Good morning, everyone. Morning. Good to see all of us here, and we want to thank God for today. We want to kick off our Full Year 2024 Financial Results Announcement, but allow me to kindly invite Rev. Evans to kick us off with a word of prayer. Rev. Evans, Karibu.
Thank you very much. Good morning. Good morning. God is good and all the time. Shall we pray? Our heavenly Father, in the name of Jesus, we want to thank you so much for the gift of life and health. Thank you for this day that you have made, that we may come, Lord, and receive our results for the year 2024. We want to thank you, Lord, for the successes. We thank you, Lord, for every opportunity you gave us. Thank you even for what we missed. As we come, Lord, we want to pray for your blessings. We pray for your covering. We want to commit this meeting before your holy presence. We thank you for all of us who are here and even those that are following us. The Lord, you shall join us together in one spirit. We pray for renewed strength.
The Lord, at the end of it all, may your name be glorified. Start with us, go with us to the very end. For this we pray through Christ our Lord.
Let's appreciate Rev. Evans. Thank you. I want to kindly request us, before we invite our Group CEO and MD, Dr. James Mwangi, to take us through the results, to be upstanding for the Equity Anthem.
Must not be feared in every hearing hour for the proud and the modest partners coming together above us all. Hey, everyone that just rolling by, I know forever you are our member. We are united by every teaching and every. Are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. I know forever you are our member. We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. Shall we proceed for the holy heaven's door? Moving together in our every action for giving interest to the following. Beauty and having change for prosperity. I know forever you are our member. We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. I know forever you are our member.
We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. Preaching of people, follow other ones. I receive our example from every teaching of their products within every mind. That's where the preaching brings us in truth. I know forever you are our member. We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. I know forever you are our member. We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. I request with all our eyes to not be held up by every teaching. Coming together every heavy cruise, our soul rescue for every march. I know forever you are our member.
We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light. I know forever you are our member. We are united by every teaching and every teaching are with me, dear partners, just rolling with all the light.
Thank you very much, Alex. And a very warm welcome to the Father State, shareholders, and investors attending this morning's investors' briefing for the year that first December 2004. As you might be aware, we have taken a little bit of time to come to the investors and shareholders with this briefing because we really needed to seek to understand the results so that we could help shareholders, investors, analysts, and media understand the context and the results we're about to present. We know our investors have taken a long-term view. They're investing in an asset. So it's not about numbers. It's understanding their investment. That's the most important thing. Today, I've been very selective. I will speak to a few slides that will help investors appreciate their investment, understand their investment, where we are, and the context within which the results are coming out.
You can't understand your position without understanding where you are coming from. We have put this into perspective. We will add by looking where are we going so that it's the past, the present, and the future. We will look to contextualize so that investors can have a better grip, a better understanding. We all know investors don't invest in the past. They invest into the future. That's what investments are all about. It's the cash flow, it's the return, it's the growth of the investment. Kendra joined me as we go. That is our history. As you can see, a very smooth curve. We grew from 2005, very gentle. Come 2020, we start seeing significant lack of smoothness. It's not as really as smooth as it was for, and that is customer deposits.
We need to look and pay a little bit of attention from 2023, 2024, a huge stagnation. Is that a stagnation? Maybe not from a customer's point of view. That might be the issue of the reporting currency. You'll see KES 160 to KES 130. And that's significantly reflected or impacts the reporting numbers. We'll guide you what the actual number would be in a constant currency. If you look at the next slide on loans, again, look at the same. One would wonder, what is happening in the last two years, 2023, 2024? We've seen, and again, we have just said, and we'll see later, that we have a mix of currencies, a basket of currencies. If the reporting currency strengthens beyond that, we'll be seen.
One would think there is a decline in loan book, but it's not a decline in loan book. It's because of change in currency vis-à-vis the currencies of the subsidiaries. The reporting currency is Kenya shillings. More than 50% of the loan book is not in Kenya shillings. When the Kenya shillings appreciate with that level from 160, you'll see. If you look, that is the loan portfolio. If you go to the next slide, you look at total assets, you see the same. That is the reporting needs to be some mathematical currency impact that we thought we could be able to explain. The next slide, Alex, as you can see, profitability is from 2021, seems to be stagnating. If you go to the next slide, if you look at shareholders' funds, there we seem to be in control.
The curve is still as smooth as it has always been because that's something within our control. The last might, so for the first time, we see Equity, which has maintained a tenfold growth from 1991 all the way to 2016 or thereabouts, starts not to have uniform. You see total funding remains almost constant. Loan book remains constant. Total assets reflect decline. That is what we thought we could be able to profitability stays constant. Again, we ask ourselves, what does this reflect? We'll see also in our ability to focus and the impact on focusing. If we go to the next slide, you'll see this is the cause of what we are seeing. Kenya, the host of our head office, has been going through very significant shocks since 2016.
Look at the shocks we are dealing with in 2025 and 2020, sorry, 2024 and 2023. We are dealing with the interest capping shock from 2016. It was initially parliamentary legal capping. Then it became an administrative capping. It was resolved with a compressed risk-based pricing that the market is not able to understand. It is too complex for the market, and I am sure. Of course, COVID, the health pandemic ended at the end of 2022, but its impact is still with us. The disruption, the breakdown. You could see if you add that, then add the Russia-Ukraine conflict and its impact on energy and food inflation, the Israel-Gaza-Palestine conflict, the global economic shocks, a mix of all those interest rates, inflation, currency volatility or exchanges, the escalated geopolitics that has manifested itself now into trade wars. We thought it to stabilize the technology.
I'm sure you know the war of technology, who controls technology. Now it has gone beyond technology to trade. Call it trade tariffs, whichever name you call. These are the shocks, and we have not had a perfect storm where you have simultaneously about six shocks playing at the same time. That is what is causing that it's affecting the bank, and it's not able to smoothen its performance because if it's one shock, like we have seen, it doesn't mean before 2016, there were no shocks. In 2007, 2008, we had local shocks of the conflict, post-election conflict. We had the global financial crisis. You were dealing with one or two shocks. The bank has the capability to manage those shocks. The volatility in the marketplace with these kinds of shocks then makes it significantly difficult to predict.
Most of these shocks will then work counter each other. You are in a very volatile environment. It is what you could, a pilot would say, "I'm flying through." Yes, Josh? Exactly. It is headwind. It is really turbulent. Some economists would say, "We are navigating the eye of a storm." This is when you then see the question here is then differentiated capability in decision-making. It is very difficult for anybody now to manage the external environment. What do you do as management? You revert inward. You have control of the internal environment. If the external environment is difficult, the pilot will always say, "Then I'll put on not only the outdoor equipment, but I'll combine that with the human capability to navigate the eye of a storm." That is how you will find the pilot tells you, "Yeah, Kendra, back on your belt.
We are going through turbulence. The moment the world is going through a very difficult turbulence, and we have seen what is causing the turbulence. The issue is the impact we have seen in our performance is because of this turbulence. Turbulence does not last. However, we have recognized we thought this turbulence will end, but shock is building after shock. What we have come to conclude is that the VUCA environment is becoming a permanent state. We must know how to manage business in a volatile environment, in a very, very volatile environment. Essentially, the environment is a pilot cannot change the weather on the route they are passing through. They can ensure their plane has the capacity and the resilience.
If you have heard the word repeated, the resilience, the Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan, it's all about how do we work inwardly to ensure Equity Group, your investment, is resilient enough to be able to perform in a turbulent environment. That leads us with the lessons of the last 10 years of significant turbulence. We decided here, we can't remove the threats, but we can remove the weaknesses within the organization that address, exploit, and make it difficult for organizations. What we have been doing is thinking inwardly, removing weaknesses, strengthening our strengths, or building heavily on our strengths so that whatever green shoots are in the challenging environment, we can see them, we can be able to extract and exploit them. Broadly, that's where we are. If we move to the next slide, two slides more, Alex. Yeah.
Broadly, what we have said is, why don't we transform Equity Group? We may not transform the environment, but we can transform Equity to make it very resilient to operate in a turbulent environment. Broadly, the first thing is to look at your strategy. The strategy of Equity has focused only on building resilience. That is why it's the Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan. The second aspect, other than resilience, is whatever impact turbulence has had, can we ensure the organization fully recovers? We have said, let's not focus on Kenya, let's look at Africa. That's what pilots do. Pilots change routes. When the normal route has turbulence, they don't fly to an eye of a storm. They take a different route.
I'm sure the last four years, you have heard of our strategy of saying banking is affected differently from insurance. Can we change the mix of our business so that if it's banking that is being affected, then insurance will keep on rewarding shareholders? Can we reduce the sovereign risk? Countries are affected differently. Like in our region, Kenya is the most integrated globally. Essentially, it has the biggest transmission effect into business. We have focused a lot on the strategy of the group led by Brent. Brent has now a team of seven that lead the focus on strategy. Maybe I will ask the team in the strategy office to be upstanding. Yeah. Very good. Oscar, I thought you were in strategy. Very good. I thought Vicki were in strategy. People don't know themselves. It looks like.
Also the meeting is John and who else? And Charlie Wilson. Where? That is the team that we have entrusted and said, "How do you deal with this?" Those who know Oscar joined us from being the chief executive of Nairobi International Financial Centre. Before Nairobi International Financial Centre, he was the counsel to Qatar International Financial Centre for nine years. Before that, he was in London Financial Center for sixteen years. I said, "How do you deal in turbulent markets?" You have seen this for, if we take 16, plus nine, plus five. Oh gosh, you have worked that long. Thirty years. Thirty years of operating in the market. The other one is the former chief executive of Image Registrars, Vicki. I said, "Vicki, look at it." Oscar brings international market experience, Qatar, and London. We have our markets here.
Those who may not know, Image Registrars is the largest governance and registry helping all the research companies in the Nairobi Stock E xchange and comprise. We said, "Work together so it's global and local." We went to economics. This is about economics, understanding economy. We picked Charlie who? Brent. Robertson. Charlie Robertson is the emerging market's most renowned economist. He's the author of the book, The Traveling Economist. You can Google The Traveling Economist. He'll give you his profile. I bet I'm not wrong that he's rated the best economist in emerging markets. When you talk about emerging markets, I want to remind you China is an emerging market. That's the caliber.
We then matched in with our own Welle, one of the most renowned advisors to the China government, said, "We must predict how the government." It is truly creating a strong strategic team that's equal to the task of significant turbulence. We got John on capital allocation from Helios. Previously, Bakris Capital in London said, "How do capital allocation work?" and worked very closely. Of course, we got maybe one of the most renowned commercial lawyers in the market. You can lay your head to Gertrude. I said, "This is legal. Let's do the legal." David Bagenda, former strategy director of Diageo, finance and strategy director for Diageo. For how many years? Five years. Before, why did we go to Diageo? Before Diageo, he was in BAT because we needed to understand the consumer mindset. It's turbulence, and personally it affects the consumer.
