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Hello, I'm Anil Wadhwani, CEO of Prudential. Thank you for joining us today. I'm pleased to share our half-year 2026 results and update you on the progress we are making on the execution of our strate

gy. The message I want to leave with you today is simple. Prudential is focused on the strategy we set out, delivering high-quality growth, generating strong capital and cash, and positioning the group for long-term success in the growth markets of Asia and Africa. We remain disciplined in our execution, capturing the benefits of Prudential's diversified multi-market and multi-channel growth engines for all our stakeholders. Our first half reflects that. Growth was broad-based, margins expanded, underlying variances turned positive, and earnings capital and cash generation remained strong. Importantly, this is quality growth. We are writing business that delivers attractive margins, strong cash conversion, and resilient capital generation.

In doing so, we are creating long-term value for all our stakeholders. Our focus on long-term savings and protection is also closely aligned with the regulators' objective for the insurance sector. At the same time, we are allocating capital with discipline. For example, investing for long-term growth in Malaysia and India while continuing to increase returns to shareholders. In line with this, we expect to add $300 million to our previously announced $1.2 billion 2026 share buyback program. We are strengthening our competitive position in structurally growing markets across Asia and Africa. Our investments in distribution, propositions, and technology position Prudential to capture the opportunity over time, creating a significant and durable growth runway. In summary, disciplined execution is delivering quality growth, stronger capital generation, and greater shareholder value while positioning Prudential for sustained long-term growth.

For the first half of 2026, new business profit was $1.4 billion, up 8%, or 10% excluding the Chinese mainland. Adjusted operating profit after tax grew 17% per share. Gross operating free surplus generation grew 15% to $1.8 billion and dividend per share grew 15%. Capital generation remains strong, supporting $1 billion of returns to shareholders in the first half through dividends and the share buyback program. We remain firmly focused on the delivery of our full-year 2026 guidance of double-digit growth in new business profit, gross OFSG, and adjusted EPS, together with double-digit dividend per share growth and achieving our 2027 financial objectives. We are executing at pace across agency, bancassurance, health, and customer. We are making steady progress on agency transformation with new business profit growth of 5% versus 4% for the full year of 2025.

We recognize there is more work to be done, and we continue to implement our plans to improve the performance of this key distribution channel. Bancassurance delivered another excellent performance with new business profit up 13%, driven by deeper strategic partnerships and a broader partnership base. Excluding the Chinese mainland, bancassurance grew 18%. Health new business profit grew 15% as we continue to build on our strengths in health to further extend into protection. We are reshaping and reimagining customer experiences through better technology operations and AI. This is translating into stronger outcomes and more scalable engagement. For example, our customer engagement platform, now live in 10 markets, has helped drive more than $330 million of sales in the first half, and our customer retention rate is strong at 94%. These results are supported by our billion-dollar strategic investment program, which was designed to build capabilities and modernize our infrastructure.

We have invested around $700 million since 2023, including $145 million in the first half of this year, continuing to build our distribution and customer capabilities and significantly strengthening our technology platform. Our growth continues to be high quality, broad-based, and balanced across channels and markets. Quality growth is a deliberate choice. We are focused on writing business that delivers attractive margins, strong profitability, persistency, and higher cash conversion. We are seeing that come through in margin expansion, strong aggregate IRRs of more than 25%, and fast paybacks. We saw a broad-based contribution from our multi-market growth engine model. New business profit in Greater China grew 5% and in ASEAN markets by 13%. APE sales were up 11% in India and were up 19% in Africa. Our asset manager, Eastspring, delivered operating profit growth of 20% on a like-for-like basis, with funds under management up 5% to $291 billion.

Our distribution model remains well-balanced, with agency contributing 53% of first half new business profit, bancassurance 42%, and other channels combined, including brokers 5%. This balance matters because it gives us resiliency and flexibility. Our proprietary channels support higher quality advice and deeper customer engagement while serving customers through the channels that best meet their needs. Turning now to the Chinese Mainland. Entering 2026, we had great momentum. APE grew 42% in the first quarter with very strong momentum across both agency and bancassurance. Bancassurance, however, reduced in the second quarter following the implementation of more prescriptive expense regulations. Overall, the first half APE grew 21%, new business profit was down 4%, reflecting an accelerated shift towards participating products. The par mix increased from 35% to 76% of APE, which compressed new business profit margins.

Alongside this, we are working closely with our bancassurance partners as the channel transitions to the new expense regulations. We see these regulatory changes as supportive of a healthier, more sustainable industry over a period of time, even as they create some short-term transition impacts. Our strategic relationship with China CITIC Bank continues to deepen, and we expand our preferred bank network from 50 to more than 80 branches. At the same time, agency transformation continues to progress with APE per active agent up 24% and MDRT qualifiers up 40%. The Chinese Mainland faces a high bancassurance comparator in the third quarter, which eases materially from September onwards. We expect full year new business profit to be in a similar range to that of 2025.

We continue to focus on the transformation of agency, restoring momentum in bancassurance, and rebalancing product mix with a clear focus on quality and capital efficiency. We have navigated previous periods of change effectively. While this creates some short-term transition impacts, it does not take away from the medium to long-term potential, and we continue to see significant long-term growth potential in the Chinese Mainland market. I really like the shape of our Hong Kong business. It is now better balanced between domestic and Chinese Mainland visitors and across agency and bancassurance. Our emphasis on generating quality growth translated into a seven percentage point improvement in margins overall across both our proprietary channels of agency and bancassurance. Overall, new business profit grew 8%. Within that, bancassurance grew 48% as it captured wealth flows, and agency grew 4% against a strong comparator.

Our domestic customer segment, which now generates around 50% of our new business profit, performed strongly, supported by demand from new residents. New business profit grew 22%. CMB new business profit was down 2% against an extraordinarily strong prior year comparator. We remain highly optimistic about our Hong Kong business given the strength of our multi-channel model, the balance between domestic and CMB, and our emphasis on longer pay savings, health and protection, and regular premium products. That is why we continue to target double-digit growth in Hong Kong for the full year, with the high July-August comparator base starting to ease from September onwards. On the recent commentary around the reinforcement of existing rules for Chinese Mainland customers, in our assessment, it is too early to tell what impact this might have on customers' behavior.

In our conversations with customers and agents, the underlying demand drivers for insurance in Hong Kong remain very strong. Customer retention rates remain very high at around 99% across both domestic and CMB segments. This reflects the continued attractiveness of our propositions and is supported by our most recent customer survey, reinforcing our confidence in the structural growth prospects of our Hong Kong business. ASEAN continues to perform well, with improving momentum across the region driven by our underlying transformation. Overall, new business profit grew 13% in the first half, and new business profit margins improved by 2 percentage points. In Singapore, we delivered double-digit volume growth in both the first and the second quarters. We refreshed and broadened our health and protection offerings, adding new critical illness solutions. We saw 39% growth in investment linked products, reflecting continued demand for wealth and saving solutions.

Agency productivity improved with new business profit per active agent up 9% and average case size up 23%. In Malaysia, new business profit grew 46%, supported by propositions that help customers upgrade their health cover to better reflect their current needs. This was complemented by more specialized advice for affluent and high-net-worth customers with new business profit per active agent up 29% and agency new business profit up 36%. In Indonesia, the first half was challenging on account of the macro environment, including inflationary pressure, volatile equity markets, and a depreciating currency, which weighed on the customer sentiment. Bancassurance performed very well, up 55%, supported by demand for U.S. dollar products and a higher mix of affluent customers, while agency was impacted by a strong prior year comparator and weaker customer sentiment. In Thailand, product innovation and partnership execution supported strong growth.

Our investment-linked offering targeting affluent and upper affluent customers, together with our partnership with TMBThanachart Bank, known as ttb, contributed to 41% APE growth in the first half. The theme is consistent, growing our proprietary multi-channel distribution model while improving the quality and productivity of our agents and leveraging product innovation to engage emerging affluent and affluent customers across the attractive markets of ASEAN. India is one of Asia's significant long-term growth opportunities. Our strategy is to play a more active role and shape our growth trajectory through two complementary insurance platforms, life and health. In life, our proposed acquisition of a 75% controlling stake in Bharti Life, subject to regulatory approval, would fundamentally reposition our platform. It moves us from passive minority participation to an active operating platform in a market with significant long-term potential. We are excited to be partnering with Bharti Airtel and 360 ONE together.

Bharti Airtel's omni-channel reach and 360 ONE's affluent, high net worth, and institutional relationships give us a stronger route to expand distribution, deepen customer access, and deploy Prudential's capability more directly. In health, we said we would launch our standalone business in the second half. We have now done so, and I am delighted that we have written our first policies earlier this month. Together, life and health give us the foundations to build a scalable franchise in India, aligned with the country's long-term ambition of insurance for all by 2047. Our focus is on building a high-quality business with a differentiated customer experience and regional expertise, and a strong position in health where there is significant unmet demand to address. We are investing for the long term in a structurally attractive market where we can apply our capabilities and create sustainable value.

Eastspring continues to be an important value creator and a key differentiator for Prudential. In the first half, operating profit after tax grew 20% on a like-for-like basis, while funds under management increased 5% to $291 billion. Performance was supported by $5.7 billion of positive net flows, diversified sources of funds, and strong investment performance with 74% of funds outperforming their three-year benchmarks. The business is highly cash generative with a strong ROE and a disciplined cost income ratio. Eastspring is well positioned to capture the rising wealth flows and growing retirement needs across Asia. Its scale, diversified funds under management, strong investment performance, and deep local market expertise give it a clear platform for growth. Strategically, it is an important differentiator for Prudential, strengthening our life businesses through its investment capabilities and co-developed solutions while creating synergies between the two businesses.

Agency remains central to our quality growth strategy, contributing to 53% of first half new business profit. In the first half, agency new business profit grew 5%, margin improved by 2 percentage points, and new business profit per active agent increased 9%. Importantly, productivity is improving across both developed and emerging ASEAN. In developed markets, active agents were broadly stable and productivity increased 5%. In emerging ASEAN, active agents were lower, but productivity increased 19%. That reinforces our view that the opportunity in agency is not simply about scale. It is about building a more professional, productive, and active agency force. Agent quality matters because customer needs are becoming more complex, particularly across affluent customers and in health and protection, requiring trusted, high-quality advice. We remain the number two MDRT agency force globally, and building that top-tier pipeline remains a key lever.

The opportunity now is to continue lifting productivity across both developed markets and emerging ASEAN while improving activation and quality recruitment where the need is the greatest. To accelerate productivity and quality recruitment, what I want to emphasize to you is that we are very focused on increasing the proportion of agents who reach the top producer cohort, particularly MDRT agents; enhancing productivity through AI and technology tools such as PRUAction; strengthening our customer propositions in affluent, high net worth, health, and protection; transforming our recruitment program through initiatives such as PRUVenture that support high-quality recruits at entry level and focused training programs and upskilling of agents. We know agency transformation is a multi-year journey, but our direction is clear. We are building a higher quality, more professional, and more productive agency force with more agents moving up the productivity curve.

Bancassurance delivered an excellent performance contributing 42% of first-half new business profit. We are now on track to reach the target range of our 2027 bancassurance objective in 2026, 12 months early. New business profit was up 13%, with margins improving by one percentage point. This performance is driven by the strength of our exclusive strategic partnerships. These relationships provide access to target customer segments, quality distribution, and a platform to scale relevant propositions. We are deepening these partnerships through specialist models, stronger frontline execution, and digital and AI-enabled tools. At the same time, we are broadening our reach to non-exclusive partnerships and driving a pipeline of new digital banking partners. Bancassurance is an important distribution channel for us and positions us strongly to tap into the wealth flows across Asia.

OneTech is the backbone of our digital investment program, moving us from fragmented digital stacks to a unified, scalable platform across the group. On this foundation, our business-led approach is embedding AI across customer journeys, helping customers access faster service, more relevant solutions, and better support. Together, our modernized technology platform and AI-enabled capabilities are improving customer experiences, increasing straight-through processing, reducing processing times, and lifting agent experience and productivity. I am excited by the value this is already unlocking. It is showing up in faster, simpler digital servicing for customers through PRUServices, stronger digital lead generation for agents, increased sales through our customer engagement platform, and higher productivity through PRUAction, our agent performance management tool. Our approach to capital allocation remains disciplined. We continue to invest in organic growth, strengthen the business, and return capital to our shareholders.

This is underpinned by a strong balance sheet position and predictable capital generation. We remain committed to returning more than $7 billion of capital to shareholders between 2024 and 2027. For 2026, we expect to increase our existing buyback program by approximately $0.3 billion. This takes expected shareholder returns for the year to more than $2 billion through ordinary dividends and other capital returns. Likewise, we remain firmly focused on delivery of our full-year 2026 guidance of double-digit growth in new business profit, adjusted EPS, gross OFSG, and dividend per share, and achieving our 2022 to 2027 objective of 15%-20% CAGR new business profit and gross OFSG of above $4.4 billion in 2027. Our confidence is supported by the long-term structural demand across our markets. Favorable demographics, rising wealth flows, and low insurance penetration continue to drive demand for protection, health, savings, and retirement solutions.

