Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. My name is Langa Manqele, and I am the Head of Investor Relations for Old Mutual Group.

I would like to welcome you all on behalf of our board and the management team. I must add that today is a particularly exciting day for us, but I will not steal the thunder from Jurie.

As you have seen on our SENS announcement this morning. On the agenda for the day, as per usual, Jurie will kick us off with a strategic update together with an operational review.

Shortly after that, Jurie will hand over to Casper. Casper is our Group CFO, who will then provide the financial review.

Shortly after Casper, Jurie will come back on the stage to provide us with his outlook and the concluding message for the presentation. At that stage, I will then call back Casper, who will be joined on stage by Ranen to help answer the Q&A.

With that, may I hand over to you, Jurie. Thank you.

Morning, everybody. Great to be with you.

Thank you for everybody, that is all our investors that are joining us online. It is great to be with you for the interim results for Old Mutual for 2026.

I have been in the job of Group CEO now for 15 months. This is actually my second set of interims.

I really can confirm to you a growing confidence in the group that we are on track. We are where I had hoped, and as a team, we had hoped to be at this point in our strategy.

You will recall that we set out our strategy last year at the Capital Markets Day. We have been tracking execution proof points along the way.

What I will be doing this morning is taking you through a highlights piece and then going back to strategy and just taking you through how we are executing against that strategy. Before I do that, just a call out on, Langa alluded to it, an exciting announcement for us this morning, and that is the announcement of Ranen Thakurdin as the next CFO of Old Mutual.

Casper, of course, well known to you, is retiring in April next year. Cas, a lot of work between now and April next year, but I am sure you are also delighted to have Ranen appointed as CFO Designate.

Ranen will take over CFO Designate from January 1st, and then walk alongside Casper, really for the sort of year-end and then take over from Casper in April next year, officially as CFO when Casper retires. Let me just say that as Group CEO, I am delighted to have someone of Ranen's experience and expertise within the group to be able to do this internal succession.

I have worked closely with Ranen both in his finance roles but also as Chief Risk Officer more recently. I really can assure investors that in terms of strategy and execution is concerned, Old Mutual is not going to miss a beat.

I am absolutely delighted with this transition. Congratulations, Ranen.

Turning back to the highlights. I said I am going to give you a sense of highlights of the half and then track it back to what we said we were going to do.

I always say internally, we are going to become a company that is famous for doing what we say we are going to do. I think we have got growing confidence that these results actually showcase that.

From a highlights perspective, the two return metrics, 12.7% ROGEV. You will know that we brought ROGEV in as a key value metric last year.

That is significantly up on last year. Last year, of course, we had the adjustments to the MFC persistency basis, and so a significant uptick.

On RONAV also, normalized RONAV also up to 12.6%. Both of those return metrics, I would reflect to you, they are not yet in the range of respectively 14%-16% and 15%-17%.

But it is the first time when those two return metrics have actually exceeded what we would consider to be our cost of capital, which is about 12.5%. We really do believe that we are on track to getting into that medium-term range.

The dividend, again, the range is 6%-9% growth and an 8% increase in the dividend. Our confidence in the value of our business, as reflected in the Group Equity Value of ZAR 20.66 for the half, is reflected in that additional ZAR 1 billion share buyback that we are announcing this morning.

From a sales and margins perspective, a very good performance. Life APE sales up 21%, gross flows up 21%.

That has been a strong performance. We have called out that there are some large gains, particularly in the Corporate business in there.

That will moderate, but even if you allow for that, it moderates to an underlying growth of about 12% for the half. That was one of our key proof points, and I am pleased that we are hitting it.

From an RFO perspective, RFO per share up 11%, and that is despite quite a noisy environment from an economic variance perspective. There also we are tracking well.

We are signaling today, which Casper will do that RFO per share growth of about 10%-14%, that is the RFO growth that we believe puts us in the range on our other medium-term targets. We are, at this point, comfortably also within that range.

To go back, I just want to draw you back a little bit to the strategy as we announced it at Capital Markets Day last year. You will recall we talked about unlocking value and generating growth as the two phases of strategy for Old Mutual.

Driving competitiveness in the South African businesses through Old Mutual Life and Savings, Old Mutual Insure, and Old Mutual Investments. Deepening market leadership in Southern Africa, recognizing across the African continent, we have, in Southern Africa, leadership positions where we have been in those markets a very long time and we are number one in a number of those.

What we want to do is to convert that scale into better margins and returns so that we can really put a value on those businesses, and that value becomes more visible to investors. We want to establish the right to win for OM Bank.

As I will talk to you later, we are in fact shifting our thinking already from establishing the right to win to actually really contesting the banking profit pool. Then finally, evaluating and pivoting on growth markets.

That is just a recognition that in our African portfolio in East and West Africa, in contrast to some of the other, in Southern Africa, where we are already market leaders, in East and West Africa, we really are wanting to build market leadership, but we first have to demonstrate through returns and margins that we can earn the right to deploy capital there. What we did with these strategic focus areas, and we did this actually in March when we presented to you.

We translated that into the medium-term targets and how they relate to what we call an execution proof points. Those proof points were the delivery of cost savings, our persistency variances, our new business volumes, getting traction in OM Bank, and OM margins and returns.

Those are the lead indicators that will ultimately get us to the lag indicators of our medium-term targets. I want to spend a moment just talking about each of those and where we are in terms of executing against those targets.

