Morning, everyone, thank you for your attendance. So this is the HIL 2023 financial year-end results. Just before we get into the numbers, I'd like—we would love your questions. We will be answering questions at the end of the presentation, but in the... There is a Questions tab in this application, that during the course of the presentations, you can write your questions as they come up. So going into the results, our fintech business has continued to dominate our profits with double-digit profit growth for the year. Our operating profit is up 28% to ZAR 620 million. Before I get into the results in too much detail, I just wanted to remind you of who the group was.
We have two divisions: our heritage business, HomeChoice, is an omni-channel retailer, operating in the mass market, dominated by textiles. Their revenues, their retail sales were down 24% to ZAR 1.2 billion during the course of the year. We made a decision in April of this year to severely curtail their credit, and this is why their retail sales are down for the year. On the other side of the business, our fintech arm, they've experienced really strong growth this year. We've got two divisions there. The first is FinChoice. They offer personal loans, insurance, and value-added services or digital platforms to their customer base, again, in the mass market. And then our PayJustNow business, offering buy now, pay later, and payment and conversion solutions to their merchant customer base.
Between these two divisions, this is why we had our revenue flat on last year. Our fintech business, as I already mentioned, now dominates with 92% of our profits coming from this division. We had really strong growth in customers and also good cash collected from our customers, up to ZAR 8.5 billion, an increase of 1.3 billion over the course of 2023. Very strong focus on digital, as I've mentioned in the past. Moving into our next, I always like to chat a little bit about our customer base when I start with this presentation. So as I said, we had great customer base growth at a group level, up 39% to just over 2 million customers.
This was primarily driven by our fintech base, which was up 72% to 1.6 million customers, and then our retail base declined, again, reflecting our credit tightening, declined by 16% to 530,000 customers. So who is she? She's a digital, urban African woman. 71% of our customers are female. Her average income is just under 16,000 ZAR, at 15,700 ZAR. Her average age is 38 years, and just over 60% of our base is either a Gen Z or a millennial customer. And we're really proud of how this, how this customer base has grown, and we believe that we continue to have a significant market opportunity in this space.
One of our longest-standing strategies has been digital, and I want to chat to you a little bit about some of the successes that we've had in this space. We've embarked on this strategy about 7 years ago, and really, the strategy has proven out, and it's driven both growth, experience, and efficiency for the group. 84% of our transactions are now digital, up from just over 50% 4 years ago, and you can see how this has driven efficiency for the group, with our direct cost per digital transaction declining from just under ZAR 500 to ZAR 196 today. On average, we have about 1.4 million digital users transacting across our digital applications in any given month, and these will be across our apps, our mobi sites or social.
Then finally, if I move on to the next slide, please. This, if our digital strategy was our key strategy over the last 5 years, this strategy is our key strategy moving forward. It primarily speaks to our fintech ecosystem, and it's about how we're gonna be driving cross-sell within our customer base in order to increase their lifetime value and profitability for the group. So if you remember, we have two customers in this space, our merchant customer, which is covers our B2B strategy, and our customer strategy, which covers our B2C strategy. So starting on the outside, this reflects our B2B strategy and our merchant base. We have about 2,500 merchant customers across our base across 8,000 points of presence.
In terms of what we're offering this customer base, so we offer both payments, and through our payments, a conversion offering. So our customers will come on to our merchant, our base. We will help them complete a transaction, either across QR payments, buy now, pay later, or retail credit. We drive about 3.2 million customers to our merchant partners through our traffic referrals. We have a very sophisticated search and discover, where our customers or our merchants' customers can choose across both categories or product or look for a particular merchant, and again, through this, we drive traffic onto our merchant partner sites. Looking on the inner circle, there are three elements to this, so we're across three verticals. Our first vertical is our payment vertical.
