Distinguished guests, investors, clients and members of the media, it is my warmest pleasure to welcome you all to Standard Bank Group's strategic update. Standard Bank has a proud 158 year history of serving clients and supporting Economic Development across Africa as the largest financial services group on this continent. Africa is our home, and we drive her growth. Now today, members of the group's Leadership Council will outline the group's 2025 ambition and provide guidance on its future financial targets. Over the past few years, Standard Bank has made significant structural changes to better serve its clients, and these Shift have allowed the group to realize a more integrated and seamless delivery of financial services to its diverse customer base, reduce time and cost to serve and to innovate more quickly and efficiently.
Now as of the beginning of SBIA. The group transitioned its operating structure from 2 business units to 3 client segments, supported by 3 capabilities. Its new operating which will enable the Ciner Bank Group to transform from its current state as a trusted financial service provider across Sub Saharan Africa to achieve 2025 ambition of being a trusted platform business. By building out from its solid foundation in traditional financial services, Centabank Plans to meet its clients where they are on the digital platforms, where they are shopping, socializing and doing business. Our business as we know it is changing.
And so banking as we know it must transform as well. The COVID-nineteen pandemic has only served to accelerate the rate of this change. Despite the obvious challenges, this crisis has presented numerous opportunities to problem solve, for people to be creative and be innovative. On this subject, I'd like to note that strict COVID-nineteen protocols have been adhered to by those of us who are here in the studio, including social distancing, everybody is wearing masks where distance can't be maintained and this regular sanitization. We hope those of you who are joining us will also continue to protect one another's health Safety, please.
So just a bit of housekeeping before we start. First, there will be 2 Q and A sessions. Sysco. The first will be with Sim, Fonega, David and Kenny. And then the second will be with Sim, Anno, Margaret, Alpheus and David.
There is a Q and A tab on the platform where you can submit your questions. We will open up the Q and A functionality shortly before each of the Q and A sessions commence. We'll try to get through as many of these questions as possible during the 2 sessions. Secondly, if you've not already done so, you can also access and download the detailed presentations for the first part of the day on the platform right now. And then during the break, you will be able to access the next set of presentations for the latter part of the day.
Once again, I'd like to welcome you warmly to all of what is promising to be an fighting occasion, and we thank you so much for taking the time to join us. Without further ado, I'd like to invite the Group Chief Executive, Sim Shabalala, to share his vision and outline the Standard Bank Group's 2025 ambition.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thank you so much for joining us for our strategic update. I'm Simcha Walala, Chief Executive of the Standard Bank Group. And today, my colleagues and I are going to share with you the ways in which we have rethought and restructured the group to make the business more efficient, more competitive and more sustainable and indeed better able to fulfill our purpose. I'd like to begin by Outlining and summarizing our message.
The fundamental question that we will be answering today is this: What do we do and what do we have that others don't have and can't do and that will give you confidence that we will deliver our SPG 2025 ambition and achieve the financial goals that we will have announced today. Our answer in essence is this, that we have updated our strategic priorities and that we will do three things: We'll transform client experience, execute with excellence and drive sustainable growth and value. The classic strategic aphorism is fortune favors the big battalions. This is certainly true in financial services, where scale has always mattered decisively, not least in Africa. And of course, scale advantages have been further reinforced as we enter the digital age.
The Standard Bank Group has massive scale advantages arising from a number of things. First, our unparalleled strategic strength and legitimacy worldwide, continent wide and indeed here in South Africa, our home base and largest single market. Throughout Africa and the world, people and businesses know that they can trust us. 2nd, the number of corporate and personal clients and hence relationships that we have throughout Africa and worldwide. We are already the market leader in many segments and deepening these relationships will enable us to grow revenues by way of product proliferation and cross sell.
3rd, the number of strong partners and service providers we already have, including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Salesforce. As for Salesforce, they are the world leader in client engagement platforms, and they are indeed the kernel of the way we will interact with our clients. 4th, we have scale advantages from the number of fast growing sectors in which we have strong expertise And the number of rapidly expanding economies on the African continent where we have local operations and with financial deepening And greater market penetration, particularly by way of new digital channels and partnerships will drive revenue uplift. Our 5th set of scale advantages arises from our robust capital structure and vast financial resources. Our large and increasingly efficient and hard and soft infrastructure and our deeply skilled and experienced people.
Indeed, the largest and strongest financial services team on the continent. Of course, scale comes with complexities. That being so, we've effected and bedded down major structural changes to optimize our endowments. These structural changes include taking liberty private to compete our financial services offering. They include creating a range of new ecosystems and our Client Solutions line of business, which will enable us to produce and distribute products and services much more cost efficiently through more channels and on a larger scale.
And they include deepening our partnerships with our major vendors such as Salesforce, AWS and Microsoft in order to achieve better cost efficiency and to create new revenue streams by making better use of data and by offering a wider range of services. We reported to you on this new basis yesterday. And as you will have seen, we're already seeing growth in client numbers, improved customer experience, growth in revenues and an improvement in operational leverage and capital efficiency. Accordingly, it stands to reason That we will successfully execute and deliver the ROE and other financial targets we are unveiling today. This is who we are today.
We are a leading African Financial Services Group. We are focused on serving our clients in an integrated and comprehensive way, meeting their needs rather than just selling products in isolation Africa is our home. We drive our growth. This is key to understanding who we are and the choices that we make. We have an almost 160 year history of serving clients and supporting economic development in Africa.
Having opened our doors as a merchant banker in September 18/62 to serve the world traders of the Eastern Cape province of South Africa. We have been building our Africa wide franchise Since the late 1980s, we are now present in all of the largest and most dynamic markets in Sub Saharan Africa. We're the largest financial services group in Africa, and we are, for example, the leading home loan provider and Global Markets Business in South Africa, the largest retail and wholesale bank in Uganda and the largest asset manager in Nigeria. We are also present in the major international financial centers so that we can link Africa to the wider world and support our African franchise. The scale and reach of our group is unique.
It's unique in Africa As is our strategic partnership with the world's largest bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China. Our client base is large and very diverse, ranging from individual clients with the simplest of financial services needs to small and medium sized businesses, substantial commercial clients, high net worth families and very large domestic regional and multinational corporates, which require the most complex and sophisticated of financial services And professional advice. Whoever our clients may be, we aim to serve them all with consistent excellence, Drawing on a combination of digital efficiency and human empathy. We have confronted a number of shortcomings and challenges over the last decade. This is a sobering list, Loss of market share in retail banking in South Africa, a costly core banking modernization in South Africa and slow progress on improving efficiency, Losses in ICBCS and insufficient integration with Liberty.
We can equally say that we have learned valuable lessons and made good progress in addressing these challenges as you will see today. For instance, the consumer and high net worth business is growing again. Modern digital systems are in place, which will enable us to be a lot more efficient. ICBCS is well on track to full integration with ICBC. And here, we remain focused on exiting our 40% stake as soon as is feasible.
And we've announced our intention to buy out Liberty's minority shareholders in order to simplify and grow our Combined Banking, Insurance and Asset Management capabilities to create something quite special and unbeatable. We intend to draw Liberty's formidable capabilities more closely into the wider Standard Bank Group. Our proposed buyout will be by way of a share and cash offer. Once the transaction is completed, Liberty minority shareholders will hold approximately 3.5% of Standard Bank's shares. The combination of Standard Bank and Liberty will produce greater revenues accompanied by better operational and capital performance than if the 2 had remained as they are now.
We expect Liberty to be delisted in the Q1 of next year. The rationale for this transaction has several elements. Full intubation of Liberty Products and Services into the group will allow us to deliver a more comprehensive and more tightly integrated set of financial and related services to our customers. The transaction also represents a significant simplification of the group structure, streamlining governance and improving flexibility and creating attractive revenue generating opportunities, particularly for our Client Solutions line of business. We are confident that the transaction will deliver sustainable growth and value by aligning and leveraging our strengths, enhancing client value, delivering on the refreshed Liberty and Standard Bank Strategies and enabling us to retain key talent and to protect intellectual property.
As recently as the 1990s, the Africa Focused Financial Services Group might have seemed quixotic. This decision turned out to demonstrate excellent strategic foresight on the part of previous Standard Bank management. Sub Saharan Africa as a whole has been growing fast and steadily since the turn of the millennium, driven by favorable demographics, urbanization and digitization. Indeed, some countries such as Ethiopia, Kenya and Ghana have been radically and largest market, South Africa, has had a much more difficult decade than the continent as a whole. We are, however, encouraged by the pace of the South African economy's recovery from the pandemic and by the structural reforms currently underway.
We're hopeful that South Africa's economic performance will improve steadily over the medium and longer terms. We're confident that being Africa and South Africa's leading financial services group is going to continue to be strategically advantageous over the medium and longer term. Over the decades to come, we expect That Africa's population will continue to grow quickly and that it will continue to become healthier, wealthier, better educated, more urbanized, More Digitally Connected and More Productive. It follows that we also expect trade and investment flows between Africa and the wider world to continue to increase, accelerated by the benefits of the African Continental Free Trade Area. These trends will, of course, have strongly positive effects on demand for financial services.
On the retail side, Africans will want a wider range of financial services as their incomes increase, and we want these services to be delivered online. Given our plans with Liberty, It's relevant to note that demand for structured savings and insurance increases particularly rapidly Rapid growth will see increased demand for lending, equity, payment, transactional advisory and risk management products and services. In support of new infrastructure, new productive capacity and new patterns of trade, all increasingly shaped Sustainability Imperatives. Our clients' expectations are increasingly set by businesses like Amazon and Alibaba and by new digital entrants to financial services. And the growing presence and ambitions of telcos and fintechs in African Financial Services has certainly not escaped our notice.
I'll say a bit more about our relationship with Fintech shortly. In order to compete and win In the dawning age of digital finance in Africa, we will ensure that our client service will be just as stable, just as personalized, just as convenient and just as user friendly as that provided by, for example, MTN, Safaricom or Alibaba and Amazon for that matter. As a financial services business, We will, of course, also continue to comply with the demanding complex and rapidly changing regulatory requirements Citi, and we will continue to invest heavily and work hard to remain secure It's certainly not going to be plain sailing in a fast changing, highly competitive and highly regulated market. As I've said, We do think we have some hard to replicate advantages that will enable us to keep growing our market shares and revenues, including our large and well balanced portfolio and our strong risk management skills. But we are very far from complacent.
Indeed, complacency, maintaining the status quo, if you like, would be too risky. We believe that in a no change scenario, we would lose clients, our revenues would flatten or worse decline, Efficiency would deteriorate and returns would fall. In the worst case, We'd end up as a back office with very little pricing power and permanently lower ROE. This is not an acceptable outcome. We are therefore embracing change in order to ensure that we continue to grasp the opportunities compete successfully, win in our markets and offer improved returns to our investors.
We have made large changes to how we are organized to serve our clients. We have reconfigured the relationship between the group as a whole and our countries in order to enable them to respond more rapidly and more precisely to our clients' local needs. Over the same period, we've worked hard to introduce new ways of working, creating a work culture and habits that emphasize speed, suppleness and collaboration. As from the beginning of this year, we are no longer organized into 2 business units: Corporate and Investment Banking and Personal and Business Banking. We're now primarily organized into 3 client segments: Consumer and High Net Worth Clients, Business and Commercial Clients Citi and Wholesale Clients.
Each of the 3 client segments is equally supported by our client solutions, Engineering and Innovation Capabilities. We have done this for three reasons: 1st, to provide our clients from individuals to major corporations with a comprehensive range of financial services in a seamless way without expecting them to navigate our internal complexities. 2nd, to reduce time and cost to serve 3rd, to enable us to innovate much more quickly and efficiently in the service of our clients, especially by creating new partnerships From our solid foundation in traditional financial services to meet our clients where they are on the digital platforms where they are shopping, socializing and doing business. As a driver of some ecosystems, We will create ecosystems. He's a market maker, as it were.
As a contributor to ecosystems, We will lend our skills and capacities to ecosystems in which we can be useful, but not absolutely central, Such as education and health care. To put the same point more concretely, When we're talking about driving or leading an ecosystem, we say that we don't just want to be the shop, we want to be the mall. We want to be a single convenient destination where people and firms can find the products and services they need quickly and conveniently. Equally, as an ecosystem participant, we aim to be a particularly attractive shop in somebody else's mall. So for example, to start creating the Standard Bank virtual mall, we don't just provide trade finance.
In addition to credit and foreign exchange services, we offer Africa's importers and exporters introductions to trustworthy trade partners and logistics Trade Suites. We have chosen to prioritize 10 ecosystems, 5 where we can play a leading role such as international trade and home services and 5 in which we can make a significant contribution Such as supporting health care and providing mobility. Our 10 chosen ecosystems are all adjacent to traditional finance, and all will make a significant contribution to improving our clients' lives and businesses. And over time our group's revenues and earnings. We estimate that together These ten ecosystems will enable us to access pools of value that are worth collectively over $1,000,000,000,000 which is a remarkably large number and a very big prize.
We're neither daunted nor dazzled, and we are approaching these markets very systematically, Starting by building and launching a range of solutions with close links to our traditional Financial Services businesses. These include the services I have already mentioned and also Look See in the home services ecosystem, Shift in the global citizens ecosystem and PowerPulse in the energy ecosystem, We have a clear plan to build scale and monetize these initiatives, and they should already be making a valuable contribution to the group We expect that the Standard Bank Group will always remain predominantly a financial services business, But we also expect that these new services will make a substantial contribution to improving client satisfaction and loyalty. We expect that we will increase our share of wallet, counteract a margin compression that we are seeing in Financial Services and hence diversify and grow our revenues and earnings. Our 3 strategic priorities create the framework within which we work. Everything we do, whether traditional or innovative, We'll further these three priorities.
This narrows our focus and therefore increases the probability that we will execute fast and accurately. First, we will transform client experience using digital technology amplified by the human touch. We aim to understand our clients as deeply and empathetically as we can And then use our human skills and digital capabilities to help meet their needs and enable them to achieve their goals. Day to day, we will defend the client franchise, while at the same time capturing new opportunities to grow. Our 3 client segment heads, Fonega, David and Kenny, will explain how this translates into their individual strategies and focus areas.
Products and services ourselves and in partnership with others. Margaret and Alpheus will unpack this in more detail And third, we'll drive sustainable growth and value. Here, we use sustainable to mean long term and Mean Environmentally and Socially Sustainable. For us, these two concepts are tightly and indeed necessarily linked to each other. David will cover our approach to ESG and the positive impact we strive to deliver.
Arnaud will speak about resource allocation and how everything comes together in the financial targets we announced earlier today. The Standard Bank Group has been criticized in the past for lacking focus or to be more charitable for trying to be all things to all people. Whatever we think of those views, we must admit that there was perhaps a grain of truth in the criticism. We have removed that grain. As you will shortly hear from Funega, David and Kenny, each of the client segments has developed a set of clearly differentiated and sharply focused priorities.
Consumer and high net worth, for example, very specific plans to grow market share rapidly and efficiently in the mass markets in South Africa and Africa regions. Business and Commercial will be leveraging its strength in trade finance and wholesale will continue to build its market leading sustainable St. Paul's offering. Let me emphasize these are just examples. My colleagues will be presenting their detailed strategies shortly.
As you will see, each strategy has 2 things in common: Each segment will maintain and protect their strengths, and each is building new ecosystems in a few focused and clearly identified areas to meet the expanding needs of our clients. Client Solutions will focus on delivering innovative products and services so that they can be efficiently scaled across our client segments and countries and also sold to other companies creating new opportunities and new revenue streams. As we see it, in a digital and networked economy, it is old fashioned And inefficient to be squeamish about competing in some contexts and partnering in others. After all, We already do this as a matter of course in correspondent banking. We look forward to a time when our services are sold on other businesses' platforms.
And when our rivals products jostle for clients in our virtual mall alongside our own, especially since many of those rival products will actually be provided by us as white labeled services. An essential precondition for being a winning business is to have the right infrastructure. That's the job of engineering. Engineering brings together all the infrastructure we use to deliver the group services. Their responsibilities include maintaining our physical infrastructure, running an efficient, stable and robust and secure IT system and providing comprehensive data management and analytics and monetization capabilities.
Our engineering capability equally focuses on keeping our clients' information and assets secure, on developing a single client engagement layer, on simplifying and automating processes And on enabling integration and partnerships. Alpheus will unpack this in more detail later. We intend to keep accelerating the pace of disciplined and successful innovation. To this end, We have created a specialized innovation capability. We don't believe in failing fast.
Our goal is to learn fast and succeed often. To ensure this, the specialized innovation team promotes a culture of innovation across the organization, provides expertise and skills to amplify and support innovation, ensure rigorous and robust processes for the prioritization and development of new business models across the group and importantly, Pursues its own innovations, which want to be disruptive and to focus on completely new markets for the group, We have a small, closely managed portfolio of investments, which contributes to the competitive disruptiveness of the group and enhances our offering to our clients by facilitating partnerships with technology providers and by undertaking acquisitions when that's appropriate. We have also formed a partnership with Founders Factory Africa, which both creates new start ups and helps to scale existing ones. To achieve our ambition, our people are learning to think and act differently, And we're encouraging all our colleagues to develop new and more relevant skills. We have, for example, created personalized online learning programs for digital skills with excellent take up
by our
people. These include courses We're also working with our strategic partners, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Salesforce, to launch a Skills Academy to develop critical engineering skills across Africa. For several years now, We have been explicitly committed to promoting sustainable and inclusive development. We are, therefore, committed to considering the environmental and social impacts of our decisions and actions very carefully, taking all our stakeholders' views and preferences fully into account. We'll continue to balance these perspectives, guided by our purpose, by our membership of the UN Principles for Responsible Banking, by our commitment to advancing the UN Sustainable Development Goals And by the Paris Agreement's target to limit warming to well below 2 degrees above pre industrial levels in the context of
a just transition.
In line with global best practice, we will continue to increase the transparency of our decision making And the detail of our ESG reporting. We will publish our climate strategy and targets in the next reporting cycle. One thing that doesn't change about the Standard Bank Group is our commitment to world class governance and risk management. This is embedded in the way we do things, and ESG Risk Management is no different. Our approach, therefore, is built on best practice.
Our processes are thorough and require multi stage approvals. We're tightly focused on efficient investment. We will preserve the strong franchises we have. We have a strong bias towards capital efficient and high margin growth. We'll invest in fast growing geographies and segments where the return on investment is clear and attractive, And we will ensure that our new businesses reach their efficient scales.
The financial targets that we're announcing today are the most important goals. These targets are challenging, but they are realistic, and we are committed to achieving them. By protecting and growing our traditional markets and by finding new ones, it is our intention to increase our revenue We will keep our credit loss ratio in the range between 70 and 100 basis points. As I said at the start, We've had less success with our operational efficiency. In the past, we have, in fact, been highly disciplined but within expensive structures.