With our trusted brand, multi-channel distribution, strong market positions, and asset management capabilities, Prudential is well-positioned to capture these opportunities over time, giving a significant and durable long-term growth runway. Let me close by reminding you of our journey. We are now close to four years in our five-year strategy, and we have made strong progress. We have reset the business and built stronger capabilities through our billion-dollar investment program, investing in modernizing our technology, operations, AI, and data with a renewed focus on customer distribution and health. Those investments are now translating into better customer experiences, more scalable distribution, and stronger execution across agency, bancassurance, and health. At the same time, we have reshaped the portfolio and allocated capital with discipline, taking actions across India, Malaysia, Eastspring, and Africa to strengthen the group's long-term growth profile.

We have also increased returns to shareholders, supported by the strength of our capital generation and balance sheet. In summary, Prudential is executing with discipline, delivering resilient, high-quality growth, strengthening its long-term capital position, and increasing shareholder value. We remain firmly focused on the delivery of our 2026 guidance and achieving our 2027 financial objectives. I will now hand over to Ben Bulmer, our CFO.

Thank you, Anil. Hello, I'm Ben Bulmer, CFO of Prudential plc. I'm pleased to report that Prudential delivered another period of high-quality growth and increasing shareholder returns in the first half of 2026. Our operational performance generated double-digit growth in three of our four key financial KPIs. Overall, we grew new business profit, or NBP, 8%, operating profit per share 17%, capital generation or gross OFSG 15%, and the first interim dividend per share is up 15%, set as usual at one-third of the prior year's full-year dividend per share. We remain focused on disciplined and active capital allocation in line with the framework we set out last year. We continue to invest in high-quality organic new business and in the capabilities required to transform the group and support sustainable growth. At the same time, we've taken actions to strengthen our strategic portfolio.

In India, we announced our agreement to acquire a 75% controlling stake in Bharti Life Insurance. This will move us from a passive to an active growth platform. We have also received approval to launch our standalone health business. In Malaysia, we increased our stake in our conventional life insurance business to 70%. In addition, during the first half of 2026, we returned over $1 billion to shareholders through dividends and buybacks. We expect to increase our 2026 buyback of $1.2 billion by circa $0.3 billion, funded by our current capital market actions. Our previous guidance for capital returns in 2027 is reconfirmed. We expect to return $1.3 billion in addition to the ordinary dividend, resulting in over $7 billion of returns to shareholders over the 2024 to 2027 period.

We remain firmly focused on the delivery of our 2026 guidance of double-digit growth across our four financial KPIs and on achieving our 2027 financial objectives. As usual, I will now run through our results in more detail, starting with value generation before turning to IFRS earnings and capital. Our diversified multi-market and multi-channel platform continues to support high-quality value creation. NBP generation reached $1.4 billion, up 8%. Excluding the Chinese mainland, overall NBP growth would have been 10%. The 4% reduction in Chinese mainland NBP reflected the combination of the margin impact from the increased share of participating business and the impact on sales volumes from the application of new industry-wide bancassurance expense rules. We are working closely with our bank partners to restore momentum and rebalance product mix, including expanding our preferred branch network with China CITIC Bank and launching a range of new products.

We expect full-year NBP to be similar to 2025 levels. By market, Malaysia was the standout performer with NBP up 46%. We also saw good growth in Hong Kong with higher margins and a strong domestic segment performance. Thailand and India supported double-digit growth in our growth market segment. From a channel perspective, the vast majority of our NBP generation is from proprietary distribution through our agency and bank partners. Over the first half, agency grew 5%, whilst bancassurance continued to deliver strongly with NBP up 13% overall or 18% outside of the Chinese mainland. We continue to focus on writing high-quality, capital generative new business. The group's NBP margin improved by 2 percentage points year on year to 40%. We drove improvement in both agency and bancassurance margins despite reductions in the Chinese mainland.

Margin progression was generated in Hong Kong and Malaysia through an improved health and protection mix. Hong Kong also benefited from further selective repricing actions. 33% of our NBP is sourced through health and protection products. The majority of savings-related shareholder profits are derived from fee income within participating and unit-linked structures with limited direct market risk. Most importantly, we continue to focus on high-quality business that converts to cash with attractive IRRs and short shareholder payback periods. Embedded value operating profit increased by 11% to $2.5 billion, driven by NBP growth, a higher in-force return, and disciplined management of central costs. On a per share basis, embedded value operating EPS grew by 16%, benefiting from reduced non-controlling interests in Malaysia and a lower average share count following our ongoing buyback.

On a headline basis and before allowing for capital distributions, the group's embedded value increased 6% over the six-month period to $40.1 billion. On a per share basis, after allowing for capital distributions and excluding goodwill, this was $15.27, an increase of 5%. Finally, on an annualized basis, our ROEV was 15%. We continue to believe that sustained high-quality growth and disciplined capital management will support a two to three percentage point improvement in ROEV over time. I will now turn to our financial performance from an IFRS perspective. In our accounts, you will see that we've made a slight change to our presentation of our IFRS CSM and operating income, moving to what we call a shareholder view, removing certain policyholder items related to reinsurance that can distort the individual lines of the source of earnings analysis.

This results in an increase in the insurance service result and a corresponding reduction in the net investment result. Our guidance for CSM structural growth in the net investment result, and growth in operating EPS are all unchanged. I will start, as usual, with the development of our CSM balance. This acts as a store of future profit, released over time to the income statement as insurance services are provided to customers. Our focus on high-quality new business grew the CSM new business contribution to $1.4 billion, up 9%. Together with the normalized unwind and the release to the income statement, the underlying annualized CSM growth rate was 7%.

This remains in line with our 6%-9% guidance range, but below that reported in the prior period as a result of lower start of period interest rates mechanically reducing the rates of normalized unwind and a lower relative contribution from new business. Economic and other variances were $0.3 billion. The release to the income statement was $1.4 billion. This equates to an annualized release rate of 10%, moderately below the first half of 2025, reflecting growth in longer duration savings business over recent years. Overall, this, together with adverse FX translation, resulted in a closing CSM balance of $26.8 billion. Turning to IFRS earnings, our insurance result was driven by the $1.4 billion CSM release, up 10%. This accounts for around three-quarters of insurance operating profit. The net investment result was $0.5 billion, up 2%, in line with the guidance we provided in March.

This reflects growth in life business surplus funds being dampened by strong remittances to group and asset de-risking activities in the Chinese mainland. Experience variances included within the other column of the left-hand chart were negative $27 million, compared with a positive $24 million in the first half of 2025. This mostly reflects increased investment in capabilities and startup costs. As a result, the overall insurance result is up 5%. Our IFRS income statement is summarized on the right-hand side of the slide. The headline asset management result is up 1%, with improved operating profits offset by the lower share of earnings from our Indian asset management operations, or AMC, following the IPO in December last year. On a like-for-like basis, underlying asset management pre-tax earnings were up 19%. We have maintained our rigorous approach to controlling central expenditure.

Corporate expenditure was broadly flat year-on-year, and the level of restructuring costs reduced significantly. This positive operating leverage lifted growth in group operating profit before tax to 9%. The effective tax rate was 16% and, benefiting from a reduced non-controlling interest charge, shareholder operating profit after tax was up 13%. Allowing for the 4% reduction in the average share count, operating earnings per share grew by 17%. Finally, turning to capital generation. We continue to make very good progress towards our 2027 objective of delivering in-force capital generation or gross OFSG of above $4.4 billion. Gross OFSG increased by 15% in the period, in line with the guidance provided in March. Underlying this was sustained growth in the expected transfer, up 16% to $1.6 billion, consistent with the $3.1 billion expected for the year as a whole.

This increase reflects the benefit of high-quality new business growth over recent years. Capability investment was $145 million. I continue to expect this to be between $300 million and $350 million for the full year, largely completing our program. Underlying operating variances are positive, and I will return to this shortly. Overall, gross OFSG increased to $1.8 billion, up 15%. We then invested $0.4 billion in new business at attractive returns. Finally, adding the benefit of lower central and restructuring costs, group level capital generation increased 41% to $1.2 billion. We remain confident in achieving our 2027 gross OFSG objective of above $4.4 billion. We will meet this through growth in profitable new business and completing in-train actions to return to long-term net positive variances. The now familiar chart on the left summarizes these key drivers.

As of the end of 2025, the capital emerging in 2027 from life business already written stood at $3 billion. To this, in 2026, we add profitable new business driving future capital generation in 2027 and beyond. Over the first half, the new business addition to 2027 capital generation was up 42% on a year-on-year basis. This is largely driven by the mechanical effect of moving to the structurally higher policy year one contribution compared to policy year two, alongside underlying volume growth. As a reminder, the 2025 full year new business addition was $0.5 billion, and I expect like-for-like growth this year to be broadly in line with growth in new business. Returning to positive operating variances and assumption changes is the other key to the achievement of our 2027 gross OFSG objective.

The return to underlying positive variances at $32 million over the first half for the first time since 2020 is an important milestone. This outcome reflects the continued benefit of actions to improve underwriting profitability within our health and protection business and the benefits of improving economies of scale, with total costs growing more slowly than revenues. As I just mentioned, we expect to largely complete the investment and capability program this year. Given this, I am confident we will deliver positive variances north of $200 million in 2027. Business unit remittances to the group center are very strong. Over the first half, segment capital generation, net of investment in new business, was $1.4 billion. Remittances matched this. I continue to guide you to a remittance ratio of around 70%, noting that the timing of remittances is typically weighted to the first half of the year.

At a holding company level, this resulted in holding company free cash flow of $0.9 billion, the payment of the 2025 second interim dividend, and our ongoing buyback program. Other corporate activities largely represent our increased holding in Malaysia. Overall, our central liquidity position remains very strong with a closing balance of $3.7 billion. The group's capital position remains robust. We benefit from strong and improving capital generation, very strong regulatory capital ratios, and low financial leverage. Our GWS regulatory capital ratio was 268% on a shareholder basis and 195% on a total company basis. Our free surplus ratio stood at 209% at the end of the period, ahead of our 175%-200% operating range. On a pro forma basis, allowing for the full return of the AMC IPO proceeds, this would be 200%.

The development of the free surplus ratio over the first half reflects ongoing organic capital generation, less capital returns to shareholders, and the increased stake in Malaysia. The progress evident in our first half financial performance and our strong capital position reflects our disciplined and active management approach to capital allocation and our focus on driving sustainable growth in value and capital generation. We continue to execute consistently across our framework by maintaining a very strong regulatory capital position and investing in new business with IRRs in excess of 25% and payback periods of less than four years. Our capital management program is now firmly established. So far this year, we have returned $0.8 billion of capital through our buyback program. We are also actively managing our strategic portfolio for sustained long-term growth.

Let me give you some further financial details on India, a key strategic market where we have pivoted from a passive position to a controlled growth platform. There are two separate but related transactions. First, our agreement to acquire a 75% stake in Bharti Life, and secondly, the prospective reduction in our current 22% holding in ICICI Prudential Life, or IPRU, to around 10%. The initial cash consideration for Bharti Life is circa $370 million, with a potential additional payment of up to $74 million dependent on the fulfillment of certain conditions. The transaction process is ongoing with multiple regulatory approvals required. It's proceeding as expected, but will take some time to complete, and hence, it has not yet been recognized in our accounts.

Regarding the second transaction, the reduction in our IPRU stake, part of the proceeds will be used to support future growth in the Prudential Bharti platform, while the residual capital will contribute to our free surplus. We will also continue to invest in growth in our standalone health business now we have an operating license. This will be modest, though, as we test, learn, and grow alongside our partner, HCL. Our performance over the first half has further demonstrated the quality of our franchise and the strength of a platform that is delivering high quality and compounding sustainable growth. We have leading positions in the highly attractive markets of Asia and Africa. We're generating attractive margins and are positioning the business to deliver double-digit performance for many years to come. In summary, we remain focused on driving high-quality growth and increasing shareholder returns.

We are executing against our strategic priorities at pace, sustaining bancassurance momentum while building agency strength and quality. We continue to enhance the quality of our new business to drive sustainable, efficient growth. We are disciplined in the allocation of capital, investing in capability build and in selective infill acquisitions that strengthen the future growth prospects of the group. We expect to increase our 2026 buyback of $1.2 billion by circa $0.3 billion, funded by our current capital market actions. We remain firmly focused on the delivery of our 2026 guidance of double-digit growth in NBP, gross OFSG, operating EPS and DPS, and on achieving our 2027 financial objectives. Finally, we are well-positioned in the long-term growth markets of Asia and Africa, and I remain excited by the opportunities ahead.

Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the Prudential plc 2025 full year results Q&A audio webcast call. At this time, all participants are in listen only mode. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. I will now hand over to Patrick Bowes. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, good morning, good evening, everyone. Welcome to Prudential plc's 2025 results analyst and investor call. Before I turn over to Anil Wadhwani, our CEO, and then Ben Bulmer, our CFO, a couple of housekeeping points. A recording of today's call will be available from Tuesday next week. Our full results package is available on our website, and I refer you to the disclaimers and safe harbor wordings in these documents, and they also apply to this call. Anil and Ben will start the call with opening remarks, followed by a Q&A. Also on the call today are Angel Ng, Dennis Tan, Rajeev Mittal, and Naveen Tahilyani. Now let me pass over to Anil, our CEO, to start us off.

Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining us today. I would like to begin by expressing my sincere thanks to our retiring Chair, Shriti Vadera. Shriti has successfully led the board through a period of significant change for Prudential through economic and political turmoil, and of course, the challenges of the COVID period. She has been a staunch supporter of the management team throughout our transformation journey. I'm very grateful for her leadership of the board and her counsel to me, and I wish her all the very best in her future endeavors. I'm also delighted to welcome Sir Douglas Flint as our incoming Chair, who will take up the role at the conclusion of the AGM.

Douglas has experience of financial services and strong knowledge of the markets we operate in, and I am looking forward to working closely with him. Turning to our 2025 full-year results. I'm very pleased with the high-quality double-digit growth across our key financial metrics delivered in line with guidance and the increased returns for shareholders. This performance reflects the strength of our multi-market, multi-channel business model and disciplined execution of our strategy with a continued focus on writing high-quality new business. Both new business profit and adjusted operating profit after tax per share grew 12%, while gross OFSG and dividend per share were both up 15%. Importantly, we consistently delivered double-digit growth in new business profit in every quarter of 2025. We also successfully completed the IPO of our Indian asset management company and increased our holding in our Malaysian conventional business to 70%.

We continue to demonstrate disciplined capital management and a clear focus on shareholder value, and we now expect to return over $7 billion of capital to our shareholders between 2024 and 2027. Turning to our strategic transformation. We are now three years into our five-year plan and have delivered 18% CAGR in new business profit growth from 2022-2025. We continue to strengthen our capabilities and operational execution to deliver consistent and ongoing quality new business and cash generation. First, we are executing with focus across our distribution, strengthening our agency channel while sustaining strong momentum in bancassurance. Agency is our largest channel, and building and growing a high-quality professional and advisory-led agency force at Prudential scale requires sustained commitment and disciplined execution.

Productivity, measured as new business profit per active agent, improved by 15% in 2022, which I am very pleased with. This has been supported by continued strengthening of our million-dollar roundtable or MDRT pipeline. At the same time, we see further opportunity to increase the number of active agents, specifically in emerging markets in ASEAN, through quality recruitment, segment-specific propositions, and supporting agent activity through technology enablement. Turning to bancassurance, Prudential has a leading bancassurance franchise in Asia. The channel delivered an outstanding year with new business profit crossing a $1 billion mark, representing around 95% of the lower end of its 2027 new business profit objective.

Second, we continue to enhance the quality of new business by deepening customer engagement and improving experience across all touch points, unlocking synergies with our in-house manager, Eastspring, and building on our strengths in health to extend further into protection. Third, we are driving efficient growth by modernizing our technology as well as embedding analytics and AI across agency health and operations to better support our agency force and deliver simpler, better experiences for customers. Finally, we have continued to make good progress in reducing core business related variances, supporting the quality and sustainability of our capital generation. As a result, gross OFSG increased by 15%, marking an important inflection point on the path to meeting our 2027 OFSG objective. While the microenvironment remains volatile, our presence across Asia and Africa gives us access to significant structural growth opportunities.

The strength and resilience of our multi-market, multi-channel model allows us to deliver consistent, high-quality growth and generate sustainable shareholder returns. We will carry the momentum we set for ourselves in 2025 into 2026, and we firmly remain on track to achieve our 2027 financial objectives. Now, I'll hand it over to Ben, our CFO, to walk through our financial highlights.

Thanks, Anil, and hello, everyone. In 2025, we delivered on our guidance, double-digit growth across our key financial KPIs, demonstrating the strength of our diversified multi-channel and multi-market business model. We intend to build on this momentum as we work towards and beyond our 2027 objective year. With higher NBP, further growth in our in-force and asset management result, flat central costs, and the benefits of our strategic and capital actions, we increased our 2025 return on embedded value to 15%. We continue to see scope to improve this as we progress towards our 2027 financial objective, driven by further NBP growth, a return to positive operating variances, and ongoing disciplined capital management. We also reached the inflection point in our capital generation trajectory, with gross OFSG up 15% year-over-year, while our net OFSG is up 22%.

The group's capital position remains highly robust. Our free surplus ratio ended the year at 221% or 204%, excluding the IPO net proceeds, broadly consistent with the 175%-200% normal operating range we've set out. We were pleased that our financial strength and flexibility was recognized by S&P with its upgrade of our financial strength rating to AA. We updated our capital allocation framework in August last year. We gave guidance of greater than 10% dividend per share growth each year from 2025-2027. The 2025 dividend per share increased 15%.

We also announced that shareholders will benefit from additional capital returns over and above the ordinary dividend, starting with $500 million this year and a further return of $600 million expected in 2027. This framework is intended to be enduring, and we thus intend for further additional capital returns in 2028 and beyond. Capital above our established 175%-200% operating range will be assessed regularly and, if deemed excess, returned to shareholders. We plan to return all of the $1.4 billion net proceeds from the IPO process to shareholders to be split half this year, half next year. In January, we launched a $1.2 billion buyback to be completed by the end of 2026 and expect to return a further $1.3 billion in 2027.

We're delivering growth in value and what we believe is a highly attractive returns proposition. We remain focused on growing quality new business with strong underlying capital generation. New business profit grew 12%, and the addition to 2027 capital emergence increased by 16%. The NBP margin expanded 2 percentage points to 42%. Further improvements in our agency performance and increasing the proportion of health and protection business continue to provide opportunities to improve margins over the medium term. The management of our in-force book continues to improve, reflecting actions taken in strengthening our health claims management. We are also benefiting from economies of scale, with total costs growing more slowly than revenues. This positive leverage will allow us to continue to invest in our business on a normal course basis.

We intend, as we've said, to largely complete our capability investment program in 2026 with an investment of between $300 million and $350 million, and we are very confident of returning to positive variances by 2027. In summary, we delivered improving financial performance in 2025 with double-digit growth across our key financial KPIs, consistent with our guidance. The consistency of our operating performance also improved. While there's work to do, we were pleased to deliver double-digit NBP growth in every quarter of 2025. For 2026, we are again guiding to double-digit growth across our key financial KPIs, and we remain very confident in achieving our 2027 financial objectives. With that, I'll pass back to Patrick.

Thank you, Ben and Anil. I'll now hand over to our conference call operator, Jake, who will provide instructions and then open the lines for questions. Please remember to give your name and organization you represent when asking a question, and you're also welcome to submit your questions online. Over to you, Jake.

Thank you. To ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. You will hear a tone to confirm that you are in the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, you may do so by pressing star two to cancel. Our first caller is Thomas Wang from Goldman Sachs. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Thank you. It's Thomas here from Goldman Sachs. Thank you for the opportunity to ask a question. If I can kind of start with a kind of broad question on growth. There's a few kind of surprises I think on this set of numbers. I think China definitely, I remember in the first half our guidance was kind of high single digit NBP growth, but we ended up with something close to 30%. Very strong in second half. I'm just wondering what you see in terms of outlook for 2026. Do you think that we can maintain this momentum into 2026? Secondly, maybe on Hong Kong.

Slightly slower growth in the second half, maybe not surprising, but just want to get your thought on 2026 momentum and how do you see kind of the base effect, how challenging is that? How confident we are getting back kind of to a double-digit or potentially even mid-teen growth in Hong Kong. If I can just sort of related to this, I think the 2025 growth was mainly driven by bancassurance agency channel was just about 4%. I think that's probably tied to Hong Kong as well. Just wondering, can you give a little bit more color on what initiatives to drive that agency growth in 2026? Thank you.

Thanks, Thomas, for those questions. I guess there are three questions, so just bear with me because I guess it's gonna be a slightly long answer as I try to address each one of them. Firstly let me start with the broader outlook. We clearly were pleased with the 2025 outcomes. I thought it was a landmark year for Prudential. Our new business profit grew at 12%. Importantly, it was an inflection point for OFSG that grew at 15%. Our transformation execution is getting sharper as well as clearly our model is underpinned by multi-market and multi-channel. That gives us the confidence to take the momentum that we set for ourselves in 2025-2026.

As Ben mentioned in his opening comments that we are guiding to delivering double-digit growth across our financial metrics for 2026 as well. Now, specifically coming to China. Clearly pleased with the 27% growth on new business profit that we delivered in Mainland China. Specifically pleased with the improved trajectory and momentum that we saw in the second half of last year where both bancassurance and importantly agency delivered strong double-digit growth. At the same time, as you know, Thomas, we have been working very hard to retooling our business and driving quality growth underpinned with strong risk discipline processes. You're starting to now see the evidence of that growth come through. We were also delighted with the fact that our par mix is touched to 40%.

It was close to 15% in the prior year. That's a step in the right direction. That underpins as to how we are managing quality growth with strong risk discipline. I'm not gonna give you market-specific guidance. As I said, the guidance overall is double-digit, and clearly China is gonna play a key part in helping us drive that double-digit performance in 2026. Let me shift gears and talk a little bit about Hong Kong. Firstly, just stepping back. I really like the shape of our Hong Kong business. We grew both mainland Chinese visitor segment and domestic segment, and both our channels, bancassurance and agency grew too.

Our focus at all times has been quality, which was illustrated by the 2 percentage points improvement in margin and our new business profit for full year 2025 grew by 12%. Now, as you pointed out, second half was a bit of an unusual period for us in Hong Kong, given the fact that we were embracing a slew of regulatory changes specifically targeted towards the broker channel. For example, the referral fee cap, the spreading of commission, also the changes that came through on illustration gaps, led to the growth coming in in short term products, largely through the broker channel. Now for us, the focus has been quality new business that generates cash at an accelerated pace. Let me give you a couple of proof points in that.

One, 95% of our business in Hong Kong were in tenures greater than five years, as opposed to an industry average of approximately 40%. We have leadership in Hong Kong on the critical illness business. In quarter three of last year, we established leading position on the health business. Importantly, our Hong Kong renewal premium growth was 15% year-on-year. Our primary channels continued to be agency as well as bancassurance for obvious reasons, because we have a greater influence both on customer experience as well as a higher degree of influence on product mix. Importantly, our agency growth in terms of new recruitment was again greater than 5,000, with our active agent growth in Hong Kong growing at 12% for 2025.

We continue to see demand, both across domestic as well as mainland Chinese visitor segment. Be it in legacy planning products, multi-currency products, as well as health and protection. A combination of these factors gives us the confidence that we will grow our agency, as well as our Hong Kong business in 2020, 2026. Now, to your third question on specifically on agency. Clearly, we are not as pleased with the agency growth as we are with bancassurance. Remember, we are a multi-channel, multi-market growth engine model. Bancassurance has done exceedingly well for us. Our agency clearly came in below expectation. Now, let me step back and just explain and give you a little bit of color in terms of what's going on in our agency channel.

If you look at our three-year growth between 2022-2025, we've delivered a growth of 18% CAGR over the last three years. This has been predicated on the back of a 19% growth in agency and a 12% growth in bancassurance. As I said, I like the complementing nature of agency and bancassurance. There have been years where agency has performed better than bancassurance, and there have been years where bancassurance has performed better than agency. Agency transformation is our number one priority. I'll have Naveen, who heads agency as well as some of our ASEAN markets give you a little bit of color. Let me preface it with a few points. Firstly, there are two specific measures that we are pressing forward on agency.

First is productivity, as is measured by new business profit per active agent. I'm very pleased with the growth that we witnessed last year. It was up 15%. It helped us offset the decline of 11% on active agents. Our active agents was largely impacted by the emerging ASEAN markets of Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia. If you go under the hood and look at what the driver of that was, it was largely the new recruitment in these four markets. I'm gonna stop there, and I'm going to have Naveen articulate as to what are we doing about it specifically and illustrate that with a specific example in terms of how we are implementing some of the steps to change the momentum on agency. Yeah. Naveen.

Thank you. Thank you, Anil. First and foremost, over the last few months, as I've had a chance to spend time with our top agents and leaders on the ground, I'm very convinced that we have some very high quality, top-notch professionals working with us, and our agency quality is right up there in these markets. Second, when I look at the different initiatives in our agency strategy, I am fully aligned, and I think we cover all the bases in terms of both the aspects that Anil mentioned, improving the top-tier productivity, as well as looking to enhance the activation and recruitment. Now, the top-tier productivity initiative is already working well. Anil already shared the data points over there.

As far as enhancing activation through quality recruitment, we are focused on creating professional recruitment schemes which work on the right capability building for the leaders as well as agents, supporting them with the right technology and the right propositions. One such example is PRUVenture in Malaysia, where this scheme has scaled up in the second half of last year. For all of last year, this scheme accounted for about a quarter of our incoming class of recruits in Malaysia. What is very interesting to see and very encouraging to see is the fact that the retention as well as the productivity of this incoming class through PRUVenture is significantly higher than those coming through other schemes. For example, particularly on productivity, the productivity of these agents is six times that of the non-PRUVenture recruits.

Our focus right now is to take such professional recruitment schemes with discipline to other markets and make sure we can use that to scale up our recruitment as well as our activation. That's what we are doing. Anil, back to you with that.