We had about ZAR 1.5 billion of gross merchandise value that we transacted during the course of the year across the payment products on the left. In the center, our lending, is our lending vertical. We had about ZAR 4.8 billion of disbursements across this vertical, and that covers our personal loans, value-added services, our credit-backed wallet, and our virtual card, which we will launch during this year. And then finally, our insurance vertical, which covers ZAR 150 million of gross written premium across three products: funeral, personal accident, and device covers . So typically, a customer will come in on one of these products, either through our merchant platform...
or directly, she'll come in on a single product, and thereafter, through our direct marketing, or offering other products during her journey, she will pick up a second, third, or fourth product with us. So in so doing, she'll drive our cross-sell and ultimately her lifetime value and our profitability. This is a pivotal concept, and it'll be a key theme that we'll reference, Sean will reference, over the course of this presentation later on. Finally, I want to close just talking about our female customer base a little bit more. So for us, we're very focused on our female customer base, and when we design our products, we specifically design for her, and this is why our customers love us. So first of all, we're there for her. She's a working woman, she's a mum, but she's very time-pressed.
So for her, being able to transact 24/7 across all of our service and our product offerings is important, where she can engage directly with us, safely and securely from her own home. We try to recognize the mishaps that occur in all of our lives, whether it's a child's broken leg or a family member needing assistance, by offering her payment flexibility and helping her manage her finance with our products, like our wallets or top-ups or our, our payment choices. And then finally, we try to improve her journey and her experience by getting better over time, and this may be across a fraud product or helping her make decisions that affect her, her family. And then finally, I want to close just talking about our development trust. This is a separate entity that we set up over 10 years ago.
Over the last 10 years, we've donated about ZAR 50 million and supported 40,000 children during our early childhood or preschool schools. And we did this because we wanted to try and focus on what's important to her, and we believe that's her family and her community, and so this trust was set up to try and recognize that. I'm going to hand across to Paul. He's our CFO, and he's going to get into a little bit more detail on our financials over the course of 2023. Thanks, Paul. Over to you.
Good morning, everyone. I'm going to provide an overview of the group's strong results for the 2023 financial year. Group revenue of ZAR 3.7 billion converted well, with operating profit up 28% and profit before tax up 11%. The books of the group continued to yield well, with collections increasing to ZAR 8.6 billion in the year, and earnings and dividends per share both grew by north of 8% in the year. I'm going to step you through the group's P&L for the year. Revenue was firm at ZAR 3.7 billion. Very pleased, Weaver has continued to grow well.
Its top line has grown by 31% in the year, and it has driven the group's 22% growth in fee income in the year, and that's come through insurance and buy now, pay later, so a very strong performance from Weaver. Retail as well has implemented some strategic credit risk changes in the year, so we're pleased that that business is well-placed for the future, and retail sales are down by 24% in the year as a result. GP declined, impacted by Forex and markdowns. I'll let Chris speak to that in more detail later in the retail section. Debtor costs have been well managed. I'll dive into that in detail in the next slide. Trading expenses also tightly controlled, so up 2% overall.
We've continued to invest in Weaver's scaling tech platform, and retail costs have actually been reduced by 8% during the year, so that's following further optimization that's been implemented. So overall, very pleased with the profit conversion. Our net interest expenses increased by 79% on the higher interest rate and the increased funding on Weaver's growth, and our profit before... profit after tax growing by 8% to ZAR 327 million in the year. Diving into some more detail on the credit books, you'll recall that the group has two credit portfolios that are separately managed. I'll start with the Weaver Fintech book on the left-hand side. We've continued to invest in the Weaver Fintech business.
Debtor costs have been well controlled, increasing by 28%, which is below the revenue growth of 31% and the book growth of 32%. This digital short-term portfolio has been tightly managed, so we've tightened limits, we've shortened the disbursement term further. You may recall that, this business usually sells its rehabilitation portfolios. Some of those rehabilitation portfolios have been deferred this year, given market factors, and that's resulted in a changing mix of the book and a higher provision rate. So the provision rate increased from 15.4% to 18.7%, and we're pleased to be holding conservative stage two and three covers, so that's been maintained at 67% for the year. So well-managed Weaver Fintech book.
If you move across to the right-hand side, you'll see the retail portfolio. So retail has purposefully tightened credit risk, and we're delighted to see the improvements reflecting in the book health. So the book has reduced by 21%. The provision rate has been reduced by 30, from 34% to 29.4% in the year, and that's resulted in improved debtor costs, so down 30% in the year. So we're very pleased with the changes that the retail business has implemented on its credit portfolio. Another highlight for the year is the group's strong cash generation. So ZAR 470 million better cash generation in the year, and I'll speak to the drivers of that. So firstly, retail has generated ZAR 345 million of working capital.