There is nobody who understands consumer than FMCG. That is why we said, "Why don't you come and be the strategy execution director?" That team is the one we have entrusted. Those who were in the bank four years ago when turbulence started can see. If you were in the bank four years ago, only Brent would see. All the others are an issue. Gertrude, less than two years. Almost two years. Vicki, five months. Oscar, seven months. Three months. Where? Three months. Charlie, three months. It is a new team built for purpose, fit for purpose. Essentially, you could see how strategy has been thought and how much we have invested in strategy. They are in charge of organizational culture, the business model, and the brassiered seat colleagues. The second one is governance. It does not matter how much you deal with issues.
If you don't have the right governance, things will go wrong. You strengthen. I'm glad that our Chairman, Professor Macharia, is with us. Professor, maybe you could start. We have been humbled. When I did this, the Chairman also decided to enhance and strengthen the bench of the board. Maybe today I would say, and we'll talk about them another day, we might have the best board anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world that has been brought to help us, highly experienced, highly, highly experienced people who could help us cope with this. One of the most celebrated board members is the former chair of Qatar Group in India and previously the vice chair of IFC, the private sector arm of the world.
Can we understand economics? The chairman has really strengthened his board to be able to, or boards, I think it's all boards, to have the capacity, the competence to guide such assembly of CEOs in the strategy to question and to create tension between management and the board so that you don't have. Governance, and then we have created the position of governance in management. That is what Victoria is focused on. Group Director of Governance, Strategic HR, and who else? And Chief of Staff. It was aligning people to really get everything aligned for people. When we have seen she's in charge of regulators with chief. That has really been done. Of course, the people, then we have asked ourselves, what would make people stick with Equity? What would make Equity attract the best people on earth?
Now that it has attracted them, how will Equity keep them? It is a question of looking after your people. Give them the best medical scheme that the world can provide, the best pension scheme. I want to say we are now up to 20% of salary as a pension. So that in old age, you live the same quality of life as when you were working because you are saving 20%. Medical comprehensive, minimum KES 2 million cover. We are glad that the shareholders around us to benefit from 5% of the entire bank group to create an employee share ownership scheme. You cannot attract that kind of people. You cannot retain high-quality staff without a very good performance reward and compensation scheme.
In the unlikely event, there is a challenge that [IF] covers for staff of up to 80 years gross salary so that it could take care of families that would be left behind. Bring certainty in the employees so that the only thing you can count on during difficult times is people. Get the right people who can make differentiated decisions and are passionate and enthusiastic. It doesn't matter how good people are. If they are not happy, the outcomes are not good. People can only be enthusiastic and passionate because they are happy. Nothing has ever been achieved without passion. That is really what we have focused on. There the game is the customer. We deliver to the customer through systems and processes. I feel very, very proud with what Equity has achieved.
It's unfortunate the entire team of IT, which is being headed by our Executive Director and Chief Operating Officer, is in India, a team of 24. It has really ensured we have the best systems on earth. They have done the core systems or infrastructure. That is complete. Processing capability has been done. Now they are looking at processes. How do you re-engineer processes so that they deliver to the customer? They have built a product house that has developed the right products. I'm sure all of you could witness that instability of our systems is something of the past. We are very excited. We will see our transactions, despite the challenge, our transactions last year went up by 67% because the systems are stable. Customers have come back. They are trading. Those who had become multi-banked have come back.
They have been focused on the bank because the systems are capable. They are reliable and dependable and are accessible. Broadly, that is what we are focused on. We are focused on this because we are living in uncertain times. We can't make uncertain times certain. Certainly, we can prepare ourselves for uncertain times. Everything has been made fit for that purpose of living uncertain times. It's not easy to navigate an organization when you have five shocks, six shocks simultaneously. Alex, play back that thread of shocks. This is what we are dealing with, an environment, what you could call a perfect storm. The only thing we can do is look at how do we have strong capabilities within the organization that differentiates us. How can we make differentiated decisions? We need differentiated decisions. That is the quality of management.
How can you give management the right tools? That is IT, the systems and processes must be right. How do you get the staff to be committed to battle in turbulence without losing faith or confidence? By looking after them, investing in them. This is a time that you really focus on investing on your staff to make sure that they can remain loyal, they can remain committed, they can be enthusiastic, and they can be great champions of winning the battle. We are in a battlefield, battlefield with turbulence. That is what it is. Having done that, we ask ourselves, but also, does the environment have opportunities? Alex, the next slide. We look at East Africa. We said, there is turbulence, but you pick what you see.
We have chosen, we have built enough resilience, we have built enough capability to align a turbulence. We have focused on opportunities. Every crowd has a silver lining. Our silver lining, which holds the future for this bank, is that we are lucky to be in the fastest growing region in Africa. When we look at that growth, it's not a season of growth. It's that they're pinned by fundamentals that guarantee long-term sustained high growth. Whether it's DRC, whether it's Kenya, whether it's Tanzania, whether it's Uganda, they are growing on the strength of fundamentals. We can predict that, and we believe that Eastern Central Africa is the new Southeast Asia. Those who know Southeast Asia, the Singapores, the Taiwans, Hong Kongs, they sustained growth for nearly 30 years.
We believe that's the beginning of our 30 years of very, very rapid growth because it's really the fundamental. You can see how on average East Africa is doing compared to all other parts of the world. It's almost growing five times faster than Europe. It's growing three times as fast as the United States of America. What will that growth do? It will attract global capital and global investment. We believe that will play on the platforms of Equity because the strategy we took of diversifying in the region, we acted on it and became systemic in the entire region. If we want a regional bank, then there is only one Equity, as we shall see. If we move to the next slide, we look at monetary policy. We are seeing stable inflation for most of our economies.
Yes, there's turbulence out there, but back home, the turbulence is not significant. We're not dealing with domestic issues. We are dealing with international issues. You could manage the cord that links the local with the there is only one vertical that you need to really focus on. When you look at the inflation outlooks, it looks like it will be fairly managed. There is nowhere inflation is out of range. That gives us really confidence. If we go to the next slide, Alex, we look at the outlook. Kenya, very promising. Tanzania, very promising. Uganda, very promising. Same as Rwanda and DRC. There will be internal challenges. You can talk about the Great Lakes conflict. That conflict has been there for 30 years. It's only we are hearing it more because it's active. The active volcanoes have been with us every 20 years.
They erupt, but life continues after they have set root. That's confidence. That's the outlook we have to give a future. Broadly, when we look at the region, we are happy that Kenya, despite not being the fastest growing economy, still anchors the financial market stability. That gives us confidence that our headquarters, our reporting currency, is of the strongest economy in the region, the most stable, because reporting, as we saw, is a big issue. When you look at upside opportunity, this is the most significant slide. You'll see if you take these data that today, East African region this year is growing at 8.75% when the world is growing at 2.8%, when Europe is growing at 1.7%. That's the energy that we talked about. We can talk about debt to GDP. We believe it's still manageable. The monetary policy rate, the inflation.
This is the summary of the economy. We are saying the resilience we have built could enable. Lastly, we see East Africa as the heart of the driving ecosystem of the African Continental Free Trade Area. It is the most integrated region in trade. That is the opportunity. We are not strengthening the organization purely for capability. We are strengthening the organization for the opportunity, the East African region. What it means is it will not just be a cost. We know we have front-row debt management. When all these chief executives come in one year, of course, you'll see a significant jump in cost. For sure, within three years, we have generated an enormous volume of business because the opportunity is strong that the unit cost of staff will be negligible. Alex, you can move on.
Let's go to the strategies that we have been, and let's measure the health of the organization. Our priority strategy has been regional diversification of the banking business. As you can see, we are very, very excited that when you look at the region from a perspective of deposits, 48% of our deposits are outside the region. Loans, 48% of our loans are outside Kenya. Our assets, 49% of our assets are outside Kenya. Look at revenue. We do not do assets for the sake of assets. We do not give loans for the sake of revenue. Look at revenue. The region is outperforming Kenya. 54% of our revenue is from the region. When you look at profit before provisions, 55% is from the region. Profit before tax, 54%. We feel very confident that we have de-risked the sovereign risk of head office.
This is when you know you are successful, when the regional subsidiaries become bigger than your parent company. That's really then when you say, wow, the strategy of expansion is really, really working. We take significant pride as to how that has happened. That ensures that diversification helps us to manage the economic shocks because different countries, as we saw, have different economic parameters. You can compensate. We have seen Kenya went through huge challenges. DRC jumped in to really support the organization. We can see maybe shareholders, you can look at return on average equity. The babies have a better return on equity than the parents. That's when you then realize you are doing better when your children go to a higher grade than yourself. That's when you say you are successful and you have a legacy.
We are excited that even return on assets, the region has 2.7% when Kenya is at 2.4%. It then demonstrates where work needs to be done. If we look at the next, how do we see it? Because sometimes you can see the numbers and miss the big picture. The big picture is that we are number two in Kenya, number two in DRC, number two in Rwanda. Those are the most significant markets. The two largest markets, Kenya and DRC, the central market. As you can see, Uganda, we're number five and not too far from number three and four. South Sudan, we're number four, not far from number three. Essentially, we can generalize, George, and say we are systemic because we are in the top four position in each of the markets we operate in except one.
That's when you then say your strategy works, not in your domestic market, in the foreign market. The business model is working, it's accepted, and you also say the brand is performing across markets. That is a very good position to be as an organization. I feel very, very proud of what our management has been able to do. We said banking is not enough. Banking behaves differently from insurance. Let's diversify from, yes, we go regional, but we also diversify our offering of products. We've decided to go into insurance. As you can see, we saw the graph of the banking. The last four years have been significantly difficult. Look at what is happening in insurance. Look at the policies. We now have issued 14 million policies in three years.
Angela, that is about how many times the number of policies issued by the other players. 2.4 times more policies than the entire industry. You say, it's the brand. Remember I said it's the brand, it's the Equity brand. It performs well in banking, it performs well. You can see unique customers, 6 million unique policyholders. What does it mean? Every policyholder is having at least an average of two policies, at least two policies. We are very happy that the consumption can lead us to cross-selling. Insurance, we look. We ask ourselves, what is the big picture? On the other side, look at life industry. In the third year, you are number four, largest insurance in the industry and credit. You can see it's neck to neck with that position in three years. Actually, we finished three years this quarter.
We were still two years and nine months when we printed this account. We are finishing three years this quarter. You can see the position. We are number one in return on equity, number four in profitability, number seven in total assets. How many insurance companies are there in the industry, Angela? 64. You are not number one out of two. You are number one out of 64. Sometimes that is why the context is very important. We are very, very happy that the brand is performing wherever it is. The reputation of the brand is very, very strong. We are happy with insurance. Banking is doing well. Insurance holds the promise of the future. You look at technology and how we are performing with this technology. Of course, the head of COVID reflected as right salad people going back to the old ways.
