Momentum Group Limited

Momentum Group Limited

1.94
EUR
+0.04
(+2.11%)
2.65BMarket Cap
Mar 10Next Earn

Q3 FY2026 · Earnings Call TranscriptJune 1, 2026

Operator

Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to the Momentum Group operating update for the nine months to March 2026. All participants will be in listen-only mode.

A question and answer session will follow the formal presentation. If you should require operator assistance during the conference, please key in star and then zero on your telephone keypad.

Please note that this event is being recorded. I will now hand over to the Group CEO, Jeanette Marais.

Please go ahead.

Jeanette Marais

Thank you. Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to our operating update for quarter three of F2026.

I'm joined on this call by our Group Finance Director, Risto Ketola, as well as Rowan Burger and Penelope Lephoto from our investor relations team. We're almost at the end of year two of our Impact strategy, and I'm very satisfied that we continue the positive earnings trajectory into the third quarter.

Remember that our earnings target for this financial year is R6 billion, and we reported that normalised headline earnings grew by 15% year-on-year to R5.5 billion at the end of the nine months. This performance was underpinned by good earnings contributions across all our operating business units.

Those businesses who had exceptional earnings in F2025 have maintained their performance, and the others have shown strong growth. We are excited to see our India segment showing a positive earnings number year-to-date, not just over the quarter.

New business sales grew by 15%. This was supported by healthy investment flows in Momentum Corporate, significant corporate scheme wins in Momentum Africa, and continued growth in Momentum Investments wealth platform.

Single premiums grew by 15%, following favourable equity markets, while recurring premiums increased by 7%. Despite sales growing, our VNB declined by 4% to R347 million, and our new business margin contracted to 1— to 0.5%.

This decline continues to be due to the decline in VNB in Momentum Investments, following an industry-wide shift from life annuities towards living annuities. This was partially offset by notable VNB recovery in Momentum Retail and Metropolitan Life.

Both businesses managed to lift their VNB to achieve the lower end of our targets, with Momentum Retail at 1.1% and Metropolitan at 1.2%. Momentum Corporate and Africa's VNB margin improved, but it is still in the negative, and Momentum Investments VNB continued to decline.

VNB remains the most significant challenge across the group and will require extraordinary effort and focus in the final year of the Impact strategy. Improving client experience is also a key focus in our Impact strategy.

This is not an easy dial to move, but we have started to see a significant shift in this financial year. We continue to measure our progress and have clear strategies per business to continue improvement how we make our clients feel.

At 23.3%, our ROE remains well above the target of 20% that we've set for the end of F2027, and it remains the highest in the industry, a testament to our capital management discipline. A big milestone for us is that today marks the first day of Momentum Health administering the Bonitas scheme.

Just to illustrate the scope of this transaction, it is the biggest move of a medical scheme from one provider to another in the history of the medical scheme industry in South Africa. From today, our annual value of claims processed on behalf of members and paid to providers will increase from around R70 billion per year to R100 billion.

That means we process and pay claims worth R275 million per day, every day of the year. Of these, 98.5% is 100% straight-through and done by a system without any human involvement.

We employed more than 500 additional employees to administer Bonitas. We set up a new building in Sandton to house the dedicated business, and we are opening 21 bespoke Bonitas walk-in centres across the country during June and July.

We achieved all of this within six months. Finally, just on an outlook, the global operating environment and South African growth prospects remain under pressure, causing uncertainty for consumers and investors.

However, these dynamics are not unique to us. Industry peers face similar headwinds, and we believe that our diversified business model, disciplined capital management, and robust risk management approach position us competitively to navigate this environment and to continue delivering value to our clients.

These are factors outside of our control. We believe in focusing on what we can control, which is managing our business responsibly to be competitive and to focus on growth.

I'm encouraged by the excellent earnings performance we achieved over the past quarter, and we remain well-positioned to sustain our growth trajectory, which is supported by our federated business model, diversified earnings streams, disciplined capital allocation, and strategic investments in new capabilities, including the onboarding of Bonitas and the continued scaling of our India operations. With one year to go to the end of our Impact strategy, we are proving that we are successfully executing our strategy and we are well-placed to meet our strategic objectives.

We have seen improvement in VNB, but we continue our focus on improving VNB margin, driving sales volumes, and managing our expenses. We look forward to providing further details at the Capital Markets Day tomorrow.

I now hand over to Risto to share a bit more detail.