So firstly, it's reduced its inventory by 29% in the year, and it's also reduced its credit book. The group has reallocated that capital to continue funding the Weaver Fintech growth, so we're pleased with that purposeful allocation of capital. And that Weaver book is now growing from ZAR 3.3 billion to ZAR 4.3 billion, but the collections coming in that portfolio have grown to ZAR 6.7 billion in the year. So that digital short-term book continues to be highly yielding, and we're very pleased with that cash generation. Lastly, we continue to have strong funder support. You may recall, during our interim results, we spoke to the refinancing upsizing of the group's commercial loan facilities to increase from ZAR 1.8 billion to ZAR 3 billion in the year.
That refinancing process was three times oversubscribed, and we're very pleased to have added another big bank into our funding group. You can see then how we've utilized the higher cash generated from operations and the higher funding. So we've invested in CapEx, and that's purposely in our product innovation, and we've continued to build out our digital technology platforms. We've also spent more on tax and interest, and that's largely in the profitable Weaver Fintech business, and we've also continued to hold the group's dividend cover at 2.0. What this has resulted in then is a 15% increase in the group's ROCE. So overall, as group CFO, I'm very pleased with the performance that we've achieved. Weaver has driven improved profitability.
Retail has been restructured for positive growth going forward, and the credit books have been well managed. The cash generation has been strong in a challenging consumer environment, and we remain strongly supported by our funders with ample headroom in our funding available. With that, I'd like to hand over to Sean Wibberley, who will speak us through the Weaver Fintech results.
Thank you, Paul. I'm very pleased to be presenting to you the Weaver Fintech results for 2023. We've delivered double-digit growth across a lot of our headline numbers. Revenue up 30% to ZAR 1.9 billion, and pleasingly, 34% of that revenue generated by fee income as we strategically drive the fee mix in our portfolio. Cash collected from our credit books up ZAR 6.7 billion rand, up to ZAR 6.7 billion rand, up 30%. I'm very pleased with that. All translating into a PBT growth of 27% to ZAR 426 million. Our customers continue to grow very strongly, both in acquisition and in their engagement. We booked 770,000 new customers last year, with both FinChoice and PayJustNow showing strong growth rates in acquisition.
PJN booked 650,000 new customers onto the buy now, pay later product. Our base has increased eightfold in the last five years, from 200,000 customers to 1.6 million, and I'm very pleased to see the strong growth rates across the Weaver ecosystem. Our customers are highly retentive in the business. 86% of our loans are to existing FinChoice customers, and 75% of purchases are to repeat customers in the PayJustNow world. I wanted to touch on our ecosystem. We have a digitally integrated ecosystem of products and brands within Weaver Fintech.
Looking to the left at the number of products per customer in the portfolio, in 2021, we had 64% of our customers with one product, and that's actually increased to 77% in up to last year, due primarily to the high growth rates in the buy now, pay later product. And what our goal is to cross-sell those products digitally, a second, third, and those customers, sorry, a second, third, and fourth product, and you can see why. On the right-hand side, the average revenue per user is the amount of revenue on average a customer brings in over a course of a year, and single product customers are giving us about 1,100 ZAR. But when they take two products, it jumps to 9,000 ZAR, and then three and four products, 13,000 ZAR.
So this is the power of our ecosystem. Down at the bottom, you can see we're starting to really purposely grow the cross-sell between the two brands, and the trajectory and momentum of this cross-sell is really taking shape. And I'm really excited for the opportunity for us to flex our ecosystem and then bring down the number of products with customers with only one product to 50%.... with 50% having two, three, and four products. That's our short-term goal. Thank you. Tech underpins our business, and all of our products are engageable via smartphones that our customers have in their hands. We have a personal accident product we launched last year, end-to-end digital on their smartphone. The Search and Discover functionality in the PayJustNow world has been enhanced with enhanced search capability.
So, for example, a customer can type in puffer jacket on the platform in the search field, and all the merchants in the PJN network that offer puffer jackets will be exposed to the customer. Then she can choose her favorite brand, drill down, and make the transaction then and there, end-to-end digitally. PJN also launched an electronic wallet, wherein refunds from customers who return goods to merchants will top up that wallet, again, keeping that cash within our network and encouraging further spend with merchants. We've upgraded our selfie technology to have liveness detection, again, again, adding to the convenience of the customer and the security of our portfolio. Very pleased to present our financial numbers. Our operating profit up 42% on the period, revenue up 31%, and pleasingly, this driven, more, more highly by the fee revenue, which is up 32%.