In our revised structure, we will be able to generate positive jaws, and our cost to income ratio will trend towards 50%. We will keep our common equity Tier 1 capital ratio prudently above 11%. All this culminates in our new post pandemic ROE target range of between 17% 20%. In summary, we're feeling confident and energized. We know exactly what we're going to do.
We're sure we're going to be able to meet these targets. But don't just take my word for it. It's now my great pleasure to hand over to our 3 Client Segment Chief Executives, Fonega Manjane, David Hodnet and Kenny Fiescher, to talk in more detail about what we're doing and about the exciting opportunities we're seeing going forward.
This is Africa, the place we're proud to call home, a place of endless opportunity, limitless possibility, vast strong potential waiting to be explored. At Standard Bank, we are committed to driving growth in Africa. And to do that, we need to At Standard Bank, we too stand ready to partner with clients to deliver the platforms those of our selected partners. That means thinking ahead, thinking modular and finding smart ways to make life That solves the needs of our clients beyond just the realm of financial services. One example is Unaiyo, which connects Finally, there is another way of allowing our customers across Africa to grow, prosper and thrive.
This is focus to work to develop new business models in new markets and ecosystems such as 1 Hub, a digital solutions marketplace Thinking and Practice, we're turning strategy into action and the vision of a brighter tomorrow into everyday working reality, making our home,
Good day, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Funega Munjane, the group's Chief Executive for Consumer and High Net Worth Clients. Today, I will focus on the following agenda items: who and where we are today a strategic progress update our key focus areas, our targets for 2025 and finally, a summary of our strategy. The Consumer and High Net Worth Client segment is accountable for all retail clients. We serve clients across the pyramid our high net worth clients are predominantly growing their existing investments and are preserving intergenerational wealth.
Our affluent clients have high disposable income and are growing assets. Our main market clients have a need for simple, low cost, but meaningful solution. All our clients have one thing in common, Which is to see the next generation have a better life. We enable our clients' daily lives by partnering with them to help them realize their dreams our client franchise and our market shares in South Africa. You will know that between 2017 June 2020, the South African client franchise experienced a reduction in client numbers, particularly in the main market segments.
This resulted in a slight decline in our household deposit market share, specifically in the current and saving accounts classification. I am pleased to report that the actions we've taken to stabilize and grow the franchise are starting to bear fruit. In the second half of twenty twenty, We saw client numbers start to stabilize. We are encouraged by the 4% growth in the active numbers in the first half of twenty twenty one as well as the 7% growth in transactional customer accounts. We've also seen stabilization and growth in our market shares.
Our client experience was ranked 5th in the market in 2020 South African Customer Satisfaction Index. We have spent a lot of time with the research company consultant to understand the gaps that we have to market. In the 2020 survey, We understand that all our client channels are on par or above the market with the exception of branch, which is lagging. We are addressing this. We are growing clients across all segments.
We are particularly pleased by the 4% growth the main market client segments. These clients are younger, and they are more digitally active. The increase in Solutions sales reflects the progress of the work that we are doing to reignite the growth culture after many years of modernization focus. Overall, our franchise is growing. Our clients are doing more business with us.
This gives us more confidence in the work that we are doing to entrench our newly acquired clients. We have consumer high net worth operations in 14 markets outside South Africa. Client numbers in these countries have increased by 10% in the last 2 years to 5,300,000 base. We have a high market share in Southern Africa and Uganda, but we are still subscale in larger markets. This gives us a meaningful opportunity to gain market share in large economy in Western East Africa, particularly Nigeria and Kenya.
Digitization has drastically reduced distribution barrier as well as its associated costs to almost 0. Players who capture, maintain and increase customer attention will succeed. Therefore, driving digital adoption And growing digital engagement of our clients is critical. To capture and maintain our clients' attention, we must have good client experience. Our app rating in the iOS and Android stores have improved as well as our internal measures of NPS.
The improvement in the score is testament to the collaborative work to improve stability as well as the ease of use. This has been achieved in partnership with our colleagues in Client Solutions as well as engineering. In South Africa, 33% of our clients are digitally active, while in Africa region it is 27%. Digitally active clients have grown by 24% year on year, and we will continue to focus on increasing this number. 33% of our digitally active clients engage on the app Citi every day and the engagement time has increased by 71%.
This is an important metric. Our ambition is to reach 50% daily users over monthly users by 2025. This gives us a tremendous commercial opportunity to offer clients deeply personalized opportunities at an increased scale. We now have over 60% of personal lending disbursements across the continent being executed digitally, up from 49% in the prior year. To continue enabling this, we need to learn and iterate On What Matters to our clients very quickly.
We have therefore doubled our delivery speed for deploying new and improved features on our digital platforms. The progress in the South African and Africa region franchises is an outcome of the following five deliberate actions. Firstly, the attrition of main market clients in South Africa has been arrested. This has been done through differentiated proposition such as MIMO and Flexi Funeral. In addition to that, when we closed 100 branches in 2019, We also commenced the work of transitioning 3,000 team members who had roles which were servicing only to new roles that are 75% service sales and 25% complex servicing.
This has resulted in a threefold increase in our sales force. Secondly, we have increased the investment in digital client facing offerings, and we are deepening the digital engagement of our clients. As a result, 90% of our affluent clients in South Africa are digitally active, and we generate 4 times more revenue than our traditional clients. We deliver personalized Client Experiences, both sales and service, leveraging our data as well as the investment that we have made in people, specifically behavioral and data scientists. These personalized conversations are currently delivered by bankers and are driving increased retention as well as increased cross sell.
We have started the work of enabling these personalized conversation digitally. Number 4, insurance and investment solutions are very important for ensuring that our clients have a better life. We have a very strong base from which to expand as evidenced by having the largest pension and asset management business in Nigeria and having the 2nd largest sales and funeral policies amongst our peer banks. Lastly, partnerships our powerful distribution differentiator. Furthermore, we offer relevant workforce solution to our wholesale, Commercial and Business Clients.
We are confident in the journey ahead. We will be focusing on scaling our client franchise and deepening client engagement. In South Africa, we want to retain as well as grow the affluent and high net worth base. Our growth story is underpinned by the following. Number 1, growing and retaining main market clients in South Africa.
Number 2, scaling and retaining main market and affluent clients in Africa regions. Number 3, utilizing our chosen ecosystems and platform for growth and lastly, continuing the work optimizing the distribution channel in South Africa. We will retain our strong presence in the South African affluent market by doing the following three things. Firstly, deepening engagement through capturing daily attention of our clients. We will do this by solving everyday pain points across the clients' lives, specifically in housing, education and global citizenship.
Secondly, by being a trusted adviser to our clients using solutions such as digital personal financial management as well as long term planning expertise, including Malvol Douglas, Stanlib and Liberty. Lastly, We have a significant opportunity to grow our affluent base through upgrades from main markets, but as well as continuing the work that we are doing of offering relevant solutions to senior employees and key drivers of our wholesale, commercial and business clients. Furthermore, we are specifically targeting ecosystems that enable us to grow our market share of young professionals. We aspire to grow our South African client franchise to at least 15,000,000 clients. Most of these clients will be main market clients.
We will continue to focus on improving our proposition and offering relevant workforce solution to our wholesale, commercial and business clients. We believe we can increase our current run rate of 100,000 new clients recruited per month. We have significant opportunity to increase digital engagement solution cross sell in our current base. We are confident that we can accelerate this current run rate through partnerships that increases our distribution reach to clients that we don't have that we don't see. We also have started scaling our new school ecosystems called Sorted, and we intend to launch another youth focused ecosystem in the first half of twenty twenty two.
Lastly, we have a unique opportunity to engage over 6,600,000 Instant Money recipients. With the population of 1,300,000,000 people, Africa offers an immense opportunity for not only scaling in Financial Services and Platform Businesses, but to also partner with African Communities for Growth. Standard Bank was founded 150 years ago on the back of trade and business opportunities. This resulted in our unrivaled dominance across the continent in Wholesale and Business Banking and as a result, a massive interconnected and growing ecosystem of both Business and Retail Customers. 1 of the bank's greatest opportunity for growth is consumer high net worth, which we consider to be largely untapped as we have over 600,000,000 people in the countries in which we operate.
We are in a good position to capture this opportunity and to scale our business by continuing to partner and bank the business, commercial and corporate client ecosystem as well as the retail value chain. We will leverage partnerships to enable scale and access to more clients at a low cost. With the growing African middle class, we are continually increasing penetration and access to lending, insurance, investments as well as other non financial services. One cannot ignore the largely untapped and growing informal sector in Africa as well as the 23% growth in mobile money payments in the Sub Saharan Africa to $490,000,000,000 between 2019 2020 as well as a large population of young and digitally active people. This is why we have made investments in various mobile money platforms such as Flexi Pay in Uganda, EdEase in Nigeria, PayPal in Namibia and more recently, Unaiyo, which is live in 4 countries.
We intend to scale Unaiyo as a unified mobile money platform across the continent. Scaling our business in South Africa and in the continent with strong incumbents requires a differentiated approach. In line with our platform business strategy, we believe one of the key ways to grow is to build new businesses that create additional value for our clients as well as the bank. Our first proof point is the Look See housing platform. The Look See platform will launch studying in South Africa, then into other countries on the continent.
It is a platform that is open to all homeowners, renters And not just Standard Bank clients. Homes are a critical part of everybody's everyday life. Managing a home can be very costly And there are high degrees of information asymmetry. Information and insights of how to manage your home sits across WhatsApp groups, families, Friends, Neighbors and Social Media. Look See aims to help any homeowner improve their home and reduce the cost of managing it through providing insights that lead into curated products and services in our marketplace.
We believe this will lead to improvement in values, lower costs, which will increase housing affordability and family stability. Citi. In the near future, home management subscription services that help homeowners can maintain and repair their homes ZAR and to reduce the cost of homeownership of our clients by over ZAR1 1,000,000,000, while at the same time earning revenue the marketplace as well as the subscription services. The optimization of our distribution in South Africa is critical. Our journey over the last 3 years has been to digitize 80% of all transactions that happen in branch, and that resulted in us closing over 100 in 2019.
Brands staff have been reskilled and have increased our sales capability threefold. We will continue to have physical presence, but much smaller. We want our branches to have limited cash, but eventually no cash. We believe this will reduce our cost of distribution significantly. Our distribution channel will also be expanded through retail partnerships like Pick N Pay, which will reduce the cost to serve and also enable us to reach new clients.
Therefore, our key targets are as follows. Firstly, a client base of greater than 25,000,000 across the continent. Secondly, we won exceptional client experiences as measured by top quartile client satisfaction in external benchmark. Thirdly, revenue growth between 6% 8%. In conjunction with client solution and engineering teams, We will radically transform the cost base.
Our target cost to income ratio is below 55%. Lastly, our ROE greater than 20%. I am extremely excited about the opportunity that we have for growth. I am deeply encouraged by the glue shoots that we are starting to see. Our prospects across the continent are vast.
We will scale our chosen platforms and ecosystem. We will continue to optimize distribution, and we will lower the cost to serve for all our clients. We are targeting over 25,000,000 highly active, highly digital clients. We are confident that we have the right momentum and have done the right groundwork that will enable us to scale our consumer high net worth business across the continent. Thank you.
I will now hand you over to my colleague, David, to speak about the opportunity that we see in the Business and Commercial Client segment.
Thank you, Paneka. I'm David Hotnet, responsible for our Business and Commercial segment. Today, I'm going to focus on 4 agenda items, starting with who we are and our progress to date, followed by our strategic focus areas and, of course, key measures of success. Across the African continent, this segment provides broad based client solutions to a wide spectrum of small or enterprise clients to medium sized and commercial businesses. Our coverage support encompasses a wide range of industries and sectors With the teams leveraging their deep insights and sector expertise grounded in years of experience.
As I'll illustrate, BCC is a key integrator between the consumer and high net worth and wholesale segments. I'll now describe our current franchise position, After which, I'll elaborate further on our strategic focus areas. As of June 2021, we have over 746,000 active clients. As expected and aligned to our revenue contribution, our active customer numbers skew towards a more mature and developed South African franchise. Our estimates show that we hold a solid 20% market share in enterprise and an even stronger greater than 25% share in Business and Commercial segment, placing us 2nd in the market.
This is a large contributor to our profitability and delivers a meaningful ROE to the group. Later, I'll discuss our approach to retaining and growing this space further. With 248,000 active clients, our Africa Regions franchise in 14 countries remains underweight and represents a significant opportunity, especially in the West and East regions. The BCC segment has historically on a transaction led strategy, which supported by the typically strong businesses we service has led to low loan to deposit ratios across the franchise. This lends itself to a less capital intensive business model, but introduces elevated exposure to endowment risk, specifically in the rate cutting cycles we have recently experienced.
Despite the recent economic challenges, The BCC segment has evidenced double digit constant currency balance sheet growth. This reflects the franchise health and partially mitigates a significant endowment impact, but more importantly highlights the growth opportunities. Whilst we remain responsive to market conditions and sector specific dynamics, we maintain a stable risk appetite that considers a through the cycle risk approach. This enables our teams to support our clients through these challenging economic conditions While still facilitating their growth, it goes without saying that transaction activity is a key driver of BCC performance. In line with broader market behaviors, we've experienced the migration to digital channels across the continent.
In addition to improving client experience, this also creates cost saving opportunities. The benefit of trade and transactional flows, combined with a low loan to deposit ratio allows this segment to generate strong returns. In South Africa, This segment delivered an REE in excess of 20% in severely challenging economic conditions and a low rate environment. We are well positioned to benefit from future interest rate increases and trade transactional flows, supporting our expectations of a higher, more normalized ROE in the medium term. In our Africa regions, we continue to focus on building scale.
While the Africa region's ROE is still below expectations in many countries, ROEs already exceed the group's cost of equity. The unsatisfactory ROE in our East region is driven by endowment impacts and elevated credit losses alongside insufficient scale. Returns will continue to improve as we drive customer acquisition and trade related revenue. As a key differentiator, we have focused on strengthening frontline capabilities to enhance the client servicing and deliver improved client solutions. The key interventions that have helped us grow and deliver on our client promise are focusing on providing tools to assist our frontline teams in By understanding their full financial exposure, key needs and future opportunities, these tools have enabled our teams to proactively engage On a very personalized basis with our clients, success is evidenced through our improved customer experience and a double digit uplift in our conversion rates.
The trade opportunity where we have seen double digit growth supported by our in house trade solutions and importantly, our unique ability to leverage our deep connection with ICBC. Recognizing the importance of smaller businesses, Together with the required investment and solution development to service this market, solutions have been introduced to support the growth of our clients, improve their experience and drive up client activity. These include a virtual banking relationship, the introduction of e commerce solutions such as Simply Blue as well as the launch of a flexible cash flow linked lending and low cost transactional product alongside our digital KYC capability, improving our digitized lending through alternative scoring methods And the recent relaunch of the BizConnect platform, which supports entrepreneurs with a starting, growing and managing a business. Pleasingly, the platform has already experienced more than 27,000 visits, reflective of the strong business demand for advisory support. In collaboration with other segments, we continue to mine our client value chains.
This is delivered through solving client ecosystem pain points and driving quality customer relationships. We have identified more than 2,000,000 opportunities of which we have already converted 5%. Lastly, we have successfully partnered with other innovative companies to support our strategic direction, deliver optimal client solutions and drive our clients' growth. These partnerships include, but are not limited to Founders Factory, Merchant Capital, Child Badger and Nomenini. I'll unpack these a little later.
Looking ahead, BCC intends to move beyond just being a service provider. We aim to be a lifetime partner integrating into our client business journeys and ecosystems where it matters and when it matters. To achieve this, we continue to migrate towards a platform based business model that provides holistic client solutions. Our existing strengths lie within our people, footprint, existing client relationships, broad based solutions, Deep sectoral insights and partnerships. To this end, we have identified the following 5 strategic focus areas: retaining and growing our existing foothold in South Africa, dominating the trade market, supporting and growing the enterprise segment, partnering to drive growth and the development of key platforms supported by ecosystem experience and deep customer knowledge.
Underpinning each of these areas is our deep sector focus and experience and a proven through the cycle risk approach With the ability to adjust for specific economic, geographic and sector dynamics, executing on and digitizing our solutions will be accomplished in conjunction with our external partners, Client Solutions and Engineering. I'll now briefly describe each of these areas. Our South African franchise has a strong market presence and delivers a meaningful contribution to the group. This is a sought after segment of the market, and we recognize that competition is mounting both from existing traditional players as well as new nontraditional competitors. We acknowledge the importance of our client relationships across both the enterprise segment and our relationship bank business and commercial segments.
We pride ourselves on the personal touch and deep client relationships Alongside the ability to connect our clients to our broad based customer network, we have further empowered these client teams with data analytics Together with the introduction of innovative offerings, including Simply Blue and VISCONNECT, as well as our fleet and trade solutions, These actions will support our client growth ambitions. We will continue to collaborate with the consumer and high net worth and wholesale segments to drive expansion through our ecosystem and value chain work. In recent months, we have seen clients with turnover in excess of ZAR20 1,000,000,000 per Our success is illustrated through our 3% active client growth, the 29% growth in our merchant acquiring turnover, 25% growth in lending disbursement and improving trends in our NPS scores. As noted by Sim, Trade is one of our 10 identified ecosystems. To effectively support and drive Africa's growth, we need to fully connect our customers As well as automate and simplify trade, to deliver on our aspirations to dominate trade on the continent, we lead with our local relationship managers Supported by our digital solutions.
Our broad African footprint, combined with our ICBC relationship, provides us with an unrivaled advantage in terms of accessing interregional and trade corridor flows. This underpins our trade ecosystem opportunity. Our trade solutions are key to our aspirations. Trade Club, a connectivity network solution where local and international suppliers are pre vetted to assist with introductions and reliable delivery. Client feedback has been positive with over 4,000 matches to date.
TradeSuite, our managed import solution, which provides a dedicated trade specialist to enable end to end support through the entire journey and ensures that the correct working capital trade finance solution is implemented. We are upgrading our cross border payment tools, which will substantially enhance the customer experience. And finally, we are also investigating opportunities to tap into logistics, which will provide further trade integration in the future. This cohesive solution set, being co created with wholesale and providing an integrated and comprehensive trade experience, is expected to deliver an increase in trade market share and provide capital light noninterest revenue and deposit growth. There is a significant opportunity in the SME market.
We estimate that there are more than 150,000,000 small and medium sized enterprises in Sub Saharan Africa. Statistics indicate that this segment contributes roughly 50% of employment and more than 40% of GDP. With less than 5% of market share of registered businesses, we are now targeting a 10% average market share, translating into more than doubling of our active client base. In South Africa, given our ready competitive position, we aspire to be number 1. The introduction of the African Continental Free Trade Area is expected to increase Inter Africa exports by 50%.
