Figma Shares Indicated To Open $105/$110
Sanlam, a leading financial services group with a market capitalization of approximately $29.8 million, reported robust financial results for the third quarter of 2023, showcasing significant growth in several key areas. The company’s net result from financial services increased by 14% to over 14 billion. This growth supported an 11% dividend increase, reflecting strong cash earnings. According to InvestingPro data, the company maintains a FAIR financial health rating with an overall score of 2.07 out of 5. Sanlam’s return on group equity value per share exceeded 20%, underscoring its solid financial position. The company is optimistic about its future prospects, particularly in African markets, and plans to continue expanding its banking and credit services.
Key Takeaways
- Sanlam’s financial services net result rose by 14% to over 14 billion.
- Dividend increased by 11%, supported by strong cash earnings growth.
- Return on group equity value per share surpassed 20%.
- Positive outlook for African markets, with expected growth in key areas.
- Continued expansion in digital banking and credit services.
Company Performance
Sanlam demonstrated strong financial performance in Q3 2023, with significant growth in its financial services net result. The 14% increase to over 14 billion highlights the company’s effective strategies and robust market position. The growth in cash earnings also allowed for an 11% increase in dividends, reflecting Sanlam’s commitment to returning value to shareholders. InvestingPro analysis reveals impressive revenue growth of 110.14% in the last twelve months, with a healthy current ratio of 3.17. Compared to previous years, the company has maintained consistent growth, with earnings increasing by 15% annually since 2020. For deeper insights into Sanlam’s financial metrics and growth potential, investors can access the comprehensive Pro Research Report, available exclusively on InvestingPro.
Financial Highlights
- Net result from financial services: Over 14 billion (+14% YoY)
- Dividend increase: 11%
- Return on group equity value per share: Over 20%
- Earnings growth since 2020: 15% per annum
Outlook & Guidance
Sanlam remains optimistic about its future, particularly in African markets, where it sees reasonable growth prospects. The company is focused on building a leading position in South Africa and plans to expand its banking and credit services to retail customers. According to InvestingPro data, analysts maintain a consensus BUY recommendation, with a significant upside potential of over 300% from current levels. Sanlam’s medium-term growth targets are expected to be revealed during its upcoming Capital Markets Day, scheduled for 48 days from now. The company is targeting cash net result from financial services guidance of 15-16.5 billion for 2025.
Executive Commentary
Group CEO Paul Handrati expressed optimism about the global economic growth imperatives, stating, "We’re extremely hopeful that the focus on economic growth imperatives at a global level will help to influence policy positively in the markets in which we operate." Heine Wirt, CEO of Sanlam Alliance, emphasized the quality of cash earnings, noting, "The quality of cash earnings is getting better."
Risks and Challenges
- Economic uncertainty in key markets could impact growth.
- Potential challenges in integrating new acquisitions and alliances.
- Regulatory changes in financial services markets.
- Competition from other financial services providers.
- Market volatility affecting investment returns.
Sanlam’s strong performance in Q3 2023 highlights its strategic focus and robust market position. With continued expansion plans and a positive outlook for future growth, the company is well-positioned to capitalize on opportunities in its key markets.
Full transcript - Azumah Resources Ltd (AZM) Q4 2024:
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Good afternoon, and welcome to Sunlam’s twenty twenty four Annual Results Presentation. Thank you for joining us. I am Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations at Sunlam, and I’ll be facilitating today’s session. I’m joined in the auditorium by our Group CEO and Group Finance Director, as well as members of the executive leadership team. As usual, Paul Handrati, our Group CEO and Abigail Mokuba, our Group Finance Director, will present today’s financial results.
But today, we also have short presentations on our Pan Africa operations as well as from our South Africa operations. We will then move to a Q and A session. With that, I will hand over to Paul.
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: Grant, many thanks and good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the presentation of Sunlands twenty twenty four financial results. As Grant said, I’m joined today by Abigail Macuba, our Chief Financial Officer Heine Wirt, the CEO of Sunlam Alliance joint venture in Africa and Anton Hildenhais, the CEO of Sunlam Life and Savings. I will begin by giving a brief overview, then Heine and Anton will provide brief updates on the strategic progress in Sanlam Alliance and Sanlam Life and Savings, particularly emphasizing the progress on the Assupol integration. Abigail will then cover the financial results in a bit of detail and I’ll wrap up with some guidance on our focus areas and outlook for the 2025 financial year. 2024 was a year of strong operational and strategic delivery for the group.
Each business cluster performed well and customer growth and earnings were strong. We’re particularly pleased that the strong performance was driven primarily by organic growth in each of our businesses in 2024. The integration of historic acquisitions has progressed extremely well. The Absa asset management acquisition is completely behind us. The various linked investment services platform transactions are now integrated.
Capital legacy is a core part of our proposition as is BrightRock. The Sanlam Alliance integration is well on track and Sanlam has launched a group supported health scheme in South Africa. Our various transactions with Alexander Forbes are now delivering fully on their expected benefits. The Sanlam Alliance business has a number of integrations completed, but it is true that there are a number to go and Heine will give you some detail on that. Our culture, our staff engagement and our recognition as an employer of choice are all signs of good long term health within the business and our partnerships continue to create competitive advantage for the group in each of our main markets.