Thanks. Thanks, Naveen. Just in closing, Thomas, building and scaling a high-quality professional agency force in Asia, and that also of a size of Prudential, does require consistent commitment and focus and execution. We are absolutely confident and focused on driving the transformation on agency.

Thank you. Okay, next question, Jake.

Thank you. Our next caller is Farooq Hanif from JPMorgan. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Hi there. Thanks very much. Just on the point of agency, can you just explain why you don't just use PRUVenture entirely for recruitment? Then can you also talk about the technology arms race, in terms of the digital tools you're giving your agents? My sense was that, and I might be wrong, but you were kind of behind. You've come along, you've invested. Do you feel like you're in line or better than your top competitors when it comes to that kind of technology? Second question is, understanding kind of the remittances. The capital position of your sub seems strong. You've remitted quite a lot of capital.

Can you just talk about why you've remitted so much capital to the holding, given your previous comments that you prefer to keep this, you know, as much capital in the subs, to earn a higher return? What's the outlook here, and how will that impact your investment margin, going forward? My last question is, will underlying variances, so that's obviously excluding the capability investment, will they reach an inflection point in 2026? I mean, they may turn positive or slightly positive, but what can we model in for that, and how does that differ between sort of free surplus and IFRS? Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks, Farooq, and thanks for this question. Let me first take the PRUVenture one, and I'll again have Naveen provide you some greater insights and greater color. I will go to Ben on the remittances and the variances question. First, we have seen great success on PRUVenture, for example, in a market like Hong Kong. The success is what really drove us to now rolling that out in some of the other markets. Again, Naveen has illustrated in terms of the early impact of that witnessed in Malaysia. Our ambition now is to kinda roll that out at a brisk pace across the different markets of ASEAN. I'm gonna stop there and ask Naveen to provide you a greater color, both on the extension of PRUVenture as well as the technology enablement.

Thanks, Anil, and Farooq, thanks for the question. PRUVenture as I said, is a scheme which is about encouraging professional recruitment, both at the leader level as well as at the agent level. To build on the example that Anil already shared of Hong Kong, where this scheme has kind of scaled up over the last year, the increase in number of PRUVenture recruits was 43%, and 2/5 of the incoming class was actually from PRUVenture. Hong Kong is an example of a market where we have successfully scaled up PRUVenture, and of course, we'll continue with these efforts in this particular market. I already illustrated Malaysia, which scaled up in the second half of last year, and we will have the impact of PRUVenture through all of this year in Malaysia.

Exactly as you mentioned, our effort right now is with some customization to take this scheme to the other emerging markets of ASEAN, particularly Indonesia, Philippines, Vietnam, whereas Anil said we've been kind of looking to improve our recruitment and hence our activation. Now, each one of these markets requires a little bit of customization, a little bit of change to the scheme, and we've kind of done that, and we are looking to implement that with discipline as we move forward. That's on PRUVenture and professional recruitment. On technology, we think of technology and agency in two loops. One loop is how do we improve the agent productivity as they think about interaction with their customers. This is about lead management, prospecting, sales, service, and claims management.

The second one is how does an agent and a leader improve their own productivity in terms of realizing what their compensation is, what their action should be, and how do they think about, you know, improving their income? Those are the two loops in which we think about technology and agency. My assessment of where we are today in terms of that technology capability, we are right up there with the best in the market. We have a proprietary platform called PRUForce, you may have heard of this name before, which is now rolled out to all the markets, and we are looking to continuously enhance the capabilities in PRUForce. But as of today, we are pretty good right up there on both of these aspects.

What we are doing now is actually injecting a healthy dose of AI into this in a very practical, targeted manner on both of these value loops, the customer value loop as well as the agent and the leader value loop. An example of that which I want to share is PRUAction, which was pioneered in Singapore last year. This was an AI-enabled performance management system for our agents and leaders to improve their productivity. As we went through this, we saw an increase in productivity of about 15%, which is quite strong, and we are now looking to take PRUAction to all the markets that we have, as far as agency is concerned. That's where the technology focuses, and we'll continue to get better and improve as we move forward.

Thanks, Naveen. Moving to Ben, for the next two questions on remittances and the variances.

Yeah. Thanks, Anil. Hi, Farooq. On remittances, look, I continue to guide you to the 70% ratio in terms of the remittance rate for LBU net surplus generation. You're right. I elected to bring up some stock this year from the Hong Kong business. I do like having a balance of surplus in both centrally and in the businesses. I've said that before. We like to have agility locally. We have stakeholders to manage. That said, I'm not going to leave excess capital in businesses. I will bring that up to center. You're right. It did have a temporal impact on the net investment return in the IFRS result, along with the effects of some China de-risking that we did. Similarly, when you think about earnings, we have a lower sort of central net investment return number as a result of completing that $2 billion stock buyback.

In terms of the underlying variances, I'm pleased with the progress we're making. I think, you know, they're materially improved year-on-year. Now really if you remove the investment in capabilities are fairly close to being neutral. I'm very confident that we're gonna return to those historic pre-COVID norms of positive operating variances within our objective period. Of course, you know, we're a bigger business now than we were. We're very much focused on continuing to drive underwriting profitability. I think you've seen evidence of that, and investing in our capabilities to drive growth and scale. Ultimately this is about operating leverage, and I'm pleased to see renewal premiums up double-digit once again last year.

We will continue to focus on cost containment, to also improve with that operating leverage, and that gives us the headroom to then continue to reinvest in the business on a business as usual basis, going forwards. I think you asked about differences between IFRS and TEV. There are some differences in geography, of course, between sort of, you know, VFA and GMM. The key thing to bear in mind there is that about 2/3 of our investment in capabilities are sat in the CSM unlocking number, as opposed to that variance line. Yeah, very confident we're gonna continue to drive very strong variance performance.

Thank you, Ben. Okay. Next question please, Jake.

Thank you. Our next caller is Michael Chang from CGS-CIMB. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Hi, thanks a lot. It's Michael Chang here. Can I just check you can hear me?

Hey, Michael?

We can hear you, Michael. Loud and clear.

Okay. Sure. All right. Okay, thanks. Yeah, I really like the results, especially in relation to the Mainland China business. I think it's very impressive what the business has done, especially on the bancassurance front. Could I just get some more clarity? I understand that CITIC has been a great partner as well as SCB, and I think they contribute, if I'm not wrong, 2/3 of the APE. It seems that a lot of investors within the China space right now for the insurers, they are quite focused on this wave of maturing time deposits, which the bancassurance is best placed to capture.

Could I maybe get some color on any initiatives you have in terms of further deepening the relationship with CITIC in terms of maybe more branches as well as with Standard Chartered coupled with any new initiatives in terms of new bancassurance partners? That's the first one, and I think the second one is primarily in relation to the Asia market. I think one of the key structural themes, even more so post the pandemic, has been the very strong demand for wealth management solutions. In the case of the insurers, there's some of your peers who are making the point that maybe third-party channels is a good way to tap this opportunity.

Now, I know that Prudential is extremely strong in the agent channel and the bancassurance channel, but maybe you can just shed some light on your thoughts about using third party channels to tap this work management opportunity and why have you chosen to actually be relatively underweight versus your peers on this front. Thanks a lot.

Thanks, Michael. Let me start with China and I'll go to Angel, who can probably give you a little bit more color on how we are thinking about the China growth and specifically to your point on deposits and the deposits maturity. Because you're right in pointing out that the Chinese economy continues to be a very high savings economy, which in many ways, given the low interest rate environment, speaks to, you know, some of the solutions that we can bring to our customers. I do want to start by saying that, you know, clearly bancassurance has been a key driver of growth for us in China. It's heartening to see that we are now seeing significant traction from CITIC Bank.

This is on account of the focus that Angel has brought in terms of ensuring that there is a segment of branches that are exclusively dedicated to selling CITIC-Prudential Life insurance policies. That has made a dramatic difference in terms of CITIC's contribution to the overall bancassurance sales and the overall sales in Mainland China as compared to some of the previous years. I think interesting to note, our margins on bancassurance are pretty healthy in China, and that again underscores the point that I made earlier to Thomas' question that that is underpinned by the focus on quality and how we would like to grow our new business profit in China. I'm gonna stop there, and turn to Angel to specifically answer your time deposit question.

Thank you, Anil. Thank you for the questions, Michael. You are correct, you know, that Standard Chartered and CITIC both are our strategic bank partner, which are also delivering very good growth rate in 2025. Especially on your questions on CITIC Bank, we've launched the preferred branch model last year with the first 50 branches. Basically is to aim for increasing our wallet share in those branches by giving them dedicated resources like insurance specialists to help the relationship managers to sell the products better. That yield very good results. Into 2026, we are aiming to increase the number from 50 to 100, so basically doubling the number of preferred branch under this model.

The other one, you know, that we are working on is to increase and diversified, you know, our partnership, you know, in the bancassurance channel. We are going to focus, you know, to work on the top ten partners, you know, in the bancassurance channel, so that, you know, we can also repeat, you know, what we have turned out in the CITIC preferred branch model business. The last point that I want to talk about is your point on deposit maturity. We are working very closely with all of our bank partners to capture these opportunities. Especially, we are going into a deeper collaboration with the private bank segments of our bank partners with greater engagement with the high net worth customer, which will increase our average ticket size.

I think these will give us a very solid plan going into 2026 to deliver our business target. Getting back to you, Anil.

Thanks, Angel. Michael, getting on to your next question on wealth management brokers. You know, are we planning to do more there? The short answer is yes. While, you know, our primary channels continue to be agency and bancassurance, for reasons that I articulated earlier, absolutely, we are engaged on a very active basis, which is where we are seeing the greater kind of attraction for wealth management offering. You will see more innovative solutions coming from us in that space. Mind you, one of our key differentiators, and I want to bring this point back, is the complementing nature of bancassurance to agency.

Bancassurance has done well because it continues to attract a certain level of flows from emerging affluent customers as well as high net worth customers. That continues to be a great source for us to engage customers through our preferred or strategic bank relationship partners. Some of them, as Angel mentioned, are not only limited to China, but to the broader Asia and Africa landscape.

Okay. Thank you, Anil. Let's go to the next question, please, Jake.

Thank you. Our next caller is Andrew Crean from Autonomous Research. Your line is now open. Please go ahead.

Hello, everyone. Three sort of numbers based questions. Firstly, you've given on bancassurance that you're 95% of the way to your, the lower end of your target. Could you give the same percentage for agency? Secondly, agency active numbers at 57,000. You were targeting 80,000-90,000 by 2027. Where do you actually think you're going to land on that? Then thirdly, you talked about improving new business profit margins in the medium term from the current 42%. Could you be a bit more specific as to what medium term is and where 42% can go to?

Thanks for those questions, Andrew. So you're right that bancassurance is at 95%, so that allows us a significant level of headroom close to two years in advance of the goal or the objective that we had set for bancassurance. Agency on that same count is roughly about close to 2/3 of the objective that we had set for agency. That also kind of leans into your second question, which is what are we doing about active agents? Naveen was trying to articulate that. The way we are thinking about this, Andrew, is that we're gonna push both the productivity as well as active agents, right?

I don't have a kind of specific kind of mathematical, you know, formula for what I would like to kinda get to. As far as either through productivity or through active agents or a combination of that, we still kinda hit the agency number. That could be different as compared to what we had conceived three years back, but I'm still confident that we will press on both the levers of productivity and active agents to get to the agency outcome that we had set for ourselves for 2027. To your question on NBP margin, I'm going to go to Ben for him to elaborate.

Thanks, Anil. Hi, Andrew. Look, I do think we have opportunity to continue to improve margins. I'm pleased with the performance, not just last year, but the year before as well. That opportunity is fourfold really. Firstly, improving our health and protection product contribution in the mix. Secondly, accelerating agency growth, and you've heard that's a number one transformation priority. Thirdly, really it's back to this point on operating leverage and building scale, and we're seeing that scale coming back. Finally, we'll continue to look to actively reprice propositions, and you've seen activity there.

In terms of why medium-term, maybe a bit of specific guidance. We talked in China about driving a greater proportion of par business. Our margins in China have come down three points year-on-year in 2025. I expect a further reduction in 2026 as we drive a higher proportion of participating business. We're stepping back, though. I do think we continue to have ample opportunity to drive overall group margin.

Thank you, Ben. Jake, over to next one, please. I'm just conscious that we are now at quarter past, so let's make the question snappy, and we'll make the answer snappy.

Thank you. Our next caller is William Hawkins from KBW. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Gosh, how to be snappy. Thank you. Could you talk a bit more about some of the non-Chinese markets, please? Anil, your outlook for Indonesia, Singapore, and Malaysia. I mean, are these proportionate contributors to double-digit growth or tailwinds or headwinds? Secondly, please, there's a 20% increase in required capital for the surplus ratio, I think. That feels sort of slightly outsized to your guidance that it should grow roughly in line with new business profit over time. I've got in mind that it should be more like a sort of something over 10% growth in the future. Can you explain, if I'm right, why was there an outsized growth in required capital? And what's the outlook for that metric in the surplus ratio? I'll leave it at that. Thank you.