Risto Ketola

Thanks, Jeanette. I'm just going to make a couple of additional points that when I read the operating update, I thought was maybe not obvious.

I saw a comment from one of the analysts this morning referring to the R44 EV number we have in the statement on the buybacks. That's actually the number from December.

The closing EV at the end of March was R46.43 before the dividend that was paid in early April. It went to R45.33 thereafter, and probably back at about R46 now.

The discount to EV that we bought the shares back was actually a little bit higher than I think people realise. Just to qualify the R45, R44 was the December number.

The other thing is that on the sales side, Metropolitan is the only business where sales went backwards a little bit. One thing I did check this morning is the sales numbers are down, is it 19% here?

No, it's 13% combined. The actual number of agents is down 39%, on average, that's the average monthly number of agents.

I think it's a great outcome. I have spoken before about just how much the cost of running that sales force has reduced and the quality's improved.

I think definitely a 40% reduction in let's call it the size of the entourage versus 13% reduction in sales is a great outcome for VNB. It's pleasing because it shows you that sometimes when you take really drastic action, it actually pays off.

Probably gives us confidence to look at further activities that will hopefully then lift the VNB. I also noticed that there were some comments about the Guardrisk and Insure numbers being a little bit lower in the third quarter.

I just want to confirm that that is only the investment return. Both Guardrisk and Insure do invest a little bit in equities, and obviously, the January to March period was quite poor for that.

I can actually confirm that Insure had the best quarterly claims ratio in that third quarter. There were some weather-related claims there, but it was still a great quarter in terms of underwriting.

Guardrisk is a very diverse business, but their underwriting results were also very much in line with the first six months. The little bit of a slowdown that we're seeing in quarter three is purely the equity impact on their investment returns.

There were some very positive comments on Africa, and obviously, we take good sales. The business is showing some improvements in a lot of areas.

I do want to just point out that the new operating model, which we'll talk a bit more about tomorrow, it is increasing the cost base of that business, you need these volumes to be higher. As we do the actuarial assumption changes at year-end, there might be some negative expense adjustments that we need to make.

Maybe just moderate the expectation for year-end there. Then very good news that a lot of people picked up is India is now profitable on IFRS 17 basis.

I don't really see a reason why it won't continue to be profitable and continue to grow those profits. The business is still very fast-growing.

If we look at some simple maths, we're growing gross written premiums by about R3 [billion?] to R4 billion a year.

That requires about R1 [billion?] to R1.5 billion of capital to support that growth every year.

Even if earnings pop up to a few hundred million, that's still a R1 billion shortfall that the shareholders need to make up in terms of supporting the growth. We probably looking at about R400 million per annum as our practical contribution for the next few years to support the growth, even if the business is profitable.

It is a nice problem to have because we would like to have more businesses that require capital for growth, okay? India is a good story.

Beyond that, Jeanette already mentioned ROE remains at 23.3%, very strong, we're really happy with that. Overall, there are a few new things.

Bonitas is really exciting. Obviously, the India outlook is better.

At a very high level, I think we're extracting as much earnings out of the business as humanly can, very focused on expenses, cost optimisation, you'll see tomorrow a lot of usage of AI and make sure we're not behind the technology curve. The one concern still is actually top-line growth.

The volumes are good, VNB needs to be better, but from the earnings side, can't really think we could do better. I think I'll hand back.

Rowan Burger

We're happy to take questions now.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, we will now be conducting the question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question, please key in star and then one on your telephone keypad.

A confirmation tone will indicate that your line is in the question queue. You may key in star and then two to leave the question...

Rowan Burger

Have we lost the line?

Operator

Sorry, ma'am. Can you hear me?

Rowan Burger

Hello, can you guys hear me? Yes, Mike, we can hear you.

Sorry, we lost the call for a bit in the room.

Michael Christelis

Apologies, I think I lost it as well. Thanks for the time, guys, and well done on another really good earnings print.

Just four questions if I can. Firstly, your CSM commentary, can...

Rowan Burger

Yes, we can hear you, Mike. Go ahead.

Michael Christelis

Sorry. On your CSM commentary, I just want to make sure that there were no estimate changes at quarter-end, this is essentially a product of new business and accretion and release rather than anything else.

The second question, obviously, markets very turbulent at the end of March. Can you comment at all about the direction of travel for investment variances since March-end and what we should expect based on where we are today?