On a very brief overview now of some of our financial results, Abigail will go into more detail. We continue to focus on cash earnings with the cash net result from financial services up 17% per share, ignoring the one off boost in the accounts from the closure of the Capitec joint venture. Strong investment returns for 2024 boosted operational earnings even further, these being up twenty six percent
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: at a
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: per share level. New business and value of new business growth continued, albeit at a modest rate this year, following structural corporate activity as well as currency depreciations impacting value of new business in the Pan African operations. I will remind you of course that things like Namibia moving out all had an impact on the reported growth in new business. We are satisfied that our new business volumes are adequate given the high base that was set in the last few years. The overall new business growth rate on a like for like basis was nine percent.
Sanlam demonstrated strong growth in net client cash flow of 52%, demonstrating the strength of our asset management operations. The two measures of shareholder value creation, which we employ within the group, namely return on group equity value and dividend growth, both produce satisfactory outcomes in 2024. Return on group equity value was ahead of our long term target and our dividend increase of 11% is supported by the robust growth in cash earnings. The group’s solvency position remains excellent. I want to draw your attention to the fact that we’ve introduced return on equity as a further financial metric for the group.
Later this year, we’ll set out medium term targets for various metrics, including ROE. But we’re satisfied at this point that an ROE of 19.8% and that again excludes the one off Capitec reinsurance recapture fee is reflective of the ongoing value creation by the group. The group continues to consistently grow at a good rate. Earnings growth since 2020 has been 15% per annum. Despite the extensive reallocation of capital which has been taking place, which is intended to improve our core businesses, competitive positions over time, growth since 2020 has been mainly organic.
The contribution from capital reallocation and resulting synergies is expected to increase significantly over time and in the next few years we will complete the integration of a number of businesses. Aside from 2020 when COVID badly affected the group, our most important measure of long term value creation, return on group equity value, has been ahead of our hurdle. Strong growth in cash earnings has supported our secondary measure of value creation, dividend growth. Dividend growth remains ahead of the group’s target range. The group now has three strong growth engines.
In 2024, South Africa produced robust growth and returns. The life insurance business produced strong experience variances, improved persistency outcomes in retail mass segment and continued to produce excellent margins. The Suntan business continued to improve its underwriting performance as it improved its operations overall, driving premium growth at the same time as improving the quality of the underlying business that’s been written. The investment business has continued to grow assets under management strongly. The newly formed Sanlam Alliance joint venture has produced a strong set of results that are mostly within the guidance ranges provided to the market.
The competitive position that Sanlam has in most of our markets has put us in a very strong position to generate good returns. The Indian business continued to grow and perform strongly. The credit business grew strongly and margins were excellent with good credit performance. Insurance businesses continued to grow strongly, although earnings out of India were impacted heavily by the investment and expanded distribution of the life insurer. It’s important to note that if we reported earnings for the group, growth was dampened by the reduction in the Sriram finance stake that we undertook during the course of the year.
Finally, Sanlam has had a fabulously successful partnership with Ubuntu Butte for the past twenty years. Value has been created for Sanlam’s shareholders, while simultaneously millions of beneficiaries have been supported by the work of Sanlam and our partners. The previous relationship agreement between Sanlam and Ubuntu Butu expired on the December 31 and both parties have now entered into a new relationship agreement to extend their strategic partnership for a further ten years to the December 2034. Sanlam and Ubuntu Butu Partnership has mutually developed beneficial opportunities for both companies. During the partnership, Ubuntu Bute established African Rainbow Capital to diversify its investment base, but importantly also to assist Sanlam in developing areas of the market and to create significant value as envisaged in the early agreements.
Milestones of the relationship include the formation of Sanlam Investments becoming the first major black asset manager with more than 51% controlled after Ubuntu Bootu through ARC invested in Sunlam Investment Holdings. Developing businesses like Capital Legacy, a world and estate administration business to the point where it became strategically relevant to Sunlam. And Sunlam’s investment into ARC Financial Services Holding, a black owned financial services group and an incubator for high growth fintech startups and early stage businesses, leveraging its portfolio companies to drive synergies and develop superior competitive customer propositions. Important to note that there are no capital impacts arising from the renewal of this partnership and we are delighted to have a strategic partner in the form of Ubuntu Booty for the further development of our business. At this point, I’m going to hand over to Heinie Wirt, who will give you a very brief overview of the progress over the last twelve months of the Sanlam Alliance joint venture.
Thank you.
Heine Wirt, CEO of Sanlam Alliance Joint Venture, Sanlam: Thank you, Paul. Just a reminder to everybody, Sandler Malliance is still a fairly new company. We are now a new group of companies, only eighteen months old. And I have to say, we’re off to a good start. Paul already referred to it, not only in terms of our numbers but also in terms of building a foundation for the future.
Just a reminder on our key strategy, nothing has changed. It is really about supporting this objective of building a foundation for the future. We really believe in the long term future of Africa. And it’s really built along three levers. One is very simple, grow and optimize the businesses we have.
It’s doing all the basics right in the business. Secondly, very, very important, it’s to support our businesses technically from the center to accelerate their growth profile. And the third leg is really active portfolio management. Are we in the right countries? Are we in the right businesses?
Where should we accelerate further expansion through structural growth? Or should we even exit countries where needed? For 2025, in addition to the overarching strategy, we always look at specific focus areas. And again, you will see it’s really, really just focusing on the basics of the business. It is firstly, most important, we must deliver on our budgets.
