Santam Ltd (JSE:SNT)
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Apr 28, 2026, 5:00 PM SAST
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Earnings Call: H2 2024

Mar 3, 2025

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

Good morning and welcome to our results presentation for the year ending December 2024. I'm joined this morning by our Group Finance Director, Wikus Olivier, and our Head of Strategy and Investor Relations, Thabiso Rulashe. Together, we'll be taking you through the context for our operating environment, give you a sense of the numbers, and also some sense of the outlook for 2025. Starting at a very high level, we are pleased that the group has shown operational resilience in what was a very difficult year. We see the underwriting margin back at the midpoint, and we also see that the group has shown steady growth in 2024. Overall, we have continued to focus on profitable growth. Turning now to the operating environment. 2024, as we've said, was an incredibly difficult year.

At a global level, we saw multiple elections, increase in geopolitical tensions, and certainly another year where we saw weather events as a key theme for global P&C and reinsurance. It is also clear that we are seeing the average daily temperatures are increasing. Although the correlation between climate change increase in temperature to the multiple perils, whether primary or secondary perils, may not be so clear, we do enter another year in 2024 where we saw insured losses in excess of another ZAR 100 billion. It is a number that is becoming a trend in the recent, in the recent last couple of years. The ZAR 154 billion that we saw in 2024 refers to the insured losses. The economic losses are certainly much, much higher than the ZAR 154 billion we saw in 2024.

I think that shows to a large extent the protection gap that we see between the economic losses and the insured losses, presenting an opportunity for growth in insurance and also for innovation. 2024 was a year where we continued to see elevated property catastrophe rates. Although we have seen some easing at the last renewals, reinsurance rates do remain elevated compared to previous rates. I think this will be a continued theme that we can expect to see into the future. The recent L.A. fires will, to some extent, provide some resistance potentially to the easing of reinsurance rates into the 2025, 2026 renewal season.

Coming back to the local SA market, I think what we see is a huge amount of optimism within the economy, in particularly in 2024, where we saw very little load shedding, we saw inflation coming down. We do remain, however, concerned with the average cost of repair, where the inflation does tend to be much higher than CPI. The consumer does remain under pressure. We've seen, again, interest rates starting to come down, a double-edged sword, good for investment income at elevated levels, creating pressure obviously for consumers. The vehicle motor value chain does remain under pressure. It's a space where we've seen the average cost of repair remain elevated. Its constituents, labor, paints, the cost of motor body repair, and the actual cost of parts themselves does remain elevated.

We've also seen vehicle sales themselves remain moderately flat over the last year in 2024. The imminent reduction in the production of steel in the local market does provide further pressure within this value chain. Although the full extent of this does still remain to be seen in 2025. By and large, a very difficult 2024. I think both tailwinds and constraints to the economy, with the economy still growing at about that 1.1% in 2024. Turning now to our operating highlights. I think 2024 year, as we've said, was a difficult year. What we found is that the group fared very well, staying focused on profitable growth.

We've seen growth coming through at 10.5% in terms of the top line net and premiums at 9.7%. We're comfortable with that level of growth, producing an underwriting margin at the midpoint at 7.6%, demonstrating a huge turnaround from the underwriting margin we saw in 2023. To a large extent, the underwriting actions that we've been implementing and carrying out over the last 18 months starting to bear fruits into 2024 with the margin comfortably at the midpoint. The ART businesses had a stellar year in 2024, earnings significantly up at ZAR 781 million, and we've seen the net income for the group 13% up on 2023, returning a return on capital of 31.9%.

While earnings are up, the shape of the earnings are split between underwriting and investment income is certainly in a better place than we've had in pre-previous years. We've seen the underwriting part of the business starting to contribute a lot more to the overall earnings of the group. The shape is certainly in a better space. The group remains well capitalized, and you've seen that the economic capital coverage is at the upper end of the range. The board is pleased to declare a dividend, a final dividend for the year of ZAR 9.85 per share, up 8.8%. The total cumulative dividend for the year is up 8.6%.

A result that the board is pleased to put out to the market. Our international business and our direct remain key pillars within our strategy and will remain an area of focus. It is important to say, though, that the result is underpinned by significant weather-related losses. We have seen flooding, windstorm coming through the year, floods and tornado in KZN, a benign hail season last year in Gauteng, but flooding all the same in the Eastern Cape and in parts of the Western Cape, together with some large fire losses. The good news, though, is that the aggregate property portfolio has turned positive. As I've said, that is a result of the various underwriting actions that we have been implementing over the 18 months.