The third question is around the guidance for the shareholders segment for the remainder of the year. Quarter four, we saw a very wild swing from what was a reasonable quarter three to quite a big negative in quarter four.

Maybe if you can just give us some sort of comment on what to expect. Then the last question I've got around the Momentum Investments mix changes, can you comment at all about the kind of IRR you're earning on the weaker mix?

In other words, I don't know if there's a way that we can calculate it, but if there's some sort of commentary you can give us to what sort of IRR you generate on living annuity versus guaranteed annuity volumes, any commentary on that sort of basis would be great. Thanks very much.

I hope you heard all of that.

Rowan Burger

Yes, we got them. Thanks.

Risto Ketola

Yeah. Rowan, my answer is in grace, but let's see if we can get through all of them.

I can confirm that there was no assumption changes. Obviously, there will be some experience variances that will impact the CSM, and your market returns would have had maybe a bit of a weakening impact on the VFA component of the CSM.

To answer your question, no, there is no assumption changes. Investment variances, I'm looking at here, the number to the nine-month number was R540 million positive.

I think what was the interim stage? About R400 [million?]

. Okay.

It was definitely a positive quarter despite the equity markets being negative. I'm just thinking now, we had no credit default, the credit spread and NII would have been quite substantial then.

Think of it as a R100 million like that, R100 [million?] to R150 million positive for the quarter.

Your IRR question is interesting because I haven't looked at it recently. When I looked at the IRRs on annuities, it was very high, and payback periods were very short because, remember, on annuities, the commissions are also regulated to be only 1.5%.

The payback periods are very pleasing on the eye on the guaranteed annuities. I haven't done the same exercise for living annuities.

I can do it for you. It will be very unlikely it's as good as the guaranteed annuities.

Rowan, make an action point for me to look at that. What was the question again?

Rowan Burger

In the prior year, we saw a large change from Q3 to Q4 in the shareholders segment. I think that was largely driven by the VC funds.

If you consider this quarter, I don't think your guess is as good as mine just in terms of those VC funds. We have seen sort of write-downs on those.

I don't know if Risto wants to give a little bit more colour. One thing, though, is that there is capital that is allocated to the business units, and they earn returns on that, and the shareholders earn returns on the free assets.

Those are slightly lower for the shareholders from the 31 December capital calculations.

Risto Ketola

Rowan, I agree with that. The only thing else I can think about is obviously fourth quarter, we also normally adjust for the bonus pool.

I think this year, I think we're pretty fully provided. At this moment, it looks like it's sufficient.

Michael Christelis

That's great. Thanks, guys.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Marius Strydom of Austen Lawrence Gidion.

Marius Strydom

Can you hear me?

Risto Ketola

Yes, we can.

Rowan Burger

Thanks, Marius.

Marius Strydom

Sorry about that. My question is with regards to solvency.

We saw an improvement in your SCR cover from December to March, and that was clearly due to or impacted by the bond yield moves. Now, we've seen bond yields decline again since March almost to similar levels where they were in December.

Obviously, the issues with regards to the longer-duration bond yields and the extrapolation may not be as extreme now as they were at 31 December. The question is: should we expect a better outcome for SCR at June even if bond yields remain at current levels?

Number two, have you taken any steps and what's your thinking around risk-based capital efficiency steps that may be taken going forward?

Risto Ketola

Marius, we'll expand on this a bit tomorrow, but you're right. The capital ratio improvement from December to March, probably half of it related to the yield curve movement and the other half related to sort of retained earnings.

I'm actually thinking the SCR, the required capital, I think, in the life company fell by R500 million from R20.4 billion to R19.9 billion over the quarter. Yield curve has a lot to do with that.

Now, we still have four weeks to go before end of June, but I do expect the capital ratios to be better than what was in December. Now, the extrapolation impacts is not as severe at the moment as it was in December.

Hopefully, that remains on course, and that's obviously external to us, that is a yield curve provided by our regulator. Now in terms of actions we're doing, we have been looking a lot in terms of how we calculate the SCR, what our management actions are, how we model tax in the stress tests, how we interpret some of the standards.

We've done a lot of work on the calculation side of it. At this stage, we have not changed our hedging policies.

We have been debating whether we sort of relax on the earnings hedging. Remember, we hedge the earnings as much as we can, which then leads to this volatility in solvency.

If we increase the solvency hedging, then that will introduce earnings volatility because you can't hedge both of them, you have to choose which one you hedge. For now, we have not increased the hedging on the solvency side, we're still exposed to the same external events.