When the JV come together, we set ourselves stretched budgets. It’s important to achieve it because that means we are making progress in terms of really vesting the JV. During the year, we also want to make further progress on the integration and rebranding of our businesses. The big focus is being put on our people, investing a culture that will help us to build the businesses for the future. It is about our systems.
In the long term, we want to standardize and simplify our businesses. That will take quite a period of time, but we are well on our way. And then very, very basic, you always have to focus on the balance sheet. Quite often people tend to focus on sales, distribution, collection of premiums. But in the end, you need to make sure you’ve got optimal balance sheet.
Opportunities to invest in Africa in many markets are limited and we have to ensure our balance sheets remain strong and solid to support our businesses. Just a short update on where we stand with integration. A reminder, we had overlaps in 11 countries. During 2024, we completed five integrations. Interestingly, the last one, Madagascar, was on the December 31, but we finished those five last year.
We are quite confident that Nigeria should happen in the next month or two. We’re waiting for final approvals there. And then in East Africa, when we look in East Africa, Tanzania, Mauritius, Uganda, Kenya, we are waiting for our regulatory approvals. The one which will take a bit more time is Morocco. Earlier this year, we reached agreement with the authorities there on the actions that we have to put in place to address their concerns.
They accepted our proposals, the old seplit was lifted and we are now looking at the best ways to execute on these actions. Basically, we expect all integrations to be and rebranding to be complete before the year end and Morocco might take a little bit longer. But overall, well on track. And in terms of the synergies we promised our shareholders, the integration costs, we’re ahead of target. So it’s really coming out the way we planned and even better.
If we look and Paul briefly referred to it, we promised our shareholders, not promised, when we agreed with them certain ranges that we will target on the life insurance side, the general insurance side and also for Sander Melians as a collective. So on this slide, you will see comparisons where we compare our results with it firstly gives actual results for the year, the numbers. And then you will see percentage growth relative to last year. Those percentages are in constant currency and it’s as if the cluster was in existence the full of last year. The color coding then is, did we meet the objectives or the agreed targets that we agreed with our shareholders.
And you will see in all cases, in most cases, they are green, meaning we’ve exceeded those ranges. In this case, orange, like on the net insurance margin for general insurance, we are well within the range. Even before we get a question, we will always get a question in, but what does that mean for our underwriting margin? Typically, you can deduct 5.5% to 6% for our return on float, return on technical reserves and the remainder is then effectively your underwriting margin. So even there, we’ve got a healthy 6% plus underwriting margin.
The only negative we will see a green is our net earned premium on the general insurance side where we only grew 11%, very, very close to our margin of 12 to 15%. I’m very confident that we will get into that range in the coming year. We succeeded early in this year to get an A rating for our reinsurance company, Sandler Malianzari, and that will help us also in terms of this growth prospect. Overall, I think a solid set of results for the first year of our getting together as a joint venture. And I really want to say I think it’s a great testimony to the resilience of your people who succeeds to manage change and uncertainty the whole time.
So well done to all of them. On this note, I’m going to hand over to Anton Gholdenais. Thank you.
Anton Hildenhais, CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam: Thank you, Hany. Good afternoon, everyone. The South African update, we will focus on the recent Assipol acquisition and the absolutely enormous opportunity it holds for the Sanlam Group. By merging Assipol with our existing retail mass operations, we actually have formed a leading mass player in South Africa. As you can see, our combined book is now the largest in the industry, which presents enormous scale advantages for us in Sanlam.
We have more than 7,000 tight agents throughout the country and we enjoy support for more than 1,000 AI phase, again leading positions in the market and that gives us a very strong position for growth across the traditional channels in the industry. I’m also very pleased to report that we’ve had a busy, but a very successful first three months as a joint entity. The initial focus of the team was on value protection. As you know, any change brings uncertainty and we are very conscious of the need to return our people, our advisors and most importantly, our clients. We finalized a new joint leadership team with Retail Maas with great talent from both Assapol and Sanlam Retail Maas coming together in the new leadership team.
This team is now focused on developing and implementing a range of operating model synergies as well as enormous new business potential growth throughout the combined business, and I’ll get to that just now. Through this focus on value protection, leadership and organizational alignment, we managed to achieve great early successes. First of all, we managed to reduce our inter license churn that is churn between Assapol and Sanlam by 60% and we aim to bring that down even more. We maintain we managed to retain that talent in the group at all levels. Crucially, our manpower in both Sanlam Retail Mass and Assapol distribution teams remain stable.
Because of these successes, we have improved persistency and we are seeing continued new business growth. This has contributed to continued growth in the total book, which fuels our future profitability. This focus on value protection is already evident in the returns we get from the business. Our initial outlay has been just below $6,600,000,000 Now based on Sonlam’s valuation method, the GB on the Assapol business is still $6,600,000,000 at the end of twenty twenty four. Very importantly to note though that Sonlam has received a dividend of $781,000,000 after the acquisition, which means that we’ve achieved a return of 12% of just the first three months of the acquisition.
Now that we have the foundations in place and we are confident about value protecting, our focus is shifting towards value creation. And we have identified significant low hanging synergies from business harmonization and integration. This includes stuff like IT consolidation and leveraging our much larger base in procurement activities. The result in cost savings will drive profit growth and our market share of value of new business. We are very excited about unlocking additional potential in new business from productivity improvements in particularly the support channels.