By harnessing and supporting the growth of this segment Through our trade solutions and networks, we believe that as we partner our clients for their success, we will support Africa's development, employment, inclusion And GDP Growth. While we continue to see respectable customer growth in the enterprise segment, We have identified and are responding to the following key client demands, namely funding, protection, Connectivity, advisory, servicing and financial offerings. We have introduced new solutions and processes, including innovative, easy access lending facilities such as Trader Direct, Easy Cash and Flexi Pay. We leverage our transactional data and external nonfinancial data alongside artificial intelligence robotics to automate and reduce our lending turnaround times. To address client payment requirements, we have introduced low cost digital business account And for protection, we offer business insurance options.
Our enterprise mentorship program, business resource platform And the virtual banker relationship model provide the segment with an necessary advisory and connectivity support. These clients are serviced virtually through an experienced team of local bankers. We continue to deliver improvements to our model to ensure that 90% of all sales and services can be provided virtually. This model, already boosted by the introduction of our digital client relationship tool, Customer 360 and the heightened use of our underlying data and behavioral science models enhances our ability to proactively engage with customers. Newer digital solution developments that are in flight include an upgrade to our South African mobile app and online solution.
This will better support our SME clients' business needs. These interventions will drive existing client loyalty and future acquisitions to to deliver optimal customer outcomes, we have already entered into partnerships with various companies that have more experience and agility in certain environments. We have highlighted 4 of these partnerships. Founders Factory is a key entrepreneur and enterprise segment growth partner, which supports start up companies. In actual fact, we do not only partner with Founders Factory, but we also support the Kickstart businesses within their network to active utilization of their services.
For example, Tripleo, Float Pays, Codigo and Redbird. Merchant Capital provides our flexible cash flow linked funding solution in South Africa as well as more recently into the rest of Africa. ZAR. Pleasingly, we have already dispersed more than ZAR1 1,000,000,000 through this offering. Cloud Badger delivers a potentially disruptive for NIA platform, which allows us to service consumers as well as traders on a low cost, flexible and simplified platform.
It creates ease of use and reduces branch and bank dependencies. Nomenini provides us with an alternative approach to consider lending And the use of nonfinancial data to support business lending decisions. We continue to embrace and carefully consider partnerships with relevant companies that will support the BCC strategy and our clients' needs. As the group transitions towards a platform business, BCC has identified several key focus areas. There is a significant opportunity in the trade environment where our solutions lend themselves to an integrated platform.
This will not only benefit our clients in terms of our value proposition, but also provide financial benefits as the bargaining power in the platform increases. The trader solutions that service both the wholesale and retail trader environments, for example, Thrive, present further opportunities that will fundamentally change traditional payment and financing models for this sector. While we are still building scale, The detailed data outputs, distribution and stock management capabilities will be game changers for the small trader market, providing key insights on product demand and utilization for the wholesaler. Unaiyo, our recently launched platform, We'll service 4 key payment ecosystems, namely donor programs, remittances, traders and salary payments. Already active in 3 countries and on track for further deployment, this is a no cost digital account solution, providing a potentially compelling competitive offering in response to MVNO solutions.
We have already affected more than 60,000 transactions Since our launch in the Q1 of 2021, renewable energy sources are very topical given the power challenges experienced across the continent. Our newest platform, PowPulse, launched by the wholesale segment, will be a key enabler for our business clients. Kenny will expand on this. In the agricultural sector, our One Farm solution supports small farmers with production challenges and provides opportunities to enhance the yields and connect them to markets. The data associated with this is used to provide much needed funding to small farmers.
Lastly, we're exploring opportunities of building an advisory and digital business solutions hub aimed at connecting businesses to products, services, technology and people and designed to generate access to market and additional business growth. These platforms support the opportunity to capture new markets, reduce the cash footprint and provide a lower cost to serve. They provide access to new revenue streams through enhanced data sets, new products and ease of use capability and connectivity. We are excited about the prospects that exist for BCC across the continent. We have the combination of our existing strengths of scale, client base, products, footprint and the ICBC relationship together with a significant potential of growth in Africa Regions, Trade and Enterprise as well as the emerging platform opportunities.
In addition, we will continue to collaborate with our other segments to mine our client ecosystems and value chains for acquisition prospects. We also see potential in the energy and agricultural sectors to support sustainable development and are working with wholesale to develop products to support our clients in this transition. We are therefore well positioned to take advantage of the key trends underpinning growth across the continent. And as a result, Forecast REEs will return to 25% to 30% in the medium term. In conclusion, We have a robust South African business that will continue to present stable measured growth, while Africa regions provide substantial growth opportunity.
We
Citi. Greetings to all our investors, partners and all those joining us for our investor update. My name is Kenny Fischer, Chief Executive Officer for Wholesale. I'm here to take you through how our business is growing in leaps and bounds through leveraging our strong client partnerships, identifying new market opportunities We have a lot of exciting updates to share with you, so let us get started. As you have already seen, Standard Bank Group serves various clients from individuals to corporates.
Whilst we service 3 broad segments, This section of the presentation focuses on the wholesale segment. That is large Corporate and Institutional Clients doing business in Africa. Our strong sector capabilities and geographic presence and have a clear strategy. We deliver compelling client propositions through proactive partnerships, Specialist Expertise, on the ground presence and balanced risk appetite to support our clients' growth in the 7 core sectors and 2 country specific sectors. Our geographic and product diversification allow us to maintain sizable and resilient revenue streams.
Even in the wake of the COVID-nineteen pandemic that saw many institutions lose revenue, We continued to weather the storm. In 2020, our total revenue was larger than our competitors, With our wholesale segment looming larger than 2 of our peers combined, our diversification, and robust even as markets fluctuate. The quality of the revenue streams remains strong through our transactional product SME and Global Markets Businesses. Multinationals and Large Local Corporates continued to be our engine for growth. Multinational Organizations are our backbone, providing a solid foundation of revenue.
We have, however, seen good performance our large local corporates and institutional client base with a 15% growth since 2018. Our portfolio is well balanced and remains stable from a risk management perspective. Our risk exposure is diversified across our core sectors to minimize concentration risk. Over the last few years, our credit loss ratio to customers has remained well below our bottom limit our truly cycled range of 40 to 60 basis points. We continue to enjoy market leading position in crucial solution sets across our Investment Banking, Global Market and Transactional Product and Services.
As a recognized leader in the market, we are also honored to have received some of the most coveted accolades in our field, the accolades we share with our incredible partners and dedicated colleagues. We are incredibly proud of partnerships with clients such as SA Taxi, which has enabled many previously disadvantaged individuals to achieve the means of employment S. We are well placed to contribute to the sustainable finance evolution with our clients. We have increased our originated sustainable finance business by an astonishing 27% for the 1st 6 months of this year Compared to the same 6 month period last year, the 20 21 half year revenues our sustainable finance business have increased by 99% from the 2020 full year revenues. Our total 2021 Sustainable Finance origination is expected to reach R20 billion, which will represent a doubling of our 2020 origination efforts.
As we have shown, our growth trajectory remains steady and on course. Even though an uncertain global environment, Our services and risk management have remained robust. We have managed to strengthen our existing relationships and acquire new clients. We grew our product market share in the countries we operate in. We gained significant growth across Africa by leveraging our sector expertise and capitalize on renewable energy opportunities, Optimizing our key client engagement processes has seen client experience improve, And digital transactions continued to grow and expand.
We concluded market leading sustainable finance transactions. We placed the 1st retail sector sustainability linked loan in South Africa with Woolworths and the 1st sustainability link bound in Africa with Netcare. As development, Investment and trade opportunities continue to grow within the African continent. We are well positioned to support this group. These are the 5 strategic areas we'll be focusing on going forward, which I will take you through now.
Our multinational and South African franchise relationships are a key focus for us. SmartLine Base is the largest contributor to our revenue at 60%. We intend to maintain that true retention, growth and acquisition strategies across our African footprint. South Africa remains a key franchise for our business, Citi. Maintaining our leadership position in this market remains important for us.
We'll achieve this through utilizing our balance sheet and resources appropriately to unlock growth opportunities. Also, we are taking a renewed focus on the industrial sector to benefit from key growth themes emerging from this sector. In collaboration with the Business and Commercial segment, we have scoped the market opportunity on the back selected clients in key growth markets across Africa. We expect an incremental revenue opportunity from this the Tapped client segment of local corporates. We'll achieve this through our concerted targeting of potential clients, offering a compelling value proposition, providing financial solutions that improve the client value chains and continuing to enhance our client service.
To drive Africa's growth, this is a must win priority. Citi. We have identified core sectors in key regions that we intended to cultivate for future investment. We have the reach, the expertise and the resources to achieve our targeted growth across the continent. To highlight a few, starting with the renewable energy opportunity in South Africa.
This is a significant areas of growth potential for ourselves and the broader energy needs of our clients. There is much needed investment to close the energy deficit across our continent. Therefore, supporting natural gas opportunities and resource endowed places like Mozambique will massively improve the region's economic development. Just as energy is vital for economic growth, so too is infrastructure. To this end, We see growth prospects from rail, road and port projects in East Africa and Nigeria.
The West African region heralds substantial growth prospect, considering that Nigeria is our 2nd largest franchise. While privatization opportunities are emerging in Angola, there are further industrialization opportunities from Ghana's Import Substitution Drive. Optimizing our custody business provide opportunities for us to expand our prime brokerage offering and continue to maintain our leading 40% market share in South Africa. We are well positioned as a thought leader to these sectors and are at the crossroads Citi. The bank interacts with various roles in the corporate line base.
Each role Requires a specialized digital interaction that makes experience situational and purposeful. To this end, the bank developed various specialized digital products. However, clients require these capabilities to interact with their own systems seamlessly. This led to the development of 1 Hub, a personalized digital platform where clients can access digital solutions provided by the bank as well as trusted partners. It brings together new electronic services into a unified client experience With a single sign on, such as know your customer, opening of accounts and project origination, including foreign exchange.
In addition, one half allows for core creation with clients Sanddhemakkad through application program interface, commonly known as API Services. We have already just under 170 clients on the platform, 17 partner users and have won the Global Finance Award for Outstanding Innovation in Corporate Finance earlier this year. Ultimately, 1 half will revolutionize our client digital experience with us by adding value and reaffirming loyalty. The energy industry is fragmented. Companies requiring a stable supply of electricity have to navigate different technical solutions, varied suppliers, funding options Eventually, clients are currently mostly unaware or miss out on potential benefits of alternative energy solutions for their business, There is no simple way to access.
Therefore, there is an increased need for a decentralized energy solution in South Africa and across the continent. We have built Power Pass as a solution to this challenge, an innovative digital offering designed and built to transform the way we deliver and consume energy and which can be accessed via 1 hub. Through PowerPulse, we are able to have clients to source alternative means of energy production with the support of VETED solution providers. This platform guides our clients in making the right technical decisions and selecting the right installation partners. This is then aligned to the most appropriate legal and funding solutions, all within the complex regulatory and approval environment.
Ultimately, we can play a leading role in this ecosystem by connecting both our clients and Vertech solution providers for value to be shared amongst all participants. This is just one more way for us to help build a sustainable future and offer more value to our clients. We see sustainable finance as a vital component our future growth. ESG has taken center stage in the market's investment and capital allocation decisions. This provides us with an avenue for further partnership with our clients in their sustainability drive, Especially as it relates to environmental and social outcomes, we have seen exponential growth the global sustainable finance market, and we're able to provide our clients with market leading ESG Finance solutions, including Green and Social Boards, ESG Linked Loans, Sustainable Trade Solutions and Impact Investing, Citi.
Increased land interest on ESG solution has continued to bolster our pipeline. Our 2021 gross Origination across bonds and loans is expected to be twice that of 2020. Our expectations towards 2025 is premised on sub Saharan Africa's economic rebound and the resultant revenue streams from growth opportunities across our continent, which we forecast will give us a CAGR 6% to 8% for this period. At the same time, we are cognizant cost management and efficient operational leverage. We can move our costincome ratio to below 50% and maintain our credit loss ratio within the target range of 40 to 60 basis points.
Ultimately, all these efforts will result in a return on equity in excess of 18%. With all that said, we trust that you can see that the wholesale client business to and to capture opportunities and new revenue streams associated with the new imagined client needs. Thank you. We'll now go back to Lirato for the Q and A.
Some pretty comprehensive presentations there from the leadership team. And now that we've garnered some insights on the group's direction and how this translates into the strategies and the key focus areas of each of the 3 client segments, all designed to enhance the client's experience. We're going to be exploring that in a second. May I also take this opportunity to apologize for the delayed start in transmission? We just wanted to make sure all participants are safely on the platform.
Also, please remember that all presentations will be available on the website once they've been broadcast. And do send your questions through using the Q and A facility on the our virtual platform. You can also send your questions to sarah.rivet karnakstonerbank.co.za. Now it's time for you to engage with Sim Fonega, David, CENI. They join us now to give us more clarity and understanding.
As a reminder, do submit your questions using the Q and A tab. And where relevant, do indicate who the question is for so that we direct it accordingly. Okay. Let's not waste any time. Sim, Deg Boss?
It's great to see you. Thank you for joining us in studio and being willing to answer some of the questions that our delegates and participants have for you today. The first one says, SIM, the slide detailing ecosystems is interesting. So that's a good one there. But please can you explain how you've determined the 5 ecosystems that you wish to drive and the 5 that you wish to be merely a contributor.
Lareto, I think the first place to start is By asking ourselves why in the first place we thought about ecosystems and why it matters, It became very clear to us that as we compete, we can't simply compete on the basis of selling products to our clients. In fact, not just selling products, but selling disparate products. Of course, we're going to continue designing and manufacturing products because that is what financial institutions are good at. But if people are going to stand between you and your clients, you have to We've got to organize ourselves on the basis of bringing people together, buyers, sellers, depositors, Borrowers, importers, exporters and so forth. And our clients don't Just want to borrow money.
Our clients want to buy plant and machinery or they want to move goods From Zimbabwe to Tanzania. And it's not just that they want to learn. It's that they want to Be part of a logistics process, they want to trade goods, etcetera. And it's become clear to us that for us to remain relevant to our clients, we've got to do more for our clients. And therefore, we've got to participate in activities then that are adjacent to our Financial Services.
So the first principle is, Is the activity adjacent to Financial Services? Is it close? And secondly, is it part of the demand from clients. And thirdly, have we got the capacity to do that? So that's those are the 3 questions that we ask ourselves.
There are different types of ecosystems we've chosen. And before I go there, there are hundreds of ecosystems we could have chosen.
Spain.
But we've decided to choose 10, which, as I say, are adjacent to Financial Services but where we believe we're particularly good. So there are 5 where we can be drivers, and there are 5 where we'll just be participants. And the example of Where we're going to be a driver, for example, is home services. The other one is trade. The other one is agriculture.
And the logic around there is that these are things that we are particularly good at. We've got the largest home loans business in the country, for example. And in that context, we want to be able to coordinate all activities and the communities that surround the home services. And I guess, Funego can talk to you in a bit more detail about that. PowerPulse in the energy sector, That is one of the ones where we will just participate.
It's adjacent to Financial Services, but we don't see ourselves as the coordinator. Other people are better at that. We don't generate power, and we don't distribute power, but we know how to pull those things together, how to make how to pull the various participants in that ecosystem together. And as I say, Kenny might want to give you more detail on that.
Okay. So it's really about just focusing on your competitive advantages, what you do, what you do well. It's what we're
good at
and what we do well, but it goes beyond simply lending money or giving advice. We're capable of doing more, for example, in home services, as I say, than simply give somebody a loan.
David, let's bring you into the conversation. There is a term that Sim used earlier on that was competitiveness within the South African environment. And there is a question here that says, the competition in South Africa is tough. How are you convincing businesses to bank with Standard Bank in the midst of this competition?
Yes. Thank you very much, and Good afternoon to everybody. I think firstly to say that we've got to understand that the South African franchise is already a very strong Franchise with above 20% market share in enterprise and 25% in the commercial business segment and ROEs of over 26%. And I think we've seen that in the numbers that we announced yesterday around the growth in our active customer numbers, turnover increases in assets and liability growth that we've seen. So around servicing our customers where almost 90% of everything can be done by not going into a branch at the moment through the Enterprise Direct, A strong focus on our relationship managers, which is core for us, key sector knowledge in areas like agriculture with years of experience that we have As well as our scale of product and footprint that Sim talked about earlier.
However, we recognize that it's still a very competitive environment that we're in, and everyone will be going after this ship managers and enterprise direct on how we service and our clients interact with us. Importantly, the platforms that Sim talked about, areas like trade for us, PowerHouse, As well as the advisory and digital solutions that we'll be putting in place for our clients. And then I think just as we talked about in the presentation, how we were Our VCC is a connector between the consumer and high net worth and wholesale portfolios with all the ecosystem work that we were doing. So we believe we've got lots of road around that to continue our growth. And then lastly, the new solutions that we're working on, for instance, the SA app and online solutions.
So hopefully, a lot of the areas still working on But progressing off a very strong base. Thank you.
Thank you, Funeika. The question that comes is for you now and it's along this tack of staving off the competition. It says, your clients are being offered platform and ecosystem based services by many of your competitors. What makes you so confident that they will take additional services from you? And how confident are you that you can drive more revenues?
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Sisi. The first thing I want to say is that Retail Banking is already unbelievably competitive. But it's also true that the game has changed.
The game has changed has now moved the share of human attention, which is why we are actually changing our business strategy to platform business. We've taken a very pragmatic call around some platforms. We've said, as Sim has spoken about it earlier, we want to go to where we've got strength, therefore, housing. And secondly, as far as consumer is concerned, A lot of our platforms, if you think about Unai, for example, actually depends on solving big problems How do we make sure that we capitalize on the strength that we already have? In reality, competition the ones who wins the competition is the one that better serve or create most of value from a client perspective.
One thing I can say, Sis, is that we are not recycling bankers. We think that our anchor tenant business of banking, insurance as well as investment. There's plenty of runway there. But to our platform businesses, we've started to bring in different people. We are building different capabilities.
And as Sim said earlier on, we're bringing in innovation partners, advisory boards such as motive partners so that we can help us to accelerate. At the end of the day, we're going to put something out there As fast as possible, we'll get feedback from clients. We'll iterate and learn, and that's really our strategy. So we fundamentally believe that we've chosen the right areas of strength, and then you will add tremendous amounts of value for our clients, and our clients will love the solutions.
Fantastic. And Kenny, a question to you. A reference was made earlier on about PowerPulse. And this, delegate says PowerPulse sounds like an exciting development, but how do you monetize it?