We benefited by our increased books and the high interest rate environment in our lending business, and the growth in buy now, pay later, and our standalone insurance business contributed to the high growth in the fee income mix. Debtors' costs up 28%, below revenue and book growth, and I'm pleased with that. We increased our provision, as Paul mentioned, due to us holding on to our rehabilitation books under the market conditions, which on a weighted average, increased our provisions. Very pleased with the efficiency in the business. Our trading expense is just 17% up versus 31% of revenue, and you can see the efficiencies, 29.6%, reducing to 26.5% as we have grown the scale of our business on our digital ecosystem.
Our profits up 27% profit before tax, and you can see our interest expense up 90% due to the investment in our portfolio and into our tech and innovation. Very pleased to see the revenue per employee, a key measure, going up 27% to ZAR 3.7 million generated per employee per year. Weaver maintains a portfolio of short-term products, ranging from 3 months to 6, 12, 24, and 36. This allows us to be highly flexible in how we manage our portfolio and reactive to changes in the consumer market when it comes to credit risk. We book our customers on the short-term, 3- and 6-month products on low values, and we progress them steadily to longer-term products over time as they prove themselves.
In tough market conditions, we lower the limits to these short-term products and progress the low and grow more slowly. Last year, you can see in the tougher conditions, we weighted the 3- and 6-month portfolios more highly, as we contended with quite a tough macro. We reduced our average term to 12.5 months and reduced the average dispersed amount from about ZAR 4,022 to ZAR 3,423. Last year, there were genuine concerns in the marketplace over affordability due to the high sustained interest environment and the battle against inflation. So against that backdrop, the team tightened scorecard criteria and increased the affordability buffers in order to give customers more free cash flow to contend with the higher cost environment.
We still focused on our existing customers, so 86% of disbursements went to existing customers, up slightly from the year before. In retrospect, I think we could have given even more money to our better-performing customers and weighted the book more favorably towards existents. However, there was genuine concern in the environment around affordability, and in the time, those were the decisions we made. But in retrospect, I think we left some money on the table. Slight increase in our term to 20.9 months in the book, and just a reminder, we collect all of our lending electronically through the DebiCheck system. I'm very pleased with the continued tight range of our vintages, and down the bottom left, you can see our active accounts able to borrow at 84%, proof that we've been looking after the health of our portfolio.
The PayJustNow business had a very strong year from a credit point of view. They launched a new behavioral bespoke scorecard, which allowed them to split risk even better. So they were able to say no to more bad red risk, but also, very importantly, to extend limits to their proven existing customers and drive more good spend to these customers and in addition, allow more of their existing customers to make concurrent purchases. That is, being able to make a number of purchases from different merchants within their credit limit over the same period of time. That's driven good behavior in the portfolio and driven the mix shift very nicely. You can see how highly cash generative this book is, just 45 days for...
On average, a tenure in this book, and we collected ZAR 1.9 billion from customers in the second half of last year, up 80% on the prior period. Our customers really appreciate the convenience and security of being able to transact 24/7 from their smartphone in the privacy of their home or at work. We—if you look at our digital mix, the vast majority of our lending is done via their smartphone. Our hero channel, which is our new app, grew 19% last year and contributed ZAR 933 million of disbursements through the app. Existing customers, whose information we have on file, are able to take repeat business loans, repeat loans, in less than three minutes.
We also launched a WhatsApp sales bot for new customers to find us using WhatsApp, and then to go through a familiar journey on WhatsApp before transitioning into the FinChoice world to take credit. Our much-loved MobiMoney Wallet, the FinChoice MobiMoney Wallet, is reaching record highs. 270,000 MobiMoney Wallet customers in force now, and they grew withdrawals in that portfolio by 33% to ZAR 1.8 billion. This compared to the 12.5% growth in the total book, so you can see how much demanded and loved that product is. Looking forward, we're going to grow the number of points of presence for our QR codes to over 600,000, allowing customers to scan at the point of sale without any cash and make transactions at those merchants using our MobiMoney Wallet balance.