This will happen by rolling out the digital tools that we have developed over a number of years in Sunnal and that has driven Sunnal’s productivity growth. A second source of new business growth will come from cross selling or product diversification. We have worked extensively on broadening the solution set in retail mass with a lot of pilot activities during 2024 and we are now aiming to roll that out during 2025. Solutions include the worlds and estates product, credit solutions, primary healthcare, general insurance and also transactional solutions. Our intention is to deepen our value proposition in both Sun LAMP and Assipol channels.
Of course, the wider solution set will be powered by the digital solutions that we are rolling out in our channels. Another key focus area for us in 2025 is to expand our branch network and to also reposition our current network. Although Assipol already has more than 80 branches throughout South Africa, these branches have been positioned mainly for servicing of existing clients. While the servicing of clients will continue, we will now also focus these branches on driving new business of the broader solution set, all those solutions I’ve mentioned a bit earlier. And we’re already doing this with our existing Sunland branches.
Through this depositioning and the further expansion of branches, we are aiming to have about 200 strategically placed branches throughout the country, giving us a solid physical presence in the market. By offering a broad solution set, which is also backed up by this physical presence, we believe that we will further improve our ability to forge strong relationships with our clients, a much larger client base, resulting in further improved retention and growth. Thank you. And I will now hand over to Abigail to unpack the financial results.
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: Thank you, Anton. Good afternoon. Building on the strategy and high level performance just outlined, I would like to now take you through the financial results demonstrating how our execution translates into tangible financial outcomes. We have maintained a strong focus on key financial priorities, and our numbers reflect that. Please note that for the rest of my section, when I talk about net result from Financial Services and net operational earnings numbers, I’m covering numbers that exclude one of after tax recapture fee income of about SEK 1,400,000,000.0, which was received from the termination of the joint venture with Capitec.
So if we dive into the numbers, our core earnings metrics, Net Result from Financial Services, increased by 14% to over JPY 14,000,000,000 with strong and steady contributions across all lines of business and across our diversified geographies. I will go into the life and health as well as the general insurance lines of business in detail in later slides. However, for now on this slide, I would like to cover the credit and structuring line of business’s performance, which was impacted by the change in shareholding in both TRIRAM Finance Limited in India as well as the Sandler Malliance Namibia transaction. The Sriram Finance Limited in India entity, which remains the main credit and structuring business, continues to perform well with earnings up 16% after adjusting for the reduced shareholdings. Its loan book continues to show double digit growth while maintaining good credit experience.
Investment returns also benefited from excellent performance in equities and bonds that beat our shareholder capital portfolio. Project expenses during this period reduced, also supporting operational earnings growth. And as always, please note that both net result from financial services and net operational earnings are after Sanlam specific shareholder fund adjustments, which in this period have absorbed positive investment returns. Our core earnings growth also translates into similar cash earnings growth. Therefore, the strong growth in earnings and the cash generated cash generation supported a dividend increase of approximately 11% for the year.
If I move to return on group equity value, both return on group equity value per share of just over 20% and adjusted return on group equity value per share of 18% are above the twenty twenty four headcount rate as Paul has already alluded. If we focus on the elements within management’s control, the key drivers of the adjusted ROCEV numbers were: we experienced satisfactory levels of new business volumes and the resulting VNB contribution. We also saw a combination of positive operating experience variances and assumption changes. Our GI business in South Africa, Santam, they outperformed against their target return on capital over the period. Then also, we experienced the revaluation of the Indian credit and general insurance business.
All of these were partially offset by the write down of the South Africa Health business, Afrocentric. All three of our core geographic regions contributed to the strong performance. Then maybe if I just double click on some of the elements, if one looks at the risk experience, it remains strongly positive across all businesses in South Africa, albeit lower than prior year. The negative risk experience from the medical insurance business in Malaysia was the main detractor in the risk experience. Persistency experience variances on covered business improved significantly, albeit still slightly negative.
In South Africa, persistency basis strengthening in December 2023 in the retail mass business and the management actions that we implemented from the second quarter of twenty twenty four resulted in a positive persistency experience variance in the individual life business for the 2024 reporting period. However, experience weakened on the Capitec and entry level retail group businesses over this year. The risk and savings business continues to record positive persistency experience. And then if you move to Pan Africa, those operations recorded positive persistency experience, while Asia recorded slight negative experience largely from Malaysia. Then just to cover up on this slide or to finish up on this slide, the actual ROG have benefited from positive investment variance and economic assumption changes.
Again, from a Santan perspective, that share price performance was also a positive in terms of the contribution, although these were partially offset by the negative impact of the devaluation of the Egyptian pound relative to the South African rand in the Pan Africa business. And then lastly, the negative contribution from other earnings relates mostly to the implementation of the global minimum tax regime in South Africa, which negatively impacted some of the Pan Africa operations group equity value. We continue if I look at the discretionary capital balance in the group, we continue to deploy capital responsibly. Our long term target range for discretionary capital remains that between ZAR1 billion to ZAR3 billion. We ended the year above this range primarily due to the timing of outstanding approvals of the approvals of the announced India transaction.