During COVID, we were doing 89% of all our transactions. We are digital, but we came down to 89%. We have started going back. We are now up to, sorry, we came to 85%. We are now roughly 86%. We'd like to see more digital. We saw our customers going back to agents. It looks like they are now getting back that maybe online business is a better way. Again, the technology group has really supported us. The channels. We talk about the product house. Leader, it's not just product, but the channels. Look at the performance of the channels. What Leader has drilled us is that we have moved from brick and mortar. We have moved from the variable cost channels to self-service channels. What self-service means is that they are no cost to us.
It's a customer serving themselves on their own devices. That's no cost. As you can see, those are the dominant channels. That's what the previous slide, Alex, I look at the digital channel, our self-service agency is third party. The ATMs and branches is brick and mortar. Now you can see how the shape so that you can interpret the channels. The dominant channels are now the self-service business. We are increasingly becoming an online banking business. What does it mean? We're able to provide banking 24 hours wherever you are, whatever time. We have compressed distance. We have compressed geography to allow customers the freedom. When we look at the non-banking, what is the contribution of the non-banking? As we can see, we take confidence that most of the numbers are showing an upward, whether it's profit before provisions.
If we look at profit before tax, yes, it's small, but the direction is right. That the insurance, it's not just growing, but it's growing faster in profitability than the banking industry. That's why its ratio of contribution is growing. We now, this year, have activated the general insurance. This is just life insurance. General insurance and health insurance now will come and play. We assume even at the beginning, each of them takes three. It means 10% of our business will be in the insurance industry by next year. Yes, SIS is a systemic regional bank in the top four positions in five markets in the fastest growing region in the world. I have paused so that we be on the same page with what I've said. That's a very good statement for an investor.
We then have seen, and then the last is our two agents, the social agent and the sustainability agent. We are very, very excited. One number that you may want to take that speaks very, very significantly is the contribution to women and youth in providing livelihoods, opportunities for them to be in business, 2.5 million customers. The second one you may not want to miss is the last quadrant. Look at Equity Afia. 3.3 million patients in a period of four years of startup. You may also want to see the Equity Afia clinics are now 132 in four years. Since the head of the pilots, and we're very, very excited about Dr. Joan. Dr. Joan can answer all the questions about the social agent, the banking agent, Moses, insurance, Angela, and Brent will talk about strategy.
You now know who to direct the questions to so that you really can get to the depth of it. What is the story? The story is we have built resilience. We have built leadership that is differentiated. We have built governance that is really strong. Despite that hard work, how do the numbers look like? Alex, if we go to the numbers, this is our numbers, the balance sheet. You can see the growth between 2024 and 2023. As we said, one of the biggest issues was the strengthening of the Kenya shillings from KES 160 to KES 130. It has significant impact on our numbers because every currency is being translated into Kenya shillings. While on the face of the balance sheet, it shows like we did not grow, that we are marketing at KES 1.8 trillion.
If it was like for like, that the currency was constant at KES 160, we could have grown from KES 1.8 trillion to KES 2.1 trillion. That's an 18% growth. The region is growing heavily and significantly, very, very fast, as we said. When it looks at deposits, again, like for like, in terms of constant currency, we have grown at 23%. Remember, 40% of our balance sheet is in dollars. The dollars have been translated at KES 130 instead of KES 160. We could see the impact. The health of a bank is intermediation. You look at both the customer's trust and confidence, at 23%, we're happy. Look at shareholders. Again, very strong capital buffers. The shareholders' wealth is growing faster than the balance sheet, almost two times as fast as the balance sheet on constant currencies.
If you look at the other item that you may want to look at is liquidity. Liquidity is very well. If you look at cash and cash equivalent, as we turn the corner, we're very well positioned to do business. This is what one of the biggest responsibilities we had was to structure or to restructure the balance sheet from the turbulence. How do you have your balance sheet? Turbulence doesn't last. They say seasons come and go. We believe they will go, but how well will we be positioned? As you can see, the two biggest buffers, or let's extend them to three, the three biggest buffers is capital. How well are you seated with the ultimate protection of a business? Capital. How well are you in liquidity for agility, for quick turnaround when opportunities, for ability to take opportunities?
Look at a combination of cash and government securities that are tradable. That's where the wealth of the bank. So that's liquidity. Kenya has almost a liquidity of 82%. The whole bank has a liquidity of 57%. It's really, and we are hoping these opportunities will unlock. We're very well capitalized to grow the business. We shall also see when it comes to net loans, we stitch up provisions to ensure that the quality. I take pride that we might have the best coverage in terms of provisions at 71% coverage so that you don't curry or be lagged behind because of need for provisions. We have taken whatever provisions we need at cash basis at 71%, ignoring the securities. If we look at P&L, that is of great we all knew we were struggling with interest income. Interest expense was growing faster than interest income.
Of course, our net interest income, it's where we struggled. It's more at the top line. Non-fathered income, much better. Total income, six. Again, as we said, loan loss provisions to enhance the quality of our assets up 43. You don't fail to provide. You tell the shareholders the truth. These are difficult times. We all know NPLs in Kenya are around 16% as an industry. We are glad that we are two off when the industry is at 16%. If you look, we start out as the bank that has made the biggest provisions relative to the balance sheet. We've now managed to defy the huge staff complement we have acquired. We have now stabilized our costs of staff, meaning that most of the staff are just around here. The two numbers are now almost equal and stable. Profit before tax, we go up.
Maybe I should have emphasized that this result, when we saw revenue is straight, is growing at 6%, we then said, what do we have control over? We have control over expenses. As a result, you can see we constrained our cost at growth of only 2%. That gives us a 17% increase of profit before tax and 12% after tax. Very confident about the future. As you can see, we increased dividend from KES 4 to KES 4.25. The capital is big. We do not need leader. We need to start. These are difficult times. It is not only difficult to organization, but also to shareholders. How much do you invest in shareholders? You do not just look after staff. You also look at your shareholders. There are many stakeholders you need to balance relationships on.
The dividend payout becomes a record dividend of KES 16 billion. We hope this will not only go to the shareholders, but will be felt at the economy level. Dividend yield per is at 8.50%. The KES 4.25 is of a share of KES 0.50. That is the value of an Equity share. The par value is not KES 5, like most of the shares we compare with. Ours is at KES 0.50. That is the par value. That is really the money we get from a shareholder as the capital. For KES 0.50, you are giving KES 4.25 in a year. I hope shareholders can see how the yield for your plant is. Going forward, what really we focus on is the ratios. How are the ratios?
As you can see, the ratios tell us the health of the organization. Analyst, this is your page. PAR, as we can see, we have come down to 12.2%. Coverage, we are at 71%. Higher than last year, it was 67%. Despite improvement in quality of loan book, we have increased. Loan-to-deposit ratio, the lowest we have seen in many years, below 60%. Core capital at 17% and 19%. When you look at core capital and total weighted lease capital, 14% and 19%, 8% and 17%, 10% and 17%, it shows how capitalized we are. That is why we are willing to pay out dividend generally to the shareholders. As we said, look at liquidity at 57%. Alex, if you go two slides back, two slides back, we then are confident. Sorry, one slide for them.
We increased our profit from KES 43.7 billion to KES 48.8 billion. That's after tax. Before tax, we increased our profit from KES 51.9 billion to KES 60.7 billion. We are very, very confident. How do we look at the past? Alex, if we can go to the forecast. The first one is to look at what had we given as a guidance. We were very optimistic that we could grow loans at between 2% and 5%. We missed the target. Our loans shrank instead of growing. We were optimistic we would grow our deposits between 7.5%, but to 7%, we only grew by 3%. This is what we are talking about. We are operating in a very turbulent environment. If you look at those numbers, particularly deposits, we might be the best in the industry. Everybody else has shrank in deposits.
It's difficult times, but we have been very, very resilient. As I said, this picture is because of the structure of, and in summary, so that people can understand how our balance sheet was. Interest cutting, the shock, made us unable to lend to unsecured borrowers. What did we do? We bought into government stock at 10, and then the cost went all the way to 18, but your interest on treasury bills remains at 10. We bought Eurobond at 7 interest rates, so cost went to 12. You are getting negative. The good thing, we have seen significant reversal. The central bank rate is where it was before the peak, so that is normalized, and you see a normalized performance when we report the first quarter.
That explains why, despite missing the targets for last year, because of simultaneous shocks, which we couldn't be able to really predict when they could hit. We are now more confident. We have built a resilient team, a resilient balance sheet, so we are optimistic that this year we'll grow our loans by between 10% and 15%, deposit between 10% and 15%, and we will test this in the first quarter, which we will be reporting in just about a month's time. That also explains the net interest margin. We're optimistic we will enhance that. Non-funded, we are optimistic that we will still be able to retain above 40%, and now we are confident that because we have seen stabilization in cost, interest expense is likely to come down significantly. We are confident we will be able to be below 48%.
Return on equity, we had projected 25%-30%. We rather that 21.5%, and we could tell the reasons. Return on assets. Our optimism and confidence in the future has not been affected by the turbulence. It's reinforced by the strategy, the capacity of our people, and more importantly, how we have been able to adjust the bank. The cost-income ratio, we're confident we are even aiming lower than we had aimed last year, despite missing. We say that was storm of the eye of a storm. We are through the storm, or we have built resilience of operating in a volatile environment. That tells us confidence. We're confident. I think this we need to pay a little bit of attention. The subsidiary's contribution, we have targeted the same because we are feeling like Kenya, the sleeping giant, is waking up, and we'll push back.
It will be interesting to see Kenya regaining to contribute more than 50% of the profit. We are wishing Moses well. The task is his. He has taken it in stride that not yet. He will push back in terms of we are confident. Looks like he will be able to. That is our outlook of the future. The present, it was what it is, but the future remains certain, and it is because of the transformation that the organization has gone through. I want to stop there and give you an opportunity to interrogate the management with questions so that we can lead a zero through to what you may want us to focus on. Once again, thank you very much for being helpful. Thank you, Dr. Ari, for keeping us upbeat.
You spoke of that we now look at opportunities instead of beating ourselves up a lot. In DRC, outside traditional mining, where are you seeing upticks that have made it even overtakers in terms of registering profitability? To Mr. Nyabanda, what opportunities are we seeing locally in agriculture that can help us, that can help our farmers and our economy? To Dr. Corrier, the biggest pain point now for how to pay for medical care. What are your experiences around this pain point? Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you very much, George, for those three questions. I think, Brent, you can give them a go. DRC, outside mining, what are the other sectors that are driving that growth? Is it a concentrated mining business? The second question, what are the agricultural opportunities in Kenya? Brent, you can go for those two questions.