I think the SCR calculation, like we're reinterpreting some of the components, I think will yield a slightly more positive result. Then obviously, based on that, we will assess our own target for high-quality liquid assets, which we set at R16 billion in December.

I think it's more likely than not that it will be lower than R16 billion in June, but there is four weeks to go, yeah. You're right, we have to watch those yield curves, and particularly the long end of the yield curve.

Marius Strydom

Okay. Thank you very much.

Operator

Ladies and gentlemen, just a final reminder: if you'd like to ask a question, you're welcome to key in star and then one on your telephone keypad. We have a follow-up question from Michael Christelis of UBS.

Please go ahead.

Michael Christelis

Hi guys. Sorry, I'm not sure if you can hear me.

Thanks. If no one else is going to ask, I want to ask about the Metropolitan margin.

I estimate it's about 2.5% for quarter three. Do you think you're now sustainably in that 2% to 3% range, or what do you think the margin does from here?

Is there room for that to lift up towards the 4% to 5% range you've been targeting for a few years?

Risto Ketola

Most definitely. We do expect it to improve further going forward.

The actions we've taken have made an impact, but they will continue to make a bigger impact. There's still a few adjustments or changes in terms of product features and basically the distribution models as well.

I do think that it can still improve. I think the 5% may be a stretch, but improvement, definitely.

Jeanette Marais

The team remain very committed and focused on the 5%, but maybe we're a little bit more bearish on whether they're going to get to exactly 5%, but they're still making good progress, and we continue to track it and we continue to see the improvements they're making.

Michael Christelis

That's great to hear. Thank you.

Then maybe just a last comment. One of your peers made some pretty cautious comments around persistency and the expectations for the rest of this year.

Is there anything you can say about what persistency has done since quarter-end, given the pure price hikes and your expectations for the rest of the year? Yeah.

Risto Ketola

I'm looking at the management reports here. Now, obviously, there's a bit of a lag here.

We're still not seeing any worsening in terms of lapses. Now remember, you can miss one or two payments and not lapse a policy.

There's no increase in lapses, and I have not heard from the business that there's been a noticeable increase in the failed debit orders or stop orders. It's early days.

Now, Mike, I think I have told you before that we tend to be a bit out of cycle because we had our own persistency problems a couple of years ago. We have implemented and continue to implement continuous improvements to our collections mechanisms and the quality of business.

We're tightening new business acceptances, we're improving our collection capability. We continuously hear that our business is a little bit more sort of lower middle market than the higher lower income market.

There's a number of factors why we might be different to some of the competitors. Again, the short answer to your question is no, I have not seen any management information showing higher lapses yet.

It could still come because if I'm thinking now, we're in 1st of June, I probably have proper visibility of lapses to the end of April. The May lapses won't be through yet because they will try double collect now and so on.

Rowan Burger

I will say, Mike, that April sales were a little weaker than March, but I think that was more of an Easter effect because they came through strongly in May.

Jeanette Marais

Seasonality more than...

Rowan Burger

Yeah.

Risto Ketola

Mike, wait, I want to brag quickly. I want to go to the Metropolitan slide here.

Yeah. The total PCR is the highest since February 2021.

How's that? Okay.

That's our collection ratio, okay? All the efforts we have done to improve our collections to date is showing an upward increase.

Now, like I said, there's a lag in this data. This particular ratio is sort of a three-month lag.

It's sort of how many of the premiums you collected in the last three months. Maybe it turns from here, but it's quite a pretty picture as we stand here looking at the last two years.

Jeanette Marais

Sounds

Michael Christelis

excellent. What about with the affluent in Momentum Life?

There was some deterioration there amongst your peers in quarter four last year. Are you seeing anything there?

Risto Ketola

Again, definitely nothing statistically significant. Now, in my internal presentation on the results, I actually commented on improving persistency experience in Momentum Retail.

The persistency and expense variances were better in the nine months than the previous nine months. Remember, these are results to 31 March, though.

Yeah. I haven't seen since then.

Generally, the collections are extremely high in this market. Missed premiums are the exception rather than the norm, it's very difficult to meet.

Michael Christelis

Excellent. Thank you, guys.

I appreciate it.

Operator

Our next question comes from Warwick Bam of RMB Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Warwick Bam

Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks very much.

I have one question on costs. Your cost-saving initiatives are starting to show meaningfully in your direct cost growth, which rose just 1%.

