For standing by, and welcome to the Tower Limited Full Year Results Announcement 2023 conference call. At this time, all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you'll need to press star one one on your telephone. To remove yourself from the queue, simply press star one one again. As a reminder, today's program is being recorded. Now I'd like to introduce your host for today's program, Chairman Michael Stiassny. Please go ahead, sir.
Good morning, everyone, and thanks for making the time to join us for this investor call and presentation of our 2023 full year results. With me in Auckland is our Chief Executive Officer, Blair Turnbull, and our Chief Financial Officer, Paul Johnston, who will take you through the results in more detail shortly. The word unprecedented gets bandied around plenty these days, but is an appropriate description for what the global insurance industry faced in 2023. A raft of catastrophic weather events worldwide not only highlighted the immediate impacts of climate change, but also put all insurance businesses on notice that the risk environment in which we operate is irrevocably altered. Risk-based pricing continues to be Tower's best prediction to address these issues and has enabled us to remain resilient, withstanding the challenges that this past year has served up.
Tower has been the poster child for risk-based pricing in New Zealand. We were the first to implement risk-based pricing for inland flooding, and we continue to expand hazard modeling to other climate-related risks. Our view remains that risk and pricing transparency is not only fairer to customers, but is also in the interests of our shareholders. It has certainly proven to be a compelling factor in securing a comprehensive reinsurance program for FY 2024 at competitive rates. This is crucial as reinsurance provides protection from volatility caused by large events, maintaining flexibility to enable Tower's growth and support strong solvency. However, while risk-based pricing successfully underpins Tower's competitive pricing, robust underwriting, continued growth and response to issues arising from climate change, it is not a cure for all challenges. Ideally, comprehensive insurance will be affordable and accessible for all.
Unfortunately, the twin challenges of an inflationary environment and increasing risks from climate change make this unrealistic. The unpalatable truth is that not everyone is or will be able to afford to insure their home in the way that they do now. However, the New Zealand market enjoys strong insurance penetration, and people will be loath to give up all protection. So while affordability is currently presenting challenges, the desire and need for insurance will not dissipate. Our view is that fortune will favor those insurers who can pivot and adapt, something that Tower has the digital capability and proven ability to do. Tower will continue to innovate by developing cost-effective alternatives to traditional comprehensive insurance cover.
In the future, options likely to be offered in New Zealand include parametric cover, which has already been successfully tried in the Pacific, and named perils policies which only cover certain hazards. For example, offering fire-only policies in flood-prone areas. This approach is already common in many other parts of the world, and while it will take some time getting used to, it will likely become a necessary replacement to comprehensive cover for at least some New Zealanders. In short, Tower's continued resilience will be fostered through innovation and meeting the market where it is at, not where we would like it to be. Despite the obstacles of 2023, Tower continues to be well positioned for long-term growth. Looking ahead, Tower's sharp focus is on continuing to deliver strong sustainable growth via its rating approach, and customer experience.
Careful risk selection and risk-based pricing expansion will remain at the forefront of our strategy. Tower's solvency margin is NZD 53.8 million, which is above RBNZ's minimum solvency capital. Although this is below historical levels, it will continue to increase, please, God, in FY 2024 as catastrophe event claims are settled. The fundamentals remain strong. I would like to take the opportunity to welcome Mike Cutter, who has recently joined the board, and thank Blair for his contribution as an interim board member. Mike brings extensive global governance and executive experience in the financial services sector that will be invaluable as Tower continues to evolve. Finally, on behalf of the board, our sincere thanks to the entire Tower team, from the front line to management, for digging deep in tough times to deliver on our strategy while supporting our customers and communities. I'll now hand over to Blair and Paul to take you through the results.
Kia ora! Thank you, Michael, and good morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us for our 2023 full year financial results. Here is a summary of our results, which overall demonstrate Tower's resilience through a challenging year. I'll talk through these points in more detail shortly, but first, an overview of our performance this year. Gross Written Premium for the year to September 30 increased to NZD 527 million, up 17% on the same period last year, and this was driven by strong rating actions as well as continuing customer acquisition and retention. Customer numbers increased to 321,000, up 4% from 310,000 in FY 2022.