Then, Moses, you can jump on that, Kenya, to add on what Brent will leave out. I am saying that, George, because, Brent, we said strategy is equal to agriculture. Brent cannot tell us he succeeded unless we succeed in having 30% of our loan book being in agriculture. He is the person responsible, but the book is with Moses. The third question will be shared between Dr. Joan and Ajera. I think it talks of both the demand side and the supply side. How do we make medical care affordable? Brent.
Good morning, everyone, and thank you for the question. On the first question on DRC and the opportunities that we see, I think we need to think of our subsidiaries, including DRC, in the context that we operate as a contiguous operation across East and Central Africa.
The opportunities we see in our markets, including DRC, are both a domestic story outside of mining as well, but also the opportunities in which this trade and investment corridor provides, of which DRC is a key anchor to our activities in East and Central Africa. Let me focus on the domestic story. Yes, there are more opportunities beyond just mining. There is the ecosystem around mining. This is logistics services, or specifically mining services, the FMCG companies supplying into the mining ecosystem, particularly in southern DRC. We have set up our business such that we are capturing the entire opportunity set in DRC. It is important to talk about our operational structure to reflect that we have set up the business in terms of management structures so that we cater for the West, we cater for the South, Central, East, and Northern DRC as well.
Across these markets, we see agriculture as a key opportunity. You'll appreciate that DRC is four times the size of Kenya. It has about 80 million hectares of arable land, of which 10-15% is utilized. You will also appreciate that there is significant investment going into what is called the Lobito Corridor. This is a critical minerals infrastructure belt running through Angola, DRC, Zambia, of which DRC is a key part of that corridor. It is important to highlight, this corridor straddles, whilst it's a critical minerals rail corridor, it does straddle across the agricultural potential of these three countries, including the DRC. The DRC also has over 100 million population. This is a country where credit penetration is around 8%. There are about 7-8 million bank accounts. If you include mobile wallets, there's about 15 million in an adult population of 50 million.
This is, call it Kenya 25 years ago in terms of the potential of banking opportunities. Agriculture is clear. There is the FMCG, the fast-moving consumer goods. As I mentioned, over 100 million population. Over time, there is a lot of manufacturing businesses that are already catering for what is almost a 20 million population in Kinshasa. There is a high density of population in a few cities. There is also the opportunity around the asset financing that we see because of the capital expenditure that the manufacturers are looking to do in terms of their investment in capacity expansion, as well as the mining equipment. There is a lot of asset finance opportunities. Also, we see payments. There is a big focus of the group, not only in DRC but across the group, around what we do with payments and the movement of money.
You will appreciate that DRC is a cash-driven economy. Our ability to provide these value propositions on making it easier for customers to move money is also a big opportunity for us. SMEs, an SME obviously is a cluster of many industries, but SMEs is a big opportunity for us. Similar to what we did in Kenya, the expectation is that we will also grow our SME book. What this means for our bottom line is that, and our balance sheet is that, with a slow credit penetration, you should expect continued high double-digit growth in our balance sheet, but also importantly, margin expansion as we penetrate the SME market. Because we are leveraging off digital channels, agency banking, we will also look to contain the costs given our abilities and experience in other markets.
To be precise, beyond mining, there is agriculture, there is FMCG, there is SME, and there's big opportunities in what we see in the payment space as well. What we do in Kenya, for instance, what we're doing in insurance, we will replicate in DRC as well, leveraging off the infrastructure of the banking business. On the question around agriculture, agriculture ranges between 20%-40% of economic activity in all our countries, whether you're looking at Tanzania, DRC, Kenya, etc. As a proportion of GDP, it's between 20%-40%. There's a lot of opportunities there. You contrast this to the banking industry, and we can talk about Kenya.
In fact, Kenya will probably be the highest, where the loan mix of the banking sector is only 3% of their total book, and you contrast this to economic activity of 20%-40%. What are we doing? As part of this Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan, it essentially looks at developing value chains. When we talk about value chains, this is everything from the primary sector, so this is agriculture in terms of farmers, as well as with the extractive sector or mining sector. These are the raw materials that industries, businesses require. When we talk food and agriculture, it's everything from the farmers all the way to agro-processing to FMCG manufacturing all the way to exports into global markets. In agriculture, we have a systematic approach to develop the agricultural value chains.
We are working with many stakeholders, including the Kenya government, on developing livestock value chains. We have a big initiative around leather and beef. We have big initiatives also that we will be looking at in terms of tea, cereals, oil seeds, agriculture. We are looking across all the different sub-segments within agriculture. We are doing it in a manner where we will look to support value addition in agriculture. This is consistent with the governments across our markets' policies around import substitution. The learnings from COVID, the learnings from the disruption and the changes in global supply chains is that countries need to be more self-sufficient. This import substitution industrialization that the Kenya government is going through is complementary to what we are doing with developing value chains and, importantly, supporting value addition with our manufacturers, our agro-processors.
You'll see more of the activities on the agricultural side. As James mentioned, it's a strategic importance of ours. The intention is for us to move our food and agricultural loan mix to 30% by 2030. We want to be known as the banker to value chains and not just a bank to SMEs. I think we want to be a lot more intentional in how we connect SMEs into a logical sequence called a value chain. Hopefully, that answers your question. Thank you.
[Bringing our Ghana], in our target of reaching 30, we are now at 16%. 16% of the entire loan book is in agriculture. Moses, anything you want to add on agriculture?
Thanks, George. To complement what Brent has mentioned, one of the things we are also quite strong on is using our strength as a group.
We've known as having a foundation, having a commercial arm. We are working very closely with the foundation in terms of capacitating, particularly the emerging farmers, and ensuring they do have the right technical skills to enable them to scale up. In addition to that, George, the other piece we've done as a Kenyan bank is to ensure we have the right specialists across the sub-sectors that George has mentioned. That enables us then to map the whole of Kenya and be able to target opportunities wherever they sit. If it's a dairy area, then we're able to deploy specialists to support our farmers in terms of financial capacity, targeting dairy. If it's an area around animal husbandry, similar as such. We are quite poised to achieve the targets that James has mentioned to move us from that 16% to 30%. Thanks.
Dr. Joan, what pain points are you addressing with Equity Afia?
Okay, thank you, George. The question was on the strain as far as paying for healthcare services. If you look at healthcare services and total healthcare expenditure, you'll note that about 50% or at least 50% goes to paying for outpatient services, with only 25% going to pharma and inpatient services, and the final 25% going to the auxiliary services related to healthcare. A large cost of healthcare payments goes to outpatient services. That has advised the need for Equity to look at outpatient health services as a priority starting point in terms of addressing health challenges and access to healthcare issues.
When we look at trying to manage downwards the cost of healthcare, we noted as well that the aspect of access would be a key driver of the cost because without the access elements, then cost drivers present from even issues to do with transport to access those services or escalating costs because of lack of time leaking of health services. You're postponing your care because you have no facilities perhaps next to you. That's advised our very stiff targets in terms of how far and how fast we need to expand our Equity Afia network. Over the last four years, as you've heard, we've been able to grow the network from four medical centers, five medical centers all in Nairobi, to the current 132 medical centers, all counties of Kenya covered. Now we've rolled out into our next subsidiary, which is DRC.
In taking the services closer to people, then we're able to manage the access aspect, therefore lowering the cost. Another thing that we're then looking at is how do we build in efficiencies into our model because ours was driven by not just the access element, but also the affordability and high quality. How are you able to safeguard quality even as we manage the affordability aspect? We've worked with partners, including the pharma partners, because inside outpatient, of course, we've noted that pharma and the human resources for health are the biggest cost drivers. On the human resources for health, we are pleased because we have alignment. The medics that are running these facilities are largely from our education programs, the Equity Leadership Program.
We're able to read from the same page when we tell them how can we work together to manage the aspect of cost of healthcare and the human resources for health. On pharma, we are now working very closely together with the bank and its ecosystem of pharmaceutical importers, distributors, manufacturers to see how can we localize manufacture and how can we then strengthen local value chains around pharma to then bring down the cost. I think we've been largely successful given that our target has always been to have an average cost of KES 2,500, which we currently are around there, KES 2,900, and always exploring ways to bring it down lower. We've also realized that it is not in order and it is not sustainable to have our patients paying for their health services out of pocket.
Because of that, we've worked collaboratively with our insuranc e arm, who are then developing solutions to say how do you mitigate the aspect of out-of-pocket payments because it presents a risk as far as empowerment of our communities. We're working very hard on our social impact initiatives to empower the communities. We want to also safeguard that when they seek health services, that when you seek health services, we'll hold you on the economic end. That's one of the challenges that we are sitting close in the insurance team to present a solution for that. Thank you.
Before I hand over to Angela, maybe Dr. Gatonga, you can come and take the seat in the middle. George, I think the objective was to make health accessible, affordable, and of the highest quality.
As we speak, the doctors we have remember are the top performers in the country, sponsored by Equity. That almost guarantees quality. The second thing is the franchise is owned by a non-profit making organization. We have no intentions of making money from health. Equity Afia franchise is owned by the Equity Group Foundation. That is why Dr. Joan is speaking about it, so that we do not make money. That was the intention. How do we bring the benefits of the bank, like its brand, like its capability of procurement, centralized procurement, bulk purchasing? How do you ensure the costs are managed by having what she talked about? The target is KES 2,500, but that covers the cost of tests as you walk in the lab, and they cover the consultancy by the doctor, then covers the prescription or the drugs will be provided by the pharmacy.
That also includes if you have a dental or an optical issue, that will be included. That is how we've been able to lower that cost of all those inclusive per visit. KES 2,500 is not cheap for every Kenyan. The next step is how do we make it even more cheaper by ensuring it's not an out-of-pocket cost? Because if it's an out-of-pocket, it then becomes a problem. That's when we thought of thinking how do we provide the country with a health insurance policy that then you don't pay the KES 2,500 per visit, but you take a policy, maybe KES 5,000, KES 7,000, or whatever amount it is that covers you for the whole year and covers you and your family. To do that, we have Equity Health. The Managing Director of Equity Health Insurance is Dr. Gatonga. Dr.
Gatonga, do you want to speak to the supply side and how you are making health more affordable using insurance?
Yeah, thank you very much, Dr. James, and thank you, George, for that question. Good morning, everybody. On the health insurance side, as has been mentioned, one of the things we the real problem we want to solve there is household resilience as part of responding to our strategy of the Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan. What we are doing in order to connect what is happening on the supply side and what is happening at the household level in terms of paying for healthcare is to then create insurance solutions or financing solutions for healthcare. In order to make that very easy and affordable to access, there are about three fundamental things we are trying to do there.
