhat in our markets. Cost efficiency is a core focus area for our business to maintain target margins and drive long-term premium competitiveness.
As you saw, when once you go down to a segmental level, you can actually see some of the gains that we've made because the big ones of a share-based payment variation is excluded at that level. Then our market entry into Ireland is a significant strategic milestone, and that's expected to give us more runway for growth and diversification because it's likely to be less correlated to southern hemisphere weather patterns, and also have a larger bodily injury component which is uncorrelated to natural perils. So we're quite excited about that, and we're positive about the launch in the next quarter. Then lastly, in terms of the wider group, we will continue to focus on the incremental simplification of the group through seeking monetization opportunities for the portfolio investments.
The long-term goal is really to present the market with a focused business focusing on our core strengths with some good cash generation and large opportunity for organic growth because that's how we historically provided the best returns to the market. That is the group outlook. We're now comfortable to move over to questions and answers. Are there any questions on the call? Yes, sir. We have a question from Warwick Bam of RMB Morgan Stanley. Go ahead, Warwick.
Good morning, and thanks for the opportunity. Two questions from me. Just if you could just elaborate on the BZI losses, obviously they contributed meaningfully in this half, ZAR 150 million loss. Can you just talk to, I guess, the quantification of that and how you expect these losses to narrow over time? That's the first question.
Second question's really on your regional growth profile in Australia as to whether you're seeing any sort of incremental, diversification benefits that might reduce your overall natural perils risk in Australia. Thanks.
Thanks, Warwick. Happy to speak to those two. So if you look at the BZI losses, if you remember when we took over that book, that business, it was running at a 120% claims ratio, and as such, we had quite a bit of catch-up to do in terms of pricing adequacy. Overlaid with that, you got the ever-increasing natural peril claims, driven by things like climate change and urbanization, but also the reinsurance market which got significantly harder. A key feature of the BZI book is that it's very much home-heavy. It's much more home-based as opposed to car, when you look at the direct business.
And as such, when you go through a period with a big step up in natural peril claims, it'll be more affected than, say, your direct business. So that's also why we're flagging that we still have some way to go to get to pricing adequacy, but we're still confident on traveling along that journey to get to pricing adequacy. Then in terms of the second question, we're most definitely seeing improved geographical diversification. When we launched, we launched in Queensland, and our market share there was quite a bit bigger than other states. And now over time, as the brand became more established, we see stronger growth out of the other states.
I think CTP has also been a key driver of, of awareness of our brand in, in New South Wales, which is the biggest state and the state where we were previously underrepresented. So over time, we definitely see the, the diversification, improving, and, and that should reduce the overall level of volatility. Yeah, CTP, another benefit of that is just the, the fact that it's uncorrelated to, to, to natural peril events. Hopefully that gives you a bit of context around those two questions.
Helpful. Thanks.
Thank you. At this stage, we have no further questions on the lines. Thank you.
We have some online questions submitted. Marthinus, the first one is from Werner Prinsloo. There've been talks about a regulatory inquiry into the affordability of insurance premiums in Australia. Have you seen or experienced any interaction, and what is your view on this?
Thanks for the question, Werner. Yes, I think it's, it's quite a relevant question, if you consider the, the very high premium inflation that's been observed in response to the, the claims cost inflation. If you look at Australia, I mean, a lot of the people are living close to water if you look at the, the geographical spread of, of people. And what with urbanization and climate change, a lot of the time you see what used to be the 100-year flood line now becomes the 20-year or the 10-year flood line. And really, if you have to rebuild the same property once every 10 years, it's, it's simply not economical. So as a first pass, all of that came onto insurers, and they, they had to pay those claims, but then naturally, in order to remain solvent, you have to put up premiums.
I think what is needed in the long run is a joint effort between insurers but also government and even banks to make sure because there's some low-lying properties that simply people are gonna have to be relocated. And then in other instances, investing in mitigation, I mean, infrastructure, dams, and things like that can I mean, if you look at the return on those investments as opposed to a reactive investment in insurance, the returns on those investments are very strong. So we've had some engagements, and we're providing this feedback that a joint effort is needed between government, banks, and insurers to mitigate that, to make sure that places aren't financed, that's in low-lying areas, mitigation is built, but then also insurance focusing on affordability, product design, rewarding resilient construction methods, and things like that.