Thank you very much, Loretta. I think the first thing with regard to Power Pals is to create scale, I. E, get as many suppliers of energy solutions onto the platform as well as get as many people or companies or entities who require these solutions onto the platform We're able to identify solutions that we can provide to energy suppliers and to people who need energy sort of deliver to them, whether it be financial solutions, structuring solutions as well as So broadly speaking, banking solutions. I think the second phase of development of PowerPulse is going to be, once you have the scale, How do you then leverage the platform to deal with energy trade? Some might have excess energy production, But others could have a shortage of energy production.
How, through the platform, do you then optimize and create a trading platform for energy, irrespective of who supplies it or who requires it. In addition to that, the data that will be able to generate it through PowerPulse Enables a whole range of other creative solutions, for example, waste wastage, inefficiencies and so on. And all of those are All aimed at creating value at the end of the day to the participants on the Power Pals platform. So we see the future of Power Pals into value added solutions at the back of the participants and the volume that would have created through this platform. It is exciting, Huge demand from those who provide energy, huge demand from the clients that we've spoken to.
And we have no doubt in our mind that we have to focus on creating this game and through that, we'll see a massive amount of value starting to flow into the participants of the bluff. Citi.
Thanks so
much for that, Kenny. And obviously, it speaks to the moment that the world finds itself in right now with so many people focused on what they the energy transitions and the emergent opportunities in the new energy economy. But that also speaks to the other areas of business opening up, e Commerce, for instance, Tech. Let's talk about some of the partnerships, as it were, that you made reference to in your presentation Cision and why those particular entities. I think you made reference to Amazon, Salesforce, Microsoft.
Just tell us a little bit about those relationships you're hoping to build.
Sure. Lirato, the point here is that one of the strengths of a financial institution And one of the reasons why we will continue to exist despite the entry of new entrants, big tech, etcetera, is relationships. And I made this point in the introductory remarks. We have scale, and part of the scale is the scale of our relationships. One of the most important of those relationships are the relationships with our vendors, particularly in the space of IT, software and hardware.
Over the years, we've built incredible relationships with a number of these. Let's take Salesforce that you've just mentioned. Kenny can give you more details on this if he if there is time, but Salesforce has been working with us for over a decade in Corporate and Investment Banking, and it provides us the backbone to our client engagement and CRM platform. That relationship is deep, it's rich and it works. We've extended that relationship.
It's now a strategic partnership, if you like, in terms of which they're working with us Through the leadership of Margaret, who chairs our platform steering committee, to make sure that sales force becomes the kernel Standard Bank's client engagement tools. We've extended that relationship from wholesale to Business and Commercial and now to Consumer and High Net Worth. There was a time when these business units would have made their own decisions about this, Which then speaks to Standard Bank as the platform and everybody having a relationship with Salesforce and driving the efficiencies that arise from that relationship. That's Salesforce. They're the world's leading CRM provider and client engagement tools provider.
They are working with us on developing tools for marketing, for sales and so forth. AWS and Amazon, just briefly on them. They, too, have a strategic partnership with us. It's not just a vendor relationship. And we're working with them on them helping us improve the client interface, particularly with Amazon On things like personalization, which Fonega is driving.
And Microsoft, for example, is providing us with a lot of our back office type of activity, our finance, HR and so forth. And so those three relationships are crucial in Standard Bank pivoting to become this platform our business and ecosystem curator. It's an exciting time, I have to tell you.
Absolutely. Fonega, an exciting time for you, too. Could you just spread your client base out per segment. I mean, how many high net worth clients in South Africa? Are we talking about how many middle markets?
And how many entries?
Thank you for that question. So we've got 9,700,000 clients in South Africa. We run them in 3 segments, broadly High net worth affluent as well as main markets. So the growth that you've seen of 4% has been A growth of in South Africa, 3% growth in affluent clients as well as 4% growth in main markets. Our current clients are just under 1,000,000 clients in South Africa.
Thank you.
Thanks for that. Okay. A question from Bankole Ubogo, also for you, Fonega. It feels like CHNW has the biggest gap to improve on rates of returns on equity. But its revenue growth outlook is not the fastest.
Do you believe efficiency gains here what would be the most substantial. Of the okay, and you've answered this question. Of the 25,000,000 clients, how many are South SOCAN.
Okay. Thank you, Moncola, for that question. So firstly, I want to say that we see an opportunity, as you would have seen in our outlook, to grow revenue as well as to reduce costs. Our business is very subscale and sub subscale in 2 ways. Number 1, our main markets business is subscale in South Africa.
And then across the continent, as we've said, we've got Very large banks, so reasonably sized bank in the Southern Africa as well as Uganda. But in big markets like Nigeria, Kenya, We are still subscale. So we do see an opportunity to scale our business and that being a driver of revenue growth. And absolutely, the second point is on costs. We see a significant opportunity to reduce costs.
More specifically in South Africa, as we've said, More specifically, when it comes to the distribution network, we think that there's a big opportunity to resize that network and reduce costs Without Reducing Client Excess.
Thanks for that. A question from Kevin Harding at Investecxum. How do you vet your future partners to ensure your brand is not compromised?
That is such an excellent question. I think we work on the basis that we're a financial institution regulated by the prudential authority who are very, very serious about us making sure that we do not create risks that will cause systemic risk. Standard Bank is large in the South African financial system, and it's large on the continent. So firstly, that's very, very important. Secondly, we need to make sure that we don't create 3rd party risks, something that David in his previous role was very focused upon, Making sure that when we do contracts and joint ventures and partnership agreements, those people do not create operational risks, Create cyber exposures, create the forward risks that cause us big systemic risk.
And so we've in the process of upgrading our risk management framework to put us in a position to be able to vet partners and understand the types of risks that they will create for us, ranging from our partners in the space where we will be Using their distribution channels to partners that will be operating in our own ecosystem, a very, very important point. It's We're having to learn how to manage 3rd party risk. Great question.
And David, from your experience in this field. Is there anything you want to add as to what Sim has just said about managing the risk?
I think as Sim said, it's Something that you can't not do. You have to go there, but it is a new muscle for financial services firms and us to just learn and experiment with, and I think it's going to take time, but a lot of focus by the board, the regulator, etcetera, on 3rd party risks and Often not just 3rd party risk. People are talking about nth party risk because it can go you've got to understand the total chain that you're working with. So
Another question for you from Walid Moshin from Goldman Sachs. How will the group differentiate itself versus competition in the broader African region, especially competition from fintechs, telcos, global banks and in country champions. To exporting this model across sub Saharan Africa. How are you going to go about it? What differentiates the group versus this competition which seems to be increasing, especially on the retail side.
For sure. Let me start on the wholesale side, if I may. Standard Bank, without being uncharitable to our competitors, is the continental champion in the space of Wholesale Banking, particularly because of its strength in multinationals. And that strength arises firstly because we've got on the ground capability in 20 countries. We've got people that know and understand those markets.
We've got people that have got a set of products and solutions that have been built over the years, and we've got systems in the nature of infrastructure and software. And we've got processes, again, that have been built over the years to be able to service multinationals on a cross border basis on the continent. In addition to that, we've got people based in London, New York, Dubai and the Middle Kingdom that help us to knit our network into the major financial centers of the world So that, for example, Liorato, the treasurer at GE, can phone our colleagues in New York about a payment that has failed to happen in Angola, And it will be sorted out that afternoon. There are not many competitors that can do that and be able to do that. And then that afternoon, If necessary, sort out the home loan problem that the Chief Executive in Kenya has got.
So that's the first one on wholesale. That's what differentiates us. On the consumer and high net worth side, it's pretty clear to us That even on the African continent, financial institutions have got capabilities that telcos And fintechs do not have. Banking is a scale business, firstly. And secondly, it relies heavily On your ability to comply with regulations and we hire armies of risk managers.
And again, I will tease David about that. The armies of risk managers were organized to be able to protect the institution against the risks that it faces. And so that for us is a moment which we will continue to benefit from for a long time, and that differentiates us. So our ability then to use that capability, together with our ability to partner, will differentiate us from these new entrants. Thanks.
I think I'd like to ask Kenny to just add a few more points on this particular one. It's kind of leveraging the platform capabilities in different African markets.
Loretta, I guess, I mean, the question about competitiveness is at the heart of winning. Unless you can compete effectively and can add value to clients, I mean, it's unlikely that you will win. And part of the sort of solution to this question has been alluded to by Sam. The two points that I would want to add are the following. The first relates to the nature of the form of our relationship management with clients.
We were the first to bring our sales and origination teams together To create what we call client service teams so that we don't have individual products knocking at the door of the client trying to push their products. By coming together in a client service team, the view that gets taken then is that of finding an appropriate solution to the client With the relationship manager becoming the choir conductor, I think that has added tremendous value. Firstly, our appreciation of the client environment, understanding what their pain points are, understanding what their strategy and their journey and consequently being there to provide appropriate solutions At the right time, with the client blowing fully well that they've got an internal champion within the Standard Bank Group. I think that has been extremely powerful. We have since seeing everyone following that model, and we continue to improve on that model to refine it.
The next stage of development of that model for us to effectively make decisions and support clients. That's where we are at the moment, and we're rolling that out throughout our geographies. The second element is about the sector expertise that we've developed. It's unbelievable how useful it is to understand the sector and the environment within which clients are operating, so that when we think about structuring deals and solutions for them, They are appropriate to the environment that they find, and they can be implemented because we're not taking something that works in the mining sector and wanting to propose it to a retail client irrespective of the dynamics of the 2 sectors. I think those 2 competitive advantages have tended to set us apart relative to competition.
We continue to build on those. We continue to find new ways of adding additional things that we can do to clients, which is where the platform proposition of the group then becomes relevant. It is not just about platform for its own sake, but it's about identifying what are the imagined needs of clients, How do they procure and buy things? And how can we add value and take away frictions and make it easy for them to achieve that which they wanted to achieve in a much more quicker way, in a manner that is value adding and in a manner that enhances their business objectives and so on, which is why Power Pass It's such a powerful value proposition because it is less about us but more about the value that we add to clients. And through that value add,
I just want to take advantage of the fact that we've got Funeqa on the platform at the moment before We take a break. So Foneka, two questions for you, if you can answer them quite succinctly. Kevin Harding says, why do you believe Unaiyo. The mobile money proposition will be successful considering the strength of MTN and Safaricom's mobile money offerings, respectively, that are already well entrenched in a lot of markets across the continent. That's the first one.
And then Fonega James also wants to know, he's from RMB Morgan Stanley. Given the revenue compression from lower cost digital delivery versus competition, what kind of underlying growth in transaction volumes underpin your 6% to 8% revenue growth projections.
Thank you. So just first question, Unariu. We're absolutely rolling out. It's meant to solve a very unique problem of big corporate or big payers that are paying into wallets that are not typically interoperable. So one of the very big advantages of Unai is what we as banks do that are not necessarily there in other players, which is full bringing on the benefit of full interoperability into the world of wallets and also being very, very selective into which ecosystems which we get to.
So that's the first one. 2nd one in terms of transaction flows, Just really 2 things. Firstly, revenue growth assumes that we move away we increase our client base From the current EUR 15,000,000, which is about EUR 9,700,000 in South Africa and EUR 5,300,000 in Africa regions to EUR 25,000,000, Which is €15,000,000 in South Africa and €10,000,000 in Africa Regions. That is the big underpin of our revenue growth. And of course, linked with that, our ability to sell more solutions, particularly non financial solutions into that base.
Thank you.
Thank you. And Sim, a question that I just knew was going to come today, and I was wondering when and how, but it's here. Question from Asif Mohammed. How will you integrate Liberty into Standard Bank's business units?
Brief answer, Lerato, and thank you, Assi, for that question, is firstly, at the moment, Liberty remains independent and at arm's length with Standard Bank. And until the shareholders approve the scheme of arrangement in October And the competition authorities and the prudential authority approved the transaction. We can't speak in great detail in public about how that will work. But At a high level, the strategic rationale is as follows: 1, it completes the Standard Bank platform. So it has sine qua non actually to do this transaction for us to speak about a platform.
Secondly, and most importantly, it increases our relevance to our clients. We will be there for the client Whether they want to make an investment, they want to insure themselves or they want to buy a home, we'll be able to do that in a seamless and integrated way, Hence the notion of an integrated financial services organization. We want to be able to do that without the shackles of an arms' bank bank assurance which has worked wonders for our group but is no longer really relevant for the future. And importantly, just to close this, we want to increase our relevance Not just in South Africa, but on the rest of the continent because the point we made earlier on, people are getting healthier, wealthier. There's Greater Financial Deepening, and we want to be at the forefront of that financial deepening and enjoy the benefits of the wide margins that exist On the African continent.
Thank you.
Thank you, Sim, and thank you to your leadership team for battering away these questions. Let me thank you all also for posing the questions. You make me sound smart. Thanks to you, James Stark, Waleed Mosheen, Kevin Harding, Charles Russell, Asif Mohammed, Bankole Ogbogo. And John's Storii.
You got the ball rolling, so thank you very much to you. I think that was a fantastic session. It's clear that Sun SanddBank Group is accelerating towards its 2025 ambition of becoming a client centric digitally enabled platform business, wanting to create new solutions, new partnerships that would help to serve clients better and also grow the business' revenues. So really comprehensive insights there. We'll now be taking a short break.
If you'd like to access the presentations for the next session, please refresh your browser for this platform during the break, and then they'll be made available to you on the page for download. For now, we just ask you to relax, reflect on what you've heard, refresh, and get yourselves ready for this afternoon's exciting session. Thank you for your time. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to this all important strategic update from the Standard Bank Group. It's a timely conversation, and it's one informed by a world that's rapidly changing around us.
You all know that technological advancements are moving a variety of service based industries into a totally new realm, and banking cannot afford to be left behind. In fact, it's Financial Services and Telecommunications that are at the part of driving so much of this change. Transforming the Cenobank Group from a traditional financial institution to one that is defined by modern innovation. We'll enable it to deliver on the promises made to help Africa grow, develop and fulfill its potential. Before the break, we were shown how the organization is being transformed and in so doing, transforming client experiences.
Now it's time to hear about how the Standard Bank Group plans to execute with excellence, delivering innovative and cost effective products and services itself and also in partnership with others. We'll also hear more about how technology has transformed into Sineering and how it will support the group's ambition of becoming a platform business. Sustainability is embedded in the DNA of this organization, and also going to hear about how the Standard Bank Group plans to drive sustainable growth and value through its commitment to a positive impact delivering on sustainable social, economic and also environmental value across Africa, the continent we call home. Lastly and importantly, we're going to turn to the financial road map. We will translate what you've heard today into the group's 2025 financial targets.
Now S. Margaret Nienaba joins us to talk to us about the group's client solutions.
Good day, everyone. My name is Margaret Nienauboe, and I am the Chief Executive of Client Solutions. I'm so excited to share with you some thoughts on the positioning of this newly formed area within the context of the Standard Bank Group strategy. Citi. I'm going to touch on these key themes: defining client solutions, what our focus areas are and what you can expect as key takeaways and targets for 2025.
CIM. You would have heard from Sim on how client solutions fits into the context of the Standard Bank Group strategy with a key focus on servicing the solutions needs of the 3 Standard Bank client segments and scaling through partnerships. Citi. Today, we would like to focus on the following three key areas. What we mean when we say we want to be a modular producer or modularize what we do secondly, understanding the importance of partnerships and thirdly, unpacking how we intend to unlock value and client benefit with the intended integration of the Liberty Group.
Firstly, unpacking what we mean when we say we want to modularize. Citi. In a world where value propositions are no longer fixed or static, we realize that no partner or client needs will be the same, and we therefore use the analogy of the Honeycomb to represent our client value proposition. Many of you will be familiar with the strength of honeycomb technology used in Formula 1 cars. And of course, in nature, it represents flexibility, adaptability and it is unique in its very modular nature.
We built this honeycomb around the key solutions clustered as banking, Insurance, Investments and Non Financial Services or Beyond Financial Services as we refer to it. Citi. Within each of these solutions, we have a number of client needs that we address with each of these hexagons having their own unique product set. None of our partners or clients will want the same Honeycope, and we cater for their unique needs on a very personalized basis. The reference to wanting to modularize or show up as a modular producer is really categorized into 3 themes.
Firstly, lowering the cost to serve by bringing together the capabilities that were previously run within the old business units into a central place to allow us to show up as integrated, simple and efficient, able to build innovative scalable solutions within any configuration. This also talks to something we are very passionate about, which is being truly human and truly digital, which I will unpack shortly. Secondly, standardizing what we do, which also links in with this theme of simplification of the tech landscape and decommissioning our legacy systems, which you will hear more about from Alpheus. And then lastly, ensuring that we have the ability to connect with the businesses of our partners Spire APIs or otherwise required to allow us to scale and partner with others in a seamlessly integrated way. And so to summarize this slide, segments or our partners will inform us with regards to the needs expressed by their clients, for example, the Pick and Pay partnership, where we will then solve for the client needs through the correct solutions, and our colleagues in engineering will assist us to ensure we operate within a simplified landscape with the ability to plug and play into any particular business.
Citi.
One of the key focus areas within lowering our cost to serve is to find this right balance between being truly human and truly digital. We believe being truly human will remain a key client engagement imperative going forward. But there has to be a shift from human interference behind the scenes, often slowing down the service to the client or acting as a bottleneck because solutions have not been fully digitized throughout. For example, straight through processing, which is one of the key measures in the wheel on your screen, which defines what we mean Supply Digital Solutions. You would have heard previously about digital engagement.
For example, the 99% digital engagement within our retail client base in South Africa. This graph measures digital fulfillment across all of our jurisdictions and across all three of the client segments. And so you will see see that currently, we are at a combined digital fulfillment rate of 22%, and we aim to get to 50% by 2025, which compares well with global best practice. Citi. It may not be the same average for each of these solutions, but we believe that we can get to the right balance.
One such example is our flexi funeral product, which Puneika also referenced, launched a year ago and now at 640,000 Active Policies, currently sold through branches and call centers, where we increased our existing base by 40% in only one year. By the end of this year, this solution will be fully digital, which includes straight through processing. Citi. The second and very important focus area is then this notion of scaling through partnerships. When we define partnerships, we really look at it through 2 lenses.
On the left side of the slide are those partners who complement our honeycomb for SanddBank segment clients and therefore act as open architecture solution partners within the frameworks of banking, Insurance Investments and Beyond. And then on the right hand side of the slide, you will see that going forward, we also plan to scale through strategic distribution partners, where we offer our own Standard Bank manufactured Honeycomb Solutions within insurance, banking and investments into other people's client distribution channels or ecosystems or platforms, however you want to look at it, on the basis of B2B2C or B2B2B. I would like to unpack these two kinds of partnerships for you. Firstly, within the context of our open architecture solutions partners, Stannard's. So those complementing the value proposition for Standard Bank segment clients.