Thanks, Wills. Let me start with Singapore, Indonesia, and Malaysia. We obviously are looking for all the ASEAN markets to contribute. On Singapore, let me give you some texture. Clearly very strong momentum on sales. In the second half of last year, the sales grew by 19%. The challenge that we had in Singapore was more around product mix, which was skewed more towards savings and wealth, as well as the demand coming from the government-sponsored medical plan, which is known as Shield, got calibrated because of changes in the co-payment rules.

On account of the steps that we are taking, as well as the strengths that we have in Singapore, both in terms of the 1.5 million customer relationships, as well as the distinct strengths across bancassurance, tied agency, and financial advisory channel. We believe that we can grow Singapore to high single-digit on new business profit, if not early double-digit. Indonesia, very pleased, 11% growth on new business profit. Mind you, this is the second year that we've been able to deliver new business profit growth in Indonesia, which is what we had struggled to do that in the prior years running up to COVID and even coming out of COVID. Pleased with that.

It also tells you that we are in a much better position to be able to address some of the challenges on medical inflation, as well as we distinctly see an opportunity, to Naveen's point, in terms of improving our agency momentum. I believe that Indonesia will continue to be double-digit growth. Malaysia, again, was a struggle for us in the first half of last year, but did exceedingly well in the second half of last year. Again, it talks to some of the steps that we took on PRUVenture and how we are retooling our agency. We are seeing that momentum carry forward into 2026 and remain optimistic that Malaysia will come back to deliver double-digit growth as opposed to the 5% new business profit growth it delivered in 2025. I'm gonna go to Ben on your second question.

Yeah. Thanks, Anil. Hi. Hi, Will. The simple answer is it was down to non-operating effects. We had very strong equity market performance in a number of our markets where the local regulatory basis uses economic capital models and also has, as it happens, countercyclical equity risk adjustments. In periods where you have very strong equity performance the risk adjustment increases, required capital grows. Of course, your available surplus also grows. When we look at the free surplus ratio, we take that required capital number over. Of course, we truncate available surplus of what's actually fungible. Really it was down to outsize equity performance in a few markets. Going forward, when you think about modeling required capital, I would guide you again to low double-digit growth rates. Have 12%-13% in mind.

Okay. Thank you, Ben. Okay, Jake, next question, please.

Thank you. Our next caller is Kailesh Mistry from Deutsche Bank.

Oh, hi. Good afternoon. A few questions from me. On numbers, just on China CPL, could you just give us the core and comprehensive solvency ratio post the bond in January? Second one, there's something about a slightly lower CSM release rate in 2026. You know, how much does that go down? Does it go down below 9% or does it stay above? Or alternatively, you can give us the release rates for Indonesia and China, which seems to be driving that. And then thirdly, just on agency, could you just give a little bit more color about this comment in the statement about revamping agency compensation? Are you changing the incentives or is it purely about increasing commissions to make it more attractive, et cetera, et cetera? Thank you.

Thanks, Kailesh. I'm gonna go quickly to Ben for the first two and then Naveen for the agency question.

Thanks. Hi. Hi, Kailesh. If you pro forma for that recent perpetual debt issuance, the business is operating at 3x and 2.3x regulatory minimum levels. More specifically, core is at 150% comprehensive, around 234%. You know, as I've mentioned before, we've increased our sources of local financing. Later in the first half of this year, the business will recapture some existing sub-debt and replace that with perpetual debt, and that will give a further solvency uplift. In terms of your question on IFRS, actually at a group level, you know, the release rate is gonna be marginally lower. You know, in the sort of late 9.4s rather than 9.5s.

Okay. Thank you, Ben. We're over to Naveen.

Great.

On the question on agency compensation, this is a structured initiative as a core pillar of our agency transformation to encourage the two behaviors that Anil already mentioned. One was improving top-tier productivity, and the second one was to enhance quality recruitment. What we have done through last year and this year so far is actually piloted this in a number of markets and put these structured initiatives now in place. In fact, we had pre-tested this with a large number of our agents and leaders. In the pre-testing, it was very well received. Now in the markets where we have actually rolled it out, it's also very well received and the implementation has been quite smooth. This is targeted to both agents as well as their leaders who actually recruit them.

As I said earlier, it's totally aligned to our transformation objectives.

Thanks, Naveen.

Okay, next question, please, Jake.

Thank you. Our next caller is Changazi from Kepler Cheuvreux. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Hello. Thank you. It's Fahad Changazi from Kepler Cheuvreux. Thank you for taking my question. Just very briefly on this PRUVenture, which sound very interesting. In terms of what happened in Hong Kong, 2/5 or 2/5 of recruitment, new recruitment came from PRUVenture. What was the number of agents in 2024 and 2025 in Hong Kong? And on the OFSG, just two questions. We have the usual slide where we're looking for 2026 new business profit contributing +$0.5 billion to 2027 OFSG. Can I just— Is that assuming some sort of a mixed shift which accelerates conversion OFSG or is just normal new business profit growth?

The last point on the operating variance, I know Ben mentioned, you know, just positive returning to historic, positive levels. Previously, and you're a bigger company. Previously, you used to give that, chart where it was 0.9% of opening EV from 2011 to H1 2024. In 2024, it was 1.4% of opening EV. Is there any reason not to assume it will be 8% of opening EV, and where should we be landing on that percentage? Thank you.

Thanks. Thanks for the question. Let me go to Naveen to the Hong Kong PRUVenture, and then we'll go to Ben for the two questions on financials.

Sure. On Hong Kong PRUVenture, as I said, PRUVenture is fundamentally a high-quality professional recruitment scheme in Hong Kong. Very pleased to share that last year, which is in 2025 compared to 2024, PRUVenture scaled up by 43%. And 40% of the incoming class of recruits was through PRUVenture. That's where we are on Hong Kong, and I already covered Malaysia. And as I said, we will now be looking to roll this out with the right customizations to other markets.

Thanks, Naveen. Let's go to Ben on the two financials.

On the OFSG production projection slide, I think you're referring to slide 43 on the top right, A, the new business additions. That is the normal profit signature that you're seeing there. We design our products to be very capital efficient. It's about capital velocity for us. We're writing business with a fast monetization profile and short payback period. You know, put simply, the cost of writing the business, whether that's distribution, underwriting, admin, capital requirements or so on, comes through in year one. Then we try to recoup some of those costs through the collection of second-year premiums to match revenue to costs as closely as possible. That's why you have a jump there in the release, and thereafter it's more of a levelized pattern.

I'll be brief on variances. You should have in mind north of $200 million in 2027. As I said, we're now a bigger business. We're very much focused on driving scale and cost containment.

Okay. Thanks, Ben. Conscious time runs on. Dominic, do you want to go next? Jake, could you let Dominic in, please?

Thank you. Our next caller is Dominic O'Mahony from BNP Paribas Exane. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Thanks for taking questions and for squeezing me in. I will try to be quick. Three, if that's okay. One is just on your IRRs, greater than 25% is a great number. How does that compare between banker and agency? My guess is that banker is lower, but tell me if that's wrong. The second question is just on the shape of new business, surplus emergence, really following up on Fahad's question. Are you expecting any further change in the shape? It's accelerated in 2025. Should we expect further acceleration in the shape of emergence beyond this? Then the last question on variances. Very clear, and thank you, Ben, for the explicit guidance on the variances in 2027.

If you're already growing, frankly at a very decent clip, I would have thought that you would have already got to the stage where you're getting the benefit of that operating leverage coming through in the variances. Which says to me there must be some relatively substantial negatives coming through still in 2025, offsetting that to get to your -$45 million. What are these? You know, what are the sorts of things that are acting against that? Thank you.

Ben, you want to take that?

Yeah. Thanks. Hi, Dom. Look, I'll start. I'll do it in reverse order if that's okay. In terms of variances, without repeating my earlier comments, you know, the sort of residual negative you're now seeing is a mixture of scale coming back. We continue to, if you like, incubate some of our smaller businesses, so Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Africa, for example. Scale is building nicely, as renewal premiums compound. We have further actions in train to drive cost containment, just to give you a little bit of color. It's not simply about revenue compounding. We are focused on structural changes in the cost base through automation, digitization, tech convergence, investing in processes, using centers of scale and excellence.

All with the aim of driving lower net costs going forward. We hope to be able to deploy that leverage into reinvestment in the business. Cash profile, I'm pleased with all the improvements we made over the last few years. I know you're very aware of those as a result of repricing, so I won't repeat them here. I think we do have opportunities to continue to improve the business. We'll look for that from a repricing perspective. You know, mix more health and protection, again, accelerating agency, will all help with that cash profile. To be very clear, I'm not reliant on any change in business profile to get to 2027. You shouldn't read that being inferred into these numbers.

That's because we put the hard yards in repricing savings products a number of years back. We're not reliant on that, comfortable with the 2027 target. On your IRRs, in terms of the products sold, very similar products sold, Dom. At a product level, the IRRs by channel are actually pretty consistent. Differences in the sort of channel IRRs overall are more a factor of mix. You know, as I think you know, the agency channels tends to sell a greater proportion of health and protection. That said, one of the things that has improved our margins and our cash profiles is the success we've had driving health and protection through the bank insurance channel, improving our margins consistently year-on-year. Very pleased with that.

Yep. Thank you, Ben, for that concise answer. We've got a chance for a very last question from Nasib at UBS. Jake, if you'd let him through. We'll take a few offline. I can see a few on the list. We'll come back to them from the IR team. Nasib, if you wanna go ahead.

Thank you. Our next caller is Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Your line is now unmuted. Please go ahead.

Thanks, Patrick. Just two questions from me. Firstly, on Hong Kong market share. I was looking at Hong Kong association data. 2023, you had about 30% market share. I'm looking at agency. Now 2025, you're less than 25%. That's as a percentage of APE. Can you give more color on are you gonna grow back to greater market share in Hong Kong in dollar amounts? Then the second one is on numbers. Ben, you said investment spend is gonna be broadly done by 2026. I think if you kind of add up the numbers, you're maybe left with $150 million of the $1 billion. Are you expecting to spend less than $1 billion in 2027? Is it kind of closer to zero or 50? Thank you.

Thanks for those questions, Nasib. On Hong Kong market share, again, I want to kind of go back to the emphasis on quality growth, right? That is where our focus has been. Within that, those parameters, yes, we absolutely would like to grow our market share, and we do have plans to do that. At all times, our underpin will be quality growth as well as cash generation. Again, just to illustrate that point, we did improve margins despite the activity that we saw on different fronts in Hong Kong by two percentage points, which is a good illustration. I gave some other stats to illustrate the point as to the discipline that we are adopting in focusing on quality growth in Hong Kong.

What we are interested, Nasib, is market share of new business profit and market share of profitable growth in Hong Kong as opposed to simply driving sales, market share. As I said, broadly within the construct of quality, absolutely we'll be driving a greater level of market share. Ben, you want to take the last one?

Yeah. Hi, Nasib. So yeah, look, it's our plan to largely complete the investment in capability program in 2026. We'll be investing a further $300 million-$350 million. And this investment essentially covers, you know, foundational dimensions. I'm not expecting material amounts in 2027, and we're being very disciplined about our spend. And as I mentioned earlier on the call, you know, our focus is on driving operating leverage, and that enables ongoing investment in capability in the normal course of business beyond the target period.

Okay. Thanks, Ben, very much. Jake, I'm gonna pass back to Anil to close the call. He's just got some very closing remarks.

Thanks, Patrick, and thanks everyone. Enjoyed the questions, and hopefully, we were able to provide you a greater level of detail and insight. We have made good progress in our transformation journey, and clearly, this would not have been possible without the dedication and the hard work of our people, our agents, as well as our partners. I'm very proud to work alongside them every single day in the way we support our customers, communities, and shareholders. A few of us will be on the road, so we will get an opportunity to meet with you face-to-face and would be happy to kind of get into further details and further conversations if we haven't been able to answer some of those points.

We look forward to updating you on the first quarter business performance in early May, and as I said, look forward to seeing you when we are on the road. Thank you and goodbye.

Thank you for attending. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, everybody, and thank you for joining us on today's Prudential Half Year Results 2025. My name is Drew, and I'll be the operator on today's call. [Operator Instructions] It's now my pleasure to hand over to Patrick Bowes to begin. Please go ahead when you're ready.

Thank you, Drew, and good afternoon and good morning to everyone. Welcome to Prudential plc's Half Year 2025 Results Analyst and Investor Call. Before I turn the call over to Anil, our CEO; and Ben, our CFO, a couple of housekeeping points. A recording of today's call will be available from Tuesday next week, and our full results package is available on our website. Anil and Ben will start the call with opening remarks, followed by a Q&A, as you've just heard. And just a quick word on recent developments we have shared with the market already regarding the potential listing of our shares in ICICI Prudential Asset Management Company. We published the draft prospectus on the 9th of July. However, we remain under a number of restrictions as to what we can say about this, given the next stage of the process is to undergo a series of regulatory reviews. We will provide you with further updates in due course. With that, let me pass over to Anil, our CEO, to start us off. Anil?