Let me first say that I am very pleased with. I think 12 months is a long time, but when I was talking to you 12 months ago, I was talking about how we were restructuring the group.

We were creating our clusters. We were creating end-to-end accountability, giving people line-of-sight targets, and really creating a management machine that would be driving towards execution.

We have a growing confidence and, in fact, a high conviction that we are already seeing that machinery at work. I see it in our quarterly cycles, see it through our incentives.

We see it through the execution that is coming through in the businesses. I think a very high degree of alignment around these priorities, and you can see it in the results we are producing.

On cost savings, we talked about ZAR 1 billion by the end of this year and ZAR 2.5 billion by the end of next year. We are at ZAR 1 billion already virtually completed by mid this year, so on track for those cost savings.

On persistency, very significant decisive actions that have been taken actually particularly on new business, but also on collections, in MFC, on distribution incentives, areas of loss-making business. We have conviction that we are starting to see those come through.

Q1 there was some we signaled to you in the operating update, still some negative persistency variances, but it really came through in line with bases in Q2. Overall experience variance is healthy.

We are confident that the basis changes we made are going to be appropriate, and that actually the management actions we've got in place are starting to work and are getting us to where we need to be. From a new business perspective, we talked about it.

I talked about Life APE sales and gross flows, but I will also call out Old Mutual Investments, where gross flows are up 48% and largely within OMIG and Futuregrowth. In OM Bank, we are up to, at the end of June, it was about 750,000 customers.

We will cross the 1 million-customer threshold in the next couple of weeks. We had deposit growth to ZAR 1.4 billion in June.

We are at the end of August at ZAR 1.6 billion. The progress in kind of integrating Old Mutual Finance and OM Bank, which I will get to in a second, that has progressed well.

We really have created an organization that is a much more fully fledged, all-rounded banking proposition than what it was a year ago. Finally, in OMAR, there have been actions on pricing, on managing the portfolio, on driving sales, and so we are also seeing margins expand there, from the underwriting margin, significant improvement.

VNB margin, we know with that VNB number, it is a volatile, it has been volatile historically. But certainly, the management actions are there, and we have seen an improvement in the margin up to 2% for the half.

I want to spend a moment on OM Bank because I think clearly in all of the execution pieces, OM Bank is a major growth initiative for us and is a key differentiator for us as we move into that generating growth phase of our business. This is just an illustration of the OM Bank ecosystem and how we are positioning OM Bank, the Old Mutual ecosystem, how we are positioning Old Mutual Bank as a kind of anchor in that ecosystem.

It is not just a digital standalone banking proposition, but it actually works through the whole system of points of presence, where we have got 7,200 retail intermediaries in South Africa, 357 branches that are now fully integrated into the bank. We have got 40,000 work sites.

We have got opportunities to create integrated propositions across the stack, across Life and Savings and Old Mutual Insure into OM Bank. Just an illustration there of the opportunity set we have of ZAR 140 billion of inflows and outflows that go through our group, through Life and Savings.

Then our 3.4 million reward members, and increasingly those redemptions happening through OM Bank. The clarity that I want to bring this morning is on the.

We have spoken previously about break even in 2028 for the bank on a monthly basis. We are now looking at this as a cluster, and so we are looking at OM banking cluster RFO, targeting ZAR 0 breakeven to ZAR 200 million annually in 2028 and giving you a breakdown of what are the key targets that we need to hit to achieve those numbers.

So talked about customers. We have not changed the target for customers of 2.5 million, 2.8 million.

The levers there are it is ultimately about NIR there. We have got bundled rewards and bundled products that we can drive of extended value-added services, our non-advice funeral proposition that we can scale.

That is the opportunity set there. In terms of growing retail deposits, we are well on track and pleased with our progress in retail deposits, but we are targeting ZAR 8 billion-ZAR 10 billion by the end of 2028.

There, it really is around leveraging our mutual distribution, in particular, repositioning our MFC savings proposition, launching fixed deposit products, and the like. From a lending point of view, we have a lending business, of course, in Old Mutual Finance, that is largely our lending business, a personal loans business.

We want to scale that from the ZAR 16.4 billion currently up to that sort of ZAR 23 billion-ZAR 26 billion range. We are going to be supplementing that strong personal loans business of about ZAR 15 billion, scaling it also in other areas.

So secured lending, investment bank loans, home loans, and credit cards. We want to grow that portion of the lending business.

Again, part of this theme of building out OM Bank as a much more fully fledged, all-rounded banking proposition. I want to now turn to the operational review and just spend a moment on each of the clusters and some of the business units before I hand over to Casper for a more detailed financial review.

Old Mutual Life and Savings is a significant part of our group. So pleased there with Life APE sales up 21% and VNB up 47%.

We have spoken about VNB margin, and VNB margin obviously being under some pressure across the market with reduced guaranteed annuity sales. Importantly, if you look at this VNB actually as a percentage of opening GEV and a percentage of ROGEV, actually significantly advancing.

If we go into each of the underlying business units, wealth management and corporate standout performers in this half within life and savings. Wealth management, of course, now having 10X Investments included in that business.

We are delighted with that business and it really is going to become an important part of our proposition going forward. Sales there growing 21%, VNB margin also ticking up to 1.1%.