We're also gonna launch a virtual credit card linked to her MobiMoney account to a cohort of test customers, again, enabling her to make cashless transactions at merchants who take the Mastercard and Visa rails. Our insurance business continued to grow very nicely. Gross written premium from our standalone products up 27% to ZAR 148 million, and we now have 125,000 active customers. Very pleasingly, 36% of all transactions to sell funeral to customers is now done digitally, sharply up from the year before, as we really are getting into our stride in how to cross-sell funeral across our digital ecosystem. We only have a 1.5% market share, and we've proven to ourselves that we can cross-sell insurance within the FinChoice stable, where we have a 45 penetra...
% penetration of funeral products to existing lending customers. We are only 19% in the active Weaver base, which includes PayJustNow, and that represents a huge opportunity for us to sell insurance into the Weaver customer base. PayJustNow, our buy now, pay later product, continues to be the hero product in the Weaver stable. We've booked 1.3 million buy now, pay later customers, the graph on the left, very steep growth rates. Pleasingly, on the top right graph, you can see that the spend going towards repeat customers is starting to grow, despite the very high growth rates in new customers. So the jaws between the spend of repeat customers versus the spend of new customers is starting to go vertical. So 75% of the ZAR 1.5 billion in GMV last year went the way of proven existing PayJustNow customers.
Customers on the PayJustNow network are increasing the frequency and the amount with which they engage. Our best 10% of customers, for example, do about 10 sales per year and are now transacting ZAR 13,000 across the merchant network. That's up from ZAR 9,000 the year before. So increasing value, increasing engagement, increasing stickiness. Very pleased with the buy now, pay later product. If the customers are one side of the buy now, pay later coin, on the other side are our very valued merchants. We have over 2,500 actively trading merchants on the PJN network, trading at over 8,000 points of presence, split across both online and in-store point of sale devices. The merchants digitally integrate with PayJustNow and are then able to contract con- con...
They're then able to transact with that product at their points of sale, leveraging the buy now, pay later product that the customer has. Merchants are well represented across the brands you will be familiar with in the South African market, and you can see on screen those brands we signed up just last year. One of the big benefits merchants get is customers, the 1.3 million customers, visit the PayJustNow app and can see on the My Deals platform and on the Search and Discover platform, where merchants are and where they can find products, and this generates leads back into the merchant base. Last year, that was 27 million leads, up from 11 million the year before, so again, exponential growth there. Merchants also love the buy now, pay later app because customers increase the basket size by about 50%.
Why buy a pair of sneakers for ZAR 2,000 now when you can upsize to the ZAR 3,000 sneaker and pay only ZAR 1,000 now and ZAR 1,000 in the next two months? So merchants definitely see an increase in basket. They also see an increase in conversion, 'cause it's easier to check out using buy now, pay later than it is to enter your card details and do a bank validation, and so on. It's just simpler, easier, and faster, and merchants are seeing that conversion increase. Thank you. Before I hand over to Chris to take you on the retail journey, I just wanted to say thank you to the staff in the Weaver Fintech for these fantastic results, and really looking forward to how we're gonna leverage our ecosystem and take this opportunity to the next level.
Thank you, and over to you, Chris.
... Thank you very much, Sean. It's my pleasure now to share with you our retail story. So, very, very pleased to share with you where we are in our retail journey. The business has been reshaped, and we are now positioned for some really exciting growth. We've centered our kind of fundamentals around four things. Shirley and Paul have touched on one of them already. So the first one was really good quality customers, and there we've tightened our risk criteria, and dropped sales by about 20%. And we've seen some really good results from that. Going back, being the bedding experts in South Africa, so we've got a unique heritage, and we're going back to those heritage textiles, and we're combining our heritage product with really strong credit offers and strong marketing campaigns.
The third one is digital. We have an ambition to be about 30% plus in the future of digital sales. And this is combining not only end-to-end digital, but also a digital concierge service to our customers. And then the last one is our unique showrooms, and there we are accelerating the roll-out of these smaller format showrooms. They've got much higher footfall, strong cash generation, and lower credit risk. So four key fundamentals for us going forward in the next year or two. So in terms of our overall P&L, I've mentioned the sales, and there you can see our retail sales were down about 24%. Finance and other income down 7%.