As your savings initiatives start annualising, how should we think about cost growth into 2027? Just remind us how you've dealt with these cost savings in the embedded value, especially with reference to the potential for expense variances at year-end.

Risto Ketola

A great question. I should have actually had that on my bullet points.

Been quite busy today, I had to prepare for this call a bit on the fly, but Warwick, I'm actually looking here. Our cost in the January to March quarter was 4% lower than the same quarter last year and 7% lower than in the same quarter two years ago.

Warwick Bam

Okay.

Risto Ketola

Our optimisation project, because it's sort of rolling over time, is starting to have almost like a bigger and bigger impact every quarter that goes past. As we sit here, June is always interesting because people want to bring expenses in before year-end.

I think there's a good chance we end up flat year-on-year from the current 1%, which will be better than we expected. I think we went into the year expecting 2% to 3% cost growth.

Next year, we're budgeting for about 2% budgeted increases. If we continue to keep the focus, we might get closer to zero.

It can't continue forever, although certain technological changes might give us a bit of a longer leeway now. The project is going well.

In terms of EV, we have not allowed for anything beyond next year's budget. Next year's budget, which uses the starting point for expense assumptions, and I think it means that in most places, you might have slightly better expense assumptions than last year, except Africa, where we have now implemented a more sort of their own controlled model, which means they have more expenses in Africa.

It will definitely help the VNB and EV a little bit over the next couple of years. Remember, we probably assuming about what?

4% or 5% inflation for let's say three, four years after next year. If we can come in at closer to zero, that's obviously quite a big impact.

Quite a big impact, that's like R500 million a year impact in 4.5% versus zero.

Warwick Bam

Very helpful. Thanks.

Risto Ketola

They say you can't shrink yourself to greatness, but you can shrink yourself to some breathing space.

Operator

Thank you. The next question is a follow-up from Marius Strydom of ALG.

Please go ahead.

Marius Strydom

Hi again. This time I'd like to ask about Momentum Corporate.

You mentioned with reference to Guardrisk and Metropolitan Insure that investment markets had had a lot to do with the slowdown in the third quarter. We obviously saw a slowdown for Momentum Corporate as well.

I think the NHE for the quarter was R260 million versus R427 million in the first quarter, R449 million in the second quarter. Just wanted to understand how much of that slowdown was related to markets versus underwriting and other experience.

Risto Ketola

Yeah. Good observation.

Corporate had a negative investment variance in the third quarter. Remember, their book is not as long-dated as the retail books, and they also have a lot more inflation-linked liabilities.

Their investment variances are not always in sync with the retail operations. That had a small negative variance, which would have hurt them.

I also noticed that their disability and PHI experience is a little bit lower than last year. The mortality experience actually continues to look good compared last year and past year.

I think last year they benefited a lot more from IBNR releases than in the current year.

Operator

The short... Excuse me, please remain on line.

We seem to have lost the main venue. Please remain on line, and the speakers will be rejoining us shortly.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, apologies for the delay.

Please remain on line, and the main speakers will be rejoining us shortly. Thank you.

Risto Ketola

Does that mean we're back on the call?

Operator

Thank you, ma'am. You are back.

Marius, your line is open again. Thank you.

Marius Strydom

Okay. Sorry, I missed everything after IBNR releases, Risto.

Risto Ketola

Yeah. I don't think I said anything valuable.

No, I was just saying you're right. The investment variance was negative because of different factors.

If anything, there might have been a small decline on year-on-year claims experience, nothing major. Overall, the mortality experience looks really good still.

Disability and PHI, a little bit less exciting, but still decent.

Marius Strydom

All right. R260 million as a quarterly run rate is lower than what you would normally expect.

Risto Ketola

It is. Sorry, I was distracted because the Myriad guys just sent me a message, and they're saying by end of April, the debit order experience remains exactly like the previous month.

There has been zero impact in April debit orders. That's a small addition there, and Marius, you're right.

Marius Strydom

Thank you. Then just a final one from me, just with regards to Africa, the third quarter was a loss of R48 million.

Am I right? Can you just speak to that and the outlook for the full year?

Risto Ketola

I'm going to go there. Now, generally, the results in Africa are a lot more volatile than in South Africa because we can't hedge the market exposures to the same degree.

It's just practically impossible. We also invest heavily in government bonds there, and the NAV is quite large compared to operating profits.

The investment returns on the NAV has quite a substantial impact on earnings. I'm just trying to go to my own notes here.

