This achievement is even more notable given the volatility of the markets during the year. The business’s diversified multi-manager strategy has again supported performance. Individual funds continued to be ranked first or second quartile over most performance periods, outperforming benchmarks. The PPS Balanced Fund of Funds, the PPS Managed Fund and the PPS Defensive Fund received five-star ratings from Morningstar global investment analysts. The strong performance was further supported by the continued transition of the investment portfolio to the inhouse multi-manager, enabling members to benefit from economies of scale. This was underpinned by an ongoing focus on cost management, promoting the benefits of cross-solutioning to our members and the exceptional hard work and effort the team puts in to grow the investor base. The ambition is to double again over the next five-year period towards 2027. There is little reason why every member with a PPS life insurance solution should not also have PPS Investments solutions in their portfolio. From this perspective, there is ample runway for the PPS Investments business to grow. remained stubbornly high, with the number of such claims reducing by only 32% from around 10 902 in 2021 to around 7 409 in 2022. However, COVID-19 death claims reduced from 191 to only nine in 2022. This reduced total death claims by 52% from R1.94 billion in 2021 to R927 million in 2022. The total value of COVID-19 claims in 2022 was R256 million (before reinsurance). Our foremost purpose remains to assist our members in times of need, which means paying valid claims; profit is a secondary objective. However, it is great to see profitability returning on the life insurance side. Total operating profit allocated to members is R862 million. This is still much smaller than in pre-pandemic times, as is to be expected with so many COVID-19 claims still in the numbers. Management expenses constitute the only “leakage” from the pool that will eventually be returned to our members, either as a claim payment or as Profit-Share. Hence, efficiency ratios are important metrics that we track. Management expenses of R1.229 billion were within budget and delivered the targeted efficiency ratio. PPS Investments PPS Investments reached a significant and laudable milestone in 2022. The business more than doubled both assets under management (AUM) and the number of investors it serves in the five years from 2017. The value of AUM at the end of 2022 was R66.67 billion (up from R54.0 billion in 2021) and it served 61 460 investors at the end of the year. Gross inflows increased by 9% to R7.7 billion during the period and profit before interest and tax increased from R98 million in 2021 to R121 million in 2022. 25 Leadership commentary
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