Thank you, Patrick. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our 2025 first half results and capital management update. I'm very pleased with our financial performance in the first half of 2025 during which we delivered both high-quality growth and enhanced shareholder returns. We achieved double-digit growth across our key financial metrics in line with the guidance we gave earlier in the year. We have reached an inflection point in our operating free surplus generation, enabling us to update our capital management program and increase shareholder returns. This demonstrates the strength of our business model and its ability to generate sustainable cash returns. New business profit and adjusted operating profit per share both grew 12%. Gross operating free surplus generation grew 14% and dividends per share increased 13%. These results reflect strong momentum across our core markets, the sharpness of our execution and our relentless focus on writing high-quality new business, effectively managing in-force and improving our variances. I'm also very pleased that we have now settled the dividend claim in Malaysia. Having reached an inflection point in our capital generation and reflecting our confidence in the future, we have announced today a capital management update alongside an enhanced capital allocation framework, including the completion by the end of this year of our existing share repurchase program, we expect to return in total more than $5 billion to shareholders between 2024 and 2027. Any initial net proceeds from the potential IPO of the asset management business in India will be in addition to this. Ben will cover our capital management update in more detail. We are now halfway through our strategic transformation launched in August 2023 and are making good progress across our key priorities. We continue to invest to accelerate value creation across our markets, actively pursuing structural growth opportunities as well as addressing areas that need improvement. We have invested $400 million in targeted initiatives, including modernizing our technology, processes and capabilities. Through these investments, we are accelerating our platform improvements, enhancing customer engagement and driving operational effectiveness at scale. They are underpinned by an increased focus on the use of data, predictive analytics and AI across the business. We are investing to make Prudential a stronger future-ready business. While the macro environment remains volatile, we are very well positioned given our multichannel and our multi-market franchise. This is demonstrated by our broad-based new business profit growth, including 16% growth in our Hong Kong market and 34% growth in Indonesia. We have clear plans to continue to strengthen our performance, including in distribution and addressing areas of underperformance. Our multichannel distribution model is one of our greatest strengths, and we have a good balance between agency and bancassurance. Agency is our primary distribution channel, and we have one of the largest forces in the Asian insurance industry. We see significant value in further strengthening it. Our agency strategy focuses on driving high-quality profitable growth through quality recruitment, career progression towards MDRT and digital capabilities that boost both productivity and activation. Further developing our agency capabilities and accelerating our performance is a top priority for us, and we are activating bespoke change management programs in our markets. In bancassurance, the continued focus on strategic relationships and training has underpinned our strong performance with 14 markets delivering double-digit growth in new business profit. We have also recently successfully activated our new partnership with Bank Syariah Indonesia. We are also building on the foundation of our health transformation efforts to further accelerate growth in health and protection sales. These efforts will be instrumental in unlocking the next phase of sustainable, high-quality growth. Reflecting on our strategic progress and investments in the growth drivers of our business, we are confident we will carry the momentum in the second half and beyond. This keeps us firmly on track to achieve our 2027 financial objectives. Today, I'm delighted to be joined on the call by the leadership team responsible for our businesses and would now like to hand it over to Ben Bulmer, our CFO, to walk through the financial highlights. Ben?

Thanks, Anil, and hello, everyone. Our first half 2025 financial performance reflects a positive start to the year as we continue to focus on accelerating growth in value and capital generation in line with our strategy. We delivered double-digit growth across our primary financial KPIs. We're on track for our 2025 guidance, and we remain confident in achieving our 2027 financial objectives. Growth in our in-force profit and the ongoing capital return improved our return on embedded value to 15%, and there's more to come. Net of the dividend payment, embedded value per share, excluding goodwill at the end of the period was $13.24, equivalent to GBP 9.66. We've reached the inflection point in our capital generation trajectory with gross operating free surplus generation or OFSG, up 14% year-on- year. whilst our net OFSG is up 20%. As we indicated in March, we've updated our capital allocation framework, reflecting both our strong capitalization and our confidence in the strategic progress we're making, which is driving improved organic capital generation. Let me spend a couple of moments on our capital management update. Our enhanced capital allocation framework reflects a move to a total return orientation in respect of the distribution of our holding company free cash flow. We've updated our guidance for ordinary dividend per share growth rates and announced that from 2026, shareholders will also benefit from additional capital returns. This framework is intended to set a recurring and sustainable basis for returns going forward. In terms of ordinary dividends, our policy is unchanged. We've given guidance of greater than 10% dividend per share growth each year from 2025 to 2027, building on the 13% dividend per share growth in 2024. We will commence additional recurring capital returns in 2026, and we expect a buyback of $500 million in 2026 and a further return of $600 million in 2027. And as we've previously said, capital above our established 175% to 200% operating range will be assessed regularly and if deemed excess, then capital will be returned to shareholders. Lastly, we expect to complete our current $2 billion share buyback by the end of this year. Overall, this means we are planning to return to shareholders over $5 billion between 2024 and 2027, and this is before assuming any initial net proceeds of the proposed IPO of India Asset Management business. In terms of financial performance in the period, we remain focused on writing quality new business with strong underlying capital generation. Our product IRRs remain above 25%, and our shareholder payback periods are less than 4 years. The $1.3 billion in new business profit added over the period, up 12%, reflects our continued focus on quality, driven by our actions to reprice products and improve mix. The NBP margin expanded 2 percentage points to 38% compared with the first half of last year. As a result, the addition to 2027 capital emergence from first half 2025 new business increased by 27% year-on-year, much faster than APE growth during the same period. Management of our in-force book continues to improve with variances between actual and expected cash flows before investing in capabilities continuing to meaningfully reduce. Underlying this improvement are a range of ongoing actions, including repricing, enhanced claims management, cost containment and the benefits of a return to higher-margin new business growth. We expect our core operating variances to return to our historic positive levels in 2027. In summary, as a result of the financial performance and execution to date of our strategy, we remain confident in achieving our 2027 financial objectives. With that, I'll pass back to Patrick to open the Q&A.

Thank you to Ben and Anil. I'll hand over to our conference call moderator, Drew, who will provide instructions and then open the line for questions. Over to you, Drew.

[Operator Instructions] Our first question today comes from [ Michael Chang ] from CTSI.

I'd like to say congrats on a very solid set of results. I primarily have 2 questions. The first question relates to the agency business. I really like the chart on Page 10 of the slide pack because it gave an idea in terms of areas of strength as well as areas of improvement and areas of improvement typically means that you do have plans for improving those areas. So if I can just focus on maybe the 2 major markets, say, Mainland China, areas for improvement. What's the outlook on that front? Because I think it was flagged in the results release that there are a number of regulatory changes which are occurring right now. But then it would also flag that in terms of agent numbers, agent growth was actually quite strong in terms of new agency recruits, up 45%. So maybe you can elaborate a bit more on the Mainland China business. And then in terms of areas of strength, Hong Kong clearly stands out. Agency new business value growth is very solid. And in terms of agency recruitment, it's been strong for a number of years. So maybe you can shed some light on the profile of these recruits and how sustainable is the strong agent growth? Then my second question would relate to capital management. So capital management, Ben, I appreciate the detail given on the capital management framework, the buyback amount for 2026 and '27. But maybe you can shed some light on how these amounts are determined because Investors, they do focus on sustainability. They actually might like to understand if we were to project going forward because the free surplus generation, the value of in-force monetization that is all disclosed. How should we think about the framework for future buybacks? Is it something like one of your peers who buy 75% of net FSG or other considerations? And maybe also related to that, on Page 6, in that there's a chart on the total capital returns in 2026 and 2027. Does that mean that the Indian AMC IPO, should it go ahead, the capital will be returned over 2 years?

Thanks, Michael. Let me start with the agency question and I will then flip it to Ben to answer the capital management one. So firstly, at a high level, we, as you know, have a significantly strong balance between agency and bancassurance. And within that, we clearly understand that agency is an area of key focus for us given the fact that it continues to be our primary acquisition channel contributing to 55% of new business profit growth. Specifically to your question on Mainland China, we have a change management program that we have instituted in China. You rightly pointed out that our new recruits are up 45%, very much in line with the focus that we have employed on quality recruitment. And we have launched our PRUVenture program, which is our flagship quality recruitment program in China. I think we are starting to now see some early evidence of that change management program come through with our active agents up 6%. And I believe based on the measures that we are putting in, the agency channel in China will start to complement the strong bancassurance performance that we continue to see in China Mainland, and that's on account of our strong relationships, both with CITIC Bank as well as with Standard Chartered. With respect to regulatory changes, and again, this is very much in line with what we had expected. I think the regulatory changes are very much focused on ensuring greater retention of agents, ensuring that the agents have a decent source of income, which is kind of spread over a period of time. And again, this is not at -- it's pretty much in sync with what we are trying to do, which is drive quality, resulting into greater activation and greater productivity. In terms of your Hong Kong question on agency, very pleased, by the way, firstly, with the Hong Kong performance. I like the shape of our Hong Kong performance. Good balance between agency and bancassurance, good balance between domestic and MCV. And if you remember, when I got into my role 2.5 years back, I had flagged off that we would like to strengthen our performance in domestic to complement our MCV. And towards that, our active agents are up 11%. Our productivity -- NBP per active agent is up 4% and our recruitment continues to be on track to deliver greater than 4,000 new recruits in 2025. So very much like the shape of our Hong Kong business and the measures that we are taking and remain highly confident that we will carry the trajectory that we set for ourselves in first half into the second. I'm now going to flip it to Ben for the capital management question.

Yes. Thanks, Anil. Michael. So in terms of capital management, the update reflects our confidence in our business model. Really, the strength of our balance sheet and also the progress we've made in our strategy means we've reached the capital inflection point. That's enabled us to then pivot to a total return proposition. As I mentioned in my opening remarks, that's funded by sustained annual net capital generation. And you need to remember to apply the 70% remittance to the holding company. There's a few slides in my deck, Michael, that set out the building blocks to enable you to project that. But to keep things simple, we've given numerical guidance to the end of 2027. I think the important point is we provided a durable framework. Sustainability has been very important to us when thinking about this. We're a double-digit growth company, not just in value, but also in the conversion of that value to cash and capital generation. So we expect growing capital generation. The Board will regularly review the quantum and form of the additional returns to ensure that's in the best interest of all of our shareholders. And as we've said, they'll additionally review any residual capital over and above that 200% free surplus ratio. And if that's deemed excess, that too will be returned to shareholders.

Our next question today comes...

Pardon Drew, we just got one more question.

I think I missed Michael's third question, India AMC returns. So Michael, as you heard at the top of the call, we're under regulatory restrictions as to what we can say about the timing and quantum of those returns. You're right, they've been included in our slides. You should take that as indicative.

Our next question comes from Larissa Van Deventer from Barclays.

Two quick questions from my side, please. The first one on outlook and the second one on margin, which will -- which relates to the outlook. You said that you have reached an inflection point in capital generation, which gives you confidence in your ability to generate sustainable cash returns. What is the key driver of that confidence? And then also, what are the main risks to not reaching your 2027 objectives? Related to that, your margin expanded by 2.3 percentage points, but it is still over 19 percentage points lower than that of one of your key competitors. Recognizing that the geographic footprint distribution would impact the margin, but how much scope for margin improvement do you consider possible that will be derived from scale benefits, product mix, cost cutting and the like, please?

Thanks, Larissa. Let me take the first question on outlook, and then I will flip it to Ben for the margin question. So as I mentioned in my opening comments that we remain highly confident to carry the trajectory of the first half into the second. And the results that we were able to deliver in first half underscores the strength of our business model, double digit pretty much across all the matrices. Our results are obviously are driven by the relentless focus that we are employing on writing quality business as well as the focus on converting that quality business to cash. And we like the balance between bancassurance and agency. I did mention earlier that bancassurance continues to perform quite well. I am not satisfied on agency performance in a few of our markets. Hong Kong, Singapore, Indonesia, stable to growing on agency, but I think we have a potential in markets like Malaysia and Vietnam, where industry-related challenges are not only impacting Prudential, it's impacting the whole sector. And we have a very clear line of sight in terms of actions to be able to change the momentum in these couple of markets. I've already kind of spoken to the opportunity in China. And again, we have a specific change management program on agency in China that, again, I'm confident will start to show some demonstratable results. And again, a combination of this plus the investments, Larissa, that we are making in the growth drivers of our business, be it expansion of our distribution. Just to give you one example there, we are yet to fully activate the Bank Syariah Indonesia partnership. That's a significant partnership for us in a critical market. And we're just kind of getting started there, focusing on customer experience, growing our health and protection business. And that kind of gives us the confidence that not only will we be able to deliver the 2025 guidance, but it firmly keeps us on track to delivering the 2027 objectives, both on new business profit and on cash. Ben?

Thanks, Anil. So on margins, we continue to see the opportunity to improve medium term. I was pleased to see another 2 points of margin improvement come through at the half year. That's on top of the 2 points you saw last year. And in short, the way we look at this is a fourfold opportunity. Firstly, repricing, and you've seen considerable activity here. And that's benefiting the cash flows and their contribution to 2027 quite visibly. Secondly, I think to your point, operating leverage and building scale. I'm pleased in the first half of the year to see renewal premiums up 11%. And so there's a scalability in growing expense allowables coming back into the platform. And then finally, improved health contribution, health and protection contribution in the mix and an improved agency contribution. So I think plenty of opportunity medium term for us to continue an improving trajectory margins-wise.