We have already successfully partnered with competitors like Sunlam, Hollard and Old Mutual to provide insurance solutions within Africa regions. Going forward, we would also like to focus on our non financial services or beyond solutions by listening to the broader needs of our client base and optimizing our distribution network. We already offer beyond solutions like lottery, Airtime and Electricity to our clients in South Africa with ZAR 350,000,000 revenue Secure Clients' Needs. We have narrowed down the Beyond focus areas to the 7 displayed on the screen. We have already started engaging with many of these partners and look forward to sharing progress in this regard with all of you.
You will notice, for example, home services as a focus area for beyond our non financial services. This is, of course, to complement our home loans business, where we are already proudly the market leader in South Africa. ZAR. We aim to grow revenue from these Beyond Solutions partners to between ZAR 3,000,000,000 and ZAR 4,000,000,000 by 2025. ZAR.
Secondly, when it comes to strategic distribution partners, the current ZAR 1,600,000,000 revenue as of the end of 2020 is made up of those areas in yellow on the screen. For example, existing partnerships such as providing home services to clients of Essa Home Loans, providing international solutions through trust companies in Jersey our independent financial adviser networks like Efficient Wealth and Devea Group partnering with us to offer our Standard Bank International Banking Solutions to their Wealth Management clients across the African continent. With our colleagues in innovation, we are already engaging with a number of fintech partners, and we are also partnering within our vehicle and asset finance space with Mobility and Fleet Partners. We don't necessarily see these partnerships as being exclusive. And within the new framework, we are very comfortable to also partner with competitors, which is why you will see financial services is one of our key areas that we are focusing on, where we've already started to see some green shoots.
Sandd, and you can see a number of these assets on the screen as already referenced by my colleagues. The integration of Liberty into the Standard Bank Group is an important and exciting next step to allow us to truly function as a platform business ready to partner. As per the slide that Sim shared, we are focusing on both the transaction imperatives like allowing Standard Bank and Liberty Clients the benefit of scale and choice as well as the 6 key business case drivers. Within the context of already being the most successful bank assurance agreement on the continent. We believe this transaction will allow us to refine our engagement around a number of key areas, also allowing for better capital usage.
Us. We look forward to unpacking this with all of you in more detail. Within ZARN's short term and long term insurance portfolios. We already have a significant gross written premium of ZAR 64,000,000,000, consisting 90% of life insurance solutions. And as you can see, this is mostly done for individuals within consumer and high net worth, that we are slowly starting to increase our reach to business and commercial clients with a clear opportunity to also partner with our clients in wholesale on their insurance needs.
91% of these premiums are from South Africa, with the remaining 9% being spread across the continent, where we are steadily starting to increase our penetration. The addition of our Stanbic IBTC Life license in Nigeria is our latest introduction to the portfolio. Citi. Going forward, our focus will remain the opportunity to utilize our distribution base to establish broking businesses for short term and long term insurance. It is not our intention to start manufacturing capabilities unless there's real scale in the country like Nigeria.
And we will therefore continue our drive to partner on manufacturing across the continent. On a consolidated basis, we already have a total our CNY 1,200,000,000,000 combined assets under management and administration, which puts us ZAR in the top three asset managers on the continent. In fact, at ZAR 1,200,000,000,000, to now scale our back office support functions across all of these businesses. Approximately 24% of this asset under management Sustainability. It's currently outside of South Africa.
In closing, what are the key takeaways from these focus areas? Citi. By 2025, we aim to lower our costs to serve, standardize and have the ability to seamlessly connect with partners with a particular focus on having at least 50% digital fulfillment on the solutions being provided to clients. Secondly, achieving between ZAR 8.5 ZAR10.5 billion of the group's revenue through partnerships, consisting of ZAR3 1,000,000,000 to ZAR4 1,000,000,000 from beyond our non financial services and between €5,500,000,000 and €6,500,000,000 from strategic distribution partners. And thirdly, unlock the potential to fully integrate Liberty for the benefit of all of our stakeholders.
We are so passionate about our purpose. Africa is our home. We drive her growth, and we look forward to taking you on this journey with us. Thank you. And it's now my pleasure to hand you over to Alpheus.
Thank you, Margaret. Good day, ladies and gentlemen. I am Alpheus Mengele, and I lead the engineering capabilities for the group. So what is engineering maybe asking? Engineering maybe a foreign team in financial services, but very fitting and common in platform and technology businesses.
Building on Sim's comments earlier, engineering brings together all the infrastructure capabilities we use to deliver the group services. It includes technology, operations, security, data and analytics, partnership delivery and real estate services. Citi. These capabilities provide the always on, always secure digital foundation required for excellent execution And to enable new revenues and provide a superior customer and partner experience. Engineering working with client solutions act as an integrator, Citi, an enabler of the Group Platform in pursuit of the Group Platform business ambitions.
In terms of the agenda today, I will reflect briefly on our journey to date and provide a snapshot of what the future holds. I will describe the key shifts required as we move from technology to engineering and then provide an overview of our key capabilities and approach. And finally, I will outline our key success measures as we play our role in delivering the group's standard bank 25 strategic priorities and targets. To provide context on where we're going, it is important we reflect on where we have come from and on the changing world around us. Global Financial Services Organizations have undergone numerous transformations over the last 2 decades.
In the early 2000s, traditional banks were largely product focused and advancements in technology saw their onset of massing computing power. We went much different with Sunabank following the global trends of significant investment in physical infrastructure such as data centers investments with multi year payback periods. The period post 2010 saw organizations seeking to shift to digital banks, replacing their aging, How to maintain legacy core banking systems with modern new ones. We too chose to praise our core banking systems. We implemented SAP in South Africa and Finacle in the most of our African operations.
Once that had been completed, we turned our focus to the client facing capabilities. We are making good progress in this area as reflected in our digital solution ratings And the improvements in our client experience course covered by Funeka and Kenya earlier. The next period will be shared by the onset of cloud computing. The explosion of data as well as the developments in AI and machine learning. These are all key enablers which we are embedding to enable our pivot St.
Petersburg with some of the biggest and the best technology companies in the world. As previously mentioned, I reflected on how the industry has changed over the last 20 years, And I will respond to this. It is important to know that our journey hasn't been all smooth sailing. For this reason, We feel it is important that we reflect on our learnings to date, our successes and on the steps we have taken to ensure that any missteps I'm not repeated. As already mentioned by Seem earlier, at the core of our learnings has been the acknowledgment that our transformation journeys, In particular, our core banking modernization journey in South Africa have taken too long and caused too much to complete.
We have a complex ecosystem that is expensive to run, and we'll continue to simplify this. We have a high reliance on external expertise And have struggled to leverage our data to its full potential. To help ensure we don't repeat these mistakes, we have embedded heightened governance processes and are driving clearer accountability for delivery and benefits realization. Our transformation has also seen a shift towards agile ways of working and our cloud migration journey is also underway. These actions have enabled rapid digital growth across our geographies and faster deployment of new products and solutions and improved product and stability of our systems.
And lastly, we have forged strategic relationships with Salesforce, Microsoft and Amazon, which will enable us to fast track the build out of our platform capabilities and support us in growing critical skills across the continent. Here, we illustrate the critical shifts required as we pivot to engineering capability required by platform organization. Reflecting on the experiences of those who have done it before, we saw the need to move away from a traditional product and cost focused technology function to a set of core engineering capabilities. To achieve this, we have amalgamated a series of existing capabilities as integrators and reorientated as a series of services focused on delivery of superior experience to our clients and our partners. These services include, among others, cloud migration, partner integration through APIs and customer insights through data.
Our 5 capabilities will enable our platform and ecosystem aspirations. The engineering capability of 5 distinctive portfolios. This includes Technology and Operations, which focuses on the delivery of integrated, reliable, simple, efficient and scalable digital solutions to our clients and our platform partners security, which focuses on ensuring secure interactions with our Data analytics, which focus on repositioning our data as a service, where capabilities can both be used internally and with our partners to create value for our clients and the group. To achieve success, we are focusing on data analytics resources on the opportunities that add business value within the group at scale. This will be achieved through improved prioritization and a laser focus on key areas such as client and revenue growth, Partnerships will create robust and reliable mechanisms for our partners to engage with our platforms as well as participate in our ecosystem seamlessly.
Our partnership delivery teams work closely with our client solutions and our client segment teams, Forming holistic client services teams to help our partners engage with Standard Bank digitally through fit for purpose APIs. Finally, our real estate services, which focus on rethinking and reshaping our workspaces to better services our customer and partners and employees in the post COVID world. This included radically reshaping our traditional branch and corporate rate spaces as well as rethinking our client and partner services models. As noted by Funeka earlier in the Consumer and High Network line segment presentation. Servicing customers will move beyond branches into smart digital channels and via our distribution Supporting these five capabilities are 3 broader underpinning priorities, which will help ensure the success of engineering.
The first is rapid innovation and business agility. Through the leveraging of cloud partnerships, we aim to migrate our core applications to the cloud, ensuring a more robust and always on, always secure and agile environment. The second is developing engineering skills. Sourcing critical engineering skills on the continent remains a huge challenge. We too have to invest and develop skills source Microsoft and Amazon on the continent.
Together, we hope to build critical skills and empower African businesses to sustain the 4th Industrial Revolution Transformation journeys. By 2025, we hope to create approximately 50,000 certified engineers in the areas of data, cloud, security, AI and others. We will also empower over 300 small to medium businesses to support the deployment of these critical engineers. Finally, we are also embedding the requisite engineering culture To enable us to win in the market. We aim to build a team of leading engineers who are passionate about servicing our clients and our partners as well as providing superior solution to media needs.
We'll continue to foster a growth mindset With emphasis on learning it all rather than knowing it all. This will continue to position Standard Bank as a great place to work, Allowing us to attract superior talent and enabling us to deliver on our aspiration. We have already started to make progress on realizing our engineering ambition. Ultimately, the proof is in their pudding, and we have already seen significant progress made in the achievements of these aspirations. In Technology and Operations, We have commenced our journey to simplify technology landscape.
More than 120 systems have been decommissioned and more than 100 applications have already been migrated to the cloud, providing an improved resilience. We have digitized more than 90% of all our branch based transactions, supporting the strong growth in digital volumes referred to by Foneka earlier. We have also introduced more than 100 robotic process automation as we automate our operations processes. In security, we have commenced the journey to future proof our security capabilities and have had no material security breaches in over 3 years. Independent assessments have consistently ranked us in the top quartile of global capabilities.
For data analytics, We are now focused on driving increased commercial value from the key initiatives that capitalize on the unique footprint with our focus on effective execution at scale. An example of this is a collaboration with our client Transaction Capital to launch Authentifi, A product designed to assist businesses enhance risk management, optimize cost and efficiencies and improve cash flow and collection success ratios. Excellence in data, analytics is also implicit in our recent awards Africa's Best Investments Bank And Africa's Best Bank for Wealth Management for 2021. This reflects our leading position in risk and business data and insights across Investment Banking and the use of our leading portfolio and analytical tools for the benefit of our high net worth clients. We are targeting to onboard more than 1,200,000 clients digitally with biometric data by end of 2021.
This will be done using our leading facial recognition and artificial intelligence To date, we have onboarded more than 700,000 of these customers. In pursuit of seamless digital partner experience, We have enabled more than 300 APIs across the group, and we have seen over 40% growth in the utilization of these services in the last 6 months alone. Finally, in looking at our real estate, we have commenced the journey to right size our corporate and branch real estate. We have removed more than 60,000 square meters of floor space since 2018. This translates into an annual cost saving of about 400,000,000.
We are also partnering with our client segment teams to reimagine our services distribution models. Our recent partnership with Pick N Pay build on this initiative. Our key success measures support the group's strategic priorities. In closing, From an engineering perspective, we have defined the 4 key measures of success as part of this journey. Firstly, We aim to have more than 70% of our core applications in the cloud by 2025.
This will enable agile systems With superior production stability and an ability to deploy changes as customer needs arise. Secondly, Through the integration of technology and operations, we aim to reduce legacy systems by between 20% to 30%. This will result in simpler system landscape, limit client friction points, reduce possible points of failure and heighten production stability. We also aim to expand the use of our robotic process of automation to automate our processes. Thirdly, through the technical enablement of our chosen partnerships and ecosystems, we aim to have a common set of universal APIs.
We'll measure success through our percentage of digital engagements with our partners. In this case, we aim to have more than 75% of our partners' engagements Digital Enabled. And finally, we look to leverage our data capabilities to save our customers in a superior manner. We will measure success through the data products and solutions deployed and through the shared value created. We aim to generate more than ZAR6 1,000,000,000 worth of business value annually by 2025.
To date, we've already noted more than €1,500,000,000 of annual business value created through data. These outcomes will assist in improving client and partner experience and reducing the overall cost to serve. It is important to note that as we shift towards a more technology enabled organization, Tracking technology costs in isolation will become less important. Anno will comment on our technology investment expectations and our safe to invest approach in more detail a little bit later. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm excited to be leading the engineering function as we pivot to a platform organization.
Our role as engineering is clear and our success measures have been clearly defined. I am privileged to be part of the Standard Bank Group leadership team leading this business transformation for the benefits of our clients, employees, partners and our shareholders. Thank you for your attention. And I will now hand you over to David.
Good afternoon, everyone. In this section, I'll cover our commitment to driving a sustainable impact through our SEA strategy, our approach to ESG and managing climate risk. We will then turn to the panel discussion with Mercia, Chief Executive of Standard Bank Namibia and Sasha, Sustainable Finance Executive. We hope to bring to life what this means in a Standard Bank context and provide some concrete examples of how we are making a positive impact to financial services. As Sim mentioned earlier, when you look at today's investor landscape, there's no denying the importance of environmental, social and governance concerns to Standard Bank and to our investors.
Being more than a bank, driving sustainable and inclusive economic growth It's part of our purpose. Africa is our home. We drive her growth. As noted in the 3 client segment presentations, We fully recognize the impact of our business activities on the societies, economies and environments in Nutri operate And as such, have embedded social, economic and environmental, what we call C, considerations into our decision making processes as well as our progress measurement framework. The economic value we generate for our shareholders should be underpinned by the creation of value for society.
This is at the call
of who we are and how we do business. Our seed strategy incorporates the UN Sustainable Development Goals, Agenda 2,063 and other sustainability frameworks. We're also aligned to the Paris Agreement and are a founding signatory to the principles for responsible banking. The principle set the global benchmark for what it means to be a responsible bank. They make it clear that the bank indicators of impact and success should be much broader than their financial results.
We are co chair of the banking board, which is responsible for overseeing effective implementation of the principles and are proud to be amongst 240 banks leading the charge for a more sustainable world. A large Part of our strategy involves prudent ESG risk management. Best practice in this regard is the foundation for delivering on our C impacts. We have reviewed and restructured our governance systems and processes to ensure we are aligned with global good practice in respect of ESG risk management, Including climate related risk management. In the last 2 years, we have refreshed our approach to ESG, established a dedicated sustainable finance unit, Published a series of policies that guide our approach to thermal coal mining, coal fired power and financing fossil fuels, published 2 TCFD reports, which focus on our material sectors and participated in industry level initiatives to improve our climate risk management and published our own sustainable bond framework.
We have committed to publishing our climate risk strategy on our next support meeting the goals of the Paris Agreement and the goal of net zero carbon by 2,050. Our approach to climate target setting is based on support For a just transition and the need to address Africa's energy needs. While we have made some significant progress and reached a number of milestones, We are committed to making even further progress and doing substantive work in navigating the complexity and the trade offs required to fully integrate ESG and drive sustainable impact. To talk about how we are putting the C strategy into action, We've invited incredibly well regarded journalist, Lorate Mbele, to host a panel discussion with some of our Standard Bank leaders on how they are working to make a sustainable impact in their respective areas. Over to you, Lorato.
And thank you very much for that generous introduction, David. Welcome everyone to Standard Bank's panel on our commitment to driving Africa's growth, putting it into action. As you well know, the African continent continues to grapple with many social, economic and environmental challenges. And the COVID pandemic has made that even more pronounced by exposing the vulnerability of health care systems, it's disrupted schooling, it's affecting food production, and it's also affecting supply chains for factories and retailers. Now this experience has really amplified the need to find homegrown solutions and also the need to place communities at the center of all economic programs.
Serembank puts sea at the core of its work Across Sub Saharan Africa. And during this discussion, we'll be exploring several projects that are currently underway across South Africa Sandd Namibia, initiatives that are bringing Standard Bank's C and ESG strategies to life. Now joining me to discuss the impact of these projects. We're joined by Mircea Gaitis, who's the Chief Executive of Standard Bank of Namibia. She's also joined by Sasha Cook, who's the Sustainable Finance Executive at Standard Bank.
Now let's get started with this fascinating initiatives that's currently underway in Namibia. And Mercia, let's start with you. I know you've recently partnered with MIT Center For Bits and Atoms and also with the architectural firm Red House to develop a sustainable economic and social ecosystem in Namibia. Could you tell me more about this, please?
Thank you very much for the opportunity. I would start by talking to the why, why Namibia would be so optimally placed for an opportunity and a partnership with MIT and the Red House Architects. Namibia is an arid country that has got scarce water resources, that is estimated at more than 400,000,000 tons of sustainably harvestable biomass. So we started our journey with biochar, Which is sustainable charcoal, and we've become one of the top 10 charcoal exporting countries in the world. Then we went into the biomass and its conversion to energy, and we've seen many of our industries now fueling their operations with biomass.
Then we followed the journey into bio fodder, which we've converted this biomass into animal feed. And now naturally, the Biohub partnership with MIT and the research teams that are working with us on that. We are privileged to work with MIT to research to grow mushrooms. Now the mushrooms are grown and harvested, and the material that is left behind is Contacted into Sustainable Bricks as a First Phase. There's lots more to come from this research.
So we've established a research and development site just outside of Windhoek, which will also function as a training facility for MIT's lab free Label Free Research Group and also for the international network of Biofab Labs. It is also open to Namibians that are seeking for new learning opportunities, and we're looking forward to exploring the ecosystem opportunities that this initiative provides.
Mercia. It just sounds to me like there's so much bounty in mother nature, so much that we don't see that, we can benefit from and that there's no such thing as waste. All Sing the Potential Wealth. Staying with what you've said, Mercia, what is Standard Bank's involvement though in the Biohub project?