On the Personal Finance side, and I want to iterate here, Personal Finance sales more muted. You have got to remember that both Personal Finance and wealth management are actually, and this is in line with peers, are part of a unified distribution engine.

We are overall in the Personal Finance and wealth segment, we are pleased with sales in general. There has been a tilt in mix more towards wealth management products.

Particularly from guaranteed annuities into linked annuities. But comfortable with the progress there.

If I then look at the other two business units within Life and Savings, Mass and Foundation, life and funeral sales up 9%, which is good. We are certainly calling out that the management actions that we are taking, and it is particularly primarily on new business, is we are targeting loss-making areas of new business that we do believe will moderate sales somewhat in the second half.

But that is in the pursuit of value-accretive activity and value-accretive new business. Those are the primary actions to drive the expansion of that margin again.

You can see we reported the VNB of 4.5% for Mass and Foundation last year. Actually, what we have done now is we have moved Credit Life into the bank because Credit Life, along with lending is a key profit driver within the bank.

Looking at MFC on its own, that 2.5% for the half, and that is the piece where really we are looking at both persistency and management actions there, but also ultimately expenses to make sure that we have a healthy margin there. Corporate standout performer for the half.

This really is the leading operator in its segment. Very pleased both with margins and with volumes in this business.

We have called out with these large schemes, there is a non-recurring nature to some of that. The business is lumpy, but very pleased with progress.

Old Mutual Banking, this is now the cluster together. You can see that I have talked about the clients and the deposits.

Our loans and advances are flat for the half. You will see there was some additional credit provisioning within Old Mutual Finance.

We are looking to grow this business from here and to increasingly drive lending through the bank and start launching lending through the bank in the second half of this year. Just pointing you again to that combined RFO picture, where we are moving toward targeting that ZAR 0 from breakeven to ZAR 200 million RFO in 2028.

Again, just pointing you to those levers that I showed you earlier. Those are the real markers to see that we are tracking from a revenue and a cost perspective to be able to hit that breakeven.

Old Mutual Investments, a strong half. Gross flow is up 48%.

That actually excludes alternatives because alternatives capital raises actually are not in gross flows. Alternatives also having an excellent capital raise year, 97% up to ZAR 6.7 billion.

That is a fantastic business. Also then looking at those gross flows in asset management in OMIG and in Futuregrowth.

Very strong. Assets under management are flat over the period in line with markets, but RFO up 40% and partly as a result of this growth in non-annuity revenue.

Very pleased with the performance of the investments cluster. Old Mutual Insure, it was a tougher period this half than it was in the prior period from a large claim perspective.

There were floods, flood claim, catastrophe claims that came through. I really believe that the 7.6% underwriting margin is a very resilient performance actually in this half.

I have been quite bold, I know, in my investor meetings telling you that I believe and back in a previous life, I had once run a motor insurance business. I do know what the levers are of success in a business like this.

The foundations that have been put in place through data and through operations, all the way through from pricing and underwriting claims and claims management, I do believe the foundations we have got in place in this business now set us up to be more competitive going forward to be able to grow our business. While sales were muted at 5% for the half, we are already starting to see underlying growth come through that I believe will have a better outcome, and stronger growth in the full year.

As it was for this half, we had strong growth coming in through from Gen Re and from ONE Financial Services, which supported the number. This is also the business which has led our group on the implementation of AI, where its AI program is actually well three or four years, and its data program three or four years into implementation.

I think that's part of the results that we're seeing, which notwithstanding a claims ratio going from 47%-50%, I think a number of years ago, that would have been a very difficult thing to manage through for this business. But we're seeing it come through, with resilience.

Then finally, Old Mutual Africa Regions, sales up by 35%, and there's call-out on margins being a big focus. So whilst that margin is volatile in life, we're pleased with the performance there to getting us to 2%.

On the short-term side, that again, the implementation, the focus on margins, pricing actions, looking at renewals, looking at how you manage your portfolio, it did result in some pressure on top line, but we believe well worth it, when you look at the impact that'll come through in margins. So overall, before I hand over to Casper, I think I'm pleased we are where I had hoped we would be at this half.

I'm very confident that as a team, we are focused as a business, and there's a growing confidence internally that the green machinery in Old Mutual is focused on the delivery of the key proof points in our business. I think that you'll see more of that now from Casper's presentation.

Over to you, Casper.

Thank you, Jurie. I will now take us through the financial review, focusing on earnings, value, and capital.

Starting with earnings, we have seen robust underlying operating growth in results from operations or RFO even after our deliberate increased investments in OM Bank. We have assessed our forward-looking medium-term earnings profile, and the 11% increase in RFO per share is within our target range of 10%-14% sustainable growth per share based on our 2025 base.

The 11% growth was supported by improved operating performance in Old Mutual Investments and Old Mutual Africa Regions and reduced Shareholder costs in other group activities. Turning to the cluster-specific RFO performance and starting with Old Mutual Life and Savings, which was up 4%, Mass and Foundation increased by 19%, which was largely due to the strengthening of the long-term persistency basis on our funeral book in the prior year, and was further supported by improved mortality and persistency outcomes, partially offset by negative IFRS economic variances during the first half.

Personal Finance RFO decreased by 11%, mainly due to negative IFRS economic variances, partially offset by positive mortality and persistency experience. Wealth management profits increased by 49% due to stronger revenue from higher average assets under management.