There is, however, still room for improvement within the property portfolio, and that will remain a continued area of focus into 2025. Sticking with the theme of weather-related losses, 2024 demonstrates that the weather-related losses came in at about ZAR 450 million for the year, very similar to the numbers we saw in 2023. Although 2024 was on average a drier year than we saw in 2023, it is the intensity and period with which that rain is falling that is of critical importance, and that's creating severity in terms of the claims that we are seeing.

In some areas, we've seen as much as 200 millimeters of rain falling in several days, and in other parts of the country, the same amount of rain is falling within a few hours. That is leading to flash floods, fluvial floods, as they are known, to a large extent, and largely unpredictable. We've also seen the impact of windstorm, again, where there's not been so much rain, but that windstorm is causing severe damage and to some extent, followed on by fires in some regions. The average of weather-related or catastrophe claims, as we call them, is much higher over the last decade than we've had over the previous 10 years.

From our perspective at Sanlam, we do believe that these weather-related and even the fire-related losses can be managed. Through quite a few of our underwriting actions, the geocoding initiatives, that allows us to be able to price, identify risks, understand floodplains, flood lines to a large extent, our exposures to thatch does allow us to price these risks a lot better than we have been able to do historically. The cumulative effect of this, together with optimization on our reinsurance program, effectively does leave us in a better place as far as the property portfolio, again, with a significant turnaround in the property portfolio coming through in 2024, curtailing the losses that we've seen in historic years. We do expect further improvement in the property portfolio, but this may require ongoing actions in this particular space.

Turning to our MiWay business, which forms an important pillar of transitioning our business to a multi-channel space, we have seen double-digit growth starting to come through in the last couple of months as we came through to the end of 2024. The growth within this business achieving 8% for the 2024 year, up on 2023 at a decent underwriting margin of 8.3%, again, up on the prior year of 2023. Again, demonstrating our commitment to profitable growth. We have seen the policy count start to notch up on previous quarters. I think this demonstrates progress within the underlying MiWay business. We continue to spend in the MiWay business to drive the inbound capability as well as the tied agency force in this space. This is starting to yield benefits.

We've also recently launched our MyCash benefits from a retention perspective, and so we do expect further positive progression within the performance of the underlying MiWay business. Turning to strategy. Over the last year, we believe we've made progress in implementing our strategy. We remain consistent with our strategic objectives to the year 2030. Our strategy is underpinned by three critical vectors, which is maintaining our dominance and strength within our South African business. We have been largely a broker-dominant business, and we maintain our dominance within the broker space. Our business starts to shift towards our multi-channel business, and we are making good traction in the scaling up of our direct and tied agency.

We continue to drive our international expansion off the back of a tested competency that has been successful here in South Africa, which is our specialty capability, and we leverage that into the rest of Africa, working much closer with SanlamAllianz, and we continue to scale our reinsurance business across the world. The combination of these efforts in the international part of our business has led to growth or the contribution from premiums in the international space up to 18% from 16% in terms of contributing to the gross written premiums of the entire group. We also continue to focus on our partnerships because we believe this fundamentally allows us to access new customer segments at a lower cost of acquisition.

We work with our Sanlam colleagues towards cross-selling, working with our partnerships at MTN, and our recently announced partnership with MultiChoice continues to provide momentum in this particular space. All in all, strategic consistency from our perspective as we continue to drive our Future Fit strategy 2030. A lot of this underpinned by modernization of IT, improvement within our procurement space, which should continue to provide momentum to our business into the foreseeable future. Turning to our long term targets that underpin the strategy, both financial and non-financial targets we believe are achievable in terms of growth underwriting margin. With the underwriting margin now at the midpoint, we do expect continued profitable growth into the future.

The non-financial targets talk to how we run our business, how we make sure that our business remains, future ready, Future Fit in terms of sustainability of our business into the future. On both financial and non-financial targets, we do believe that despite a difficult and uncertain operating environment, this remains achievable in terms of our targets for 2030. We'll now turn to the financial results, and I'll ask Wikus to give you more context and color and detail in terms of the performance of the group. Thank you very much.

Wikus Olivier
Group Chief Financial Officer and Finance Director, Santam

Good morning, everyone. It's my pleasure to take you through the financial results for the 2024 financial year. Starting off with an overall picture, we've achieved a very strong performance across all of our key performance indicators. From a top-line growth perspective, our growth was muted in 2023 following the cancellation of a number of blocks of business that didn't deliver the performance that we found acceptable. Net and premium growth, however, expanded to 9.7% in 2024, which is the highest level of growth that we've achieved in the last 10 years. Quite a pleasing outcome.