Increasing inflation and a higher frequency of motor claims have contributed to an increase in the BAU claims ratio to 55.5%, compared to 48.9% in FY 2022. Tower is continuing to apply targeted rating and underwriting actions to address these challenges. We are pleased to see our management expense ratio improve once again to 32.2% versus 36% in FY 2022, thanks to our disciplined cost control and improved efficiencies through digitization and increasing scale. Large event costs totaled NZD 55.6 million, up from NZD 19 million in FY 2022, and these costs include the additional reinsurance cover purchased to reinstate our reinsurance arrangements following the two New Zealand catastrophe events earlier this year.
Given these large events' costs, our solvency ratio decreased to 159% from 205% in FY 2022, but remains in a solid position, and which Paul will talk to shortly. Despite these challenges, we are reporting an underlying profit after tax of NZD 7.6 million, down from an underlying profit of NZD 27.3 million in the full year 2022. Reported FY 2023 loss was NZD 1.2 million, compared to an NZD 18.9 million profit in FY 2022. On the basis of these results, Tower will not pay a full year dividend in FY 2023. As you can see in this graph, large event costs have been rising steadily in recent years. Tower is monitoring these trends and has important mitigations in place to help manage these risks.
Our robust reinsurance arrangements have provided protection from catastrophe events this year. We estimate reinsurance will cover more than NZD 200 million of customers' claims for both catastrophe events combined. As at November 20, we had completed approximately 84% of claims for the New Zealand weather events and 88% of claims for the Vanuatu cyclones. We are working hard to close the remainder. To help mitigate large events, large events impacts in FY 2024, we have purchased cover for two catastrophe events, up to NZD 750 million each, as well as prepaid cover for a third event, up to NZD 75 million. We have also included a large events allowance of NZD 45 million within our guidance, and this allowance has been calculated with an estimated 90% confidence the outcome will be below or up to this level.
We now plan for a higher frequency and intensity of large events in both our financials and our business operations. While we respond to the challenges presented by climate change, including increasing reinsurance and other weather-related costs, Tower has also been actively managing the impacts of inflation. Tower's dynamic rating ability saw monthly inflation-based rate changes and other pricing activity total 77 rate changes in the past year. We are also continuing to improve the accuracy of existing customer sum insured amounts and therefore their pricing. In New Zealand, for the second year running, nearly 100% of our house customers' sum insureds were updated automatically as part of their renewal offer, mainly using data from the Cordell Calculator. This helps customers choose a suitable level of cover. And as we noted earlier this year, motor theft is a continuing challenge in New Zealand.
Therefore, we continue to increase premiums and excesses for vehicle models that are being stolen more regularly. This chart demonstrates the annual growth in Tower's average premium after taking into account changes through excesses and sum insured amounts. The substantial annual growth highlights the impact of technical premium increases and how these flow through to gross written premium. Increases to home insurance premiums were moderated by the change in the EQC cap, which came into effect from 1 October 2022. We're also, we're also continuing to address the challenges presented by inflation through strong, disciplined underwriting. Following the New Zealand large events in January and February this year, we introduced manual underwriting for landslide risks and automated, automated underwriting on sea surge risks. Risk ratings for these hazards will be presented to customers in My Tower in the coming months.
We are also targeting good risks, like new build homes with competitive rates. On the motor side, we continue to improve our data by taking a more granular approach to rating factors that are proven to influence claims, frequency, and severity. This helps predict the likelihood of claims and possible customer behaviors with greater accuracy. We're also exploring new telematics options, and ultimately, this is all about getting the right risks for the right price, for the right customers. I'm proud of Tower's resilience, which has enabled us to continue delivering on our strategy this year while responding to catastrophic events and other external challenges. At Tower, our purpose is to inspire, shape, and protect the future for the good of our customers and communities.
After a year navigating the impacts of catastrophic weather events in New Zealand and Vanuatu, widespread inflation and increasing crime, our purpose is more important than ever. In FY 2023, we took the opportunity to review and confirm our strategy and focus on four key areas, and these are: delivering a leading customer experience, being operationally efficient and effective, continuing to develop our high-performing culture, and ensuring continued resilience. Our focused outcomes will help lead to the new 2-year financial targets that Paul will talk through shortly, alongside our FY 2024 guidance. Tower's focus on simple and rewarding customer experiences, combined with consistent rating actions, continue to deliver strong growth in both customers and premium.