If you remember, we announced the SFL transaction, wherein the proceeds of that transaction are expected to partly fund the increase in the insurance entity stake once it is approved. We expect that once the approvals are received, discretionary capital will fall back to the target range. In terms of the movement during the year, deployment was still largely in South Africa and Pan Africa. Post this reporting period, we expect that AdiAnsis’ top up option exercise will increase the flows and then Surem investment into or our investment in terms of the Sriram investments overall into the Life business, Wealth and Asset Management, there will be major drivers of the outflows. And then all of which is still aligned with our communicative strategy.
The group remains well capitalized and comfortably within its solvency cover ratio target. If maybe I just cover from a line of business perspective, first, the Life Insurance and Health business. Earnings increased by 8%. And if you look at it including the recapture fee, it was around 28% for this period. And then South Africa’s increase was supported largely by the growth in the retail business, driven by the risk experience profits that I talked about earlier, the higher asset based fee income and positive credit spread earnings as well as overall inclusion of Asupol in the last quarter of the year.
PanAfrica’s increased performance was in spite of the negative impact of the currency devaluations in Nigeria and in Egypt. Life core earnings were up more than 30% in constant currency, which growth was further supported by cost containment initiatives across the Pan Africa portfolio. The key country contributions include solid performance in Namibia and Botswana as well as strong performance from the Credit Life business in Tanzania and Deposit Administration and Group Risk business in Malawi. In Asia, Malaysia’s lower earnings were impacted by a challenging claims environment in the health portfolio as well as elevated expenses partly due to regulatory changes. I think I refer to those at half year as well.
India recorded muted growth because of the improved investment returns, premium growth as well as positive mortality experience, which were offset by the business’s focus on investing in developing the sales channels to support new business growth. The South Africa Health portfolio recorded lower earnings, largely due to weaker performance from Afrocentric. You would have seen the results earlier in the week. South Africa’s present value of new business premiums increased by 3%. Retail mass recurring premiums recorded satisfactory growth driven by positive contributions from the Funeral JV and the first time inclusion, of course, of Asupol in the last quarter.
This was partly reduced by weaker contribution from the Individual Life business because of the successful management actions I referred to earlier. The affluent segment, which consists of the risk and savings and glacier businesses, recorded an increase during this period. Single premium sales increased due to international and living annuity products seeing increased flows, while life annuity sales tapered off in the second half of the year, in line with the reduction in the bond yields. In recurring premium business, we continue to see market share gains in individual underwritten life and a good growth in savings products. Corporate businesses segment growth was muted due to the high single premium in 2023, while recurring premium sales increased by 17%.
Pan Africa volumes performance is impacted by the corporate activity structural change in the portfolio. On a comparable basis, Life Insurance new business volumes increased by 24%. This was supported by good annuity, credit life and individual life flows in Southern Africa, credit life flows in Tanzania, strong unit linked volumes in Egypt as well as individual life and annuity volumes in Nigeria. Asia recorded continued strong double digit growth driven by good growth in both India and Malaysia. India’s increased individual Life sales volumes from the development of new sales channels, while Malaysia sales growth was from increased sales of savings products and growth in group business.
On the value of new business side. If I move on to the value of the new business side. The South Africa VNB growth was marginal as the good affluent and corporate segment growth was dampened by muted growth in the mass market segment from the actions that were taken to address churn, but also from the inclusion of Capitec’s contribution for only ten months relative to the full year in 2023. While churn management actions impacted the performance in quarter one and two, we can already see the benefits in the latter parts of the year. Pan Africa’s VNB contribution increased by 4%.
This growth percentage was impacted by the structural changes that I talked about earlier. The same VNB growth is 36% higher if you look at it on a like for like basis and in constant currency. And this was supported by volume growth in Namibia, Egypt, Malawi, Tanzania and Nigeria. Asia’s VNB growth was impacted by costs that were incurred in establishing the new open market distribution channels, also what we referred to earlier. And then in Malaysia, the VNB was impacted by shifts to lower margin business sales.
Overall, the group achieved a net VNB margin of 2.81%. And then if I move to net client cash flow. Life net client cash flow was satisfactory at just below ZAR 17,000,000,000, albeit 10% lower than 2023. We saw strong growth in Pan Africa and Asia, which was offset by weaker performance in South Africa. South Africa was impacted by the net outflows in the corporate business, including two port claims as well as the loss of one large client.
This offsets strong inflows in the mass and affluent segments. Then my last slide will be on General Insurance. The South Africa GI business, Santam, saw the results of consistent management actions implemented over the past two years continue to bear positive results in the underwriting margin improvement, supported by improved claims experience. Pan Africa, which again is impacted by the structural change from a comparability perspective, it recorded higher investment returns on insurance funds and overall book growth within the portfolio. The good results were achieved in Morocco, Saint L’Amaliensri and Egypt, which was partially offset by the underperformance in Cote D’Ivoire and Angola.
The business achieved a net insurance margin within its 10% to 15% target range. Asia’s decline in performance was due to the non repeat of a positive modeling change in 2023. Underlying business performance remained, however, satisfactory. Malaysia was impacted by a challenging claims environment in the motor book. And then in closing, if you will allow me, I just want to acknowledge our incredible management team whose dedication and commitment drive our success.
And I also want to extend my sincere gratitude to our investors for your continued trust and confidence in SandNam’s vision. And we will continue to deliver. Thanks, Paul.