Thank you. So apart from the country context that I've just given you and the role that we have played as a bank in the biomass sector, We have our flagship CSI initiative, which is the BioBrick program, which we've been running in partnership with the Shek Dwellers Federation in Namibia. Now BioBrick has a vision of a Shekels Namibia, and the BioHAP initiative is so complementary to our Quest for Existing and Providing Affordable Housing Solutions to approximately 500,000 no to low income Namibians that are living in informal settlements. And we believe that the Biohub initiative has got all the potential to solve for this. The funds that are collected through the bank's philanthropic efforts are distributed to the Sheikh Dwellers Federation of Namibia, We have already assisted us in building more than 6 50 houses in the country since we've started out.
So far, about 100 The proceeds that were derived from the sale of the mushrooms that we are producing at the Biohub facility as an experimental and research and development site has been donated to our BioBrick Foundation to fund some of the initiatives that we have in partnership with the Sheikh Duallis Federation.
All right. So it sounds to me like this is an alignment between country, company and the community, making sure that everybody benefits. Let's move on to you, Sasha. And moving on to a topic that's also great interest lately, sustainable finance. Why do you think that it's been such a huge focus for investors and corporates lately?
Thanks, Lorato. The pandemic has really demanded new approaches and new ways of looking at economic development and highlighted the importance of sustainability as well as raising the focus us on ESG issues. Looking at the markets, green bonds still dominate the sustainable finance market globally, But it is interesting to see some of the newer product categories, including green and social use of proceeds instruments as well as sustainability linked instruments, and these are really fast playing catch up. We have arranged a number of such bonds and loans this year already. In partnership with the JSE listed health care group, Netcare, we arranged and brought to market the 1st sustainability linked bond Earlier this year, we've also partnered with Woolworths Holdings Limited to execute the 1st sustainability linked loan in the retail South African Retail Sector.
And alongside Tough Limited, which is the trust for urban housing finance, we arranged South Africa's very first Social Bond to be listed on the Sustainability segment of the JSE. Most recently, we issued our own Standard Bank Senior Bond, Senior Social Bond under our Sustainable Bond Framework, where we also acted as the solar ranger and social bond coordinator. This bond, in particular, is aimed at raising funding to support the financing of affordable housing in respect of mortgage loans in this market with a focus on women borrowers. The activity in this segment certainly doesn't show any signs of slowing down.
Absolutely. And it's always best to borrow to women. You can ask the Grameen Bank. So as you see the evolution in the capital markets, what's next Sustainable Finance, Sasha.
So as we mentioned, the pandemic has really resulted in a significant increase in the issuance of social use of proceeds instruments. These are instruments specifically focused on raising funding to support social projects or social impact areas, And we expect this trend to continue. We also acknowledge how important the social investment is for emerging economies expect to see a wave of decentralized green energy projects as corporates and municipalities look to secure reliable, sustainable and affordable power supply while also furthering their own ESG agendas. The sustainability linked category of financing that I mentioned previously has and will continue to see significant growth. Citi.
The flexibility afforded by these instruments is very attractive to issuers and borrowers, and investors are also attracted by the tangible improvement indicators and the ability to actually demonstrate the impact of their investments. We issued our first ever green bond last year via a private placement with the International Finance Sustainability Corporation, the proceeds of which were allocated to fund eligible renewable energy assets. This was also aligned to our sustainable bond framework. We expect to see increased activity in the Sustainable Finance segment, and we expect this to be driven both by the demand side, I. E, investors, ZAR but also the supply side.
In the first half of twenty twenty one, we saw origination activity in excess of ZAR 9,000,000,000 across a number of transactions.
All right. So quite a broad conception of sustainability there. Moshe, I'd like to bring you back into the conversation and now really hone in on what socioeconomic needs, your project that you've referred to. What socioeconomic needs does it fulfill? And how does it align to Standard Bank selected C Impact Areas and also the ability to attain some of these global goals?
The biomass industry in itself is a very big employer. They've got about 12,000 jobs that were created in just harvesting Century with almost 40% of our unemployment rate being recorded there formally from the economic sector. So that's If you just look at the mushroom farmers that are going to emanate from this opportunity as we are going to scale the production And the capacity in order to deliver on the goals that we've got for our project, that's a big both employment creation and an enterprise development opportunity. If you just look at the machinery and equipment that we have deployed in this pilot phase already, most of that was Citi. Lots of benefits and innovation for the Namibian entrepreneurs out of the machinery and equipment that we're using in these new materials that we're testing and researching on.
Our architectural and engineering fraternity is at the forefront of this new building methods, and that skills development that also ties into employment creation and enterprise development. And there is so much more to this that I cannot share with you at the moment. Yes, we are in a research and development phase, but we're extremely excited by the impact opportunity that this presents.
Citi. Absolutely. And the relevance as well, Mauricio, given that the African continent in general has more than half of the total population being young CECL. Many of them are self starters. So it's very, very important to locate many of your goals within that new demographic.
Thank you so much, ladies. From what I'm hearing from you, it's ultimately about corporate citizenship and ensuring that always you're thinking about the Triple Bottom Lines. Thank you to Sasha and to Mercia. Now it's a remarkable impact that you're being able to make through the work that St. Jude.
And what I've learned from this discussion is that when we put the emphasis on the social, on the environment and the economic impact in the work that we do, it's not just about the financial returns, but it's about what's beneficial to the societies in which you live and work and everybody then wins. So thanks again to Mercia, to Fascia, to David and for all that have joined us for this particular session. If you'd like to find out more about Standard Bank's C strategy and the impacts being made. Please visit the On Demand section of this platform. I'll now hand over to Onno Danica to speak about the group's Financial Roadmap.
Good afternoon, and thank you for joining us today. I am Arno Denko, the Group's Chief Finance and Value Management Officer. And today, I'm going to share our 2025 financial road map with you. I would like to start by sharing some of our thinking on resource allocation, And I will then share our medium term targets with you and wrap up why we believe the STK share is an attractive investment proposition. I would like to start the resource allocation discussion by taking a step back and reflecting on the size and strength of the Standard Bank Group.
Our common equity Tier 1 capital base of ZAR169 1,000,000,000 has grown steadily and has been managed in excess of regulatory requirements. As well as the financial means to access and to deliver on new growth vectors you've heard about this morning from our client segments. On this slide, we reflect on our track record of a strong risk management and our ability to manage stable returns In excess of our cost of capital, the COVID-nineteen pandemic has clearly interrupted this trend, but our recent results evidence our ability to withstand a 1 in 100 year event. Our risk and return metrics are rapidly recovering to pre pandemic levels. Our resource allocation framework is illustrated on this slide.
The important points to note here are that our allocation processes start with a client need. Gated hurdle rates are used to assess the attractiveness of the investment and targeted metrics are continually assessed to manage progress and delivery. We have also embedded the discipline of scenario planning to better anticipate and plan For a future characterized by heightened volatility and complexity. Through the process we illustrated on the previous slide, We have made meaningful shifts in our capital allocation since 2014. We have tilted capital allocation to higher return products, namely insurance and investments and higher return regions.
Other group entities in 2014 Comprised by investments in Russia, Argentina and Standard Bank Plc in London. In 2020, Just 5% of the group's NAV remains invested in our 40% stake in ICBCS. ZAR. Over the period illustrated here, an incremental ZAR 36,000,000,000 of capital has been invested in our Africa region's legal entities, yielding an average annual total return of 18% to 2020, thus supporting our decision to allocate capital to these higher growth markets. Turning to the future, we will continue to allocate our resources to deliberately tilt our portfolio of businesses.
Clearly, our core banking franchise in South Africa is our mainstay franchise, And it will continue to grow and deliver good returns. This will require continued resource allocation, but with a focus on optimization We will continue to look for resource allocation opportunities in capital efficient businesses, in insurance and investment activities across Sub Saharan Africa. The Liberty transaction is an important part of this strategy and will help us achieve this portfolio tilt. We will continue to invest in high growth markets in Sub Saharan Africa. SIM has illustrated the strong demographic trends that support growth in these economies, and we will allocate capital, investment spend and people to capture this growth.
We understand the risks inherent in these growth markets and have proved that we have the on the ground capabilities and portfolio diversification to mitigate these risks. Finally, we will be investing in scaling new business models. We will allocate incremental capital and invest in new capabilities and partnerships that allow us to capitalize on the network effect that ecosystems and platforms reveal. This slide summarizes the client segment's focus areas, which you have heard about this morning in detail From the client segment and solution heads, our prioritized resource allocations fall accordingly. Through this deliberate and targeted approach, We are unlocking new growth vectors to deliver superior shareholder returns.
The client segment strategies will require resources, And this slide illustrates how we think those allocations will play out in terms of growth, risk as well as returns. We expect to grow our allocation of capital to our core banking franchise in South Africa. But through capital optimization strategies And faster growth in other areas of the group, banking in South Africa is expected to amount to just over 50% of the group's NAV by 2025. Continued growth in earnings will support an increasing ROE. We expect our existing and large Insurance and Investments Businesses in South Africa, Nigeria and the Channel Islands to grow faster than banking.
And we are also seeing exciting opportunities to expand our insurance and investments businesses through our ecosystems and partnerships models, As you heard from our client segment and client solution heads, the Liberty transaction will create opportunities for meaningful capital optimization. Insurance and Investment Businesses traditionally carry high returns, which we believe can be maintained and actually further enhanced through digital delivery. We will continue to tilt capital allocations to high growth markets in Sub Saharan Africa. Across our portfolio of 20 countries, we have identified countries where capital is currently being actively allocated for growth and other countries that will only require capital on a case by case basis. There are also those countries which are not expected to require additional capital and are focusing on optimizing the deployment of their current resources.
In terms of new markets, We have entered the West African Economic and Monetary Union via Cote d'Ivoire, and the wholesale business there is making good progress. We're also reviewing entry options into Ethiopia, a market we believe presents compelling long term opportunities. In order to scale new business models, we need to continue to invest in platforms, technology and data, and we estimate will cost approximately ZAR2 1,000,000,000 per annum. This is similar to the amount we have spent over the last few years. We have also set aside approximately $100,000,000 per annum to invest in fintech partnerships to accelerate our growth strategies.
This investment is expected to generate new revenue streams outside of traditional financial services. This slide sums up the portfolio tilts by showing the group's projected capital position in 2025. In the 2025 column of the NAV composition, you can see here Africa regions growing to almost 30% of the group's capital base and the Liberty transaction increasing insurance and investments to around 14%. We also remain confident that we will exit our shareholding in ICBCS in the near to medium term. I'm now going to take you through the income statement to expand on our financial outcome targets for the medium term.
Please note that we have kept liberty and the potential benefits of integration separate as we currently do in our reported results. Over the medium term, we expect interest rates to normalize from the lows in 2020. The impact of rising rates We'll allow for margins to expand by 40 to 60 basis points and together with high single digit growth in the lending book, Net interest income is expected to grow between 7% 10% per annum. Excluding the impact of endowment from interest rate normalization, NII will grow by 5% to 8% per annum. We are expecting an acceleration in growth in non interest revenue.
This growth is driven by new customers and increased cross sell in banking and strong growth from our existing insurance and investments businesses. ZAR. We also expect new revenues beyond traditional financial services to grow to ZAR3 1,000,000,000 to ZAR4 1,000,000,000 by 2025. You will recall Margaret spoke about these revenues as complementing our honeycomb of bank, insure and invest. ZAR.
We currently generate approximately ZAR350 1,000,000 of this type of revenue from third party solutions exposed to our clients on our app Via A Time, Electricity and Lotto Sales. As our ecosystem and platform strategies achieve scale, We anticipate a meaningful increase. This revenue is currently captured within banking and we intend to show it separately of 7% to 9% in NIR in the medium term. It is worth noting that most of this growth comes from Africa regions. South Africa's compound growth over this period is a more muted 5% to 7%.
This slide combines NII and NIR on the previous slide to show a view of total revenue. Here you can see that we expect total income to grow between 7% and 9% per annum over the forecast period. We've analyzed the revenue growth in 2 ways. 1st, our client segment. Here, you can see consumer high net worth growing by 6% to 8% over the medium term, which Foneka took you through earlier business and commercial by 8% to 10%, which David outlined and wholesale by 6% to 8%, which Kenny took you through.
You can also see the planned revenue contribution resulting from strategic distribution partnerships as discussed by Margaret, ZAR5,500,000,000 to ZAR6,500,000,000 per annum by 2025. In this type of partnership, we would be selling our solutions via an intermediary either on a B2B2B C2B2C basis. Secondly, we have analyzed the growth by product or solution. ZAR. Banking activities benefits from interest rate normalization over the period to the extent of ZAR6 1,000,000,000 to ZAR8 1,000,000,000 in increased NII.
Stripping that impact out, we forecast banking to grow by 6% to 8% per annum over the 5 year period. Insurance and investments is expected to grow strongly by 9% to 13% per annum. We have covered services beyond financial services on the previous slide. ZAR. Turning to costs.
By doing this, we have achieved cumulative savings in excess of ZAR6 1,000,000,000 since 2015. The biggest drivers of this saving have been reduced headcount and premises costs as well as automation and process optimization, some of which Opus referred to earlier. In thinking about cost growth, we will achieve our cost to income target by maintaining our track record of growing costs Slower Than Inflation. We plan to grow costs by an annual 4% to 5% growth rate. ZAR.
While weighted average inflation across our markets is expected to be between 5% 6%. ZAR9 billion to ZAR12 billion are expected to be banked through lower costs to originate And lower cost to serve, a further reduction in premises costs and diligent management of IT system running costs As outlined by Alpheus earlier, after efficiencies are accounted for, this would deliver our business as usual cost growth over the period of 2% to 3% per annum. But in order to deliver the revenue growth we have outlined, We will continue to invest in partnerships, new business models, data capabilities and technology. By saving to invest, We can constrain cost growth over the period to 4% to 5% growth per annum, while continuing to build for the future. Our cost to income ratio has remained stubbornly high.
And over the medium term, Our target is to reduce this ratio from its current 58% to a ratio approaching 50%. The revenue targets that we have already spoken about deliver 5% of the cost to income ratio reduction. And we will be relying on cost efficiencies, which I spoke about, to deliver the remaining 3% of the cost to income ratio reduction. Analyzed another way, we can see that cost growth expectations of 4% to 5% per annum And revenue growth expectations of 7% to 9% per annum will deliver strong positive jaws over the period and allow the group's cost to income ratio to approach 50% by 2025. This slide illustrates again That the achievement of a 50% cost income ratio relies on accelerated revenue growth as well as maintaining subinflation cost growth.
Turning to credit provisioning. The introduction of IFRS 9 and the impact of the COVID-nineteen pandemic have resulted in a volatile credit loss ratio since 2018. Going forward, we expect the credit loss ratio to normalize between 70 and 100 basis points Through our deep on the ground risk management expertise, we have proven our competitive advantage to manage our portfolio of risk across sub Saharan Africa and have confidence of achieving a through the cycle credit loss ratio within the 70 to 100 basis points target range. Our capital management plans over the medium term reflect strong capital ratios above regulatory requirements and above our target for core equity Tier 1 ratio of greater than 11%. We are planning continued issuance of AT1 as well as Tier 2 Capital to optimize our capital stack.
Given the sustained earnings growth and strong capital levels that we have illustrated today As well as the planned increased issuance of AT1 Capital, we are confident that we can maintain a dividend payout ratio between 45% 60% over the medium term. Now that we've covered earnings and capital, we turn to measuring returns. This slide illustrates the levers we have to return our return on equity to pre pandemic levels. The majority of the uplift in return on equity will be delivered by our core banking franchise returning to pre pandemic levels of credit provisioning. This will be supplemented by Africa Regions earnings growth at relatively higher ROEs.
Insurance and Investments growth We'll be ROE accretive as our existing businesses grow strongly and Liberty returns to profitability. The integration of Liberty Solutions following the bias of minorities will be ROE accretive on the back of transaction synergies and further capital extraction and optimization. In the near term, new business models will have a relatively small impact, But this is expected to become much more meaningful over the medium to longer term. Our primary measure of shareholder value remains return on equity, And the plans you have heard today will deliver a return on equity of between 17% 20% in the medium term, With our cost of equity expected to remain at around 14%, these returns will deliver sustainable value over the medium term. This slide summarizes the group's medium term financial targets.
We anticipate revenues to grow between 7% and 9% per annum over the 5 year period to 2025. Based on these revenue targets and through continued disciplined cost management, We are targeting a cost to income ratio approaching 50%. We anticipate that the credit loss ratio will range between 70 At 100 basis points, the Liberty transaction and associated integration synergies will further underpin sustained earnings growth for the group. Diligent resource allocation and an increasing dividend payout ratio will drive returns. Our most important measure of shareholder return, the group's ROE, is expected to increase to between 17% 20%.
The group's core equity Tier 1 ratio will be maintained above 11%. We acknowledge that many of these targets are similar to the ones you have seen from us before. We consider the 5 year period from 2020 to 2025 to be a recovery period coming out of the global pandemic, and these targets should be seen in that light. We will reassess our targets in 2025 or even earlier if necessary. By 2025, our platform business model you have heard about today will be well entrenched, and we are looking forward to setting post recovery targets that will reflect exciting step changes and further increased shareholder value.
On this slide, you can see a broader perspective the group's targets over the medium term. We understand that financial targets are outcomes of actions taken in our strategic value drivers of client's interest, employee engagement, risk and conduct and operational excellence. We have set ambitious targets for client experience, activity and engagement that you heard about earlier today. By 2025, we aim to have 1.6 times as many customers as we do now, And we expect new revenue sources from strategic distribution partnerships and from non financial services. By the same token, we want to keep levels of employee engagement, diversity and productivity higher.
On risk and conduct, we always stay within the parameters set for us by regulators and risk appetite endorsed by our board. For operational excellence, we will track our decreasing cost to serve and ensure that our systems are always on and always secure for our clients. The combination of all of these actions and targets will lead to a financial outcome defined by sustainable growth in headline earnings and a return on equity in our target range. By 2025, we will also have made a positive impact in our 7 chosen social, environmental and economic impact areas. And by 2,050, we will have achieved our goal of net zero carbon.
I would like to conclude with a few points summarizing the group's investment case. There are clearly compelling macroeconomic trends in the markets in which we operate. The pandemic and its socioeconomic effects will fade, and we can see exciting demographic trends providing growth and opportunity in Sub Saharan Africa. The Standard Bank Group has massive scale advantages arising from unparalleled brand strength and legitimacy worldwide, continent wide and in South Africa. We have a large and growing client base With winning client propositions and a significant opportunity to deepen client relationships and grow revenues by way of cross sell, We will achieve this by using data, which is a significant differentiator for us due to our scale and our size.