What? This doesn't explain the loss, but remember, the first quarter, which was very good for Africa, still included a bit of profits from Ghana.

We had sort of an exit profit on Ghana. I'm looking at the investment variances, what they were like.

Africa had a negative investment variance in the third quarter as well. That would play a role there.

If you come tomorrow, I'll dig up a bit more detail on...

Marius Strydom

A lot of that is mark-to-market on the bonds as a result of the increase in interest rates.

Risto Ketola

Most of it is investment volatility then.

Marius Strydom

Yeah. Okay.

Thank you. See you tomorrow.

Operator

The next question comes from Senamela Mabebe of SBG Securities. Please go ahead.

Senamela Mabebe

Thank you. Done on the Indian business and turning into a profit.

It's clear that the business is starting to show improved operating leverage by increasing revenue at a faster rate than expenses. However, I suppose just two questions there.

Given that the combined ratio is still greater than 100%, is the strategy to gain more returns from investments than underwriting, or is it just purely from waiting for the business to grow? The second one to that is that the claims ratio increased 33% to reflect an increase in benefit utilisation.

What is management's strategy just in response to that if this is a continuing trend?

Risto Ketola

Okay. The Indian business is predominantly annual premiums.

The float is quite big on this business. I don't think you will ever get a combined ratio much below 100.

In fact, on back-of-the-envelope calculations, even at a combined ratio of 102, 101, you'll actually generate quite decent ROEs because the float is probably, I don't know, two-thirds of annual net premium. The investment equation can be very substantial.

In terms of benefit utilisation, we continue to do a lot of work like trying to get hospitals convert to only cashless claims. Very difficult for us to start fighting with the policyholder, whatever, and try and manage it with the hospital before they provide services.

Despite a few industry actions also to share data and so on in terms of rate structure in some of the hospital groups, we continuously refining our benefit structures. We actually find that we get better claims ratios on your higher sum assured type of business, so that is a focus area for us as well.

We're also moving a lot of administration into our own offices versus third-party administrators. When we started, we were small, we didn't have the scale to really justify doing everything ourselves, we used third-party administrators to handle the claims.

We find that we get better outcomes when we do it ourselves, we're moving it in-house now. The claims ratio is a big focus.

I sort of hinted earlier on the call that I'm quite pleased with what we've seen recently, and part of this is also that there's a couple of listed competitors now which have also been forced to increase their focus on profitability, which I think has made the whole industry a little bit healthier, and we're all benefiting from that. The industry seems to be rationalising a little bit from being growth at any cost to being a bit more balanced between growth and profitability.

Senamela Mabebe

Thanks, Risto.

Operator

Thank you. Does that conclude your questions, ma'am?

Senamela, does that conclude your questions?

Senamela Mabebe

Yes, that concludes my questions. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you so much. Our next question comes from Thapelo Mokonyane of Investec.

Please go ahead.

Thapelo Mokonyane

Good day. Can you hear me?

Operator

Yes, you can.

Thapelo Mokonyane

Cool. Good day to everyone.

I have a question, just one question. You probably are going to touch a bit on this tomorrow at the Capital Markets Day,

Risto Ketola

but

Thapelo Mokonyane

how should we think about share buybacks just given what has happened? Like what what needs to happen for you to resume your your share buyback to resume share buybacks?

Just talk to to to that, and and just a bit of guidance on how should we think about it. Thank you.

Risto Ketola

Yeah. The discount to EV is still quite substantial.

Obviously, if we have surplus capital, I think our preference at this stage will be to buy back shares rather than distribute special dividends. Now, we increased our internal view of required high-quality capital, in other words, sort of cash and money market, margin, and so on, from R11.6 billion to R16 billion in December, and that basically meant that we effectively utilised our surplus capital to shore up the capital base of the life company.

If we reduce the internal view of required high-quality liquid assets substantially in June, that might then result in sufficient surplus capital to restart buybacks. I think it is a little bit early or premature to speculate how likely that is, but it is something we will look at year-end.

We look at it every six months: how much do we pay shareholders via special dividend policy, payout personal of our earnings. If there is surplus capital, buybacks would be our preferred course of action at the moment.

Then

Thapelo Mokonyane

there is a possibility of declaring a share buyback program if everything stays the way it is today, if we just freeze everything to the end of June, there is a case where buybacks are possible, that's what you're saying.