We have seen some benefit of mandatory credit life and also the benefit of the higher repo rate coming through. In terms of our GP, our GP has dropped from last year by about 300 basis points, largely impacted by the product, where we've seen a rand-dollar devaluation and the decision not to pass on all of those costs to the customer. We've also had to trade out some overstock position, and you'll see that from a cash generation point of view, we've been able to reduce our stock year-over-year. And then also because of the higher infrastructure with 2 warehouses, it also had an impact on our fulfillment and warehouse cost, impacting GP.
In terms of our debtors cost, you'll see there, you can see a -30%, so down 30% year-on-year, driven by a very conscious decision to reduce our credit risk appetite. So there we've seen about ZAR 140 million reduction in rand value and debtors cost, and our provision has gone down by about 400 basis points, from 34 in the previous year to 29.4%. In terms of trading costs, down 8.4%. Really managing those costs tightly. We've went through a bit of a right sizing in the last year. That sets us up for the future. And we also had to spend a little bit more marketing, acquiring some of these lower risk customers.
So in terms of overall profitability, ZAR 52 million, but really strong cash generation of ZAR 345 million. And another aspect that we are very proud of is a 27% growth in cash sales year-on-year, showing again that our customer really wants our product. And going back to some of our heritage textiles, that strategy is working. In terms of our overall customer base, there you can see on the right-hand side, down 16.6% year-on-year, impacted on the left by lower new customers, but we have been able to improve some of our net attrition. If we look at where we are now, post-year end, we've seen some really good positive momentum in acquiring new customers and also reactivation.
And then the growth in the bottom left of our showroom percentage of overall sales that has increased, and that will increase also into the new year. In terms of GP, I've touched on this already very briefly. Our target gross margin range is 44%-48%. In the last year, we've also done some really great things for our customer. We've implemented a smart fulfillment delivery solution that improves the customer experience, and it also allows us in this year to also test a drop shipment, and that's where you can ship directly from the supplier to the customer. It also has some benefits in working capital. In terms of our stock levels, I have mentioned that we had to manage in some of our overstocked positions.
We've optimized our delivery fees, and also lower cost. Then the last thing we did was to close our Joburg distribution center. That will also have benefits into 2024, and we are very, very comfortable with that kind of target range of 44%-48% in the future. In terms of our overall book quality, it has significantly improved. In the top right hand, you can see there that our new applications, we've reduced the approval rate, and that's gone from about 65 to 53. Our average sales term has remained pretty much flat year-on-year, and our average balances. At the bottom right, you can see that the new customers, we've been giving higher limits, and that's really the shift to low-risk customers.
Very pleased that the early vintages for post our new scorecard are yielding the results, and that's evident in the bottom left. Also, in terms of our collections, we've implemented new technology and new collection strategy, and those are yielding positive results. So we are really comfortable where we are going into 2024. In terms of our showrooms, we are very, very excited, and I touched this at the beginning. So we are going for these smaller format showrooms and combining the digital experience together with the physical experience. The cash contribution in these showrooms are about 24%, versus the business at 7%, so very important for us from a cash point of view.
Our debtors cost at 13% versus the business at about 18.7%, and also our customers are coming into these showrooms to do collections, and again, improving the CX. In the last year, we also piloted Take Me Home, and this is where a customer can leave with a product immediately, and that's been very successful. So where we are at the moment, we've got about 22 showrooms at the end of last year. We want to increase that to 36, and we want to combine the digital experience with the physical experience. So also in showrooms, things that we will be working on and in progress at the moment are things like the digital catalog in store, WhatsApp orders, for both buying and self-service.
Buy now, pay later is getting some really good traction, and then also roaming tablets. So very excited about the future. The business has been set up at a certain scale that we can take advantage, going back to our heritage and combining all our efforts around credit, marketing, and getting the product out to the customer. So very exciting where we are, and really privileged to be in the position that we are. Thank you very much. I'm now gonna hand back to Shirley.
Thanks, Chris. Before I wrap up, just wanted to take the opportunity to thank all our team sitting in the three different businesses. I think everyone's had a great year, so thanks, thanks to you, and equally, thanks to our board for all of their support. Just to wrap up, I think the most important thing for me is around this ecosystem concept that we... that we've introduced. Just to be clear, this is a digital ecosystem. I know in the past we've had contact centers, but FinChoice and PayJustNow have a very high focus on digital. 95% of their transactions are digital. And so when we talk about ecosystem, it's a digital ecosystem. We believe that this strategy is gonna enhance our profits over the next couple of years.