A change to the retail margin agreement, with Wealth retaining 7% of the retail margin previously reported by Old Mutual Investments. This represents the margin on assets managed on behalf of Wealth's clients, better aligning revenue with the management of those assets.

Old Mutual Corporate's RFO decreased by 8%, largely due to flat IFRS economic variances in the current period compared to the strong positive contributions from markets in the prior period, and was partially offset by positive mortality and morbidity variances. We continue to see the benefits of our diversified Old Mutual Investments business with our diversified revenue streams driving strong operating growth.

Results from operations increased by 40%, largely due to a significant increase in non-annuity revenue, supported by higher preferred returns and fair value gains. Annuity revenue grew by 6% to ZAR 1.5 billion due to increased fund commitments and portfolio growth.

This is a particularly good result in light of the change to our retail margin agreement I mentioned earlier, which impacted annuity revenue. Results from operations in Old Mutual Insure decreased by 25%, reflecting lower underwriting earnings relative to the strong prior period outcome and a reduction in investment returns on insurance funds.

The insurance service result decreased by 21%, driven mainly by elevated catastrophe losses of ZAR 376 million net of reinsurance due to the severe flooding events in the east and western Cape in quarter two. Our net underwriting margin remained resilient at the upper end of our target range.

Old Mutual Africa Regions' RFO increased by 65%, driven mainly by growth in Malawi and East and West Africa. Our Malawi operations continue to face challenges brought on by high levels of inflation and foreign currency shortages.

While exchange rates did influence Malawi's results, the underlying performance in Malawi remained strong across all lines of business, reflective of management's response to the economic environment. Results from operations in East and West region increased from ZAR 10 million to ZAR 125 million, driven by improved performance in all lines of business except banking and lending.

Zimbabwe remains an important business of substantial scale, but due to the inability to access capital, we have ring-fenced their results since 2019. We have excluded their results from adjusted headline earnings, RONAV, and other group KPIs.

We have made material progress in addressing these constraints, with improving conditions supporting potential inclusion in our group results, subject to achieving the required capital repatriation milestones. Zimbabwe saw strong equity market performance in the first half of 2026, with higher investment returns being the main contributor to the growth in adjusted headline earnings.

We will continue to assess cash generation, fundability, and the macro environment, and will provide an update at our 2026 annual results. Shareholder operational costs decreased by 57% the prior year, including a ZAR 414 million restructuring provision.

Excluding the once-off restructuring provision, shareholder operational costs reduced by ZAR 225 million or 31%, driven by our commitment to a lean corporate center. The reduction of treasury contribution relates to lower interest and cash balances and a once-off impact related to a tax provision unwind in the prior year.

In addition, our asset liability program outcomes, although in line with targets, were lower than the prior period. As I outlined in our 2025 annual results, cost savings are being tracked through a two-pronged approach.

Firstly, savings will be evidenced through improvements in our key efficiency metrics over time. Secondly, we are tracking total savings by reconciling our IFRS expense base in the financial statements to our controllable expense base, with detailed reconciliations provided from 2024 through to June 2026.

As outlined in this waterfall, controllable expenses are then reconciled to our achieved net savings after allowing for inflation, foreign currency movements, and once-off costs to save future costs, which are removed in the subsequent year. This waterfall also adjusts for business boundary changes to controllable expenses, with the only adjustment being the impact of 10X.

For the first half of 2026, we achieved savings of ZAR 338 million. This takes our cumulative savings to ZAR 936 million, while on track to achieve savings by the end of 2026 of at least ZAR 1 billion.

We highlighted 2025 savings of ZAR 450 million at our 2025 annual results. This was an initial view, with actual 2025 savings at ZAR 598 million post completion of our IFRS expense reconciliations.

Adjusted headline earnings or AHE per share was down 27%, driven mainly by Shareholder investment returns being below what we would expect on a normalized basis. Overall, South Africa shareholder investment returns were in line with strategic asset allocation return benchmarks, with the additional reduction below the benchmark return being driven by active bond positions taken to increase bond duration and reduce solvency volatility.

Year-on-year, IFRS profits reduced, impacted by the reduction in adjusted headline earnings, which was partially offset by a substantial increase in Zimbabwe's IFRS profits due to higher investment returns. Now moving to value.

Group equity value or GEV per share increased to ZAR 20.66, with growth in value exceeding distributions, and the per share GEV supported by the completion of our share buyback. We saw solid growth in our covered business and in our property and casualty business, reflecting the resilient underlying underwriting performance in Old Mutual Insure.

Banking and lending was flat, reflecting continued pressure on consumers and the deliberate focus on sustainable risk-adjusted growth in Old Mutual Finance, as well as the reallocation of Old Mutual Specialised Finance to the other lines of business. The reduction in other is mainly due to the completion of the remaining ZAR 2.3 billion of the share buyback.

Our ROGEV for the first half was 12.7%, improving from 4.1% in December. This was driven by strong growth in covered EV being offset by lower growth in non-covered banking earnings.

Total embedded value operating earnings was ZAR 4.8 billion, resulting in a strong analyzed return on embedded value of 15.3%. This was driven by higher expected existing business contributions and higher new business contributions, positive risk experience across the business, and the once off impact of MassMutual's reinsurance in Old Mutual Corporate at the end of 2025.