Okay. We can go to the next question.

Our next question comes from Farooq Hanif from JPMorgan.

I'm looking at slide, which shows your capital generation converting to free cash flow. And obviously, you're not sort of giving a payout ratio guidance here. You're looking at your situation every year to work out what your recurring buyback will be. But it seems to me that you're going to have a big jump, obviously, in 2027 in your net free surplus generation because you get to your targets, you don't have investment cost anymore, which will then drive very high or a big jump in free cash flow, I'm hoping to the holdco. Does that mean in 2028, there's a potential here for a leap in what you are able to pay in your buyback? My second question is, I mean, looking overall, correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like your active agents are sort of flattish to down, but your productivity of the agents is up a lot at 10%. Can you give us kind of a guide to where that's going, those 2 metrics in the future, but what's driving those? And then very quickly, what's driving your banca margin improvement? And is there scope for further margin improvement in banca?

Thanks for your question. I'll flip it to Ben to start with the first question on OFSG conversion, and then I'll come to active agents and banca margins, if that's all right. Ben, do you want to?

Yes. So you're right. I mean, growing capital generation translates into materially higher growing holding company free cash flow. As I mentioned in my video, that acceleration in gross OFSG between '24 and '27 means we're broadly doubling holding company free cash flow over the period. The total returns we set out are funded by sustained annual net capital generation. And we are paying out the majority of the flow. As I mentioned earlier, we've not given numbers beyond 2027, but I think provided an enduring framework and the building blocks to help get that.

Thanks, Ben. Farooq, if I may go to your question on active agents. So the way we think about growing our agency new business profit is through 2 levers, right? One is to drive active agents and the second one is to drive productivity. And you're absolutely right in pointing out that the 10% new business profit per active agent gain that we saw offset the decline that we saw in active agents. Now I did refer to some of the measures that we are putting in place to energize our active agents and specifically in the ASEAN markets like Malaysia, like Vietnam, like Philippines, I think these are large agency markets that require and have the opportunity for us to drive greater activity. Again, the focus areas are very much what we had referred to earlier, which is quality recruitment, ensuring that we are investing in our technology platform, both to drive activity and productivity as well as uptiering our agents to MDRT. We are the second largest MDRT force globally. And our MDRTs increased by 3%. So we will press both the levers, active agents. And as I said, I'm confident that the measures will start to show an improvement on active agents. But we also, on the other hand, have the productivity lever to be able to, as I said, drive both these to the goals that we have for 2027. Banca margins, again, yes, Banca again, doing very well. And in my view, Banca targets probably will be achieved well in advance of the 2027 guidance that we've given. So that, in many ways, kind of creates a little bit of a headroom and an opportunity for us. The margins were driven by a few factors: one, product mix. Second is we have referred to some of the pricing actions. So they were applicable both on agency and bancassurance. So that obviously translates to a better outcome. And then the geography mix, right? Hong Kong obviously had a bigger share or a bigger contribution in the first half. So a combination of these factors, Farooq, led to the Banca margins being higher.

Our next question comes from Nasib Ahmed from UBS.

Firstly, on the perimeter of the business, you had the exits in Africa. Is there anything more in terms of the geographies that you would like to exit in Africa or elsewhere? And then related to the perimeter, you've got the Malaysian dividend issue resolved, but you still don't own 50% of the business, roughly 50%. Is there a way to get that back onto the books and pay the third party? That's kind of around the perimeter. Second question around variances. Ben, you mentioned you want to get back to the historical positive levels. In 2020, I think it was more than USD 200 million. Is that kind of the level that we're thinking of in 2027? And then finally, on the $1 billion capability investment, you're halfway through the plan and you've only invested $400 million. I think I know you mentioned in the past, you won't -- if you don't need to, you won't spend the full $1 billion, but it seems like the run rate is a little bit lower than the $1 billion. Is that the right way of thinking about that one?

Thanks, Nasib. Why don't we take the variances question first, and then I'll come back to the perimeter question as well as the Malaysia one. Ben, you want to get us started on the...

Yes, happy to do that. So you will have seen in our results that setting aside investment in capabilities, our business as usual variances have more than halved. And as I said earlier, I'm expecting to return to that historic pre-COVID norm of positive variances within our objective period. you're broadly right in terms of your quantum. I'm confident we're going to get there. We're continuing to focus on driving underwriting profitability across the business. We're now seeing much improved claims experience, thanks to a lot of management actions. We're continuing to invest, as you know, in capabilities to drive both growth and scale. And to that end, renewal premiums are growing very strongly. And finally, we have opportunities around cost containment and operating leverage. And one example of that, if you like, is the positive jaws between net OFSG growth rates and gross OFSG growth rates because we are containing central costs, and we'll continue to do that going forward. So I think we've got plenty of opportunity -- confident we're going to get back to our historic strong positives in 2027.

Thanks, Ben. Nasib, coming to your exit in Africa, in terms of the Francophone market, yes, so that is also a good illustration of the focus that we are employing on deploying shareholder capital where we believe we have a more than fair chance to win and scale. And we did see that opportunity in the Francophone markets. The Anglophone markets are doing well. In fact, in the first half, those markets still continue to grow north of 20%. And as I've said that as the businesses evolve and get more matured in Africa, they provide us the potential to complement the growth profile of the markets and that we have in Asia. And that is something that, again, the management team is quite focused on in driving forward. To your Malaysian question, yes, so we are happy with the settlement of the claim. We will look at opportunities, but I can't speak too much to it. Needless to say, they have to be commercially viable and in the interest of shareholders. But as I said, I can't comment further on that topic.

Okay. Drew, we can go to the next question. Maybe you should just remind the audience how to send questions online in case they've got a bad connection or anything. I've got a couple of questions that have come in already, but perhaps you could just explain to people how they should submit questions online.

[Operator Instructions] Our next question comes from Dominic O'Mahony from BNP Paribas.

I've got 3, if that's all right. The first is just on new business and any impact you're seeing at all on appetite for U.S. dollar- denominated product. I had thought maybe there would be some disruption from some of the geopolitics and the currency movements. Actually, the MCV business has been very strong. Just any reflections on what you're seeing in terms of appetite. The second is, thank you for the disclosure on the 2027 contribution from the new business, the plus 27% is super strong. I wonder if you might just unpack it a little bit. It's clearly well ahead of the new business profit growth we're running forward a year, which gives you a small positive as well. But what else is going on in there? Is it that the shape of the service emergence is coming forward in time? Anything else you could do to unpack that would be great. And then the last question is just a clarification really on dividend policy specifically. You've been very clear that, that's -- it's unchanged, but maybe I misunderstood it before. If we just flow through the OFSG net of strain and central items, you have a very, very large increase through to 2027. And I think consensus and I have EPS growth in excess of 20% last time I checked. Should I be a bit more nuanced in the way I think about this? So for instance, a big contributor is the change in the variances from negative to positive. Should I be looking through that? Or actually, would you say, no, no, go back to the headline net FSG and that's a good guide for the dividend?

Thanks, Dominic. Let me start with the new business question, specifically on MCV and whether the attraction has faded away in terms of U.S. dollar products. The short answer is no, and we continue to see strong demand. The traffic flows on MCV in the first half grew 10% as compared to same period last year. I think the core demand drivers continue to be intact, whether that's the propositions that we offer in Hong Kong, the multicurrency options, including the U.S. dollar as well as there is a natural attraction for the health and protection infrastructure that Hong Kong has to offer. So we continue to see that demand continue and haven't kind of seen any of the volatility that you alluded to impact the customer demand coming through in the MCV segment. To your second question, I will flip it in a moment to Ben. So yes, the 27% improvement in terms of cash contribution to 2027 objectives for the cohort of business that we wrote in '24, again, underscores the focus that we are employing on quality new business that accelerates to cash. And I think that's an important differentiator. And this comes on the back of the improvement that we saw last year of 36%. I'm going to stop there and kind of flip it to Ben to see whether he has any further comments to give you a little bit of color on that and then to the dividend policy.

Yes. Thanks, Anil. So pleased really to see the 27% increase on the back of the 36% increase a year ago. This is driven by repricing. It's driven by repricing of some health products, but largely savings products. And the importance of repricing savings products essentially makes this channel agnostic, if you like. It benefits both channels. And it's repricing that's driven a lot of margin improvements last year and this year. And as Anil touched on earlier, is driving margin improvements on the banca channel. There's a little bit, Dom, in terms of the changing of the timing of cash flows, but also the absolute level of profits to the shareholder from some of these products. Clearly, we need to look at things carefully to balance shareholder returns and policyholder returns. But thus far, I'm pleased with the progress we've made. And we'll continue to look for opportunities for repricing. I think one of the key things, Dom, to take away is the confidence the repricing has given me in terms of our 2027 OFSG objective. And in short, that means whilst there's opportunities looking forward to continue to improve our business mix, more H&P, more agency, I'm not reliant upon that as a result of the savings repricing that we've done. To your question on dividend policy, I think the short answer is yes in terms of the look-through to your specific point. Really, you should view that guidance in the context of the total return proposition that we've set out. So in short, growing annual net capital generation supports a minimum level of growth in total ordinary dividend per share across '25, '26 and '27 and then the $1.1 billion of additional returns over and above that. There is no change to the group's dividend policy. And in a nutshell, that's to grow broadly in line with net OFSG over the medium term. So we've looked through the upswing, if you like, you get in the acceleration of capital generation as a result of variance switching to positive in the interest of a prudent and sustainable dividend path. That guidance we've given in terms of growth rates is intended to build on the 13% the Board declared last year.

Our next question comes from Andrew Crean from Autonomous.

Coming back to a question which I don't think you answered, which was what is the timing of the remaining $0.6 billion of investment in the business as to how that hits '25, '26 and '27 was one question. The second question is around the active agents. Could you say what the fall in the active agent numbers was in the first half '25? And also what you expect the growth rate in active agents to be in '26 and '27, please?

Thanks, Andrew. So let me give you a little bit of color on the $1 billion investment program that we announced 2 years back when we announced our new strategy. So as I mentioned previously, we've invested $400 million to expand our distribution to enhance our customer experience capabilities to modernize our technology platform as well as we successfully have now been able to stand up the health business, and that's kind of putting us in a position of strength, both in terms of growing our health business, Andrew, but also being able to successfully mitigate some of the challenges that we are seeing on account of the regulatory changes that are impacting the health business. You could expect another $100 million to $120 million by the end of this year. And for 2026, we are expecting to invest another about $200 million to $250 million. And that is really what we wanted to aim for because the majority of the investments we wanted to book in by 2026, so that you then kind of start to see the flow-through impact in '27 and beyond '27. As we get into '27, you will see some reductions kind of come through. But as I said, at all times, we are very conscious of the fact that we are building capabilities that are going to give us enduring returns over a period of time. And to the extent that we can meet our 2027 objectives more efficiently, then that kind of opens up optionalities for us. In terms of your active agents, our active agents was down 7% year-on-year. As I look to '26 and '27, we are looking at a growth rate of about 7% to 10% is what we would kind of gun for on a year-on-year basis. And by the way, as I said, based on the measures that we have taken, we expect that to improve in the second half of this year going into '26 and then further going into '27.

Okay. Drew, I'm going to go to the online questions I've had, and it's from William Hawkins at KBW, who has 2 questions. One is -- he got 2 parts to it. The first part is, is there any seasonality in terms of the split between agency and banca that we expect for 2025, given that there was some seasonality in 2024. And therefore, will the 2025 H1 figure change in any way as you go through to the rest of the year? And then secondly, are there any particular key drivers by market or product or distribution channel that will influence the growth momentum from now until the end of the target period? And then the finance question, which is, how do you think about the remittance ratio? And are there any ways that you feel that you can affect the remittance ratio? Are there any particular actions that you're imagining that you're going to be able to undertake? So those are the 2 questions from William.

Thanks for those questions. And let me start with the seasonality question. So again, the short answer is yes. We typically kind of see first half skewed towards bancassurance. And as we kind of transition to the second, the skew kind of changes more towards agency. We saw that last year. I don't believe you're going to kind of see a different trend this year. And again, as I said, to my mind, that's kind of unique about us because we have scale both on bancassurance and on agency. And importantly, we have been able to demonstrate that we can deliver respectable margins on bancassurance, including the 6 percentage points that we saw in terms of margin improvements on bancassurance in the first half of this year. Key drivers, yes, there is both distribution as well as new product ideas. Just to kind of illustrate one example of that, I did refer earlier that we still -- we haven't still activated the Bank Syariah Indonesia partnership fully. Bank Syariah Indonesia is one of the largest bank and the largest Syariah bank in Indonesia, 230 million Muslims, clearly underpenetrated. We see that as a significant opportunity to drive sustained momentum in an important market in a strategic market like Indonesia. Likewise, I did make reference on the fact that we are focused on driving quality agency recruitment. And we are again seeing some good traction under our PRUVenture program, which now contributes to 7% of the total new recruits. And as we keep rolling out these to different markets, I believe there is an opportunity for us to improve the mix of the quality recruits. And I think that's important for us because the productivity of these agents are to the tune of about 4 to 5x as compared to agents that don't come through this program. And I think that's again going to be an important driver of growth as we kind of think about the second half as well as '26 and '27. And again, on product ideas, I again made a reference specifically in Singapore. We did launch multiple products focused on health and protection and high net worth. We did see the traction. as we kind of closed out the second quarter. And we believe that, that traction will continue into the third quarter. And that's why my confidence that Singapore will come back in the second half of this year. And likewise, we have new products in Indonesia. We have new products in Hong Kong. And again, as I said, it takes a little bit of time to get to maturity, but remain confident that both on distribution and product, we have enough ideas to be able to drive our momentum forward. I'm going to go to Ben on remittance ratio.