So just to close, first of all, we, you know, we're very confident in our tech rollout. We're very clear of the products that we're launching during the course of this year and how they're going to enhance the ecosystem. We've proved out our ability to cross-sell the products and our skills around cross-selling into our customer base, and you can see how our customer base has grown over the last two years, and we believe this growth is gonna continue to occur with our customers. We're very focused on our third leg of strategy, around increasing our fee income through our product diversification. Again, this has got a digital push. And then finally, as Chris said, we're really excited to see the retail business gaining momentum and getting back into growth and focusing on its cash generation.
We've got great momentum that we've opened the 2024 year with, and we're continuing to see our growth in line with our expectations. So, you know, I'm really pleased to see that all of our businesses are trading well, and we're very exciting about our prospects for the 2024 year. So over to your questions, and again, thank you for your time. We're gonna move on to some questions now. Thanks to everyone. As I said earlier, please put your questions on the left-hand side, and we will address them. So, just on the first question, this is a question on cash collection. We've had strong cash collection. Where are your differences lying? I think, Paul, maybe you can address this, or Sean.
Thanks, Shirley. I will speak to this. So just to remind everyone that the group's credit books are short term in nature. And given the high proportion of disbursements and GMV extended to existing customers, that ensures the quality of our collections. Also, to remind everyone of how digital the Weaver collections are. So, yeah, we're very pleased with how these books continue to yield. I'd also like to remind everyone of our ability to manage our disbursements level and to take that in where there's higher risk and how much that impacts our cash generation. So, yeah, very pleased with the yield of the books.
Thanks, Paul. Chris, a question for yourself: the bricks-and-mortar strategy seems to have compelling benefits. Is this a departure from the digital strategy, and how big a shift are you planning on making?
Thanks, thanks, Shirley, for the, for the question. So, earlier in the presentation, I spoke about our digital aspirations, as one of the four key pillars of our future growth. Our ambition is still to have 30% plus in that space. And we want to combine voice together with the digital experience. So, certainly not, you know, continuing on the digital space, and growing that. And then in the showrooms, it's actually combining the physical experience, so where a customer can engage with our brand, the product, but also combine some of those digital experience into the showroom. We see them as complementary, and certainly we still have very strong ambitions to continue our growth in the digital space.
Thanks, Chris. Sean, I think a question for you. There does appear to be opportunity in the ecosystem. However, what have you seen in practice over the last year?
Thank you, Shirley. Yeah, so in one of my earlier slides, you saw the sort of step change in our cross-selling between the brands of FinChoice and PayJustNow. As we've learned how to integrate our systems and where best to position offers to customers. So seeing really nice traction in terms of exhibiting bespoke, personalized offers to customers that have been pre-approved, and we're doing this primarily with our lending business, but also testing within our insurance business. And we're seeing customers coming to the PayJustNow Real Estate, seeing our credit offers, and then clicking through and taking them all within the digital ecosystem.
That's obviously part of our strategy, is to get more and more touch points that are served up personalized to customers to cross-sell the Weaver products to customers and try and maximize the proportion of our base that has two or more of our products. 'Cause as you can recall from the presentation, the revenue per user jumps materially when that same customer has more than one product.
Thanks, Sean. I think another question for yourself. So have there been improvements in revenue diversification? Are you planning on launching further verticals, and where do you see this fee diversification going to?
Yeah, thank you. I mean, we currently have a lending vertical, an insurance vertical, and a payments vertical. And our growth aspirations are to try and focus on our fee-generating side of the business. So in the insurance side, we have two strategies. One is to grow the number of products within the insurance stable. So we currently have a personal accident product and a funeral product, both very well-liked and understood products in the market, and we're looking to grow the life portfolio a bit more. And we're also looking to add short-term products, typically products that might augment purchases made in the PayJustNow world, where a customer's basket of goods might link nicely to a short-term coverage product. That's the one strategy on insurance.