From an underwriting margin perspective, the margin more than doubled from 3.5% to 7.6%, with the margin also expanding from 6.5% in the first half of the year to about 8.6% in the second half. Favorable investment returns continued since 2023 into the current year, supporting a 2.6% return on our float portfolios as a percentage of net and premium. The strong financial performance also enabled us to achieve a return on capital number of close to 32%, which is well in excess of our target return of 24%.

Just turning to business volumes, as Thabiso's indicated, our long-term target for top-line growth is nominal economic growth plus 1%-2%, which implies a target range of 6.5%-7.5% for 2024. GWP expanded by 10.5%, which is well in excess of this target range. All of the businesses contributed very strongly to this result. The exception was our Specialist Solutions business, which continued to be impacted by the deployment of international capital capacity, in particular within corporate property and casualty lines, at rates that's, in our view, not sustainable over the long term.

In line with our philosophy to focus on profitable growth, we are very much prepared to forsake top-line growth in the short term, to enable us to protect the long-term profitability of our in-force book. Tava also mentioned the pleasing acceleration of growth at MiWay, achieving double-digit growth in the last quarter of the year, lifting MiWay's overall growth from 5% in 2023 to 8% in the current year. Other factors that supported the growth this year was an excellent result from Santam Re, despite the further cancellation of some business especially within the UMA space. Partner Solutions also benefiting from the transfer of the MTN in-force book in the first half of the year.

From an insurance class perspective, property and motor remains our biggest insurance classes, with the motor book growing by 7%. This is a combined effect of very good growth across our Broker Solutions and Client Solutions business, as well as MiWay Business Insurance, partly offset by more muted growth within Specialist Solutions. The property book expanded at double digits by 10%, benefiting from the MTN in-force book transfer that I mentioned, but also reflecting a continued strengthening in the underlying insurance rates across the book. Liability engineering also growing very strongly, supported by Santam Re, which in the case of the liability business more than offset a lower volumes within Specialist Solutions.

Within the crop class, we did see a decline of 12%, which is effectively the result of unfavorable planting conditions in the first half of the year, which did limit our growth potential. Business written outside of South Africa, growing by 27%, with very strong performance in Namibia, especially on the back of niche classes. Within the other territories, we did see some shift in business from rest of Africa into other international, with Santam Re's excellent performance also supporting the other international component. This picture very much aligned with our focus on diversifying the overall book, and contributed to an increase in the overall portion of the book coming from outside of South Africa from 16% in 2023, to 18% in 2024.

We are getting closer to our target of 20% for business outside of South Africa. It's also important to note that we did get our own A- international rating from AM Best at the end of last year. This will be very much supportive for our international growth strategy in 2025, as we are no longer reliant on using partners' A- rating solutions to write business in international markets. From a reinsurance perspective, I mentioned during the interim results presentation that we did achieve single-digit rate increases in the January 2024 renewal, which together with optimization of the overall reinsurance program, contributed to a decline in reinsurance cost as percentage of gross written premium from 20.9% to 19.2% for 2024.

It was also very pleasing to see that we did achieve a reduction in some of the rates during the 2025 program, where we are receiving recognition from reinsurance for all of the work that we've done from a risk management perspective. Turning to earnings, net income after tax and minorities increased by 13%. It actually increased by 45% if I strip out the one-off gain of ZAR 705 million that we realized in 2023 when we sold our stake in the SANParks JV investment. The growth came from all of the important earnings lines. net insurance result up 82%, with a more than doubling in the underwriting profit, and also supported by very strong float returns as I mentioned.

The favorable investment market performance also supported the investment return on capital, which together with a ZAR 90 million increase in our return on our investments in India and Malaysia, contributing to a 20% increase in return on shareholders' capital. The ART businesses also continued with its, their strong performance, growing by more than 50%. It was also pleasing to see that that growth came from all of their revenue lines, from a float return perspective, admin fees, and also from the underwriting profits, where they do participate in some of the underwriting in their partner sales. From a conventional result perspective, I mentioned the underwriting result, improving to 7.6%.