So yeah, it's a constant theme. I think Australia, the middle class is fairly affluent compared to South Africa, but this is really biting on those low-lying properties because the mapping is quite accurate and the prices are very high for those. So I don't think insurance in general is completely unaffordable, but on those instances where people have low-lying areas that's affected, I mean, built-in low-lying areas, it's very material, and it is something that all parties need to collaborate on to solve. All right.
We then have a question from Gerhard van Rooyen regarding the losses of new initiatives. Would one expect this to peak and decline, or when would one expect this to peak and decline, turning into profits in future as these new ventures mature?
Additionally, are there any new opportunities management is targeting in different markets? If so, why? When will management start to focus purely on product rollout in these markets?
Yeah, I think it's a good question. So we certainly expect some of the older new ventures to turn into profitability. We already see OUTsurance Business Brokers, as I said, if it wasn't for the once-off transition, they would have already been in a small profit. So going forward, we certainly don't expect that to persist. With us pushing towards pricing adequacy, we expect the same at BZI for those losses to evaporate. And CTP, you would have noted the loss was already very small, and we expect that over time to move into a profit. So the main one over the next five years will be Ireland.
but as flagged previously, even with the peak of the Ireland losses, we expect to remain within the 10% guidance on a full-year basis. And yes, I mean, we don't wanna start more and more new ventures and just perpetuate this unnecessary. So we do believe, as I flagged earlier, that we've now created a lot of room for organic growth, by just the ones that's been activated up to this point. So we currently don't have anything else in the pipeline, that'll feed into that metric. Baron has asked, how does Youi's GWP growth and underwriting performance this half compare to the Aussie industry overall experience? Yes, I think first, premium growth.
From what we've limited information we received because of the IFRS transition, the data hasn't been as plentiful as normal, but I mean, the entire industry is experiencing better growth because of premium inflation. But I do think OUTs is a bit above the average because of positive unit growth. In terms of profitability, the natural perils would have affected the entire industry, but again, as we indicated, our diversification is still on a path of improvement. So over time, we'll see our results being less affected by Queensland-concentrated natural peril events. Michael Christelis, can you provide guidance on the long-term ROE expectations or targets once you have achieved scale in Ireland and Australian growth has normalized? Michael, I'll take that one.
Our management target is 30%-35%, and our stretch target is 35%, which also attaches to our long-term incentives as a vesting condition. So, we believe that is, yeah, that's an appropriate long-term target once we land there. As noted, I think the target in the near term between OHL and OGL just needs to be considered in the context of the pool of assets, which is around ZAR 2 billion, that's held on the balance sheet of the holding company. Then there's a question from Chris Logan, who notes the positive performance since listing. He also notes the complexity of the results given the IFRS change, claims inflation, impact of share-based payments, as well as currency impacts. He would like to see us disclose customer and policy numbers in various categories similar to our international peers.
and that would facilitate a greater understanding of the results. Thank you, Chris. We note that. I think it's one we often debate internally, and we feel that, given that we are in highly competitive industries, there's likely more to be lost than gained by showing that on a disaggregated basis. In our integrated reports annually, we do disclose group-level aggregate policy numbers, which you can refer to.
Maybe also adding to that, one key feature of OUTsurance over the years has been pricing discipline. And that means that whenever cycles turn, we take the necessary action to catch up to inflation and costs. And that means that your new business volumes could be, and especially unit, more volatile, whereas your margins are more stable. And that's just the nature of our business.
We feel if you put out those numbers and even guidance or targets, you can paint yourself into a corner, which makes pricing discipline harder than what it should be. And I think that was a key thing for us. When we decided to go ahead with the listing, we said we must stay long-term focused and keep our pricing discipline and focus. So that's the reasoning. But as Jan said, we've had strong internal debates over it, but that's our current view.
Thank you, Marthinus. Then I have further online questions. Judith, can I check in with you again to see if there are any verbal questions?
Confirm, sir. There are no further questions on the lines. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, for joining us this morning. And we look forward to further engagements on the roadshow.