We will dominate the African data landscape in order to transform the lives of and create shared value for and with our clients and our partners. We have installed capacity in fast growing sectors and geographies, supporting revenue growth through deepening products and market penetration by way of new digital channels and partnerships. We have deeply skilled and experienced people, indeed the largest and strongest financial services team on the continent, supported by financial resources and a large and increasingly efficient infrastructure to grow our client franchise. And We will leverage the network effects of strong and enduring partnerships and ecosystems, enabling us to generate more revenues with better cost efficiency. The scale and reach of our group is unique in Africa as is our strategic partnership with the world's largest bank, ICBC.
Finally, we are driving sustainable growth and value. Adherent in our purpose, Africa is a home we drive our growth, is the commitment of delivering sustainable social, economic We have demonstrated that execution is underway and that positive momentum is tangible. Thank you for your attention. I will now hand back to Sim to conclude ahead of the second Q and A session.
Thank you very much, Ana. We'll see you just now during the Q and A. Folks, we know that we've presented a lot of information to you today, and it's been a long day. But we do hope We've also shown you that our ambitions are truly disciplined. Everything we're doing is intended to ensure that we achieve our strategic priorities, and everything we're doing Has been chosen because it will make our group more relevant and more competitive with emphasis on competitiveness.
We're absolutely determined to win. Our strategy isn't just something we thought up in the course of the current industry Changes and is part of fads and fashions that we're following. No, it's not. To the contrary, Despite all the changes that we're making, we remain traditionalists to the core, Traditionalists to the core about what we think corporate strategy should be. And here, we follow Porter.
We don't think that anybody has improved on Porter's classic formulation, which is to the effect that strategy is the integrated set of choices Made in response to the competitive environment in order to generate superior returns. The set of choices that we've described today have been made in response to the opportunities and the risks Facing Africa's largest financial services business, one of the oldest 2, and We have every intention of winning in our markets for another 160 years. As my colleagues have demonstrated, our transformation is definitely well underway. We will ensure that we remain Africa's largest and most competitive financial services group In the decades of rapid and great growth and opportunity that lie ahead for us after this pandemic, We are doing so in 3 ways: firstly, in a way that is appropriately responsive to the forces in the operating environment secondly, having changed the way that we are put together in order to deliver And lastly, using our resources well. We have a great team of highly motivated and sharply incentivized people.
We know that the status quo is not an option. We are rapidly confidently implementing our revised strategy, and we are determined to deliver for our clients and for you, our shareholders. Thank you ever so much, everybody, for your time and your kind attention. I'll now hand you back to Lirato to conduct the Q and A.
Citi. Thank you for that, Sim. Thank you for those reassuring words. I mean, we've obviously garnered insight into how the its 3 client segments will be supported by the group's client solutions and engineering capabilities, hopefully allowing SanddBank to realize a more seamless delivery of financial services to its diverse customer base and also reduce time and costs and allow the organization to innovate us more quickly and efficiently. We've also gained insight into the group's financial road map up ahead, while maintaining its explicit commitment to promoting the sustainable and inclusive development that the African continent so desperately needs.
Now you have the opportunity to engage speak with our executives. We have, Margaret, Alpheus, David, Arnaud and Sim,
who are with me here in studio.
And I can assure you, we're all well socially distanced and safe. So let's just start with you. Obviously, we've just heard the financial road map as delivered by Arnaud. We've heard about the backbone infrastructure as delivered by Alpheus. And we got a sense of what innovation looks like SAC as you're developing new products and solutions that respond to clients' need as delivered by Margaret.
What do you think? Obviously, there needs to be a lot of integration and complementarity. But where are the hard yards and the most important things to be done right now.
Clearly, the most important things to be done are, firstly, improved Client experience, increase the number of our clients secondly, improve the way in which we deliver, do so efficiently And thirdly, Bactracile legitimacy. I mean, those are, in plain and simple English, the 3 most important things you got to do.
I know you've obviously given us a really comprehensive set of numbers, and I'm not going to even try to make sense of some of them. But if you could help us understand, here we are in the evolution of a platform business. There's a lot of investment in technology and backbone infrastructure
Thank you, Lorato. As I've shown in my presentation, we need to bank efficiencies 2, be able to invest in the future and realize our platform ambition and to also maintain our cost growth between 4% 5%, which is subinflationary cost growth. And actually, the target we've set ourselves relative to our revenue aspiration is a 50% cost to income ratio target. So that's We think about getting to a 50% cost to income ratio target. Efficiencies, we need to think about our cost base judiciously allocating that, reduce our distribution costs, reduce our branch costs, thinking about our technology stack in a more simplified manner, leveraging the cloud capability to process our data more cost effectively and serve our clients better in that way.
So that's our Save Components of Safe to Invest. And obviously, on the investment side, in the presentation, you heard, Loreto, that we're thinking around a ZAR2 1,000,000,000 per annum run rate Of pure sort of platform technology investments. That comprises, for example, Salesforce. We spoke about that this morning at the Q and A. It comprises our migration to cloud, another example.
It comprises some of the partnerships with AWS and Amazon, as I mentioned that this morning, and other components. So this is how we're thinking about Save to Invest to ultimately make sure we compete in the 4th Industrial Revolution, But also that we can deliver on the shareholder metrics, which the shareholders are expecting from us.
Okay, great stuff. Here's a question from Tanenas Phillips. So, Sim, do you think the skills, example, see that developers need to build and run the platform exists within the organization.
I think, Actually, I'm going to ask you to ask Alpheus to answer that question.
He
does need to do some work.
Alpheus. We know you've been working really, really hard building the backbone systems, but let's talk about those who will be driving the system for the platform business. Do the skills exist? And how much more do you need to develop?
Salesforce, Microsoft, Amazon and many other web based. So we've been on that journey. I'll give you a very good example of a journey that we've been on with some sales forces. 1 of we started on this journey to really rationalize all our client And what we needed was everyone we needed to really go and sales force. I can proudly say today, we have over 19,000 ranges across the region, which is the highest amount of ranges that any other organization outside sales force have got to do.
So we are able to build the skills wave. Further to that, we are also launching number of skills programs. I've mentioned that here, around beefing up on a cloud skills and adacious students, whether it's AI And maybe others in partnership with the 3 strategic partners that we've enabled and announced earlier. So I believe we have to revisit the strengths. We have the right engineers.
I have no doubt we will continue to learn, raising all these other immense skills that we are going
Sorry, and sorry if I'm going to be rude, but Can I just embellish then on what you said? Because I think it's a really important question, and I want to give you a broader view of it. We spent several R100,000,000, and I don't have Ono's authority to give you the number. He can tell you if he wants to give you the number, but it's several ZAR100 1,000,000 on training and development in our institution. ZAR 51,000,000 that I'm happy to tell you, ZAR 51,000,000 on bursaries.
We have A learning platform in our organization. More than close to 40,000 of our people access it. We employ roughly 44,000. I mean, Close to 40,000 of our people access it, including myself and my colleagues. Alphius makes reference to rangers.
Now a ranger at Salesforce is somebody who's gone through their program. So they've learned artificial intelligence. They've learned about SPOT. They've learned about what a platform is, what an ecosystem is, just how to operate in the 4th Industrial Revolution. Standard Bank, he says, yes, it's 19,000.
That's more than 40% of our staff, our rangers. And everybody on this call, I can also confirm, is a ranger. And for our troubles, we get a hoodie.
Right.
If I may just add as well, very, very important that the learning culture in our organization It has never been better. The numbers that Funeghah spoke to you about a little bit earlier, about The improvement in client numbers and improvement in client experience is attributable almost exclusively to the upskilling of that front line that FuneGa and her team did in the last couple of years. And the effect of that It's profound, and it's going to be pervasive, and it's going to be permanent. Lastly, let me just point this out. Margaret, I'm sure, will speak about it later.
Margaret chairs a forum called the Platform Steering Committee, and that committee is meant to drive platform thinking in our organization. And an important element of that is this training that I'm referring to, the work we're doing with Salesforce And just making sure that everybody knows what's going on. Lastly, and then I will keep quiet. Lastly, our board has been through a similar program. Our board has also been through a program that we took them through with MIT, which is a similar program that we've taken through the top Echelons of the organization, the top country heads, the business unit heads, etcetera, to align us all in our thinking about what it means to be customer centric and how to operate in this digital world.
So, And how to operate in this digital world.
That's a very good question.
Pastor should bring Margaret into the conversation there. And for you to add to what Sim is saying, from your work chairing the platform steering committee and just getting alignment across the different the organization and just making sure that, that interface ultimately between the customer and the bank is going to be seamless.
Citi. Thank you, Lorata, and good day to everybody. I do want to say that we do hope that you and your families are well and healthy this time. And Murata, and I also do want to just take up. Sim finished off his talk a little bit earlier by talking about the committed teams behind us.
And it's such a privilege for all of us to be sharing our story today. But I do want to acknowledge that there's a passionate experience, diverse around us that has shaped the story. And I do want to acknowledge them this afternoon and also thank all of them. But I think one of the key things when it comes to platform enablement, Bharat and everyone, is this issue around partnerships. And lots to be said by everyone around partnerships.
And there are a couple of things that I want to pick up around this. And firstly is to say that we acknowledge That partnership is not a vendor or distribution relationship. It's a relationship where there's value in it for both parties. And so if I look at Financial Services, for example, it's where we offer solutions into other people's platforms, and they offer solutions into SOWES. If we look at it within the retail space, for example, it means that we are complementing our retail partners with financial solutions to their clients, and they are offering retail solutions to our clients.
So it's mutually beneficial. The second point I Make is to say that this notion of partnerships is not new. I think earlier today, Lorato, there was a question around risk management when Assurance and Investments. We've been doing this forever. It's a common practice within the industry in terms of partnering with others open architecture to our clients.
And so we've been doing that, and we've been doing the risk management around that for a long time. So We built a capability to make sure that we do that well. However, I think partnerships around banking And partnerships around nonfinancial services is new to what we are doing. So we've done a little bit of nonfinancial services. I spoke about lottery, airtime and electricity, for example, but there's a lot more emphasis on non financial services and so therefore offering the end to end needs of our clients.
And so there's a little bit of learning that we want to do in that regard. And then just the last point I want to make is to say that we have many trusted relationships with partners within our wholesale base, within Retail Sector Financial Services within all of the sectors who are keen to partner with us so that we can also augment their value proposition to their clients. The same within David's space, within our business and commercial clients. So trusted relationships that we've built over the years across Continent, where we go to those people first to say, how do we partner with you to enhance the value proposition to your clients? And how do we ensure that you also start offering your solutions into our client base.
And that's really what platform thinking is all about. It's enabling all of these relationships. And I think Sim made that point very eloquently earlier. And then of course, partnerships like Salesforce, Amazon and others that are allowing us to also use their capabilities to strengthen our partnerships across the continent. So I think We're really excited about what this connecting the dots can do on the African continent and also being true to our focus.
Thanks, Lorado.
Thanks for that, Margaret, and I love the analogy of connecting the dots. David, I want to come to you. Earlier on, we heard some saying that winning is the way. Citi. But from all the presentations, we've also garnered the fact that creating value and shared value across the social ecosystem matters as well.
So as the largest financial services group on the South African continent, how are you going to balance or the teams going to balance Africa's ESG context with the SKU's ESG context with the increasing global pressures because ESG starts to underpin all investments, doesn't it?
Yes. Thanks, Lerato. And I think where to start is it's so clear in our purpose that Africa is our home. We drive the growth, that we recognize the importance of this And the fact that we have to play a leading role in it. So I think that's clear in our organization.
And I think the C element, what we call C, the social, economic and areas where we can actually make a difference as an organization and as financial services group across the continent. So the seven areas that we've chosen linked to the sustainable goals Africa Trade and Investment. So this is where all our business units believe they can actually make a difference in the organization. I think, however, we do recognize that this is a very fast moving and very complex environment. So even the trade off between the E and the S might sound easy, but it's It's very complex when you look at big projects across the continent.
So how we've looked at it is we therefore see the need to do this in a very grounded way and in a very scientific ways so we can either throughout the organization. So we're looking at a very science based view. So So for instance, is gas viewed as a transition fuel or not in which parts of the continent, etcetera? It also has Business driven. Otherwise, this is not going to be embedded.
If it's a group wide directive around risk or something, we find it's not embedded in the organization, so we're working very hard at that. And then very importantly, knowing that we can execute because we're over such a big time horizon here. People talk about net 0 by 2,050. Well, that's 30 years away, and a lot of us won't be here. So how do we know we can execute on this?
And therefore, we're spending a lot of time working with the data because in order to say net 0, how do you actually measure that? How do you measure the emissions, The time horizon, Yudhik, the clients that you're working with and which climate scenario that you use. People have different climate scenarios. So I think just in conclusion to say it's vital for us, but we also recognize as an organization, to do this properly, you have to get into the depths of it. You have to understand the detail, And you have to embed it into the actual business operations.
Otherwise, it's not happening. And then I go back to that purpose statement that we've got and the fact that it's measured as one of our key measurables in the group. Thanks, Veera.
Thanks so much, David. And acceleration is key. 30 years is actually quite a short time frame if you think about your own life as a person. Arnaud, there are 2 questions that come through for you, and I'm just going to merge the 2. The first one says the financial targets you describe as being ambitious.
Are they ambitious enough? That's the first thing. And are they not just returning Centibank to pre COVID levels, right? So it's just kind of a plateauing. Then the second one is from James Stark, and he says, Arnaud, do you see yourselves getting back inside the 17% to 20% range before 2025?
Yes. Thanks for those questions. The first one on the ambition level of the financial targets, it's really important to realize these are targets Which we are setting as recovery targets. Bearing in mind, we've come through a 1 in-one 100 year type event, and we are recovering out of that. And La Rota was very pleased to be able to reflect on the progress we've made already, really a meaningful progress having made.
So I would see these as sort of Recovery targets, interim targets to 2025 coming out of the pandemic. And then the exciting part is, and By 2025, our platform model will be entrenched, and I would love to sit in this studio again in 2025 or be foursome And give you new targets, okay? Exciting new dynamics and exciting new targets when we have entrenched our platform ambition. So I think these targets and we've spent a lot of time thinking about this, including discussing it with the Board just this week. What is the balance between stretch and realism, ambition and actually achieving these.
And we think we've got a great and correct balance here. These targets will be achieved. There are the right balance between stretching ourselves to really delivering shareholder value, but also having the confidence that we can do them. And then as I said, let's sit in here in a few years' time And reset those targets on a new trajectory.
Okay. A question for you, Sim, is that earlier on, obviously, when we spoke about partnerships SPS and what's being done in terms of building up the capacity in the cloud. We mentioned the work you're doing with Amazon Web Services and Big Tech Microsoft. And then here, somebody says Kevin Harding says, You did not mention SAP when highlighting key tech partner relationships. Where do they fit into your road map, if
at all? Lirato, they remain a very important partner of ours. We And they've actually laid the foundation for a lot of the cadence that you've seen in our ability to rollout products, rollout solutions and so forth. I know that Arnaud and Alpheus have got strong views about this. So let me hand you to Arnaud.
Arnaud, do you want to
Just very briefly and then let Alfieus actually talk about it. Absolutely, without SAP core banking, we would not have been able to live on what we spoke about today. We would have been in a legacy core banking platform, 40 years of age. It's not going to work. But Alpheus is the real specialist in that side.
I'd love to hear his words as well. Thank you.
Alpheus, you're the techie in the room. So if you can help us here, where do SAP fit in your plans. [SPEAKER CARLOS
GOMES DA SILVA:] Absolutely.
It's quite a great question.
Thank you for that.
You heard me earlier talking about the modernization journey that we concluded. That actually included us deploying SAP as our core banking platform and our system of record in South Africa. And equally, we completed the same modernization journey across all our Africa region countries, partnering with Finacle and Temenos. This actually plays us in a very, very good position now that we can actually turn our focus to client facing capabilities, building On the strategic relationships that we've got with the likes of SAP, with the likes of Finnacle, with the likes of Terminals and many other systems that we've got across the board. So SAP remains very, very strategic to us.
In fact, we are engaged with them with a view of us migrating from our own current base, which is installed within our data center, to a cloud version, which is based on SAP HANA architecture That the industry will be well aware of. So ACFP, Pinnacle, AWS, Microsoft and many other technology platform partners are part of this journey going forward. And we are really excited about leveraging now the investment that we've made over the years to now turn our pure focus Citi. Thank you.
Thanks for that, Alpheus. A question coming through from Bankole at Merrill Lynch for you, Margaret, says, given the business' willingness to white label or Slei on Competitors' Environment. What stops the group from eventually being a utility and seeing pricing compression there?
Thank you, Lorato.
I want
to also just quickly add on to the comments that made that Sorry, Amu made earlier around going back to pre pandemic levels. And I think I was very proud to share with the Board this week That if you look at insurance and investments, we are already beyond pre pandemic levels. So we've actually grown significantly from when we were in 2019. And so I suppose the big opportunity that we have is to further derisk the group by finding the right balance and diversity between banking, insurance, investment and non financial service. So I think this notion of trying to get back to pre-twenty 19 or 2019 levels is really concentrated within banking, which is where that focus is.
I think insurance and investment having developed very nicely since 2019. So I think to answer that question, Lerato, Citi. We're very mindful of the fact that it's a balancing act between commoditizing what we do. And I think part of that process It's this notion of simplification. We've spoken a lot about Salesforce, and Salesforce always refers to the special Snowflakes.
And these are people who think that everything that we grade for our clients needs to be customized. And in fact, we shouldn't confuse Being customized with being personalized, personalized that we know our clients through the data that we have on them, of which we've got plenty, And therefore, we've got to bring down the cost of fees. And that will allow us to partner, and that will allow us to commercialize these. So we do appreciate that a lot of this will be commoditized, and there will be margin compression in that process. Exactly the same is going to happen.
We digitize a lot more of what we do. But we also know that, for example, with digitized clients, And they're likely to be as twice as loyal. If you look at Global Best Practice, they're twice as loyal and have 2x as much share of wallet TIE's how we will make sure that we continue to increase revenue, and we've done exactly the same when it comes to partnerships. We want to find this very healthy balance between servicing our segment client needs and making sure that they're strong and they're the best in terms of the value propositions that we Stadby, but also then scaling that through partnerships. And we believe by building scale, we will more than compensate
Thanks for that, Margaret. Let's go back to talking about the money, Arnaud, with the purse strings. Of $16,000,000,000 in software intangibles and the $3,900,000,000 computer equipment. What proportion would you categorize as outdated, inflexible, insufficiently resilient to support the requirements of your platform strategy. So there's money in there, but I think there's also an understanding of the tech that's needed take you forward.
Yes. The vast majority of our intangibles are fits for the future, And we already spoke about SAP, for example, which is a big part of that and other technology which we have, which is fit for the future. Our detailed analysts and shareholders will know we did a large impairment on N BOL, and that was just 6 months ago. We do not expect another sizable impairment like that in the coming future. But of course, Lareto, and I'm sure I will engage with the shareholders next week on this When we have our investor roadshows, we always do impairment tests twice a year.