Our group value of new business increased by 32% to ZAR 569 million, whilst our value of new business margin increased to 1.4%. As you will see in the graph on the left, our margin improvement was driven by strong sales volumes, particularly in Old Mutual Corporate, Wealth Management, and Old Mutual Africa Regions, and was further supported by more profitable new business mix.

These positive impacts were partially offset by the negative impacts of lower opening yield curves during the period. Moving to the contractual service margin or CSM.

This represents the store of future life profits for the bulk of our life business. New business written in the first six months of 2026 increased the contractual service margin by ZAR 1.7 billion and was further supported by interest on the CSM and positive experience variances.

The allocation rate to profit was 5.9% for the first half at the upper end of our expected range of 8%-12% annually. Turning to capital, our horizon-based approach guides decision making as we seek to optimize RONAV in the shorter term and generate growth and value in the longer term.

Capital allocation decisions are based on our RONAV delivery aligned to the two value creation phases. On a normalized basis, we remain in horizon one below the 15%-17% target range, and we will continue to prioritize shareholder distributions and only consider deployments of capital that are tightly coupled to strategy and are time sensitive.

As RONAV improves into horizon two and three, our focus will shift towards generating growth where other opportunities to deploy capital will be considered. We expect cash remitted to be between 70% and 80% of adjusted headline earnings before optimizations and special dividends.

We have seen sustained cash generation in line with our target ratio during the period, with the prior year benefiting from significant optimizations. The comparative reduction in OMLACSA was due to a lower capital ratio reported at December 2025, resulting in lower dividends.

This then brings us to our discretionary capital balance, which reduced to ZAR 3.1 billion, driven mainly by the completion of the ZAR 3 billion share buyback with a balance of ZAR 2.3 billion being settled during the period. Our discretionary capital balance of ZAR 3.1 billion includes an expected capitalization of OM Bank in 2026 and 2027 of ZAR 2 billion in line with plan, and ZAR 1 billion has been earmarked for the board approved share buyback.

Looking forward to the end of the year, the discretionary capital is expected to remain robust, driven by cash remittances from subsidiaries, and we expect at least 50% of the declared ZAR 4 billion OMLACSA interim dividend to add to discretionary capital in the second half of the year. This discretionary capital balance will be available to return to shareholders or fund growth opportunities in line with our horizon-based capital allocation framework, and we will provide an update on this at our 2026 annual results.

Return on net asset value was supported by robust underlying growth in results from operations and the completed share buyback. As we signaled at our 2025 annual results, we will now target normalized RONAV, which adjusts for the difference between actual and expected returns.

OML shareholder solvency remains within our target, improving by 10% from December to 172% at the end of June. The improvement was driven mainly by the issuance of subordinated debt and further yield curve movements.

The ratio also benefited from weaker equity market performance, which resulted in a reduction in the prescribed equity stress. These positive impacts were partially offset by the allowance for foreseeable dividends, which include the OML interim dividend and the announced ZAR 1 billion share buyback.

Following the issuance of ZAR 1.8 billion of debt in half one 2026, the OML gearing ratio ended at 16.9% and within range. We will continue to optimize our capital profile and gearing ratio to ensure the efficiency of our balance sheet.

Whilst we have updated our solvency ranges, the interim dividends for OML and OMLACSA were based on the old solvency ranges. For OML, the lower bound of the range decreases from 155% to 150%, and the upper bound from 185% to 180%.

For OMLACSA, the range changes from 165%-200% to 150%-180%. The width of the range caters for interest rate volatility, as we saw during the course of the last nine months.

We will report again against these new ranges for our 2026 annual results. With that, over to you, Jurie.

Thanks, Cas. I think just moving on to the outlook and some reflections.

To emphasize to you, I think we have a growing confidence internally. I have a growing confidence around the traction we have towards implementing our strategy and our execution proof points.

What we've got here in this final slide is just a summary of where we were on those key targets for FY 2025 for the full year versus the half year in 2026. You can see there a traction and progress on those key metrics.

Our ROGEV going from 4.1% last year to 12.7%. The dividend continuing a healthy growth rate, 8.1% growth.

Normalized RONAV going up to 12.6%. Both ROGEV and normalized RONAV not yet in the ranges that we've set for them, but we do believe that we are tracking along in our way we had hoped to be at this point.

VNB margin was going from 1.2% to 1.4%. Clearly, there are headwinds in lifting VNB margin.

Guaranteed annuity sales, which is an industry-wide phenomenon, is part of that. So there's lots of more work to be done to lift VNB margin up to that 2%-3% range.

Then finally, net underwriting margin of 5%-8%. Despite what was a tougher half, actually coming in at 7.6%.

Our execution proof points, we will be coming back to those half after half until we have fully achieved what we set out to do. The message for this morning is that we are on track with each of those, as we set out in the slides earlier.

I do want to just emphasize a couple of things that were part of Casper's presentation. The sustainable RFO per share growth of 10%-14% that we're targeting off the 2025 base, and that we are in range at 11% for this half.

The ZAR 1 billion share buyback that we've announced this morning, which reiterates our confidence in the value of where our share is currently trading relative to GEV. Then looking forward, the ZAR 4 billion OMLACSA dividend in the second half of which ZAR 2 billion at least will contribute to discretionary capital.

Then finally, also forward-looking, the reduction in solvency ranges in OMLACSA and in OML, which will further support our efforts around capital efficiency. So I think to summarize, we are progressing, we have a growing confidence, and we are where we'd hoped to be.