The other is we have a lot of opportunity to penetrate the Weaver database with more of our existing product by just getting better, as I said earlier, on cross-selling within our ecosystem. So that's the insurance vertical. Then on the payments vertical, we have the buy now, pay later product, which customers are loving, and we're going to be augmenting that with the ability for customers to pay over longer term, so more retail credit at the point of sale. So paying off over 6, 12, 24 months. And that, that's another form of diversification, and we see a lot of demand from customers for that.
And we're also in the exploratory stages now at looking at a club program to weave together all of our three verticals, to engender another revenue stream and to pull customers into our universe with a club-based product. Thank you, Shirley.
Thanks, Sean. Then just broadly, Paul, I think this is a question for yourself. There've been some improvements in your ROCE and ROE. What are your medium-term targets for those?
Thanks, Shirley. Yeah, we're pleased with our ROCE improving to about 15% this year. We're targeting above... Sorry, improving to 11%. We're targeting above fifteen percent, and we're confident with the changes that have been made in retail, and Weaver's driving cross-sell and higher fees generation. We're, we're confident to get there during the 2025 year.
Thanks, Paul. A question: What is the actual collection rate, i.e., expected collection versus actual collections for the year for Weaver and retail? Can you talk about PJN credit quality? Two questions. Sean, I think you can take both of those.
Sure, I'll talk to the three different brands within the group. So the HomeChoice retail business, you would have seen when Chris presented that they launched a new scorecard over the course of last year and have really tightened on their credit. Collection rates on customers post that scorecard have improved year on year. In the PayJustNow business, they launched a bespoke scorecard where they augment the normal credit bureau data with their own data on the behavior of customers and other alternative data to really split risk more nicely.
And they've really had a good year in terms of reducing their bad debt, and in fact, have a lot of opportunity to extend further credit to their existing customers, which they've started doing at the back end of last year. So very happy with the collections rates in that business. And then in the FinChoice business, we did see a decline in our debit order collections rates by about 60-80 basis points, which is why we slowed down our disbursement growth to 12.5% off of previously last year, 29%. We purposely slowed down our growth and opened up more affordability buffers for our consumers, out of a concern that the market was getting constrained from the volatility standpoint.
So we're busy at the moment looking to push more of our demand to existing customers and correct that situation. But I'm very happy with our collections rates. They remain high. We don't disclose the percentages, but I'm very pleased with how we're collecting, and you can see the results in the actual cash we've yielded out the books, as Paul alluded to earlier.
Thanks, Sean. And then the second question was, can you talk about, PJN credit quality?
Yeah. So the credit quality is in extremely good position with the advent of their new bespoke scorecard. When they introduced it, acceptance rates declined a bit, but those have improved now in the latter quarter of the year. And what's really great about that new scorecard is being able to find in the existing base of repurchasing customers, those customers that deserve higher limits and can also manage the buy now, pay later product on a concurrency basis. So within their limit, being able to buy multiple times, and that's pushing up the demand to the existing base more. They perform much better, and overall, their credit risk has never been better.
Thanks.
Very pleased with that scorecard and how it's resulting in higher trade, higher merchant throughput, and better credit risk.
Thanks. Thanks, Sean. Craig, a question for you: Does PJN have the same customer base, or does it attract a more affluent customer than Weba?
So thanks, Shirley. We're seeing, in the PJN base, that as we bring on merchants, that facilitate the splitting of products for the, the higher affluent customer, that we're actually seeing an acceleration of customers in the higher, financial affluence segmentation. And what we're realizing is that it makes sense for almost anybody to split at a certain price point. So for some people, it might be a set of new tires for their car. For another person, it might be a new dress for an interview. And so, yes, we are seeing an acceleration towards, a better quality customer and a higher financial affluence segment, segmentation.
Thanks, Craig. Another question for you: How do you see the new Search and Discover affecting the PJN business?
Thanks, Shirley. As per the Sean mentioned in the presentation, we've delivered 27 million leads in the last year, 11 million on the previous year. And we see that accelerating and driving traffic back to our merchants is a key strategy for our engagement with our merchant partners. And assisting our customers to be able to find products and people who stock certain products and making that an easier journey for them is something that we are focusing quite aggressively in this year. And we believe that that's gonna drive significant business back to our partners.
Great. Thanks, Craig. I think that's gonna be all we have time for. So once again, thank you all for attending and your interest in the business, and thanks to our management team and our broader team. Yeah, we, we're excited for the year and look forward to our, our 2024 year. Thanks, everyone.