As you can see in this chart, we are growing steadily in our core home, contents, and motor product offerings, with GWP reaching NZD 527 million year-on-year. In the context of this high inflation environment, our 17% growth in premium reflects an appropriate mix of rating and organic growth, with 75% of premium growth driven by decisive rating actions. Our partnerships channel is delivering positive growth, with GWP from active partners in New Zealand increasing by 26% to NZD 82 million in the year. We also continue to drive customer engagement, with our retention rate for New Zealand remaining stable at 77%. Half of our customers hold multiple policies with us, and these customers stay with us for an average of eight years.
Our digital platform is improving the overall Tower experience for our customers as they increasingly adopt our online sales and service channels. In FY 2023, 77% of New Zealand direct sales occurred online, up from 66% in the prior- year, while 56% of New Zealand service and claim tasks were completed online, up from 50% in FY 2022. Customer satisfaction for these online engagements remains strong. Our combined New Zealand Net Promoter Score for online experiences remains steady at 55%. With our core platform now live across the Tower Group, we're able to flex resources up or down across Fiji and New Zealand, our two biggest markets.
Following post-COVID resourcing challenges in FY 22, which led to customer service challenges, we scaled up our operations, particularly through our Suva hub, and this helped our call abandonment rate improve to 12%, down from 17% in FY 22. We are pleased to see My Tower registrations continue to rise, increasing by 32% this year to 264,000 registrations, and we look forward to this number further climbing now that My Tower is live in all the markets where we operate. An important part of delivering the leading customer experience we aspire to, is fronting up and fixing things when we don't get them right. As we noted in our recent market announcement, we have made substantial progress in refunding customers who did not receive their correct multi-policy discounts extending back to 2016.
As of October 31, we've paid NZD 6.2 million, excluding GST, to these customers. Paul will talk you through the financial impacts of this in more detail shortly. Importantly, we are focused on putting things right for customers, and we sincerely apologize to those who have been affected. In addition to reviewing our processes, we are also redesigning and simplifying our multi-policy discount offering. Our investments in simplifying and digitizing our business continue to deliver MER improvements. In the context of the external challenges we are managing, we are particularly pleased to have achieved yet another reduction in our management expense ratio to 32.2% this year. Contributing to this MER improvement is our increasing scale, as well as the rating actions we have taken to tackle inflation and other external challenges.
With our core platform across all countries, another key driver of MER improvement is our increased digitization, which continues to lower the cost to acquire and serve customers. The expansion of our Suva hub this year has also delivered operational efficiencies as we move workflows between sites to manage workload peaks. In the year, our Suva team answered 16% of all New Zealand calls to Tower, and we expect this portion to further increase. Pleasingly, these efficiencies have also seen our management expenses increase at below the rate of inflation. Our commission ratio continues to improve, reducing to 1.7% in the year from 2.2% in FY 2022, thanks to legacy portfolio purchases and commission terms focused on referral arrangements.
Despite the unprecedented year of weather events, record inflation and crime, our underlying core business remains profitable, and this is due to our actions to streamline the business, continuous efficiencies through digitalization, and targeted customer growth. I'll now hand you over to our Chief Financial Officer, Paul Johnston, who will take you through the details of our financial performance this year.
Thank you, Blair. Looking at the consolidated results, we can see that growth in GWP has been strong, increasing by NZD 69.5 million, or 17% on FY 2022. This growth was predominantly driven by rating actions and excludes Tower's Papua New Guinea subsidiary, which was sold during the year. Increased motor frequency, along with high inflation and a number of small weather events, contributed to our BAU loss ratio, increasing 6.6% to 55.5%. Large event costs totaled NZD 55.6 million and included net claims costs of NZD 38.2 million and reinsurance reinstatement costs of NZD 17.4 million. Pleasingly, the MER improved to 32.2% as a result of expense efficiencies and scale. Higher yields have seen net investment income increase by NZD 13.1 million to NZD 14.3 million.