One of those is to make sure that we develop solutions that are very simple for customers to understand. We've done a lot of studies on this to understand what have been the barriers that have stopped people from buying these solutions. One of them is that you have to make them affordable, but at the same time, you have to bring the solution to a simplicity level that speaks to healthcare. Making it, stripping it of a lot of complexities on things like subliming. That's one thing.
The second problem we are addressing as we roll out this solution is to make sure that it's very accessible because the health insurance operates, for it to be successful, it operates on the basis of pooling, which means we have to get as many customers as possible into the pool so that after subsidizing the cost at the service delivery point, we also subsidize the cost through risk pooling. How we are solving that problem is to make sure that we work through our distribution networks.
We have a very unique advantage as Equity of having a very wide distribution network covering branches, both the bank branches as well as the Equity Afia clinics, merchants, and all of that to make sure that we can reach the country into all corners and reduce the and therefore increase the pool, but at the same time also reduce the costs of bringing these solutions to our customers. The third important area we are also doing in conjunction with the supply side is to make sure that we drive education.
Education in terms of financing because ultimately health insurance is a financing solution, but also drive education in terms of health education because one of the things we've also noted as the burden of disease increases is that we need to increase awareness, particularly around prevention because more than 50% of what we suffer from is largely preventable. That's what we've put together in terms of health insurance products that we'll be rolling out. Thank you.
Angela, what has Dr. Gatonga left out?
Thank you. Thank you, Dr. James. I think just going back to the question, the studies show that 63% of consumers indicate affordability and financing as actually the largest barrier. Even as we design the product and we talk about the supply side, affordability is one of the biggest things that we needed to solve.
Now, through our partnership with the bank, we're very fortunate to have Equity Bank and their limited. We structured insurance premium financing solutions, and we have a blend of two solutions for customers who are corporates and SMEs. This is for all insurance products. They're able to get this as part of the typical loan product they would get from the bank. For customers who are retail, we have partnered with Equity Bank and their limited so that they prescore the customers. They provide them with an automated limit. As a result, the minute they select a health insurance product, a life insurance product, or a general insurance product, automatically they have a prescored limit, which they will be able to access through the Equity App and in a seamless manner be able to get an insurance solution.
We intend to go live in market in Q3, and we are encouraging customers to join the partnership with Equity Bank because then you get prescored, you get an automated limit from day one. As such, we then remove the barrier of accessing insurance because we already have financing from the bank. The last one which I'll mention is that, as I'm sure you know, life insurance solutions also have an option to provide a policy loan. As such, any customer today of Equity Life who is consuming a long-term product or an endowment product, you are able to get a policy loan of up to 60%-70% of your current savings and be able to apply that at concessionary rates to be able to access health insurance.
You can see from a collaborative perspective, we have the bank, we have other insurance partners, we have the technology business, and we're able to provide you with insurance solutions through the app, easily accessible, and be able to do that to provide you with healthcare solutions, but also other solutions you might need for personal as well as business needs.
I think if I summarize this, George, that the sponsor of Equity Afia is a foundation that is not looking to make money. That really significantly removes the profit portion, which is normally maybe 20%-30% of the cost. The second aspect of it is a controlled franchise by people who are convinced that they want to change society. They are giving back to those much has been given, much will be expected.
We are really glad that the doctors agreed to be charging just KES 500 for consultancy. You could compare with Equity Afia. When it comes to quality, accessibility, and affordability, we are aligned at the same level with Nairobi Hospital and Aga Khan. That is the level of quality and affordability. Lastly, it is what has been said here. We guarantee you quality, we guarantee you accessibility, but we are now addressing affordability by bringing insurance such that we are jointly bearing the cost of insurance. It is not the person who we seek. It is a market. It is the population. The premiums are fairly affordable, but not maybe to everybody. We have developed a premium financing, and I am glad to say 50% of all the insurance policies we have issued are financed by Equity Bank, and we are very grateful.
That is why the offtake is such strong. The next question comes from [Boniface Sheger]. Going into the new year, what's the plan with Equity Afia? Will we see investment in regional level four, five, six hospitals? Is there a plan to take Equity Afia into markets beyond Kenya? I think Dr. Joan has answered those. [Boniface] has another one. Dr. Mwangi, my startup is targeting KES 500 billion market with a unique value proposition designed to solve real estate industry. As founders, we operate in a dynamic and resource-constrained environment, balancing innovation with limited access to capital. Given Equity Bank's commitment to supporting entrepreneurship and financial inclusion, what strategic advice would you offer on securing the right financial backing, forging impactful partnerships, and scaling efficiency to capture a significant share of these markets?
I think I would invite you, [Boniface], for a cup of tea, and you provide me more information, and then I will be able to respond to that. Before you come, I would refer you to somebody who had a similar value proposition, a company called Optiven. If you talk to Mr. Wachiuri, we co-created, and he has now provided our diaspora with a solution of owning a home in Kenya, almost guaranteed by Equity. If you could talk to Optiven, then you can come. We then design and co-create your product. Another question?
Yes, please. Thank you very much. Especially for making so much money for us. That's why I have an issue. Yeah. Good money. I can see why you took a little bit longer to count it this year. Yeah, it is true. KES 60 billion is not little money. That's why I can understand.
It took some time to count. Now, on the issue of dividend, since we passed the law between 30% and 50%, for three years, we have remained too close to the minimum. Today is 34.5% in an area where some of the competitors are giving 80% of the earnings per share. Being that close to a minimum puts you in a rampant corner. Why am I not finding you in the top half of the range when it comes to dividend? When you have invested in a company, their dividend is guaranteed. That dividend is an important input in household income. Many of your shareholders are people who that also addresses the issue of income inequality, one of the disasters we have in the world now. Can I encourage you to move towards 50%? Thank you.
Thank you very much.
It's true that dividend payout policy is between 30% and 50%. Brent, is it 50 or 40? 50. It's true we have averaged near the lower minimum for the last three years since the shareholders passed that resolution. If you look at it, it's how do we finance the subsidiaries? You'll see, although DRC made a lot of money and huge money, we are very, very encouraged by DRC. It's not able to pay dividend simply because it is growing faster than it can fund itself internally. Last year but one, we had to fund it. Despite the profit it's making, huge profits, we had to add another $70 million to capital injection. That explains why that state is in DRC, that state is in Tanzania, which has really now recovered and seems it's trying to catch up with the others.
It is constantly we are putting capital. Uganda constantly putting capital. The only two subsidiaries that are making money and paying money are Kenya and Rwanda. As you can see, Kenya is 50%. By the time the others start reaching where Kenya is, that whole 30 is by one subsidiary of Kenya. That is why, and yet the subsidiaries that are not paying are still asking for capital. What we are doing is to build a future for our shareholders. We are very excited that we are using dividend of the slowest growing market, Kenya, and investing in the fastest growing, three fastest growing economies in the world: Uganda, Rwanda, Tanzania, and DRC are in the top 10. We are saying, do we allow this opportunity for our shareholders? We are saying, let's do the delicate balancing act.
Let's give them as a contractual obligation, but also ensure that the future is becoming brighter. I maybe have a cup of tea with you to dialogue. How can I balance that better with the team? The objective is to create a future. As you see, it took Kenya 16 years to reach a 4% return on assets. It took Rwanda 14 years. Looks like DRC will do it in 12 years. What we are seeing is that we are making a better bet for our shareholders. As you heard Brent said, only 7% of the population of DRC has bank accounts. Loan to GDP is only 8%. Kenya, we are at 32. You can see the runway, how large the runway. We need to balance that, but it's a conversation we need to have.
Do we miss the future, or do we balance the present and the future? As we all know, wealth creation is not a function of the KES 60 billion. It is a function of how much we save to invest into the future. That is how you create compounded wealth. It is more of paying today, consuming today, or creating bigger investment in the future. That is what we are. The last one I want to say is our brother has become iconic. What happens is that the European banks and international banks that are exiting the market, we have become the first point of call. Now you can see you look at Cajabank, you look at ProCredit, you look at BCDC. To do a startup in such a market like DRC would be almost impossible.
Again, we always read that these opportunities are being shown to us constantly. You can imagine the discipline of saying no to maintain the 30% rule on dividend payout. Yet, this is a one-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You could imagine now there is no European bank in DRC. The two that were there were taken by Equity. If we missed that, it means it will be a startup. A startup in such a market would be difficult compared to taking a BCDC, which was being consolidated with the European banks and had been in existence for 120 years. That is the decision that always confronts us. Opportunity for the future and consumption of today. Building resilience. Another question? Yes.
All right. Yes. Yes. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. My name is Jimmy Mbogoh from Citizen TV. A couple of questions.
One of them is on non-performing loans. Could you give us the actual figure in terms of how much are you holding in non-performing loans? Also, what is the spread in the region? When you look at the different markets that you are operating in, what is that spread? For Kenya, in what sectors are you struggling with non-performing loans? Number two, on interest income, could you tell us how much of your investment in government securities contributed to that?
Alex, in a detailed paper, I'm glad we'll give you a very detailed advance. Maybe you could project that slide, Alex, not in the summarized version in your printed version. It's on NPL in their own section, not in the summarized paper, in the big printed copy that you are handing over. Or you can pass to me. Very good. On this one, Alex. Very good.
I wish we could have seen this together. I hope it's on page 44, if you're able to project page 44. The NPL issues by segments, the one that we are struggling most is corporate. I'm sure you know corporate means the, what, pending bills. That's a purely matter. That is at 22%. SMEs are at 13%. As you can see, and the average is 22%. Our best performing segments are retail and public sector. Alex, page 44, if you can project so that everybody can follow for themselves. I think our biggest challenge in terms of concentration is Kenya, which has 17%, Uganda 14%, and straight we drop from there. Equity BCDC is at 5.7%, and Equity Tanzania 3%, and Equity Rwanda 4%. As we said, Kenya is the most integrated, but as you can see, you can relate directly.
It's corporates, and it's the corporates that are holding the non-paying. For the group, the NPLs have declined from 13 to 12 if you combine. The average for the banking industry is 16. We are 400 basis points lower than the industry. In terms of coverage, coverage is at 71% on cash basis. The balance up to 103% is covered by credit guarantees. This is coverage of 100% without putting into consideration the value of securities. It's full provisions. That is why we said we have not carried the risk of the past. We opted to do. Alex, I would really appreciate if you could put that slide, it's on page 44 and 45. You will get this booklet. If you did not get the numbers, you will get it. It's ready. Another question. Yes, [Timother] .
Thank you very much, [Dr. Tari], for the good work for the year. As you have said, the year had a lot of challenges, but generating such a profit and also giving us that dividend, though may look constant, that you deserve a pat on your back. Now, I have two questions and one observation. One question is about you said that a lot of your transactions are now digital, and that's very good. I also thank you because there has been a lot of sensitization about this thing of people telling you, "Can you call this number?" In the process, you see those people who are not informed end up losing a lot of their money, either from their account or from the phone.