And to the extent that new technology supersedes the older technology, We'll do the impairment test and have to then think about replacing that. As we all know, technology is moving all the time. Every year, there are new developments, and obviously, we need to stay abreast at the cutting Just one last thing, Liberato. I think I ignored James Stark's question, I think, on the ROE target range, everyone. I'm not trying to avoid you, James.
Are we going to get into the 17% to 20% ROE range before 20,250? We'd like to think we're going to be heading into that range, yes, before 2020, not 2020, 50, apologies, 2025. Right. Okay. Okay.
So you're still optimistic, ambitious as well. Okay. A question from Kumbelo Nebora Fosim says, is the platform rollout going to be done simultaneously across the 3 client segments? And is one prioritized over the other?
No. There's Not one prioritized over the other, but there are different competitive dynamics and structural dynamics in each of the businesses. The entire organization is wanting to implement a platform strategy. But clearly, we're operating in different markets, Different segments and there are different pressures in those different segments and indeed geographies as well. I mean, our circumstances in C.
Yes. A very different to what they are in Nigeria. Right.
I'm actually going to ask both David and Alpheus to add to that one because I think it's a very important one. Start with you, David, even if it's just on the value share issue is how do you roll out a strategy like this across 20 markets so diverse on a variety of issues from the demographics to the market size to the regulatory environment.
Citi. Yes. Laurence, maybe two points. When you talk about prioritization, I think from my point of view, there is clear prioritization because with Margaret and Alpheus on the phone, they're the big delivery partners and the engines behind what we're doing, for instance, in BCC. So there's clear alignment there, Big discussions on the go to make sure we're all focused on the big things around that.
And then in terms of the delivery in country, I think as Simms indicated, you find in the ESG component, but in other components as well, the need of the customer in country can be very different. So you need to be able to, Margaret's point, Personalized to the customer that you are dealing with in the country, but have the engine behind it. So a lot of work going on between the segments and engineering and solutions in that area.
Alpheus, I'm also bringing into the conversation. The first thing I just thought SoftFIS. My goodness, entrepreneurs, the first thing they scream about are the cost of data in some of these West African markets that can be as much as 60% of their operating cost for a small business.
Sure, Niraj, and thank you for the question. Maybe let me add a Couple of more points to what David and Sim spoke about just now. The first one is our prioritization always follows the customer needs. We are always informed by what we do in the organization, by what our customers are actually looking for. And that actually informs the prioritization.
So you might actually see a capability being launched in one segment and then following in another segment maybe a bit later. That's actually informed by the customer needs and requirements. And we have actually learned with that process. And in fact, one of the critical points, I would say, quite unique to Standard Bank is our footprint. You might not think that way, but our footprint gives us the ability to actually implement and test capabilities from one market to another.
So when we do rollouts, We actually then structure what we call a minimum viable product, or we launched that in a market perhaps in Mozambique, get customer feedback and we generally actually improve that capability and then roll it out to all the other markets. It's not something that I would argue maybe our competitors will probably have. It's quite unique to us given our footprint and all of that. And then kind of shifting to data, I have no doubt. I think the world and I spoke about it earlier to say in this generation we have today is The world is going to be by the explosion of data, AI, machine learning on that.
I think it would be fair to say that when you look at the investment that has happened over Africa, which has The majority of that supported by Standard Bank. The infrastructure rollout that has happened in the countries that we operate in allows for the SMMEs, corporate customers and all consumer customers to connect in a cheaper way. I have no doubt you are going to continue to see data prices come down, But I guess that will also be informed by how actually customer requirements have changed over time. But it's quite exciting for us.
Absolutely. But Lerato, may I just say this because You ought to be asking this question and Onno should answer it. And that is, how disciplined are you in your capital allocation?
Right. There's the question, Onno. Our disciplined eyes.
Yes, extremely disciplined. Shareholders have given us their capital. I, in the presentation earlier today, gave the framework on how we think about allocation. And as is mentioned many times today, really, it starts with the client need. It Has gated hurdle rates.
It thinks about an investment portfolio for the future, so not just the here and now, but also planning for the future. And then metrics and measurement and data. So what
do you always say? In God We Trust, Everybody Else Bring Data.
Exactly. So the data on return on those parameters,
Yes. On a similar tack though, how is the cost of equity of 14% justified considering the increased capital is expected to be allocated to the Africa regions, which carry substantially higher cost of equity relative to South Africa.
How's the cost of equity justified? Yes, our current cost of equity is 14.5% based off the current capital asset pricing model, which we do. That's a technical discussion there. If we have a forward looking projection on where do we think the markets develop for a group of our footprint and in environments which we think we're going to be operating going forward, A cost of equity between 14% and 15% is appropriately calculated, and that's based on the technical calculations of the capital asset pricing model.
Another question for you from James Stark, says Arnaud. Looking at costs, the EUR 9,000,000,000 to €1,000,000,000 inefficiencies target is almost offset by the €8,000,000,000 to €11,000,000,000 investment spend target. Net net, it looks like a ZAR 1,000,000,000 saving, but there's considerable risk on delivering that investment spend on time and within budget. So spending it on time and within budget, what gives you confidence that the risk reward dynamic will be justified?
First of all, we already have a track record of growing costs below inflation. And again, it was in my presentation, we've grown costs over the last 5 years at 4.5%, 4.4%, and inflation has been in excess of that. So I would think shareholders give us Credibility for being able to manage our cost base. During this period, we have significant investments for the future, including a significant increase in the amortization charge. Going forward, we will continue with this discipline of extracting efficiencies.
I mentioned some of them earlier, and we've quantified these efficiencies for organic extract to allow us to invest for the future going forward. One more thing, which is, I think, very important, and Alpheus' skill is very passionate about that. I know that Alpheus over there. And that is the developments we're doing now are not large mega projects like SAP Core Banking spanning 10 years ZAR16 billion of spend over 10 years. They are quick to deliver MVP type projects, minimum bioproductype projects, cloud based software as a service, platform as a service immediately expensed, not capitalized with much quicker, sometimes weeks or even months maximum So it's a completely different way to think about how do we deliver our value to our clients
and
ultimately to our shareholders. And hence, it gives me the confidence as well that we will not be doing what we have done with SAP Core Banking, which we all acknowledged and Alpheus spoke about in the presentation, Took too long and in hindsight was actually too expensive.
Alsace, perhaps you want to add to what Arnaud is saying just in terms of efficiencies because of the Saksa, the software. It's just quick to access the tiers available and building reams and reams of legacy infrastructure.
Absolutely, and Erato. And one of the most fundamental investment strategies that we change, which I know spoke about, is We are saving to invest. That's the one thing. The second thing is we have now completed what I call our Modernization, Jane, is that takes a long time, and I wish all our competitors have not done that good luck because if you're not done that, you're not well positioned to actually participate The future of platform organization because if you are very to integrate, it would probably be a challenge. So our investment pattern It's now going to move from away from being a CapEx heavily large products with longer duration to now what we call minimum viable products that are based on assumption as we use and our partners, Our partners and our software has a service capability that we've got.
And that allows us to be able to actually implement those solutions quicker, faster, generate value for our clients and thereby also getting customer uptake Before we actually have to wait long time and all of that, you would have seen as well that then our amount will also come down because we won't be capitalizing as much of this long, long, long projects that we probably have had in the past, which is exciting because we are now shifting our teams client facing capabilities and these tend to be digital in nature. They change very quickly and then hence our ability to implement capabilities in weeks And days are supposed to be months years. So very, very exciting in terms of our investment approach going forward. Thank you.
Steve. David, I don't want the conversation to be lost to ESG principles, which are very, very important. And once we finish talking about the restructuring of the organization and the kind of financial and technological investments that are going to be made. It's been thinking about what the business going to look like in an African or a Pan African context and which are the projects that people need to be thinking about and what does the new platform business in the new modern African setup Look Like. Could you talk our audience through that, those opportunities?
Yes.
Dorothe, as I said earlier, for me to get this ESG concept and climate embedded, it's got to be driven by business. And the really exciting thing, although there's complex trade offs within Africa, You can see it so clearly. So in all the areas that you talked about, you heard Kenny talk about powerpulse. There's a need for power across Africa. It's an exciting opportunity we can participate in.
You see us play in agriculture. We're a dominant player in agriculture across the continent. A lot of people talk about Africa being the bread of the future around it. So it's an area that our business has got to play in and help the sustainable part of that agriculture Going forward, you would have heard in my earlier presentation around BCC something like how we interact with traders in the enterprise area And facilitate that getting credit into their hands, building platforms around that. So I think the exciting part and the reason it's built into our purpose As an organization, if we actually drive Africa's growth, we can get through these complex trade offs and actually grow our business in the areas that We're wanting to grow anyway to make sure Africa succeeds in the future.
Margaret, a question for you. How does the mix of the balance sheet versus the off balance sheet insurance and investment products. So talk us through what that is and how that's going to evolve to 2025 and which one is going to grow faster or far?
So I think the starting point, Lerato, is to say that it matters to us whether it's on all's balance sheet. It matters to us to make sure that we do what's right for our clients. And so one of the very important things is that none of our advisers store. Distributors are incentivized based on the kind of product that they'll sell. They incentivize based on client satisfaction.
And that's quite a big shift From how many of these functions are related to. And so we look at on and off balance sheet, and we make sure that we find the right Spanish. When Franke and I had these conversations around driving deposits versus driving investments or other solutions, We look at it holistically to make sure we do what's right for our clients. And so I think when people look at deposit growth, for example, in isolation, It's the wrong website because we need to look at these things holistically. We understand that they've got different margins.
But at the end of the day, it boils down to client satisfaction making sure that we help our clients to grow their portfolios and that we do what's right for our clients. And that's been a fundamental shift in our business. If you look at a lot of the advisers out there, a lot of them are still incentivized on the kind of products that they sell, And that's not the case within the Standard Bank Group. And so I think we've been very proud of the fact that if you look at our response, of course, if you look at our iN8 plus business, They keep on earning awards across the continent around the value proposition for our clients, the depth and the breadth of it, the fact that it's open architecture and that we do what's best for our clients. And I think we will continue to be driven by what matters to our clients, what's best for them, how do we help them grow not just locally but across the continent and also globally.
And I think within our International business. We've got now GBP 5,900,000,000 of money that we manage, And that's continued to grow despite some of the sovereign downgrades that we've seen, Which shows that there's a high trust element, and we don't take that lightly. I think we know that that's very important. It's taken us many, many years to build this level of our trust with our clients, and we will continue to do so.
Ono, a question for you. How do you manage St. Risks rounding the USD 100,000,000 or USD 1,500,000,000 investments into Fintechs.
Yes. Thank you. First of all, To realize our ambition, we cannot build everything ourselves. I think that's very clear. We have to partner with Fintechs.
And in many instances, we take a stake in them to partner together with them and develop together with them. And there was a great slide today in the presentation actually showing all the logos of this fintechs we've already invested into. I can assure the investors that we have the rigorous investment decision processes embedded in the bank to think about all of the risks of investing that sort of money. And that is obviously operational risk, that's financial risk and other risk Components as well on that. So those are well embedded, those processes.
And staying on that, Taksim, are there any specific regions where you expect to be deploying the bulk Optus Fintech Investment.
We're going to be investing on a needs basis And as we see opportunities throughout our network, there aren't any specific ones where I would want us to speak publicly about. What we have said, however, for example, is that we've said we want to grow, for example, in the Wermoo region, want to grow in Ethiopia, But we also want to grow in our existing network. And as these opportunities arise, we will then deploy the demand. I mean, I
can appreciate you don't want to share, but you just do see a level of start up development in some regions outpacing this. So, East Africa becomes more exciting, say, than West Africa. Or even if you go to a market like Nigeria, you literally zone in on a Lagos that has more than 2,000 tech start ups just there alone.
So we'll follow the the capital allocation process that Arnaud referred to, and we will go to where the returns are highest and where the risks are lowest. What we don't do is we don't say We have a particular target for particular regions because economic conditions do change, and that's a dangerous way to allocate capital. Okay.
Let's start to wind our conversation down now, and I'm going to start with you, Sim. John's story says outside ICBCS. Is there value that Standard Bank can currently attribute to your relationship with ICBC?
The answer to John is an emphatic yes. And that value is shows up in a number of different ways, in the number of trade transactions that we do between China and the African continent, both for individuals, for SMEs and for large corporates. It shows up in the deals that we do on behalf of central banks, where we help them manage their reserves in partnership with the ICBC. It Shows up in corporate deals that we do on the African continent. And then it also shows up in the way that ICBC has supported us from time to time by way of liquidity.
So Yes, the answer is absolutely yes.
And obviously, you've said that you'll be embarking on an investor roadshow in the coming days or weeks. But before then, the investors on this particular strategic update, what are the things that you just like to point them to, to just remember, if nothing else.
I think I'd like then to remind about this compelling investment case we've made today. We spoke about the macro environment. Sim started this morning about that, including the exciting demographic trends. There is no better continent in the world to do Financial Services and beyond Financial Services business on. Secondly, we spoke about the massive scale advantages we have.
And think about the data assets we have. There is no other services company which has the data assets we have, and we are Embarking on monetizing this. Think about the on the ground teams. The biggest sales force in financial services on the continent belongs to Standard Bank. Think about our capital, our liquidity resources to solve our clients' problems and their growth ambition.
And then I think There were a number of other parameters also outlined. I'm not going to go through all of them. It's going to be a repeat. But I'd like to share with us is to think about the compelling metrics we put out today And conviction we've shown you today on achieving those compelling metrics.
I'm going to ask you to do the same, Margaret Nienaba. I mean, we've heard your presentation. We are listening to you now. But if you could leave us with a thought, what is it?
You know the wrong part Q and A questions by Liberty. And one of the things that stuck out for me is whether you're talking about Stata or whether you're talking about capital or whether you're talking about deep relationships with clients on balance sheet. All I think about the Group and Stand Up, for example, and the value that they add. Stand Up has got a very important role to play in terms of off balance sheet assets, Long Term Insurance Holistically. There's a lot of capital that can be unlocked.
When you look at data, Citi. Up until now, the relationship has been very much on an on-site basis through Bank Assurance, which has got very definitive parameters within which we operate. And we believe that if we're a lot more integrated, the use of that data Very beneficial for everybody and adding a lot more value to all of our clients collectively. So Citi. We feel will be a very important step in underlying value and allowing for growth, which which is where we see the biggest opportunity for value add through that specific integration.
And we really do hope that we can proceed with that and that we can complete this process in terms of the platform and therefore then after that really putting everything on steroid and
growing collectively as a
platform business. All right.
Thanks for that, Zippy as a platform business.
All right. Thanks for that, Margaret. And of course, David Hodnett, your views, I mean, value for growth, as Margaret is talking about, but there's also the shared value concept that you're so passionate about.
Yes, Lauretta, and just to repeat, I think as Arna said, the continent that we live on It's got the exciting opportunities. There's going to be some very complex decisions, very complex trade offs that we have to make. We think we've got that in the organization. I think we've got the history of doing things correctly in detail and understanding those trade offs. But if we can execute on them, The growth that we can see from the front side, the business side will actually support all the sustainable development goals That we are talking about and we've integrated into our business to do it like that.
Thanks.
And another kind of value, Alpheus, is making sure that you have efficiencies, but the right kind of tech. So what is it that you'd like to leave investors with the sentiment?
Citi. Thank you, Dorado. I must say the future of Standard Bank Group and for us, Africans, is really exciting. And more importantly, It should be exciting for our clients, our shareholders and our stakeholders who have tuned in today. I will make Probably 3 or 4 points.
The first being, we have the right engineering capability and we've organized ourselves to make sure that we can send to the platform ambition. The second bill We are going to be leveraging the investments that we made in the back end and driving transformed all our back end systems Over the years, now we are actually well set to actually put a platform layer and the customer enablement capabilities to actually delight our customers and partners. 3rd, we also understand the missteps that we've made in the past. We have learned from them. We are now able to actually, as Siamesh put it, we're not going to fail fast.
We are going to land fast in our ability to deliver These capabilities in the market. And the final one for me, Lerato, which is dear to my heart is we have the people, We have the right engineers that are more passionate, not so much about the packs and everything that Standard Bank issue provides. They are passionate About delivering value for our clients and delivering value for our shareholders. In fact, our engineers are excited about the problems and the solutions that we provide to our clients. And we're just going to do that.
Thank you very much.
Thank you so much to the top the team that was addressing us on this latter part of the day, Alpheus Machale, David Hodnet, Marmot Niinaba, Arnaud Denka. And thank you so much to all of you who submitted your questions. We heard from some of you earlier on, but thank you to you, James Stark Kevin Harding again Cananis Philipus, I hope I pronounced your name correctly, from Excelsior Capital. Thank you very much to Bancole Ubogu and to you, cumbello nevohua from Centio, for your questions that came through because when you do it, I sound smarter than what I really am. John Story, also grateful to you.
Okay. Thank you so CHFIM. There's been a great deal of information that we've had to process, I think a lot for us to consider and unpack today. However, you and your team, I think, have really provided a really comprehensive overview of the group's strategic objectives and direction as you implement your 2025 ambition and transform it into a platform business that's going to help to drive growth. So what we want to do is wish the SenaBank Group every success on its journey forward and also to congratulate you on taking a bold leap into the future.
Before I sign off, is there anything,
sir? Yes, definitely. First of all, shareholders ought to know that there are 49,662 Gallant people that have worked hammer and tongs to deliver the results we released yesterday, and they are setting up this organization for these targets that set for 2025 and beyond. Shareholders ought to know that we are all determined to deliver. And I thank everybody who's on the call, members of the Fourth Estate and shareholders that have taken the trouble to listen to the story.
Citi. We are determined to reward you for your fortitude by staying with us for all of these years. So thank you, And have a lovely weekend.
Thank you so much for those kind words, Sim. And from me, I think we can listen to the numbers. We can hear about the tech, all the technical things. But in the end, what we're hearing in integrating a plan that, one, helps Africa make the leap into a new digital future, but wants to bring every segment of society along. In my view, that's called true corporate citizenship for the age we're in.
Thank you once again, all of you, for participating in this strategic update. And I hope that you found it interesting, fascinating, inspirational but absolutely insightful as to what the Sanibank Group is hoping to do over the next 4 or 5 years, really setting up a continent for generations to come. Just so that for you to note, all the presentations and videos related to each segment of today's strategic update we'll continue to be available on the platform for future consumption. And should anyone have any further questions emanating out of today's strategic update, please reach out to the Relations team. I'm Laurent Mbelle.
It is my pleasure. Thank you so much, and have a good weekend.