Underlying net profit after tax was NZD 7.6 million, down from NZD 27.3 million in the prior- year, reflecting the catastrophic weather events experienced in FY 2023. Including large event costs, we've reported a net loss after tax of NZD 1.2 million. This was impacted by non-underlying transactions, which include an increase to the CEQ valuation, tax adjustments relating to the prior period, and an increase to the customer remediation provision. These were partially offset by gains on the sale of our Papua New Guinea subsidiary and our building in Suva. Here is the bridge between underlying NPAT and FY 2022 of NZD 27.3 million and underlying NPAT of NZD 7.6 million in FY 2023.
You can see that business growth, management expense ratio, and investment income have helped support this result, but large events and the change in the BAU loss ratio had an adverse impact this year. We have been taking strong rating actions over the last two and a half years to combat rapidly increasing inflationary pressures. However, BAU claims costs continue to be challenged by the increasing frequency of motor claims, as well as inflation and supply chain capacity constraints, which are impacting the severity or cost of claims. These are continuing to track above historical norms in New Zealand, following a more subdued period due to COVID lockdowns in previous periods. Motor claims tend to result in the total loss of a vehicle, so this trend of increasing motor theft contributes to both higher frequency and severity.
Average New Zealand motor claims costs are now up to NZD 3,201. While house claims frequency in New Zealand is flat at 7.2%, the average severity is up to NZD 3,766. These factors have led to our BAU loss ratio increasing to 55.5%. The large events experienced this year have contributed an additional 13.4% to a total claims ratio of 68.9%. Tower has applied targeted premium increases across motor and home to offset inflation and other increases. We also continue to work closely with supply chain partners while focusing on internal efficiencies to moderate the impact on customers as much as possible.
This page illustrates the increase in the loss ratio from FY 2022 to FY 2023, reflecting the increases to motor and home severity as outlined on the previous page. We are pleased to see our management expense ratio continue to reduce, with an improvement over the last year of 3.8% to 32.2%. Increased scale from business growth has enabled efficiencies and a 4.8% reduction in management expense ratio, with a further 0.3% decrease in net commission expenses due to the legacy portfolio purchases. The effects of inflation were offset by cost containment measures in the year, particularly staff costs, which provided a 1.1% decrease. A 0.8 percentage point increase in amortization was due to legacy portfolio purchases and continued spend on investments to drive growth and efficiency automations.
Net investment income in FY 2023 increased to NZD 14.3 million before tax. This was NZD 13.1 million higher than in FY 2022. This increased income reflects interest rates stabilizing, resulting in higher running yields. Tower maintains a conservative investment policy with a focus on high credit quality and liquidity bonds, and a target duration for the core investment portfolio of six months. Our strategy has mitigated the impact on our profit from macroeconomic factors and mark-to-market movements in the past, and now allows us to benefit from higher interest rates, as evidenced by the running yield on the core investment portfolio increasing to 66.07% at 30th September 2023. Our outlook for investment income is to remain near current levels over the next year.
Tower's reinsurance strategy provides protection from volatility caused by large events and maintains financial flexibility to support growth while underpinning strong solvency. This resilience was realized in the year as we expect our reinsurance arrangements to cover NZD 204 million of FY 2023 large event claims costs. In line with our conservative approach to reinsurance, we reinstated our reinsurance arrangements following the two catastrophe events at a cost of NZD 17.4 million. We were very pleased with the successful placement of our reinsurance arrangements for FY 2024, which include catastrophe reinsurance of up to NZD 750 million for two events, with an excess of NZD 16.9 million for each event. This was down from NZD 889 million in FY 2023 due to the EQC cap change, which reduced the amount of coverage needed.
We have also purchased coverage for a third event of up to NZD 75 million, with a NZD 20 million excess. We are continuing to make steady progress in settling Canterbury claims, with 33 closed over the year. In line with expectations, we received an additional 20 new overcap and reopened claims, bringing the total number of open claims to 23 at September 30, 2023. This was a net decrease of 13 from the end of September 2022. FY 2023 has seen an adverse Canterbury earthquake P&L charge of NZD 1.2 million after tax and non-underlying items. Some of our open CEQ claims are complex and long-term. However, the remaining gross outstanding claims provision reduced to NZD 19.1 million over the year, from NZD 24.5 million at September 2022.