That was on the back of the claims incurred ratio that declined from 66.2% to just more than 61% in the current year. That is a combination of the benefits of all of the underwriting actions that we've implemented over the past 2 years coming through, and then also, favorable attritional loss experience, in particular in the second half of the year. Management expenses did increase from 16.5% to 18.1%. And that's attributable to investments that we're making into strategic initiatives in MiWay, but also within Client Solutions business, and also some IT investments at a group level. Then we also did see an increase in variable remuneration in the current year based on the strong results that we've achieved.

From an insurance class perspective, most of the classes contributed strong growth. The exception was within our marine and crop business, where we did see some large claims coming through this year, which resulted in a decline in profit contribution from these two lines. It is typical of these two lines of business where you do see periods of volatility. Just looking at the history, as Thabiso also mentioned, we're well within our 5%-10% target range. This is despite a continuous of large losses from extreme weather events and also other losses, mostly fire-related, which amounted to close to ZAR 1 billion in the current year. This is in line with 2023 if I take into account the CBI reserve releases in the comparable period.

It again points to the significant improvement in the underlying profitability of our in-force book. From a Personal and Commercial lines perspective, we did see the improvement coming through across both categories of business. It wasn't a one-sided affair. Personal lines in particular, reversing from a net loss position last year to close to heading close to ZAR 1 billion this year, supported by the favorable attritional loss experience that I mentioned and also a non-recurrence of the run-off losses from canceled business in the prior year. From a MiWay perspective, mentioned very pleasing top-line growth, with MiWay Business Insurance in particular benefiting from both the new inbound and tied agency strategies. Underwriting result up 80% to more than ZAR 300 million.

Also on the back of an improvement in the claims ratio, similar to the experience that we've seen in the other businesses. MiWay's acquisition cost ratio also increased just more than 2% on last year. And that's a factor of a base effect from the strategic initiatives which we only launched towards the end of the first half of this year. So it's comparing a six-month investment with a full-year investment in those initiatives. Underwriting margin at 8.3%. But we did actually achieve double-digit margins, excluding the investment in the new initiatives. From investment perspective, we didn't make any significant change to the asset mix of our investment portfolios. We continue to apply our strict asset liability matching approach for our insurance funds, ART and sub-debt portfolios.

With the majority of the shareholder funds also invested in less volatile fixed interest and cash investments, with some equity exposure at 10%. The investment in the target shares related to India and Malaysia comprising about 19% of the total shareholders fund. From an investment return perspective, I mentioned that we benefited from a continuance of favorable investment returns across all of our portfolios. Our asset managers also did well and in general exceeded all of the benchmarks, contributing to double-digit growth across conventional and ART businesses and also across the float portfolios as well as the shareholder capital portfolio. Just turning to capital management. Return on capital.

It's quite pleasing to see that for 2024, about two-thirds of the total 32% return coming from insurance activities, which is where we would like it to be, that the majority of the returns should come from the underlying operating activities, to ensure that we're not reliant only on investment returns, to drive our shareholder returns. The group remains well capitalized at a economic capital coverage ratio of 166% at the end of December. This is just more than our target range of 145%-165%.

Considering this capital position, we are declaring a final dividend of ZAR 9.85 per share, which is up 8.8% on 2023, with the total ordinary dividends in respect of 2024 amounting to ZAR 15.20, which is up 8.6% on the prior year. Healthy growth in dividend, also well in excess of inflationary levels. I'll now hand back to Thabo for some closing remarks.

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

Thank you very much, Wikus. I'll make a few closing remarks. We fundamentally believe that these are important in terms of how we run our business. We believe we have a positive role, we have a role to play in impacting society and nature, and we also plan to continue with our flagship programs that support community resilience. We also fundamentally believe that culture and our people are a key ingredient to our customer experience. We believe that these commitments allow us to continue to run our business sustainably and also make economic sense. I'll now turn to our priorities for 2025, which are in support of the broader strategy that we are driving to 2030. We will continue to scale our direct business.

We do believe we must get our proportionate share of the business that largely is going direct, particularly with the younger consumer segment. We are pleased with the turnaround in the profitability of the property portfolio, but this will remain a key area of focus to get the profitability up to our hurdle return on capital. Cross-sell and our partnerships continue to allow us to acquire customers at a lower cost of acquisition, and this remains very critical for us in terms of accessing new customer segments. We are pleased with the progress we are making in our international space through Santam Re and the specialist business, and this continues to be a focus area for 2025.