So William, in terms of how we think about the total return proposition and the key levers to drive that. I mean, ultimately, it comes back to focus on shareholder value creation and accelerating holding company free cash flows. So the building blocks being, of course, quality new business, management of the in-force book and capital discipline, exactly the same building blocks that I expect to accelerate our return on embedded value. Once you've used those building blocks and allowing for that operating range, as we've said, 70% of that capital generation comes to Holdco. The returns are then the majority of this flow. And as I said earlier, this is an enduring framework. We're a double-digit business. Sustainability is important to us. So I think really, they are the key drivers.

Drew, should we go to the next question?

Our next question comes from Michelle Ma from Citi.

This is Michelle Ma from Citibank. So congratulations on a very solid set of results. So my first question is about Hong Kong. So Hong Kong in the first half growth rate about 15%, and it's already achieved double digit in the first quarter. So we try to back out the second quarter trend. It seems like it's around like 20% something. It's a little bit against our observation on the ground because the whole Hong Kong life insurance industry is really booming in the second quarter. So I just want to understand, is there any like technical reasons behind this a little bit slower than my expectation growth for Hong Kong? Is that because the underwriting process takes time and some of the June policies maybe will be counted in July. So yes, the first question is I want to check on the Hong Kong second quarter trend. And also after the change of illustrative rate cap, how is the momentum in the third quarter? So have we experienced some notable drop in the demand, especially for MCV business? And how is the new product margin versus the pre- change version? This is the first question. The second question is to John. So Mr. John joined the company, I think, about 3 months of time. So I just want to get your initial thoughts on your view how you compare PRU with your previous industry experiences. And according to your observation, what's the strength of PRU? And what are the areas you believe you will particularly focus on?

Thanks, Michelle. Allow me to first answer the Hong Kong question, and you had multiple questions within the Hong Kong question, and then I'll go to John and ask him to provide his perspective and his observations. So going back to where I started on Hong Kong, I like the shape of our Hong Kong business. I like the balance between agency and bancassurance. And remember, Michelle, 90% of the mix on new business profit in Hong Kong is delivered through agency and bancassurance. And that's important for us. Why? Because it allows us to control the customer experience. Importantly, it allows us to control the margins, which improved by 1 percentage point. And as I said, I also like the balance between the domestic and MCV, which was one of the key objectives that I had to be able to provide the counterbalance on the strengths that we have on MCV by boosting our volumes in the domestic segment. You're right to point out and your math is correct, that our quarter 2 new business profit improved to 20%. And there is one important factor that I would like to leave with you, and we mentioned that previously, is that our focus continues to remain on quality new business that converts to cash on an accelerated basis. And towards that, overall, the cohort of the business that we wrote in '24 -- in '25, sorry, contributed to greater than 27% as compared to the cohort of business that we wrote in the first half of 2024. So I think that balance is important for us and something that we intend to keep as we go into the second half as well as into 2026. The illustration caps, you're right. I think it's a healthy step and a step in the right direction by the regulators. And again, we haven't kind of seen impact of that come through as we've kind of transitioned to quarter 3. And on product margins, as I mentioned earlier, we don't see an impact as well in the second half. Our product margins are -- continue to be quite robust. And as I said, it improved by 1 percentage point in the first half of this year. I'm going to kind of quickly turn to John, John, any comments that you might have?

Thanks, Anil. First of all, I won't comment on our competitor, but when I come to Prudential, what I think, first of all, we have very strong brand in Asia. And we have one of the largest agency in Asia, second largest MDRT. So that's the 3 foundation we're going to build up. But as you know, for agency, we are not looking for magic. We're looking for basics. So what we're going to continue to drive is driving further productivity and further activation ratio. We're going to continue to drive our MDRTs and then we're going to continue to drive our quality recruitment. So I'm very, very excited in the market now, very low penetration. So it means a lot of opportunity for us to grow. In the meantime, our customers still prefer a face-to-face agency to -- as a choice of purchasing. So that's the huge opportunity for us.

Michelle, just one additional comment to your earlier question on Hong Kong. I should have mentioned that while we have significant strength in bancassurance and agency, we are also looking at building our relationship with quality set of brokers, but at the same time, also being very watchful of some of the regulatory changes that are likely to impact the broker channel. So for example, the referral fee cap that's likely to get in force as of October 1 as well as the spreading of commission that's likely to come in force in January. I thought I would probably add that to just give you a little bit of extra color.

Thank you Anil. Drew, I'm just conscious of time. We've got a few more questions to come. Maybe we'll go to the next one online, please. Sorry, on the conference call.

Our next question on the conference call comes from Andrew Sinclair from Bank of America.

Three for me, please. First on capital management. You talked about the potential additional returns in excess of 200%. But it looks to me that even with what you've announced today, even if the dividend grows well in excess of 10%, you're still going to be miles above the 200% top end of that range for the foreseeable future. So what is the time scale and plan to get into that 175% to 200% range that you said is the right place to operate? Second, just on the new business margin seasonality. I think you said it should improve kind of quarter-on-quarter through the year. Just any color in any particular regions where you think there should be material changes in margins where we shouldn't expect any margin improvement through the rest of '25? Or just any color there? And third was just on Mainland China. Good to see the mix evolving towards par products. Just can you give us a little bit of a reminder of where we are kind of on the back book of, I guess, non-par? Where is the earn yield? Where is the reinvestment rate? And what's the average guarantee on that book today would be helpful.

Thanks, Andy. I'm going to kind of flip it to Ben. And then if there are any additional comments that I might have, I'll come on the back of that, Ben?

Andy, maybe I'll go in reverse order, if you like. I think your third question was on China. Actually, CPL used to sell a lot of par business in China many, many years ago. So when you look at the general account assets, and there's that snapshot slide in the appendix to my own slides on that, about 40% of that actually backs par business. In terms of cost of liabilities and where we are today, both actual and expected returns are sufficient to cover cost of liabilities. As you'll appreciate, because it's par, you can vary that cost of liability through time. The business has done a lot of repricing over the years. And I think backing up from a capital management perspective, again, confident that there will be no need to put any further contributions into CPL in 2025. They are continuing to look at actions to drive further resilience on the balance sheet on top of derisking and repricing. And we were pleased that they've been recently awarded status to enable them to issue perpetual debt locally, and that will count to their core and comprehensive solvency. On margins and ability to drive margins going forward, it's basically the 4 points I alluded to earlier. There is, I think, to your point, a seasonality thing. We typically see a greater proportion of bancassurance in the mix. Bancassurance having a very healthy margin and improving year-on-year, but still lower than agency. So as we progress through the year, I think you'll start to see a more positive channel mix come through. That will benefit margins on top of the repricing actions we've taken. And of course, as I said, there's opportunity on the health and protection side as well. We've been pleased with growth in the health space, 16% compound 2024 through 2027. So we'll continue to focus strongly on that. In terms of, I think your first question then was capital management and potential returns in excess of 200%. I mean, as you're seeing, we've not changed that target corridor of 175% to 200%. That reflects both risk appetite and the nature of our business. I'm expecting to operate slightly above the upper end of that on the back of today's announcement. And there will be a practicality element to this as well, Andy, in terms of needing to earn stress and remit surplus up to group to fund then shareholder commitment. So there's always an element of timing. In terms of the 200% pre-surplus ratio review trigger. I mean that's something the Board will regularly review. And what they do there is to look at sort of capital over and above that ratio over the medium term, and we'll think to opportunities to reinvest, but look to market conditions as well. I think today was about returns from flow. In terms of returns from stock, the most obvious example will, of course, be the IPO, a corporate event. But the Board will review capital over and above that 200% ratio, as I say, on a regular basis.

Thank you, Drew. We've just got 2 more questions, I think. If you just bring them in.

Our next question comes from Abid Hussain from Panmure Liberum.

I've still got 3 questions left, I think. The first one is on management actions. So really good to see that the new business profit growth and margins improving. And it feels like you've delivered that despite all of the businesses yet to fire on all cylinders. I think you called out some of the actions that are left to take. But I'm just wondering if you can sort of call out the actions or any additional actions that you're yet to take, but specifically the impact that, that will have on the margin improvement or scale or both of new business going forward? So that's the first question on management actions. And the second question is on the net OFSG. Good to see that the cash conversion from new business is improving. And so I think we should expect faster growth in the net operating free surplus generation number relative to the gross number. But I'm just wondering what sort of delta are you expecting between the gross and the net growth? Is it sort of a material delta? Or is there something else that we need to consider in that mix? And then the final question is on capital distributions. I suppose at what share price would you stop a share buyback? At the current share price, it makes sense to me that you continue with the share buyback. I think you're still trading below embedded value and sort of whichever the metrics you're focusing on. But if the stock moves up another 50%, it's moved up some 50% year-to-date, but if it moves up over your time frame, another 50%, does that shift the thinking?

Thanks, Abid. So Abid, let me start with the first question, and I'll flip it to Ben for the second and the third one. So on management actions, clearly, pleased, right? And as you can tell, this is a big focus area for the global executive team to be able to drive the right quality -- and towards that, I mentioned it, Ben referred that as well, that some of the repricing actions that we have taken both across savings and health and protection products are starting to flow through, interestingly, both in the agency channel as well as in the bancassurance channel. I think if you look forward, just to kind of keep things simple, as we see greater traction on agency and agency being higher margin than bancassurance, that would be a good driver. And if we get a better balance between -- or I should say, a higher proportion of agency versus bancassurance, that will have a knock-on impact on health and protection mix as well. So there is where the engines of margin improvements lie. And that's really what we are trying to kind of focus on in addition to some of the repricing actions that we alluded to in the previous part of the conversation. Ben, net OFSG and capital distribution.

So in terms of net OFSG, Abid, yes, I'm pleased with the geared effect that you see coming through. In short, that represents lower growth rates in central costs. And as I mentioned earlier, we're going to continue to contain central costs. Of course, you got in this period, a lower growth in terms of new business strain versus that gross OFSG. When you project forward, I guess, in terms of the building blocks, there's obviously the acceleration of the gross number to our objective. required capital, I'd guide you to early double- digit growth. On strain, giving you the other components, that's going to increase broadly in proportion to our new business volumes. And I'd guide you to H1 '25 strain as a percent of APE to being a pretty sensible jumping off point. And then as I say, central costs remaining fairly flat.

The third question on capital distribution.

Price all we start. I think we're a long way -- long way off that.

Okay. Thank you, Drew. Let's go to the last question for this afternoon.

Our final question comes from Thomas Wang from Goldman Sachs.

A couple of questions, hopefully short ones. Firstly, sort of first half agency NBP, I think, up 4%, mainly -- so growth was mainly driven by bancassurance. I think Hong Kong agency is up double digits. So I just want to understand which market kind of showing kind of weakness in agency channel in the first half. The second point, on the -- I think I'm looking at Page 52 of this presentation, the required capital actually up about -- looks like about 10% in the first half. Just want to understand how we should think about this required capital growth over the next couple of years because 10% just in a 6-month period looks relatively fast, which might put some constraint to your free surplus given the 200% ratio. So any color here would be helpful.

Thanks, Thomas. So going back to the agency point, and as I mentioned earlier, you can't kind of paint agency performance with a single brush. We believe that Hong Kong, Indonesia, Singapore stable to growing. And again, you can see the quality of that business as well as some of the actions kind of result into some high-quality outputs for us on agency. I think the markets that have been challenging for us have been Malaysia and Vietnam on account of some of the industry-led changes that's impacting the entire sector, and you can see that more broadly reflected in the entire industry. And we have, again, action plans and feel confident that we will be able to convert that momentum. It will take us a couple of quarters, specifically in these 2 markets of Malaysia and Vietnam. In China, we have a change management program that I alluded to. We are striving very hard to make agency complement the strong growth that we continue to witness on the bancassurance channel. We are starting to see some green shoots. So for example, our active agents in China was up 6%. Our recruitment was up by north of 40%. And that kind of gives us the confidence that we are on the right track because, again, China continues to be an important focus area as we manage the balance between quality growth and prudent risk management. I'm going to stop there and go to Ben for the last question.

Yes. Thanks, Anil. Thomas, so on required capital growth, when you think about modeling going forward, I suggest you use very early double-digit growth rates.

Okay. I think that takes all the questions. I just -- Anil, do you want to just do a closing comment, and then we'll call the call.

No, firstly, thank you for joining us, and thank you for the questions. Ben and I are going to be on road shortly. So we will be seeing many of you in person, and we look forward to continuing the conversations. But thank you very much for joining us today.

Thanks very much, Drew. You can close the call.

Thank you all. That concludes today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.