We continue to closely manage these outstanding claims, and our specialist team is working to finalize claims as efficiently as possible. We progressed well settling catastrophe event claims in the second half of FY 2023 and collecting the recoveries from reinsurers, which has improved our solvency position compared to the first half. With a solvency ratio of 159%, we are now holding NZD 53.8 million above the minimum capital required for solvency. This is below our new internal target of NZD 67.4 million, set in preparation for the new interim solvency standards released by RBNZ. Our minimum solvency capital has increased from historical levels due to the underlying business and claims growth, higher catastrophe risk retention, and capital required for open catastrophe claims.
We expect our solvency position to further improve in FY 2024 due to business profit and as catastrophe claims continue to be settled. In FY 2024, solvency ratio will be reported under the new interim solvency standard, with no material change and excess solvency expected. Our A- credit rating was reaffirmed in April by AM Best. In FY 2024, Tower expects GWP growth, excluding revenue from sales of subsidiary operations, of between 10% and 15%. We have set a conservative large events allowance of NZD 45 million for FY 2024, versus NZD 38 million in the prior- year. Consistent with FY 2023, we will measure large events as those which have a total cost of more than NZD 2 million. Assuming full utilization of the large events allowance, Tower anticipates underlying net profit after tax of between NZD 22 million and NZD 27 million.
We expect further improvements to our management expense ratio, which we'll anticipate will be between 30% and 32% in FY 2024. As the rating and other actions that we have in place to address inflation begin to improve our BAU loss ratio, we expect a reduction in our combined operating ratio to between 95% and 97%. You'll note new medium-term targets that we are sharing with the market for the first time today. In FY 2025, we'll be focused on delivering another 10% to 15% GWP growth, a management expense ratio of less than 28%, and a combined operating ratio of less than 91%. We are targeting a return on equity of between 12% and 15%. Thank you. I'll now hand back to Blair, who'll provide an update on our priorities for FY 2024.
Thank you, Paul. In line with our strategy and focus on delivering the medium-term targets Paul just highlighted, our five priorities for the coming year are clear. I'll take you through some of the actions that support these priorities in our final few slides. We will continue to invest in creating leading customer experiences and targeting profitable growth, and this includes adding landslide and sea surge risk ratings to our automated customer-facing quote-to-buy tool, where customers can already see their home's risk ratings for earthquake and flood hazards. In the coming year, we anticipate a greater proportion of new business to come from home insurance policy sales as we target high-quality risks, and this includes a greater emphasis on new builds.
We will continue to grow organically through our existing partnerships, and we expect the rating changes we've made in FY 2023 to continue to flow through the portfolio as policies renew. An important priority is to complete the multi-policy discount remediation while continuing to redesign a multi-policy discount offering. As you can see in the example on this phone screen on the slide, we are also working to give customers greater transparency of their discounts. We're focused on delivering efficiency, digitization, and process improvements, and by the end of FY 2025, we want digital transactions to account for 80% of all New Zealand service tasks, increasing from 55% at the end of FY 2023.
We will launch new house and motor assessing systems to reduce assessment times and repair costs, and we're expecting more than half of our call volumes to be answered by a team in Suva. We will continue to streamline the business through the sale of our Solomon Islands subsidiary and exiting our New Zealand rural commercial portfolio. It is also our intention to sell our Vanuatu business, and we are going through a process of identifying a buyer. We'll update you once we have progressed this further. We will continue to invest in our future resilience and sustainability. Large events are now business as usual for insurers, and we will continue to protect both our financial and operational resilience by conservatively budgeting for increased large event costs, while embedding large events response processes into our everyday operations.