Across the business, ensuring that we remain dominant within our broker space, continue to drive our procurement efficiencies, the rollout of our IT capabilities and digital capabilities towards improving efficiencies within our business remains important. Lastly but not least, our client and employee experience are a key ingredient to how we run our business, as well as maintaining relevance and brand visibility with our customers and key stakeholders. We do believe that in 2025, these short-term priorities will continue to allow us to see profitable growth coming through in the business. We expect continued progression in the underwriting margin in 2025 outside of extreme weather-related events. On that note, we'll pause, and we'll be happy to take some questions from you. Thank you very much.

Operator

Good morning, our conference for 21st of Fitness. I'm now getting to the questions that have come through from our online. I've got quite a number of questions from Michael, but I suppose there are a few topics that I want to get into. One is around underwriting profits for motor, so are you able to provide with us some details around what were the underwriting profits for motor and property in 2024?

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

Thank you very much, Michael, and thanks for the question. So we're not providing a split of the actual numbers in the interest of not giving away competitive information to the peer group. But I can say that the motor business delivered acceptable returns, so we were quite happy with the profits from the motor book. And then from a property perspective, we did note it was particularly pleasing that that book has now also turned profitable, but it's definitely not at an acceptable level yet, as it's not yielding our required 24% return on capital. So some more work to do on the property side

And maybe just to add to that question, is that we haven't seen any deterioration in the performance of the motor book and a lot of the underwriting actions that we've been implementing over the last 18 months, whether it be increased use of tracker vehicles within the cars, we've seen a reduction in motor thefts, rather an increase in recovery rates. And so a lot of that is still continuing. And I think what is also clear is that continued premium increases are certainly not sustainable. If you just always speak a lot about working with the value chain on the motor side to reduce the average cost of claims, then that becomes a more sustainable approach to maintain that underwriting margin and the internal capital within the motor book.

But I think again, good news on motor and certainly very good news on the property book where we've started to see, starting to turn around. Just maybe just stay on the property because I've got two questions. Perhaps some of them have been answered from Siphelele and Bayron Goliath. Maybe from Siphelele, the question is what actions remain to be taken to rectify the positive underwriting profitability? And what is the underwriting margin target for the short to medium term? Linked to that, a balance question as well is around how confident are we around the turnaround will be sustained, especially on the motor book or the property book going forward?

Operator

Thank you very much, Siphelele.

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

A starting point is that the underwriting actions, which stem from increased surveying, building deductibles, optimizing reinsurance, and the use of geocoding to better understand risks, are yielding positive results in the property portfolio.

These actions help us clearly identify our batch exposures, flood lines, and other risk areas. We are also working with municipalities around fire prevention and fire detection systems. The whole range of initiatives that we have been driving over the last 14 to 18 months is starting to show positive results

However, this will remain a key focus area for us. We have identified it as a key priority for 2025, and we do expect further margin progression in this space, excluding extreme events such as the KZN-type flooding we experienced a couple of years back.

In terms of sustainability, reinsurance catastrophe rates remain elevated. There may be some easing coming through, but it will depend on global developments such as the Los Angeles fires and whether that momentum continues. That will be an important factor in terms of our risk-sharing arrangements with reinsurers. From our perspective, we expect further improvement as we continue to implement tighter underwriting actions. This includes, where necessary, exclusions in areas where we believe the risks are unsustainable. However, this approach must be balanced against the competitive pressures we see in the market.

So while the margin has turned positive and the underwriting margin in this space is now positive, it is not yet at the level we would ideally like it to be. We will continue working to improve it going forward.

To add to that, we also evaluate underwriting margin from a return-on-capital perspective, where our target is to earn around 24% on each individual insurance class. For property specifically, we ideally want margins in the 5% to 10% range to achieve that return. Historically, at a national level, the property portfolio—particularly in commercial lines and even in personal lines—has been challenging. In the past, because insurance rates were lower, companies could transfer that risk to international markets and take advantage of the difference in the cost of capital.

However, with reinsurance rates increasing significantly over the past few years, that approach has become less viable. As we have shared with the market, we have increased our retention in this space. As a result, flooding activities we experienced in 2025, and to some extent in 2023, fell within that retention level, meaning we absorbed those losses.

Even within the broader reinsurance program, many of those catastrophe events would still have fallen under our retention levels. That said, we believe the approach we are taking to optimize reinsurance is progressive. It reflects our confidence in the underwriting actions we are implementing and supports the turnaround in the profitability of the property portfolio.

We do see continued momentum in that business, particularly in relation to deep mining application deals. This remains an area of strong demand within the business. Management is focused on bringing in new deals to compensate for the current cap and the present situation in the market.