Risto Ketola

I think anything's possible, and I'm trying how to answer this without getting into trouble. I think the last time we showed you how much sort of high-quality liquid assets we have, I think the number was about R18 billion, eh?

That was split between R16 billion required and R2 billion discretionary. We would like to hold sort of R0 to R3 billion discretionary capital to be able to do any mid-size bolt-on M&A as and when needed.

Now, if that required capital drops, let's say, from R16 [billion?] to R14 [billion?]

, and available capital goes from R18 [billion?] to R19 [billion?]

, then there might be some surplus at year-end. I think that's the calculation you'll have to do is how much will that R18 billion grow over the six months?

On its own, I don't think will be enough, but that combined with possibly a lower view on the required capital going forward, we might do buybacks. It's yeah.

Thapelo Mokonyane

Yeah.

Risto Ketola

We all wait in anticipation to see the yield curve on 30th of June. Earnings for the year as well.

Yeah. No, thank you so much.

Operator

Thank you. The next question comes from Francois du Toit of Anchor Stockbrokers.

Please go ahead.

Francois du Toit

Hi guys, can you hear me?

Risto Ketola

Yes, we can.

Francois du Toit

Excellent, thank you. I'm after a bit of colour on your life versus non-life earnings overall.

Obviously, we know Guardrisk and Insure is all non-life, all health is non-life. Maybe just within investments and shareholders, how is that split from my mind?

Then related to that, maybe just a bit of colour around the strong earnings growth in the health business, Insure business as well. I guess where we've come from and given also what we've heard from some of the non-life insurance competitors out there, this growth is ongoing and kind of surprising for me, at least.

Your non-life business is performing very well.

Risto Ketola

No, that's for sure. I'll answer the health one first.

If I look at the pre-tax earnings in health, the three quarters have probably gone like R100 million, R200 [million?] , R200 million.

The R200 million in the second quarter was a positive surprise because of some fee catch-ups. The R200 million in the third quarter, I think, is quite normal because most of the fee increases come through 1 Jan.

There's an increase in our revenues because of annual escalations on various contracts. Also, Bonitas, I had a look.

I think the costs in Bonitas was only like R6 [million?] or R8 million in the quarter.

A lot of that will come through in the last quarter. The third quarter results that are here was still unaffected by the investment into Bonitas.

I see that Rowan is trying to search for the covered, non-covered split for you on investments. I do know that the annuity book had very strong results.

There was no defaults and other variances were also positive. Yeah.

The asset management profits have also been up. Have you got that split there?

Francois du Toit

I was just looking for the shareholders split.

Risto Ketola

Look at the investments one, that will be an easier one. Once again, give us 30 seconds so we can open the details here.

Francois du Toit

Thanks, sure.

Risto Ketola

We should probably print out the matrix [laughs] for these calls that shows the profitability, covered, non-covered, per product line.

Francois du Toit

Thank you. That would be helpful for me because I use embedded value for the covered businesses.

Rowan Burger

Covered was 779...

Risto Ketola

That's investments.

Rowan Burger

Yeah.

Risto Ketola

Covered was R779 million versus R992

Rowan Burger

[million?] ...

Risto Ketola

Yeah.

Francois du Toit

120.

Rowan Burger

R120 million for non-covered investments and 770 for covered.

Francois du Toit

Excellent. Good run rate compared with the first half of the year.

Thank you.

Risto Ketola

Yeah. Are you happy with that?

Francois du Toit

That's all from me for now. Thank you.

Operator

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, with no further questions in the question queue, we have reached the end of the Q&A session.

I will now hand back to Jeanette Marais for closing remarks.

Jeanette Marais

Thanks, everyone, for joining. I don't have anything much to add to this except to invite you again to join us tomorrow for our Capital Markets Day.

We had all of our dry runs today. Maybe just one last thought: Risto was bragging, maybe let me do this.

We actually realised today just by kind of looking at some of our numbers that considering the span of our businesses across retail, corporate, and health markets, we now literally serve about one in 10 South Africans as clients of our group, which I think is quite an amazing number for us. Now, of course, the take-on of Bonitas has helped with this, but we don't often share those kinds of numbers, and to be thinking that one out of every 10 South Africans are clients of the group, something that makes us very proud.

I hope to see you all tomorrow. The team's ready for you, I think it's going to be a good day.

Operator

Lovely. Thank you very much, ma'am.

Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes today's event. Thank you for joining us.

You may now disconnect your line.