We are scaling our parametric insurance offering by partnering with Global Insurtech, CelsiusPro, and the United Nations to expand our pilot beyond Fiji to Tonga. We plan to offer parametric insurance across five Pacific territories by FY 2025. We're excited by the possibilities parametric insurance provides for people who may not benefit from traditional insurance products. We are reducing our operational emissions, which are now 13% below our baseline year. In FY 2024, we will expand our measurement of scope three emissions to include emissions from our underwriting activities and supply chain. While we expect the inclusion of this previously unreported data to increase Tower's total carbon emissions profile, we look forward to turning this new information into actions that contribute to a lower carbon future. Our first climate-related financial disclosure is required for the 2024 financial year.
We look forward to sharing more information with you then about how we are preparing for a range of possible futures shaped by climate change. We know that sustainability issues are important to our people and customers, and consumer research shows that for almost half, 47% of people, a commitment to sustainability and climate action matters when choosing an insurance company. With this in mind, Tower is aiming to achieve B Corp accreditation in the coming year. B Corp is a globally recognized sustainability benchmark, which measures a company's entire social and environmental impact. Thank you for your time this morning. I will now hand back to the operator to ask the questions.
Certainly. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question at this time, please press star one, one. One moment for our first question. Our first question comes from the line of Kieran Carling from Craigs Investment Partners. Your question, please.
Morning, Blair and Paul. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Great. Just first question from me, just on your, you know, your motor claims are obviously a key driver of the step change in the BAU claims ratio through FY 2023. Just wondering if you can comment on what the key driver is of the 17% increase in cost per claim. And then adding to that, perhaps get your thoughts on why you might be seeing the frequency of motor claims increase. You know, when we heard from Turners, yesterday, that their insurance book has seen the frequency of claims decline, through the latest year.
Sure. So two parts to that. The first part, there's really two drivers as to why we're seeing the average severity increase by that much. One of them is theft. As I highlighted in my call script, the theft tends to result in the total loss of a motor vehicle. And so we've seen a doubling in the frequency of theft in our book from just over 0.5% to just over 1%. And as a result of that, our incurred cost has doubled for theft as well, which has obviously pushed up the total average.
And then the third one, which also answers your second question to some degree is we have seen an increase in collision while parked in particular. And that's come along since following the COVID lockdown. And you know, again, those tend to be higher cost claims, but obviously also we've got inflation and supply chain constraints in there, which has also flowed through to that increase in loss ratio.
Great. Thank you. And I guess with a, you know, such a significant uptick in the severity of the motor claims, can you comment on what the average quantum of policy increases or policy price increases you're looking to push through in FY 2024 are? And perhaps, you know, what the consumer responsiveness to those increases is likely to be.
Sure. So our key approach to pricing is targeted. You know, the right price for the right risk for the right customer. And so if it's a vehicle that is subject to particularly high crime, or seems to be at a particularly high accident frequency, then we'll be putting through higher rates for those. And then inversely, yeah, lower rates for others. So we really are focused on being targeted. The other point there is the effective rate that the customer sees. But fundamentally, we're sort of looking to push between sort of around that 10%-20% price increase. But as I said, it really does depend on our targeting.
And maybe, Kieran, if I can just add a little bit more. You know, effectively, we're doing risk-based pricing, as Paul said, for not just home, but we're also doing it for motor. And we're really selecting those models and, as we mentioned in the script, doing a lot more around the algorithms to put more factors in to get the right risk, the right price. I think the second part of your question also was, what are, how do you see customers responding to this? What we are doing is helping customers. We understand at the moment things are pinchy. Through My Tower, customers can go on, they can, you know, edit their excess if they need to, to potentially reduce their premium. We're also helping them get the right, most suitable cover.
The final point is, you know, by bringing all of their policies together, they can also save costs by having them in one place. So that's how we're helping customers manage that affordability through.
Great. Thank you. And then this last one from me, on your management expense ratio target of 28% or less than 28% by FY 2025. Can you just comment on the key drivers for achieving that, and perhaps the breakdown of contribution and split between, you know, moving staff to Fiji versus tech improvements?
Maybe I'll touch on a couple, and then Paul can give you a little more detail on the numbers. But look, there, there's two to three key drivers, Kieran. The first of all is absolutely digitization. You know, we, we highlighted that our goal is to have 80% of our already we're there with new business, but also service transactions online. They come at a much lower cost to serve, and we're also increasing our level of claims lodgment and support online. That's a big part of it. What we want is when we pick up the telephone, is for to have those richer conversations with customers, not things that we can do systematically online. That's the first big plus. Yes, the Suva Hub, at the beginning of this year, we had about 50 people. We now have 250 people.