But of course, the work continues. I am confident that the Old Mutual execution machinery that we have put in place is starting to progress and that we are seeing traction.

With that, I am going to hand back to Langa. I think Langa for Q&A.

Thank you very much, Jurie, for moving us through the presentation so efficiently together with Casper. Casper and Ranen, if I may kindly ask you to please join Jurie on stage for the Q&A.

As per usual, we will start by taking the questions on the chorus call. We will permit just two questions per person.

If I may ask those who are online who have queued up to take the calls to please introduce themselves, mention the name of their firm, and if you may kindly just direct the question to either Jurie, Casper, or Ranen here on stage. If the question is not so clear, I will handle it.

I will take two rounds of these questions, and if we still do have time, we may have a bonus one question per person. We will see where we land with the questions.

At this stage, if I may ask the operator to just please remind us on the procedure to take the questions.

Good morning.

Good morning. Thank you.

Thanks very much. Well done on the bank's customer growth.

I think in the 2025 results you gave active customer numbers or percentage, I think it was 62%. Are you able to share what percentage of the 784,000 are active?

Just to confirm, have all the 500,000 existing customers transferred over? Could you also possibly share any details of the new customers that you're adding within that customer base?

My second question is just on the 10X impact in the second quarter, please, if you could possibly share the impact on our RFO.

Thank you. I will ask Jurie to please start, then Clarence, if you may jump in.

Yeah, so I hear there is a couple of questions around customers in there. We are acquiring about half our customer acquisition is new to Old Mutual and about half is existing.

I think that activity rates, Clarence, that is in our 2028 numbers is at a 35%-38% activity rate. I think we are tracking with a rapid customer acquisition.

I think we are tracking just below that, but I think we are on track. Yeah.

Thank you.

I think on 10X, maybe I will ask Casper to comment.

Jurie, we have not disclosed the 10X. We will look at whether we disclose that on a forward-looking basis.

Thanks. Next question, please.

Okay. I will take some questions that have come through online in the meantime.

We have a question from Thapelo, Investec. Thapelo would like to know, are you able to quantify the level of CAT losses in the short-term insurance so we can get a better understanding of your attritional performance?

We do have, I think, Soul on the line. Soul, if you are able to come through, please just give a comment on that question.

Yeah. Morning, Langa.

Sure. We've had ZAR 376 million in catastrophe losses, from the storms in May and yeah, that effectively translates to our attritional performance being better, in H1 2026 than in H1 2025.

So actually the business' underlying performance has improved materially. That ZAR 376 million translates to about a 3% underwriting margin delta if the storm didn't occur.

Thanks, Langa.

Thank you very much, Soul. I will also just continue with the questions.

The next question is from Baron. Baron is from JPMorgan.

Says, "In Old Mutual Investments, how should we think about the durability or sustainability of the alternatives non-annuity revenue?" Zulfa, if you may please.

Here is the mic.

Thanks, Baron. I was meant to stand on that side, but I have to stand on this side.

We do have the benefit of the alts business delivering a non-annuity revenue and a level of non-annuity revenue. It is, of course, lumpy.

The way we plan for that is that effectively we look at the potential fund life cycle that we have in our existence when they effectively are paying out and what the performance is. So we do anticipate a level of some non-annuity revenue.

The timing of that, of course, is dependent on when those funds exit, and this year we did have some exits earlier than we anticipated. So I am expecting some of that to taper off just where we are in some of our funds at the moment.

But we do continue to see a level and expect a level of non-annuity revenue.

Thank you very much, Zulfa. I will continue with the questions coming in.

We have a question from Senamile, that is from Standard Bank. Firstly, says, "Congratulations Ranen and congratulations for the operational performance on the business."

The questions are, may you please give us more insight on which specific line of business in Malawi contributed positively to RFO increase? That is the first question.

I will throw that to you, Casper. Second question is still on OMAR.

Clement says GWP increase of 3% is relatively modest. Is there a view to grow the market share?

Three, may you please give us insight on what makes up the central cost and how we should think about this going forward? So the two questions are for you, Casper, and one for Clement.

Langa, some color on Malawi. We did see markets.

So we saw a slight deterioration in what we see as our management view of the exchange rates, and that is the rate we can extract cash from Malawi. We saw markets down actually about 12% in the first half.

But as I said, we saw improved performances from all our businesses. So the life business, in particular, and the banking business performed very well.

Thank you very much.

Okay. On the question about the property and casualty gross written premiums, we are working to improve the margins across that portfolio.

You saw we were very negative last year. We have improved that somewhat.

The effort is mainly on pricing. We have had strong new business flows, but at the same time, because of our pricing actions, we also lost some accounts that we had.

So our renewal was hit. But I think going forward, we continue with our pricing actions and improving margins, but we are still quite competitive.

Yeah.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Clement, for that.

There are more questions that are coming through. Operator, may I please check if we have any questions online, on the press call?

Otherwise, I will continue taking the questions that have come through via the webcast.

Okay. We will continue.

There is a question from Jarred. Jarred is from All Weather Capital.

He would like to know, please explain in more detail the duration extension overlay which deducted from SA shareholder returns and whether this is expected to retrace in the second half of the year. That is the first question I will take.

Let me look at the other one. I will hand over that one to Ranen.