Operator

I have a couple of questions this morning. The other question is: can you give some more color on the management operation in Malaysia? Data suggests that activity has been quite strong recently.

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

The Malaysia operation has unfortunately been a struggle for quite a period. It has been contributing to earnings, but I think it is important to view it in the context of materiality. Both the investment that we hold and the earnings contribution are not material for the group. As such, it is an investment that we have been willing to maintain for the time being.

Operator

Next question from Michael as well: Can you please explain the revenue performance for Santam Allianz Specialties?

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

When we look at the engineering-related partnerships, revenue is very much dependent on large projects. Many of these projects become available and move forward at different times within the business cycle.As a result, volatility in the top line is expected. This is something that occurred this year where we wrote less business compared to the previous year.However, we largely see this as seasonal in nature, rather than a structural issue in the business.

Thabiso Rulashe
Head of Strategy and Investor Relations, Santam

Excuse me, in the economic growth, lower interest rate, lower inflation, especially premium increases start to stabilize. Essentially one is around product personal lines market and as well as the economic outlook.

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

There are several factors to take into account when thinking through the personal lines industry. A good starting point is that it is true that the consumers do remain under significant pressure. I think you see that coming through, for example, in motor vehicle sales, the numbers we've showed you earlier, that that industry remains largely flat if not slightly negative. Then I think if you look at the aggregate policy count, and I think here is where the distinction becomes very important. The existing policy count, again, that remains under pressure. Over the last couple of years, we've seen a huge part of that start to go direct, hence our focus on going direct. Within that policy count, it does remain under pressure.

We also see, for example, another important data point that of all the cars on the road, a good proportion of those cars are not actually insured, right? We talk largely about bringing in new customers, new customer segments, cross-selling via our new partnerships, with MTN, with MultiChoice, working much closer with Sanlam towards bringing in new customers, that traditionally may not have been covered. I think just the proportion of cars on the road that are uninsured presents a huge opportunity. I think the industry by and large is focused on the smaller proportion of cars. You've seen a huge amount of churn, pressure on pricing, different strategies coming through in the market. I think targeting very high growth, poor profitability. I think we've come through very nicely with both growth and profitability.

Our focus has to be on the uninsured part of that, on that segment, as we believe that our alternative channels provide access to those customer segments, in addition to our focus on both direct and within the tied agency. While the traditional market itself does remain constrained, I think vehicle sales in the last month or two have shown some encouraging signals. But I think there is a huge amount of cars on the road that are insured, and so that's where we focus our attention in terms of driving growth. We will not compromise on quality and profitability simply to chase market share within the segment.

Thabiso Rulashe
Head of Strategy and Investor Relations, Santam

Okay. Maybe because the second part of that question around the economic outlook, how do you see that?

Wikus Olivier
Group Chief Financial Officer and Finance Director, Santam

We do expect some improvement in growth. For this year, at the end of the third quarter, we were still sitting at 0.3%. We do expect 2024 will be a bit higher than that. Going into 2025, probably looking at 1.5%-1.7%, which together with at least some easing of general inflation and also interest rates, it should provide some relief to the consumer. I think what Thabiso's mentioned from kind of early indications of new vehicle sales, that may be some of that feeding into that as well.

Thabiso Rulashe
Head of Strategy and Investor Relations, Santam

Good. Before we maybe close up, just wanna try quarters call once more. Again, if any question. Quarters call? Okay.

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

We have no questions on the line.

Thabiso Rulashe
Head of Strategy and Investor Relations, Santam

Thank you so much. Before I hand over to Tava to wrap up, I just wanna thank you all for joining us today. To some of our investors and analysts, we look forward to engaging with you for the next couple of days. Tava, maybe some closing remarks.

Tavaziva Madzinga
Group Chief Executive Officer, Santam

Thanks, Thabiso. Thanks, Wikus. I'd just like to maybe close again, thanking you all for joining us this morning. I think the group has shown incredible resilience in a tough operating environment. We remain focused on driving profitable growth, consistency within our strategy with return on capital as a key underpin for us moving forward. Let me extend a special word of thanks to my colleagues on the executive team, our board, the rest of the Santam staff, and in particular, the brokers and the customers that continue to support our business. Thank you very much. To the investors and analysts, again, thank you for your support. As Thabiso said, we look forward to engaging with you in the next days and weeks to come on the performance of our business and the strategy into the future.

Thank you again for joining us this morning. Have a great day further.

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