That has enabled us to really low, high, manage those peaks and troughs of demands that come through post those events, but also be able to serve and get efficiencies through that operation. And of course, the whole of the Pacific now and ACRC are all on one platform, and that is a key one. Actually, decommissioning those old legacy systems and concentrating it on one core cloud-based platform enables us very tangible efficiencies in helping drive that MER down. In terms of the mix of that MER, you know, we carry around about NZD 130 million of management expenses that are, you know, basically in three big buckets. There's a tech spend, there's people costs, and then there's management and support that sit around that. All three of them, we'll be working very hard on to get greater efficiencies out of.
I think I've probably only got one more thing to add to Blair's comprehensive answer there. Obviously, also the denominator in that fraction will continue to grow, and that's through our top-line growth. But fundamentally, I guess I can say over the next two years, we will see small increases in the absolute cost of our spend below inflation. You know, we will start to see the benefit of earning through the increase in the Suva Hub population that Blair highlighted there. So that'll benefit us this year. And then our continued investment in digitization will also help bring down some of our costs there. But obviously as well, we'll continue to invest in our marketing spend and our technology investment, and our digitization, and straight-through processing activities.
Great. Thanks, guys. That's, that's all from me.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, ladies and gentlemen, if you do have a question at this time, please press star one one on your telephone. One moment for our next question. Our next question comes from the line of Andrew Buncombe from Macquarie. Your question please.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just a couple from me. The first one, on slide 25, you've obviously given FY 2025 combined ratio targets, which would suggest to me that you have an estimate for the large events allowance in that year. Can you just give us some color on what you think that's going to be in your assumptions in FY 2025? Thanks.
Sure. It is an increase on this year. We're proposing sort of around about another 10% increase. So we are expecting in our future trajectory to continue to slowly bring that large events allowance up or continue to increase it. And that's a reflection of the growth in the underlying book.
Sure. The next one is just in relation to how you're thinking about dividends for next year. Going forward, is there a willingness to pay dividends on a half-yearly basis, or are you going to move to a full year-to-year basis? Thanks.
We absolutely want to continue to pay dividends. Last year, we, as I'm sure you recall, we did pay dividend both the half year and the full year, and that's the expectation that will be there. At the moment, you know, we're still in the phase of rebuilding our solvency capital back to our previously high levels. And so, you know, depending on how much we are able to exceed our plan next year, then we'll reassess then. But fundamentally, our policy is that the board considers our dividend on a year-by-year basis, and looks at what's prudent to pay out at the time.
Sure. The third one from me, again, is in relation to the guidance on slide 25. For that FY 2025 GWP growth guidance, what are you assuming for volume versus price? What's that mix? Thanks.
We're expecting to be closer to 50/50 on that one by FY 2025.
Okay, and then the final one from me, just in relation to some of the previous questions. What are you seeing at the moment in regards to customers changing their excesses for home and motor? Are you starting to see any movement there? Thanks.
Yeah, thanks, Andrew. Look, we are seeing customers increasing. It's not a, it's not a, you know, tsunami of customers, but we are seeing customers coming in and increase their excesses and, you know, consolidate their policies with an aim to, you know, manage that affordability, as we mentioned earlier, Andrew. But, you know, it, it's, it's still single-digit number of customers who are making those amendments. It's not by any stretch of the imagination, you know, large volumes of people. And I guess that's also reflected.
Sorry about that.
Yeah, it's also reflected in our retention. Our retention has been very stable across the year at 77%, which is consistent with the prior- year at 78%. So, you know, people, even in the year that we've had with a lot of weather events and the like, people still recognize very much this is when you need insurance and still value that insurance.
Great. That's it from me. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thanks, Andrew.
Thank you. This does conclude the question and answer session of today's program. I'd like to hand the program back to final remarks.
Well, thank you for listening this morning, and, as usual, if there are any other questions, please reach out to Blair or Paul, and I'm sure they will answer them. So thanks very much.