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: Abigail, thanks very much. I’m just going to finish off by taking you through our immediate 2025 priorities and talk a little bit about our outlook for the balance of this year. So the first thing is that we are very focused on building a leading position in South Africa. And I think you’d have got a very good flavor of what we’re trying to do from Anton. The integration of Assupol is incredibly important in our retail mass business and it will help to strengthen our long term position in this market and enable us to continue to grow strongly and consistently.
A part of our work in South Africa is focused on taking advantage of the opportunities that are opening up with our investment into ARC Financial Services. And in 2025, we expect to be able to take the first steps to extend banking services and credit to our South African retail customers. There’s some very significant transactions that require completion, the 91 transaction to strengthen our active asset management proposition, and I think you will have seen the SENS announcement out today indicating the next steps on that road. The completion of the various Sanlam Alliance integrations that Heine put up and the regulatory approvals that we’re waiting for our Indian buy ups in the insurance space. Our expectation is that the work that we’ve been doing to improve customer experience will see some very significant step forward in late twenty twenty five.
This will include improved servicing through digital channels and integrating the existing group rewards to enable much better group cross sell going forward. We expect continued momentum in each of our business clusters. Growth prospects in all of our key markets are reasonable and the execution of integration is proceeding in line with our plans. We therefore expect to see continuing strong growth of cash earnings in each of our three big growth engines. The group has a historic record of reserving prudently.
And on the back of this, we would expect to have another strong year in 2025. Assuming normal market conditions, interest rates and currencies without severe geopolitical disruptions, which may be a very big if and but, we anticipate 2025 cash net result from Financial Services to be within the range of 15,000,000,000 to 16,500,000,000.0 range. This is of course off the base of 14,200,000,000.0 in 2024, which excludes the recapture fee from Capitec. Our return and dividend expectations for 2025 are that we will exceed our long term hurdles. Salim is very optimistic about the outlook for 2025, notwithstanding the impacts of global geopolitics.
South Africa is busy hosting the G20 and B20 this year. Our President has made it clear that this Africa’s G and B20, not just South Africa’s. We’re extremely hopeful that the focus on economic growth imperatives at a global level will help to influence policy positively in the markets in which we operate. It is for this reason that Salom is actively supporting the G20 and B20. We’re continuing to focus on consistent delivery and strategic execution, putting our customers first every single day.
We believe that this will enable our three strong growth engines to continue to deliver strong results for shareholders while continuing to exceed our clients’ expectations. We have a portfolio which is very diverse. We’re organized into three strong growth engines and we believe that this portfolio can continue to create value for all our stakeholders, where value creation for shareholders continues to be measured primarily by return on group equity value and dividend growth. I’d like to echo Abigail’s thanks. We don’t take it lightly that you join our call, take interest in Sanlam and support us and particularly to our shareholders.
We do not take your investment in us for granted and we’re very appreciative of it. It allows us to do our work for customers. So thank you very much and good luck for the balance of this year. We will now open up to questions and Grant Davids will marshal the various questions and myself, Abigail, Heine and Grant will be available to answer any questions you may have. Thank you.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks very much to Paul and to all the presenters. We also welcome now, Lundolozi Mancini, Sandlam’s Chief Actuary and Chief Risk Officer to take some of the questions. So we have both telephone lines and I’ve got some webcast questions that have come through. I will start with the webcast questions. The first question is from Michael Christelis from UBS and his question is please provide some color on the mortality variances in the corporate business for 2024 and how this compares to 2023?
Moundolozzi, do you want to take that?
Lundolozi Mancini, Chief Actuary and Chief Risk Officer, Sanlam: Yes. It’s our work Grant. Yeah, so we in the year 2024, we had very good risk experience profits for the corporate business. They are slightly lower than last year by about $60,000,000 but they still remain very strong in the year 2024. We have indicated in the past few years the profits in that business have been at elevated levels, and we expected some normalization.
But what we are seeing is that profits remain very strong.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks very much. Another question from Michael Christelis. Jaime, I’ll direct this one at you. What is the broad split of Sanlam Allianz earnings by the currency, if you can give any direction or color on that?
Heine Wirt, CEO of Sanlam Alliance Joint Venture, Sanlam: I think we should rather go back to Michael, but on the split. A year ago, we gave indication in the Investors Day on the split between the different currencies. It would have changed slightly from that. So Grant, I don’t have the detail now with me.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Yes, we’ll come back to Michael on that one. A question from Jared Houston from All Weather. Paul, I’ll direct this one to you. If you could please expand on how you intend to extend banking and credit to your retail customers?
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: Thanks very much, Grant. So the answer to that is that through our relationship with Time Bank, which is a fully digital bank, now has a new bank come in as a very significant investor. We intend to take digital banking services out at very affordable prices and with a very high quality to our customers. We also have a credit business. We have an existing credit business, but it’s historically been somewhat analog.
And we’re busy with Time Bank actually building the underlying technology to allow that to be much more efficient business and much more digitally enabled. And as I mentioned on the call, we’ll roll a lot of the benefits out later this year of these products. It’s also important to note that they’ll be somewhat connected with our rewards program and we expect to be able to utilize the banking services as a means of handling payments to customers.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks, Paul. Another question from this one from Baron Nkomo from JPMorgan. Some of the close competitors some of the close South African competitors of Sanlam are targeting earnings growth of 15% to 20% over the next three to five years. Is that a level of growth that Sanlam is confident it can deliver at a group level? Which businesses or regions do you expect to be the key drivers of growth?