Now, I don't know how strong is your IT department so that whenever I am called by a number, and I may not be maybe I'm imagining of my mother in the village who may not know that Equity will call you on this number, and then somebody calls and tells her to do ABCD, and then she ends up losing a lot of money. What measures have you taken as a bank to make sure that your savings, the savings for your customers, are safeguarded? That is one. Number two, you have said that you are projecting your cost-income ratio to go between 48%-50%. Yet, you have also told us that we are experiencing six shocks, although some have gone, but there are still some shocks like geopolitical and what is happening globally.
Now, my question is, how are you confident that in this year at the review, you are able to increase your income and to reduce your costs so that your income ratio may be between 48%-50%, or you might be a bit cautious and say, "The limit remains at 56% or 58%." There is no problem in that. Lastly, you have said that in three years, there have been 14 million policies as far as insurance is concerned, and that is very good. Becoming number two or three, that is very good. My question is this, what is your target for five years?
Because if you have over 21 million customers and so far you have 14 million policies, I'm thinking that by now maybe around 18 or so of your customers, about 90%, may be aware of these policies, and maybe they have taken it. What is your projection in the next two years as we celebrate the fifth year? Otherwise, I wish you well, as you have said. The pilot never loses focus because of the turbulence. He keeps ahead to make sure that where he is taking his passengers, they arrive safely. We are sure that we, as your passengers, [Dr. Tari], and your management, you will not divert and go back to the airport you came from, but you will take us to where our destiny is. Thank you very much, and have a very good year 2025.
Thank you very much, [Bwana Kimodo].
Very encouraging words. The reason why we are able to do this passionately and enthusiastically is because of the support we get from shareholders and such a powerful statement of understanding the environment. Let me say this, Bwana Kimodo. We said there are six shocks concurrently that we are dealing with. We said it appears shocks is our new way of life, that the past will have shocks. We have to learn to navigate those with shocks. Eke the bird says, "She has learned that the hunter has learned to shoot without missing." Eke bird says, "I have learned to fly without patches." We have learned how to manage business amidst shocks. That is why I said that it spent a lot of time. We had to transform equity so that it's resilient.
We transformed Equity from strategy, from governance, from people, from systems, and from customer offering. The objective of each of these focuses is to create resilience with the offering that we are making customers, resilience in our staff, resilience in our systems, resilience in our governance so that we could be able to ride and be able to operate in an environment that we do not expect to go back to the old days where we could guarantee. We have missed targets, not just for last year. It is a little bit embarrassing for me because for 25 years, we were precise. We could tell shareholders, "This is where we will be, and that is where we will be." These shocks, normally, we plan without them in mind, and then they show up.
While you are dealing with one, another one, as we said at the moment, we are dealing with these six simultaneous shocks. What we have done is then said, "How is the business operating model in a turbulent environment, in an environment of continuous shocks?" We hope this year we'll surprise the shareholders by surpassing and exceeding the projections. We are testing ourselves. Have we built the human capability that can think differently, that has seen it, has experienced it? That capability is now in the bank. We're looking at systems and saying, "Do we have the tools that will allow us to navigate and take direction quickly? Do we have the agility of the balance sheet that could allow us to do?" One of the reasons of going agriculture, 30%, is that agriculture is the most resilient in the marketplace.
Remember, the only sector that grew during COVID was agriculture because people had to eat. We said, "How do we insulate ourselves using a domestic capability?" Because food in Kenya is normally domestically produced to feed the population. That will remove you from the global shock significantly. We will work together and ensure. I think on the cost income, yes, I appreciate the suggestion you have said, "Cut the cost," but we may want to grow revenue. One of the ways of growing revenue is reallocating. If we look, 45% of our balance sheet is in sovereign list. Sovereign list is the lowest yielding asset class. Now we are focused, whether it is in agriculture, let's put these assets into credit. That alone would increase income by 30%, even without touching costs.
That is why we are very optimistic that we should be able to take it to 48%. I appreciate the skepticism moving from 56% to 48%, but you can hold me to that, and we can test it with the first quarter. Are we moving? We will not be at 48% because we are moving from 56%, but are we making progress towards 48%? I believe, I am confident that I will be there, and we shall go to our destination. For sure, the transformation that has occurred to the group gives us significant confidence about dealing with shocks. Again, as I said, it is not about expense, it is also about revenue.
As Agile IU prepare, on where shall we be in five years from 14 million, what position, what contribution of the group revenue will be coming, when will be, what percentage will be the balance sheet size in five years? Let me deal with this issue of social engineering because that's what our customers are. We are spending a lot of money to advertise, to sensitize to our customers, that we will only call you from one number. You notice that once you open to a fraudster, then what they do is socially, mentally engineer you. You lose track. You cannot see who they are. We have encouraged our customers as much as possible, "Don't engage with fraudsters and give us numbers." Unfortunately, these numbers calling the customer, we have no visibility because it can be any mobile network that is calling you.
The way you act, you are acting as normal because it is you. It's not the fraudster who is managing. If it's the fraudster, we can tell the difference between behavior patterns. Because it's you who is operating, you're operating your accounts as if it's normal. What we have done is to use significant resources on AI, and we are really using artificial intelligence, and we have created significant agents to help. I'm glad to say, where is the compliance level? Wafura, we have reduced social engineering frauds by what percentage? I think about 30%. 30%. You can see we are working loud the crowd, but you can see we are doing it without visibility of the action. AI, we have invested every AI to monitor.
Every time fraud occurs, we feed it to the AI and say, "What is unique about this?" Then we pull that screening of our transactions. We are making every effort because one fraud is too many, because that might be the only money a customer has in their account. It is not about how many. It should not happen to any customer. One is too many. We are investing ourselves a lot. The IT team, is there anything you want to talk? The fraud risk, is it Charles? Is it Peter? Who wants to make a comment? [Naftari], yeah? [Naftari] is Head of Security.
Thank you. Thank you, [Mr. Kimodo] and Chairman, as Dr. James, as you have indicated, social engineering is actually a menace. There is so much intervention that you have done.
As indicated, the problem is that these are people also coming from other networks, and we have gone ahead to even involve the commissioner of communication because we had to say, "Where are these lines that are being used to call?" How do we also ensure that we do have a way of preventing and also registering? If you look from a banking perspective, and those calls coming from Equitel, they are all registered. We can trace them. The other numbers are coming from other sectors, and you see they have gone in a way that you can have so many SIM cards. That is one area that we have started with the police. We have a network, and we have good trust with a team within the law enforcement agencies to track those people.
The key involving, bearing in mind of centers like MLOTE and prison centers that actually propagate some of these evils. Within the bank, there is also intervention and rolling up of a program with even new systems that deal with machine learning and AI, as have been put across just to try and address this particular menace. What we are doing as a bank is a lot of intervention, data analysis, and also trying to bring on board on how do we protect our customers. It is actually one of our key agendas that we sit and we review daily, and we update on a weekly basis to see what's the threat, how can we protect our customers. That's what I can add.
If an industry problem, it's a nation of value systems problem.
The best way to protect the customer, and that explains why we are spending money to sensitize the customer so that they avoid being social engineered. Angela, I guess you now have the future. You can share with us.
Thank you, Dr. James, and thank you for that question. I think I'll start by taking us back to the overall group strategy, which is the Africa Recovery and Resilience Plan, where, as highlighted previously by Group Strategy Officer Brent, Equity Group is looking to target or achieve 100 million customers in the markets in which we operate, and those customers would be consuming various solutions. Now, when you look at the Equity Insurance Group, this was the short-term goal. We had said that we had intended to have by 2030, 4 million customers. I think you can see we've already breached that.
If you look at the 14 million customers, 5.9 million are unique policies. That tells us we've already achieved what we had targeted to do within two years and eight months. That is really a demonstration of the strength of the distribution capability within Equity Group. Now, going forward, we've realized that the one thing we want to do is ensure that we are bundling our products. As you well know, the banking business does well to create wealth using credit, but then the insurance business then comes to help customers protect that wealth, protect life, or protect health so that we have a holistic value proposition.
The first thing we want to do is ensure that all of our customers consume at least three insurance solutions: one life solution, one health solution, and one wealth solution, which therefore means that as we look at Brent's target of ARRP of 100 million, the natural number we would be looking at for insurance policies is 300 million policies. I still think those at 300 million is low because previously, Dr. James has talked about use-based insurance, and use-based insurance is where we want to provide insurance as a service. A customer is traveling from Nairobi to a certain town in TC. We want to be able to provide them insurance for that journey, that 100 km journey, and that is a single policy.
We want to move from having annual policies which are paid in advance. We had talked about the fact that they're very expensive, to use-based insurance where customers enjoy insurance solutions as they have a lifestyle. Today, if a customer is taking a flight from Nairobi, let's say, to Mombasa, they can just take an insurance, travel insurance policy for that flight alone. We believe that we should be able to have customers consuming, on average, between six and eight insurance solutions. I'll let you do the math because you can now see we're in millions, but as I said, that's more the capability of Equity in terms of distributing. Now, from an industry perspective, currently, if you look at the markets in which we operate, the insurance penetration is 1.34%. The highest penetration is Kenya at 2.3%.
The lowest is DRC at 0.4%. Our target by 2030 is to double insurance penetration in the markets in which we operate. The last one which Dr. James asked me to mention is what proportion do we believe the insurance group will contribute to the overall PBT. We're currently sitting at just about 3% of overall group PBT. We are targeting to have double-digit contribution. However, as we mentioned, as the banking group, as Kenya wakes up, as the DRC team wakes up, you can tell that it's going to be the race of a lifetime to ensure that we can get to double-digit contribution. Thank you for the question, and I hope I've answered the brief but also made the future commitment from the insurance group.
N ot so quickly. Gatonga, Dr. [Heren], also Dr.
Joan, can we be able Equity Afia and Equity Insurance be able to provide Kenyans with a universal health policy? Dr. Joan, you can go first. Yeah, you're on the surprise side.
Okay, universal health coverage is about availing healthcare services that are affordable to communities and that can access them without financial crippling through access of healthcare services. When you look at that definition of universal health coverage, you can see that as the Equity Group, we are on course to deliver on that, and we're doing it in a very structured manner because we're doing, we've accessed, we're working on the aspect of the access through the health service medical centers, and we've also been challenged to also consider inpatients even as we further expand access here.
As I mentioned earlier, we're also looking at the aspect of how we safeguard our communities from financial ruin that can result from seeking healthcare services that are sudden and perhaps of a financially crippling nature. We are on course because we realize it is when the various countries where Equity operates speak about health, you'll hear all of them defining universal health coverage as a common denominator. We are on course, and we're doing it in a very structured way to ensure that it's well delivered.