Matthew would like to know, of the ZAR 1.4 billion in bank deposits, can you indicate the proportion of this that is new to bank versus what has come from the Bidvest Money Account? Clarence, if you may, can you please assist with that one?

We still have got more to go.

Okay. Thanks, Jarred.

On the Shareholder investment portfolio, we have an allocation that goes into bonds. What we have done is we have extended the duration on those bonds, largely to manage the capital interest rate sensitivity on our balance sheet, and that caused a bit of a loss in the first half.

To your question, it has actually come back a little bit since then, and so that loss is partially reversed. Thanks.

Thank you, Ranen. Over to you, Clarence.

Yeah. Of the ZAR 1.4 billion, more than 80% of it is from the money account customers that were on Bidvest, and about 20% it is from new customers.

What is also encouraging is to see the growth almost on a month-to-month basis of the new customers in terms of their deposits. We are very hopeful that going forward, we will see a growth in terms of that, yeah.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Staying with the operational review section, I will take two questions from Michael Christelis at UBS, as well as from Warwick, that is RMB Morgan Stanley. Michael is asking, may you please provide more detail on mortality and lapse variances by segment?

I will ask Ranen to give that a stab. The second one is, removing Credit Life sales revealed a low 2.5 VNB margin for Mass and Foundation.

You would like to know, the VNB margin for Personal Finance is still negative. When should we expect VNB margin to start rising?

Remind us what VNB target we are looking to achieve for Mass and Foundation as well as Personal Finance. That one I will hand over to Prabashini to handle.

Ranen, if you may, just provide comment on mortality lapses and variances by segment.

Okay, thanks. Michael, we have had good mortality experience across pretty much all our clusters.

So in Personal Finance, Mass and Foundation, Corporate, and in OMAR, there have been positive mortality variances. As we have been communicating, the Corporate variance has started to reduce slightly but still remains positive.

On lapse variances, you will see that we have the negative persistency variance on the embedded value. It is actually split across three segments.

So in Mass and Foundation, there was a negative for the first quarter, but as Jurie has mentioned, we are now in line with basis in the second quarter, but that small portion came through from the first quarter. We then also had a small persistency negative variance in Personal Finance and OMAR.

We have dug into that, and it is related to very specific books of business that Prabashini and Clement are actioning. We are expecting the persistency variance to normalize in the future.

Thanks.

Thank you very much. Over to you, Prabashini.

Thanks. Thanks for the question, Michael.

On the MFC sales side in particular, we made our material persistency basis change at the half year last year, which had an impact on the VNB margins. That was recognizing a few things, including the competitiveness in the market and a systemic shift in market dynamics.

When we remove Credit Life for the first half, you have seen 2.5% VNB. We continue to focus, as Jurie mentioned, on being more targeted on our sales by different channel to remove and eliminate those loss-making pockets of business.

Cost takeout remains a significant focus area of ours, and then growing sales from a quality sales perspective. We have previously indicated a 5%-7% VNB range for Mass and Foundation Cluster, including Credit Life.

We are not revising that. On Personal Finance, what is very important to remember is we have had an additional shift away from guaranteed annuities.

Guaranteed annuity is quite margin rich. It is down almost 40% in terms of volumes versus prior year.

Despite that, our PF margin has remained flat. We continue to focus on expenses and quality sales volumes.

Thank you very much. Please hold on to the mic.

There are more questions for you coming through from Warwick. Warwick would like to know two things, Prabashini.

Firstly, how should we think about the trajectory in the Corporate RFO? That is the question, which fell by 8% due to moderation in risk variances.

Should we expect variances to moderate further? Does the mix and volume of new business support profit growth from here?

That is the first portion of the question. The second one is, could you provide some color on the Two-Pot Retirement System withdrawals of ZAR 1.7 billion in the current period?

Do you think members have exhausted their ability to withdraw the legacy savings part now, or will there be more withdrawals in FY 2027? Thank you.

Thanks for those questions. Firstly, on corporate profit trajectory, we did indicate from our mortality experience perspective, it is cyclical and we are coming off a particularly high cycle in terms of pricing.

As pricing starts to harden, if I am using that correctly, the hardening is happening. Anyway, the margins start reducing, it gets more competitive.

As we have seen, the mortality profits have consistently been reducing year-on-year. It is difficult to call the bottom.

It is a cyclical thing. We respond to competitive pressures, and we price competitively.

The profits have actually been very strong in terms of their fundamentals. On the product mix in Corporate, we have had quite a bit of group insurance or risk sales this half.

The deals are lumpy. It is not improbable that we have another half where the majority of the deals, the sales that flow might be on the savings side, which come with different margins.

It is difficult to call. I think the business is in a good position for a sustainable normalized sales growth.

Then the mix, it is lumpy. That is the best I can do, Warwick.

On the Two-Pot Retirement System, it is interesting. Last year, first half, we had just under ZAR 1 billion of Two-Pot Retirement System withdrawals, and this year, half year, it is ZAR 1.7 billion.

I think it is indicative of the financial pressure that people are under. We did a lot of education, a lot of member engagement, encouraging people only to withdraw if they absolutely need it.

I think that had a positive impact last year. I think consumers are simply under pressure.

I do not expect huge outflows flowing for the rest of the year. It is typically as the new tax year starts that people have the opportunity to withdraw.

We see much muted withdrawals through the rest of the year.