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: Grant, I guess that’s for me and Abigail. So Abigail, you could maybe chip in as well to this thing. I didn’t hear his did he say 12 to 15?
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: 15 to 20.
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: 15 to 20. Okay. Well, far be it for me to comment. But I think that we would personally, Javier may disagree. I think personally, Sanlam would be amazed if we could ourselves deliver earnings growth over the next three to five years of ’fifteen to ’twenty.
And I think we’ve got an incredibly profitable business with very strong positions. I can’t comment on that. I think what we will do in our Capital Markets Day later this year is we will lay our targets, medium term targets for each of our big growth engines, South Africa, the rest of Africa, India. I think Heine has made it very clear. We have laid out for Pan Africa already targets.
So you’ve got a fair idea of what our growth rates and benchmarks are there. I think it goes without saying that India, you’d expect to see somewhat similar targets. But South Africa, I think to produce 15% to 20% for corporate South Africa as a whole, no matter which industry you’re in, would be very challenging. I don’t know whether you agree or not, Javier.
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: Yes, totally. Nothing more to add in that one. And I think obviously, Byron, we did include the immediate target for 2025 on those numbers. You can do the calculation in terms of the range.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks very much. Operator, I’d just like to go to the telephone lines if there are any calls on the telephone lines. Any calls on the telephone lines? Does not appear to be any calls. Back to the webcast, there is one or a couple of questions that came through earlier from Warwick Bram from RMB Morgan Stanley, but some of them some technical questions addressing the asset mismatch reserve and the VIF to NAV split.
Marek, we will come back to you to address those technical questions. But maybe one of the questions Antonelle directed you. Do you have a sense of how much market share you have gained in individual underwritten life in 2024? And you have a long term market share target in mind?
Anton Hildenhais, CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam: Actually, that’s the one product line where NMG does a survey quite accurately. So we’ve got a very good idea of where we are. So for the Sanom underwritten product, our market share was about 14.5% in 2022. That grew to 15.5% in ’twenty three and it grew further to 16.3% in 2024. So you saw about a 2% gain in market share from the Sanom product.
And then in Bright Rock, they’ve been pretty stable at around 5% market share. So combined, we’re well into 21% market share in underwritten light product solution set in South Africa. In terms of our target, I mean we’re not fixated on the target of market share in terms of premium. Our focus is really on new business value of new business growth and there we actually did quite well I
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: believe. Thanks, Anton. Another question that’s come through on the webcast from Isandra So at FairTree. Could you please give an indication of the split of the intended capital outlay of that roughly ZAR1 billion between the Shiram asset management wealth and stock broking businesses? And also if there’s any performance metrics that we can share of those businesses?
Lundolozi Mancini, Chief Actuary and Chief Risk Officer, Sanlam: So I understand the split of the ZAR1 billion.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Yes, the split of the capital that we’re investing in.
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: At one we don’t I think the information that we’ve made publicly available is the ZAR1 billion, not the feather split, no.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: One more question from Jared Houston from All Weather. If we could please explain the strategy on the launch of the new FedHealth offering?
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: I guess I should take that. But actually Anton, why don’t you do it? This is in
Anton Hildenhais, CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam: your camp. Thanks, Paul. As you know, we are the majority stake in Centric and it’s really our intention to have a sudden response as to Kim that we can integrate into our solution set to really integrate into our rewards program to combine with other underwritten products to both packages that’s attractive and affordable to our clients. And for that you need a strategic partnership with a scheme. A scheme is a separate legal entity.
And in Fedorlk, we found a scheme that really want to work and the road with us. And in that regard, we’ve got a strategy mapped out over the next couple of years that started with migrating the entire Sanlam staff complement to FedHealth. And we’ve got further actions planned for the next couple of years to really build an enormously competitive health proposition for South Africa.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks very much. I would just like to go to Chorus Call now. Are there any questions from Chorus Call line?
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: Yes. We do have a question on the line. The question is from Francois de Toei of Anchor Stockbrokers. Please go ahead.
Francois de Toei, Analyst, Anchor Stockbrokers: Afternoon, guys. Can you hear me?
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: Yes. We can hear you fine, Francois.
Francois de Toei, Analyst, Anchor Stockbrokers: Excellent, thank you. Can you maybe give us a sense of whether you believe the cash earnings will again be as close as it was or similar to your net result from Financial Services next year. You have given us cash in our FFS growth guidance. Is it fair to use that as growth guidance for our FFS as well? First question.
And then second question, is it are you willing to disclose a little bit more in terms of the contribution to new business value and to experience variances specifically that Capitec had in 2024? It would be nice to get the numbers excluding Capitec. If you’re willing to disclose that separately or publish it to the market, it will be very helpful. Third question, just about
Anton Hildenhais, CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam: yes, I think the
Francois de Toei, Analyst, Anchor Stockbrokers: if you can discuss the quality of the net result from Financial Services, all the hands and whether there were any one offs involved in that earnings impact of the maybe currency movements in Egypt, for example, and separately also quality wise what that earnings look like in terms of fungibility? Is it distributable? Can it be repatriated to South Africa? So that sort of quality discussion around that earnings if possible.