Gatonga, is there anything else to add?
Yes. First of all, can you make it possible through a policy for all of us? We share a health burden. Absolutely. It's very possible. One of the two unique things we've done is to make sure that the health solution that you get is a solution that's very flexible.
You can buy whatever you can afford. If what you can afford is KES 500 a month, you can buy a health coverage for that. If what you can afford is KES 50,000 a month, you can also buy a health coverage for that. There is a huge element of universality in the solution. When you combine that with the flexibility we talked about earlier in terms of payment, in terms of insurance premium financing, that is very possible.
I think broadly, [Akmodo], what we have done and what Dr. Gatonga is talking about is to ensure we are able to take a health policy with inpatient only in faith-based hospitals. You can imagine how that comes low. Another one is where we give you a coverage for outpatient. You go to Equity Afia. In case of admission, the policy is for a public health hospital.
You can see the cost, then it's friendly to the pocket, or you make the choice. If you can afford and you want health in a five-star hotel, then you also pay the policy of a five-star hotel. You are in a hotel, but you are receiving health. You provide everybody with what fits them, not a one fit because that has been the problem. We are given one policy, but we can't all afford the same policy. We'll look at that. Alex, are you able to project that to page 44? That question was interesting. It was pertinent. Very good. This is the NPL issue that we are being asked about. You can see the big problem we are talking about. NPLs in the country is not an industry. It's a sector.
You can see the correlation, the relations between corporate and SMEs. When corporates are not paid their bills, then they do not pay the SMEs who possess their value chains. You can see it is a concentrated list. For us, I think we are talking about 12 loans that are costing that corporate. If we deal with the 12, if we are confident this year, we will be talking about one digit. We can see the threat from 13.4% to 12%, and we can see the coverage. You can see this quarter is the best coverage we have ever had for the last five quarters in terms of coverage. That is why we said we are more focused on the quality and ensuring we do not carry the risk of the past into the future and return dividends.
This brings certainty as to how we manage the bank conservatively. Again, we can see the countries that are having challenges. Again, it is a little bit of concentration. Looks like, Christine, Uganda should be single digits. Look at Tanzania. Tanzania, three years ago, if you remember, was 39. Last year, it was 13. Look, we are now three and hopefully by the first quarter, we will be talking about one. There are problems we can solve. It is just timing. I am sure you are seeing too many headlines of Equity resolving those few. We believe this year will be our year of resolving. If we resolve all those approximately 17 loans in the entire group, and if you look at in absolute number, we have suspended interest of about KES 23 billion. That can quickly swing back into that is not provisions.
Provisions, as we saw in the next page, Alex, is, as you can see, KES 78 billion of provisions. Suspended interest out of that is KES 22 billion. By collecting those 17 loans, you'll see that swings, and we expect freeze and surprises this year. What we are talking about, the average industry is at 16.4% while we are 12.4%. Speaking about the quarter, despite the storms, the shocks, our performance remains pretty. Is there a question at the fire there? Before we say thank you for thank you, I can see no question. I can't see question. Make it very brief.
Thank you. Thank you, Dr.
[That's one].
Thank you, [Dr. Heren], for the invite. Let me say this first, that you and I are cognizant of the fact that incredible leadership is the dreadlock for every success in any given company.
I want to appreciate you for being the powerhouse that you are and the Equity Finance. Allow me in this moment to welcome the new management, the new managers who came to this institution, and to tell them to give this company a touch of quality and a taste of excellence.
A touch of quality and what else?
A taste of excellence.
A taste of excellence.
I need to ask for that.
Yeah, that's true. Professor Macharia, Chairman, on behalf of the shareholders, that's what the shareholders want. Help me to hold the management to account.
A touch of quality and a taste of excellence. I want to say three things: that you do the right thing at the right time, do not become pleasant so that we can be stronger together. Can you underline? Do the right thing at the right time. Do not become pleasant.
Better as a family. Now, I have one question. I wanted to reserve this during the AGM, but it is pressing me. It's about confidence restoration and customer centricity. How does the institution or organization ensure confidence restoration to customer centricity?
Very good. Liz, where are you?
There is another one.
Oh, okay. I wanted to shoot it straight to the Director of Customer Service. Liz, [foreign langauge] ? Okay.
Another one is for the startups. As one of the giants in the banking sector, what role does Equity play in offering support to Kenyan startups by offering space to create it and their funding?
Very good. Dr. Joan, you take the question on support for startups and Moses. You own the customers. Your director never showed up, so take the question. And where is David Ssegawa? Be prepared.
What are you doing to guarantee what the shareholders want is what staff deliver?
My name is Ali Jekori. For those who might not have seen me since the world is great, we are created.
And also, Director of Strategic HR. You hear the impalate from the customer. What assurance can you give? Sorry, shareholders. Sara is a shareholder. So, Moses?
Thank you very much, Sally, and for putting us on the spot. Customer is the center of what Equity is. Where we sit as management, we fully dedicate ourselves to ensuring our level of customer service is at the highest. Without a customer, we can't be paid. We are very cognizant around that. The pertinent question you've mentioned around what are we doing to restore customer confidence? I think Dr. James did quite elaborate. There are many facets we are dealing with.
One, we've seen the stability that we've put around systems, and that has taken significant investments to ensure that, first, we are able to serve you seamlessly so that you are able to transact when you want, how you want to transact. That's quite important in terms of ensuring that there's reliability around what it is we promise you as a customer. You've talked of the management team, and you've put us to task around that. The team that's there is then to also drive a lot of innovation. One of the things we are looking at around customer centricity is to develop products that talk to you. If we just generalize products, there won't be centricity. Even as we talk to you today, one of the big asks we have is, give us feedback around what it is you want.
Our DNA now is approaching customers and telling them, "Tell us what your dream is." Then we are able to develop something that tailors to us that dream so that it really talks to you as a customer and provides you a solution as to what it is we are looking to. The last one that I would want to talk to, and Dr. James did talk about it, is the overall governance around the organization, starting with the board, and the chairman is here. The board holds us as management totally to account to ensure we are able to deliver to you. Even within us, we've ensured we've provided proper structures and proper checks to ensure that quality levels are at the highest possible. As we do that, we are also transforming to ensure that we are almost with you at par when you're doing transactions.
Our level of monitoring, our level of digital solutions are also going to be up there to ensure that we are able to serve you fully as you do wish. It is one, Sally, that we focus significantly a lot. It is a daily conversation for the management team of, are we in touch with what the customer really wants? That is a question we keep asking ourselves every day. We need to continue doing that. We will never stop because the customer needs also evolve as we get to do that. Dr. James, let me touch a bit on the startup question before I hand over to Dr. Joan. We do appreciate, and what made us who we are as a bank is being able to carry customers from startup to ensuring they develop through the motions to become large SMEs or very large corporates.
We do not want to lose that. Where I sit as a bank and together with my other banking colleagues, we are quite cognizant that the true DNA of Equity is actually around startups. That is what made us. That is what will continue to drive us because we are able to work with you from a startup till you get to a large corporate. We have transformed you. We are able to live what our vision and mission is as a group. We are working very closely with the foundation to ensure the right levels of capacitation happen so that when you become bankable, we hold your hand from there till you achieve your dream. Thanks, Sally.
I think, Sally, what you are asking, we are saying our vision is an African vision, ensuring nobody is left behind.
It cuts across all the sectors: agriculture, mining, energy, environment, SMEs, so that we are covering communities. It's not necessarily individuals. What I liked most is what Moses pointed out to you. We shouldn't be giving you products. We should be giving you solutions to your needs. We want to lead and educate customers, not to come and ask for loans, but to ask for solutions. What they should be able to articulate most is what they want to achieve. What [Kim Osos] said, we have a destination. How are we getting there? Help me to get to this destination. This is what I want to achieve. Because when they come to ask for loans, they prescribe their own, and yet they are not experts in loans. If they give us the program, then we'll be able to provide specific solutions.
That is why the product house has become very, very powerful. The second one is test us with experience. We no longer want to be known as a bank. We want to say it is the total experience. It's products, it's channels, it's systems, it's governance. It's how we make you feel as a human being. It's your dignity. It's your honor. The opportunities we are partnering to open for you, really living to the purpose of equity, giving dignity, changing lives, and expanding opportunities for wealth creation. That is what we want to hold ourselves to. As Moses said, we are an inclusive bank. I believe the most inclusive bank in the world. What it means is that we acquire at the bottom, at the micro level, and then graduate people from micro to small to medium to large and to corporate.
We are very proud of the journey we have walked, particularly with Kenya. That is why as they grow, that's the only way we can grow. Equity doesn't grow. The numbers we are talking about, two trillion, is not Equity. It's the aggregate of what customers have achieved. The bigger the customers, the bigger we shall be. There is a perfect alignment, that is why. That is why beyond that dream, we say, what can we do to capacitate and deliver everybody, particularly the startups? Maybe we are doing that a lot from the foundation and from sustainability. A few words, and then I hope, Oscar, you also have your mic. What are you doing for small businesses for sustainability? Joan, go first.
Okay. Thank you.
On the foundation then, we are working closely with the startups and supporting them to graduate, as has been indicated. Our input is largely around knowledge and capacity enhancement, then linking them to the right tools that they would require at whatever level or whatever sector in which they are playing in. One of the additional things that we've done as far as that goes beyond the customer MSMEs that we've had, we've realized again that the young people have a very heavy leaning towards technology and innovation. We launched a program last year to also see how we can bridge that capacity building towards establishing MSMEs for young people that are focused towards tech and innovation.
We set up a tech and innovation hub at Startup City to offer them those skills of skilling in whichever sector they are focused in, whatever sector they are trained in at university, and then be able to link them with whatever financing tools they require to be able to start businesses should they require to.
Then thre is our big program, Young Africa Works. How do we get those startups to function? We provide them with financial literacy, entrepreneurship training, and we also provide them with guarantees because they do not have credit. We have partnered with Africa Guarantee Fund. We have guaranteed with IFC such that those without credit, they pay just a small amount for guarantee. Everybody now can access credit. The most important thing is to delisk them and to capacitate them so as to be able to get.
You do that through training and de-risking them through guarantees so that nobody is being left behind. David Ssegawa, yes. Oscar, what are you doing to make this a sustainable journey?
Thank you. Just to add to that, the next stage really after we've capacitated and worked with the startups is connecting them to other stakeholders within the ecosystem, the accelerators, the startup incubators that can provide access to other types of capital as well, private equity, etc., but then also connect them to other businesses across the continent.