Okay. Thank you very much, Prabashini, for managing those questions.

We have got a couple of questions. I will try and stack these ones together.

They are largely on central costs and the capital stack. Thapelo from Investec would like to know, I will read the question as is.

"Where did you attain the ZAR 936 million cost savings? How much of this was in the current six-month period, and how should we think about timing on a forward-looking basis, and where the source of the remaining ZAR 1.5 billion balance is likely to come from?"

That is one question. The second question is from Daniel.

Daniel would like to know, so first is, "Well done on the delivery on the cost savings thus far. Could you give us some color on where the balance of the targeted ZAR 2.5 billion savings will come from?

How much will be reinvested, and how much will come through the margins?" So those are the questions.

Let me just quickly scroll and see if there is any other on costs that I may have missed. Matthew, okay, this a different question.

It is about Zimbabwe. I will tackle this next.

If you could please just comment on those two.

Okay. There's a bit of detail in there, so I'm going to keep it a bit simple.

About 50% of the savings to date have come from our covered business and 50% from our non-covered business. We're expecting on a forward-looking view, a very similar outlook for the remaining ZAR 1.5 billion that we still need to deliver.

There was a question about how much of that came in the first half. We had just below 600 last year and just north of 300, so it's about 330 odd in the first half this year.

There's a question about trajectory. I think an important thing to understand is that when we do take our costs, there's a bit of a delay in terms of how it arises in the savings, because for the period that we incur the cost, for example, if we close a vacancy, you only start seeing the savings in the subsequent months.

I wouldn't regard the historic trajectory as a view that we need a fundamental acceleration of pace. There's just something to understand in the way that the numbers come through, that the annualized savings are being generated, and you should see the uptick going forward.

In terms of margins, so within the covered business, and within VNB, we should see a benefit of the cost savings coming through in VNB over time. Less on the embedded value, that's already captured in the embedded value, and we've largely taken it into account.

On RONAV, in terms of margins, I think that that is going to benefit. What we already saw in the first half is Old Mutual Insure and Old Mutual Investments benefiting.

Their profits actually reflect their savings. It dropped through in profitability.

Insure and Investments and our non-covered business in OMAR, for that remaining savings of the ZAR 1.5 billion, that will continue to drop into the profit number during the course of next year, and that should then uplift the RONAV. On underwriting margin, that is the other place that will directly flow into the underwriting margin and enhance the robustness of our underwriting margin.

Largely, margins will still benefit from the remaining ZAR 1.5 billion.

This came from Jarred as well as Thapelo. Thapelo would like to know, the OMLACSA dividend paid to group declined year on year, as we've seen in the presentation.

Says, "Please give us a bit of color around that, and what would you say is a normal run rate?" That's the first part on the question.

OMLACSA dividend. Jarred says, "Given the OMLACSA dividend to come through in H2 and DC build up and updated ranges on solvency, why was only just ZAR 1 billion buyback initiated?"

I'll ask you three to please. Thank you for that.

Okay, Casper, over to you.

I don't think you should look at the ZAR 1 billion dividends in isolation. We did see solvency ranges reduce for the reasons we mentioned at the year-end.

So higher prescribed equity stresses, and we saw lowering bond yields put pressure on solvency ratio. So we had a lower dividend at the year-end.

That's recovered in the half year and you'll see. I would look at the two dividends together, the ZAR 1 billion plus the ZAR 4 billion from OMLACSA.

That's a strong base of dividends. We should look at the underlying earnings for Life and Savings, which is a proxy for OMLACSA, as the level of earnings that would support a dividend in the OMLACSA business.

We obviously don't separately disclose OMLACSA. We only declare dividends out of capital that sits at the group.

Until we receive the dividends from subsidiaries, including OMLACSA, those are not available as discretionary capital. That's how we work.

So the OML Board of Directors need to have the capital to declare the dividends. We'll see those, and as we've said, we'll see quite a lot of capital moving up to OML in the second half, and the board can then deliberate on whether that's a return to shareholders or to funding growth.

We have told you very clearly that we will follow the horizon-based capital allocation framework. We will prefer returns to shareholders, in situations where RONAV is below target range and we're trading at a discount to our group equity value.

Yeah. Thank you very much, Casper.

I think that concludes the Q&A. There is one, I think, Jurie, this one is not really a question, it's a request for an update.

Just a voiceover from you on the recent changes that have happened at the board in terms of appointments, a voiceover for participants, as well as in any senior management teams.

Yeah. Well, I think just highlighting, of course, at the executive level, the CFO succession, which of course is something that we've been working towards and so delighted to appoint Ranen to that position as CFO designate from January 1st.

At the board, of course, we've had a commitment. We have our Chair, Roger Jardine, who took over upon Trevor Manuel's retirement in the middle of the year.

As part of that, there is the so-called succession cliff at the board as such that we've had a number of directors who then have stepped off in succession, and there is that process that continues now over the next couple of years. But I think as you've seen from the most recent appointments, I think we've got the board succession process well in hand.

Yeah. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Jurie, thanks, Casper, and thanks, Ranen. That basically concludes the Q&A session for us.

Just as a reminder, our presentation, the results booklet, is available on our website together with all materials that are accompanying it. We are looking forward to be engaging with you on our road shows, as you can see there on the screen.

So once more, on behalf of the board and the management team, we thank you very much for joining us this morning. Thank you and bye.