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: So, Abigail, why don’t you take the first question on the difference between cash and
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: So, Francois, we expected that it will continue to be closely aligned. We do provide in the slide some of our reconciling items and those ones are pretty much consistent year on year and we don’t expect that we’re going to have any volatility in those numbers. So it should be closely aligned.
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: I don’t know whether you have any strong feelings, but I’m not sure that we even have a split of the VNB impacts on Capitec and Experian variances. I’m not sure. I think that’s a question maybe, Francois, we could deal with offline with you. Jaime, do you want to cover the question of the quality of the earnings and some of the structural impacts in the short term of dividends, which we expect to clear in the longer run?
Heine Wirt, CEO of Sanlam Alliance Joint Venture, Sanlam: Yes. Thanks, Paul. I think Francois, the quality is getting more sound. I mean, as you know, some of the bigger entities or countries had big devaluations, Nigeria and also Egypt. In Nigeria, we succeeded to repatriate all our money, all the dividends.
We still have a little bit left in Malawi. In the case of Egypt, the biggest chunk is Egypt that you referred to. There, want to say the ForEx situation has improved a lot, but we are deliberately, I want to say, withholding some dividends at this stage in the country because we’re waiting for certain clarity on dividend withholding taxes. So the information we have is once that is sorted out, we will be able to repatriate. But at the same time, I have to say, we’re also looking at certain reinvestment or redeployment opportunities in Egypt.
You will know we’ve got a really, really market leading business in Allianz Egypt. And we’re also looking at certain new opportunities there. So I’m fairly confident that with the knowledge we have from the different countries that we are not foreseeing big forex shocks. You can never say never, but that the quality of cash earnings is getting better because of that. We do have still have some intermediary company structures for historical reasons in place and we will also gradually address them.
But I would say a year from now, eighteen months, you will see a fairly good dividend flow to the group.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks, Francois. Are there any more questions on Chorus Call?
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: We have no other questions on the line.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks very much. I’ll come back to the webcast. We have one question from Marius Streatham from ALG. And the question revolves more around corporate activity. And Paul, I
Anton Hildenhais, CEO of Sanlam Life and Savings, Sanlam: know you have touched on
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: it in your presentation. Marius just asks, given that we’ve been extremely active, is there still a substantial pipeline that we’re looking at? Or should we expect consolidation and delivery focus? What could this mean for shareholder distributions? If there’s anything you want to add there?
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: So, Grant, I think if there was something we were planning, we certainly wouldn’t be discussing it online. But I think we’ve done a lot. We’ve strengthened our positions and we’ve been very clear that our focus is on integration and execution. We did put up the chart showing that there’s been a relatively modest impact on earnings. There’s been quite a big impact on dividend if you listen carefully to what Heine was saying because of the formation of SaaS and the intermediate company structures.
And we’re always very clear that we did expect in the first year or two to have a slowdown of dividend declarations up to the group. And we also said earlier, I think I said it when I was talking that we do expect the benefits of some of the integrations to start coming through and that will help to underpin higher growth. As some of the structural issues also clear, there will be a better dividend flow. So, we would expect both dividend and profits to be positively impacted going forward. Unless Heineken can come up with some new ideas for us in Africa to set us back on capital deployment.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thank you, Paul. One more question from Michael. Chris Stellas from UBS. Is there any color we can give on what Assupol’s contribution was to earnings to net result from financial services?
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: For the three months?
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Yes.
Abigail Mokuba, Group Finance Director, Sanlam: It was BRL218 million.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks, BRL $2.18. There are no further questions on the web cast sorry, one has come through from Radebe Zipalme from Mergent’s Investment Managers. With the ninety one Partnership, is there an interest in increasing the stake above 12% and obtaining control if the opportunity presents itself?
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: Grant, that’s not on the table at this stage at all in our thinking. If you look at the way we approach partnerships, we’re happy to build partnerships. You might have heard me talking earlier about Winthropodie, that’s now a thirty year partnership. We start small and we build a relationship and trust and those are built on delivery and outcomes. And so I think it’s we’ll start out here.
I think it’s a good opportunity for both sides. And we’ll explore opportunities to do more together in time if that’s going to create value. But there is absolutely no thought on our behalf at this point. And I think what is very important is that we believe absolutely passionately that a good active asset manager needs to be very independent, independently minded and thoughtful. And for that reason, I think it’s extremely important that one keeps one’s shareholding if you’re going to really make a success of this at a level where there’s clear independence.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thanks, Paul. Just one more check on the webcast. No further questions coming through. I think we will leave it there, Paul. Maybe just some closing comments from
Paul Handrati, Group CEO, Sanlam: you. No, Brian, thank you very much. And once again, thank you to everybody who’s joined us. Thank you for taking an interest. And again, thank you to our shareholders.
The ability to fund our business and to have strong shareholders is unbelievably important. And to echo Abigail, Abigail and myself and actually Grant, we merely are conduits of the Sanlam story to the market. But our staff and people and partners have done an incredible job to produce a great set of results. And I think the good thing about Sanlam is actually the results you see in the profits and the growth, it’s all cash. It’s real money.
There’s no vapor in there. And I think we’ve got a very high quality business. It’s a very successful business. And we want to really thank our staff and partners for creating a good story for us to take to our shareholders. So thanks very much.
Grant Davids, Head of Investor Relations, Sanlam: Thank you. Thanks very much and we’ll leave it there.
This article was generated with the support of AI and reviewed by an editor. For more information see our T&C.