We're working with UNDP, for example, with a program that they have across different accelerators in the continent, and to see how we can plug in and help to support those startups, particularly in the technology space, but then increasingly in some of the other spaces that impact the young people of the country along the creative sector, the sports ecosystem as well. We're looking at those sectors as well. Then helping them to drive, include sustainability within our product offering so that the work that they're doing, the infrastructure they're trying to build, is built with an end to ensuring that there's a low carbon footprint, that it's environmentally cognizant of what needs to be done to ensure that it's all sustainable. There's multiple efforts we're doing also from a funding perspective as well.
I think the biggest I've seen him do is startups in agribusiness because we are seeing a lot of our young people going to innovate in agriculture. Last year, we were named the bank with the highest number of loans for mitigation and adaptation to climate change. How do you ensure micro or small or startups in agriculture survive the shock of climate change? We have this huge capability of mitigation and adaptation loans. I think Tatu was talked about. We have put 415 of first-class students, 84 points total of all together, and said, "Can you create Silicon Valley for us?" That's the team that has been said to be in Tatu City, and they are patron. I've obtained an expert from Silicon Valley. Why don't you take a little bit of mic and tell maybe Sally what you are doing?
Johnny is another graduate of Stanford University in Silicon Valley, then a master's degree from Harvard University, and said, "This is the brightest of the brightest brains in Africa." I want them to succeed the way the Silicon Valley succeeded. Where are you in succeeding?
Good morning, and thank you for the question. We're very happy to share that the young folks who've been upskilled at Tatu City have joined the group and are very busy internally working on solutions. I love what Moses said because Tatu City and that program, the innovation program, it's a sandbox environment, and it's a solution center. It's where people bring problems, and it's where young people actually develop solutions. We invite the rest of the group to help develop products around those and bring those to market.
We're advanced with that initial cohort, and we're looking forward to launching a 2025 program very soon.
We don't want just our businesses to be called jwakali. We want our startups to be in the technology space, the innovation space. The team that I talked of of 24 that is in India is looking at how we can create a digital public infrastructure for these young people so that they can play in an innovation center where the cost of infrastructure is put up for them. Hopefully, that is how we'll create Africa's unicorn. I have no doubt. In just a short period of one year, they have been able to create 45 IPs solving our problem. As they mature and we expose them globally, I have no doubt they will provide globasl solutions. Ssegawa. I hope Victoria, you have also got a mic.
Thank you, James. I think I've been requested to talk about customer centrism and customer experience. I would like to say that customer centrism is actually a core part of our corporate philosophy and our culture. That is the strategic discussion we have at all levels of our organization, whether through induction or ongoing business discussions. I think most important is the fact that we now have developed a structured way of not only collecting customer insights real time, but also reacting to them. That's why at every branch we have and every organization department.
I think the question was on people. How do you create a culture of people doing the right thing? The three things. Right thing, the right time. Without being pro. It was about culture.
Do the right thing at the right time. Do not be complacent. That's number two.
Number three is stronger together.
It is about culture. Yes.
As part of that culture, to embed it, number one, we put it in a structured way within the way we track performance to make sure that every employee today has a key performance indicator to articulate how they contribute to customer centrism and how that culture of customer experience is embedded in what they do every day. Every employee is holding themselves accountable for improving customer experience in whatever they do.
There is quite a lot of going to that culture so that people believe in our philosophy, our ethos, and corporate philosophy, such that they are not just on the board that this is our you can see the core values there. You can see our service charter. We do not want them to be on the walls.
We want them to be in the minds and hearts of our employees. We are doing that through a cash flow immersion and also performance management so that, as you rightly said, we concentrate in mind people with a daily dashboard. This is what your performance should look like. This is how it should look like. We have no challenge with the separation if it's necessary because you can only invest so much. It must be in the person's mind. Accountability for leadership and governance.
Thank you, James.
In terms of doing the right thing the right time, I think we are also looking at it from a governance level, and this is really cascaded right from the board with the responsibility that we've been handed over, where we are not only looking at what David is saying, performance, we're also holding accountable all leaders, including the MD, starting from the MD position. Gone are the days where we will go for the clack. All this has to start from the top. If there's a problem down, definitely it must have started from the top and the cascade. That is really an area we are looking at. Culture, as has been said again, is a thing we are rebuilding. We want people to live it daily, not necessarily just it being a separate matter. It's our way of operation.
That will go in even to the customers. We'll get to feel what is the Equity culture, what is the Equity way, a way that we listen to customers, and it's starting from us creating an environment within their organizations. Definitely providing employees, everybody, all staff, the right tools that they need to perform and the right skill set, upskilling them as well on a constant and also have regular engagement because as a listening caring partner, we are not only listening to our stakeholders out there, we also want to be able to listen to the staff that are in here because they are also in the marketplace to bring us the information. We create an environment for them to be able to then have this so that we are able to do the right thing right time and not be complacent. Thank you.
It's the equity way. Allow me to invite the Chairman. I'm so glad that we are there with a question from a shareholder and what they would like to do. Maybe that is above my pay grade. The only person who can assure shareholders is the Chairman of the Board, Professor Macharia.
Good morning, investors, senior management, and our customers. Thank you very much, James. You know, the day of releasing financial results is the day for management to shine. The day for the Board is the day of the AGM. There is always the intersection between management and the Board. We've had the last question that has been dealt with refers to governance. Governance is at the center of the growth of Equity. We recognize that governance is very, very important.
Many organizations have grown and turboed down because they didn't take care of their governance structures. I must say that at Equity, we have realized the importance and the centrality of having a very strong corporate governance structure. I want to assure investors, our customers, and also our admirers that we have put a lot of thought into structuring governance structures that also take care of succession. I know within Equity and outside, succession planning has been a very pertinent issue that has been raised. We've shown that as the organization has grown and the board has realized that we must create a fit-for-purpose organization, we've gone all around the world to recruit talent that will take us to the next level. As you have seen today when talking about the strategy team, I think only one person is more than three years.
It's not that we didn't have a strategy team, but we realized when we developed the Africa Recovery and Resilience Strategic Plan after 2030 that we needed to boost what we had internally. The board has not spared any efforts, has not spared any resources for us to get the best in class for every department in the bank. As we have developed management, the board has also gone out of its way to make sure that both our group board and our subsidiary boards are also up to the task. You can't have very highly skewed, very highly exposed management teams, both at the group and the subsidiaries, and then you have board members who are not as skewed or as exposed because they are supposed to oversight these very highly skewed management teams.
If you look today, look at our group board, you'll find that almost half of our board members have been recruited globally from all over the world. They have been recruited for their skills. They have been recruited for their exposure. They bring that global view and outlook. They bring that global so that they can challenge our management teams to think not only globally, but also to be futuristic because we are an organization that is growing. When you look at the demographics of our customers, the demographics have greatly changed. The requirements of our customers are changing constantly. We have realized that at the intersection between our customers and the bank, we are there. We are not just providing banking services. We are enabling lifestyles. We have to think different for us to be able to enable lifestyles.
Remember, these are people who want to consume our products 24/7. They want to make sure that where they are, wherever they are, there is no geographical restriction, there is no time restriction. That is why, again, we have also invested huge amounts of money in making sure that our systems are not only stable, they are reliable, and they are very efficient. I want to assure our investors, and we are very grateful for the loyalty of our investors. Our investors have really stuck with us. When you talk about our dividend policy and the questions that arise, I do understand as an investor also that I want to get much more dividends. There is always a question that sometimes you have to have some delayed gratification so that tomorrow also you will get gratified.
If you note at our expansion in the region, you will find that this has been funded from internally generated funds. We have bought or we have acquired some assets like we acquired in Rwanda recently. We did not borrow money for that acquisition. We used our retained earnings. We used our internally generated funds. What I mean is our investments today will enable us to continue getting that 30%-50% dividend even for years to come. We all look forward to continuously increasing our dividends. We cannot be as a board, be reckless to give everything and then we have nothing to grow. Those of you who have been investors in Equity, you will remember the time during COVID when we withheld dividends. That was the best decision we made.
If you looked at the growth charts, if you looked at our asset base, it doubled at a time of such difficult economic times. It was just based on the decisions that the board and management had made that this is not the right time. It is a right to conserve capital to make sure that when COVID ends, we have the resources to take advantage of the opportunities that arose. I just want to assure you that the board, both at the group level and at the subsidiaries, are on top of that. What the management has promised to you today in terms of their outlook for 2025, the boards take that very seriously. We use it as their scorecard every quarter to ask them, "You promised our investors and our customers this.
You promised our customers that they will be able to have a system that is stable. They will be able to transact at all times. You promised them that you are going to be customer-centric. Show us how you have worked towards achieving that objective. We will ask you promised our shareholders that you are going to cut down costs and you are going to increase revenue. Show us what steps are you taking. I want to assure you that the group board sees all the because we represent you as shareholders to oversight management and to hold management accountable for what they have promised. I want to promise on the behalf of our boards that our boards are up to it.
When you get time and when we publish our integrated report for 2024, I want you to take time and go through the profiles of not only our management but also our board members across all subsidiaries. You will get very surprised at the talent that we have been able to attract. I thank you for turning out today and thank you for continued support of our organization and the fact that you have all bought into our dream and our purpose. We promise that we shall keep to that purpose. Thank you very much and God bless you. Thank you.
Let's appreciate Chairman once again. Thank you. As we come to the end of the investor briefing, I want to request our elder to come and close for us with a word of prayer.
Thank the Lord for the year that has been and also position us for the year that will be. We will do the Equity Anthem.
Thank you very much. Shall we pray? Almighty God, our Father and our God, in humility and thanksgiving, we come to you. Lord, we thank you for every victory, lessons, and the challenges that we are able to overcome last year. We want to pray for the investors, the shareholders, pray for all the customers, the employees, and even the partners who have journeyed with us this far. Heavenly Father, as we continue to champion the socio-economic transformation of Africa, as we empower consumers, businesses, and even communities, we pray for your divine guidance. We commit our plans for the year 2025, praying the Lord you shall open doors of opportunities. I pray for divine favor, alignment, and success in the market.
We commit our board before you. Pray for the senior executive members and management, praying for all leaders at all levels. The Lord, you shall give us the spirit of revelation, wisdom, and discernment to be able to make the right decisions. Give us clarity of vision and purpose. We pray, Father, for strength and health that we may be able to lead and even to execute to the glory of your name. As we continue, Lord, we pray that you guide our steps, order our paths, level every mountain, fill every valley, and remove every obstacle before us, O God. Grant us success in all our endeavors. Lord, just as you parted the Red Sea, our prayer this morning is that you shall part the seas of impossibilities in our lives and even in our plans.
Heavenly Father, as we leave, we pray that your peace will be upon all of us and that your presence will accompany us in all our decisions and in all our endeavors. Father, may your name be glorified, blessed be your name, and we pray the Lord continue to watch over us. As we leave now, be with us. For this we pray in the name of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.