Ladies and gentlemen, good morning and welcome to the 2025 Annual General Meeting of Shareholders of Credit Corp Group Ltd. Thank you very much for joining us here today. I'd also like to welcome those shareholders watching the meeting online via the live webcast. I'm Eric Dodd, the Chair of the Board of Directors of Credit Corp Group Ltd. In accordance with the company's Constitution, I'm the Chair of this meeting. I'd like to acknowledge and pay my respects to the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation, the traditional custodians of the land on which I'm speaking to you from today. I also acknowledge the traditional custodians of the lands on which each of you are working from today. I'd like to pay my respects to Elders past and present. We have a quorum present, and I declare the meeting officially open. I'll ask the Company Secretary, Mr. Thomas Beregi, to advise whether we have any apologies. Any? No apologies. No apologies. Thank you, Thomas. I'd now like to introduce our Company Directors, who are all here with me today: Mr. Thomas Beregi, our Managing Director; Mr. James Millar, a Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee; Ms. Trudy Vonhoff, Non-Executive Director, Chair of the Nomination Committee and a Member of the Remuneration and HR Committee; Mr. Phillip Aris, Non-Executive Director and Chair of the Remuneration and HR Committee and a Member of the Nomination Committee; Ms. Lyn McGrath, Non-Executive Director and a Member of the Audit and Risk and Nomination Committees; Mr. Brad Cooper, Non-Executive Director and a Member of the Audit and Risk and Remuneration and HR Committees; and Ms. Sarah Brennan, Non-Executive Director and a Member of the Audit and Risk and Remuneration and HR Committees. Other members of Thomas's executive team are here today, and can I please ask those present to stand and make themselves known to the meeting as I introduce them: Mr. Michael Eadie, our Chief Financial Officer and Company Secretary; Mr. Mitch Symes, there we go, our Chief Operating Officer for Australia and New Zealand; Mr. Martin Wu, is Martin with us? Thank you, Martin. Our Chief Analytics Officer; Ms. Carrie Lazar, our Chief People Officer. Carrie? Tim Cullen, our Chief Information Officer; Ms. Alana Hampton, our Head of Risk; and Ms. Nikki Brown, Nikki new to us, our Head of Marketing. Mr. Matt Angel, known to all of you as President of Credit Corp USA, is currently in the U.S. and unable to be with us today. As well as being available for me to call on to assist in answering any questions during the meeting, the executive team, as well as myself and the rest of the Board, would welcome the opportunity to speak informally with any meeting attendees at the conclusion of this meeting. Also joining us today are the Company's Legal Advisor, Mr. Guy Sanderson from Hamilton Locke. There's Guy, thank you. And Mr. Drew Townsend from Hall Chadwick, the Company's Auditor. No written questions were received in advance from shareholders for Hall Chadwick in respect to the conduct of the audit and the Auditor's report, as per the process set out in this Notice of Annual General Meeting. I will call upon Guy and Drew to answer any relevant questions as required during the meeting. I'm going to commence with the Chair's Address, which will be followed by the CEO's Quarterly Update Presentation. We will then proceed with the Ordinary Business of the meeting, which will include the opportunity to ask questions on each item of Ordinary Business. Following that, we will open the meeting up to questions covering any aspect of the meeting, including my address, the CEO's Quarterly Update Presentation, or any other relevant matter a shareholder wishes to raise. I'll now run through some instructions for asking questions and voting for those in the room today. Please note that only those who are registered as shareholders or proxy holders for absent shareholders are entitled to ask questions today. That is, people who have a yellow or blue voting card. To ask a question, please raise your voting card. When the microphone is brought to you, stand and give your name, the name of the shareholder you represent if you're a Company representative or proxy, and then ask your question. Where appropriate, I'll call on specific directors, management, the Auditor, or other advisors to respond to shareholder questions. However, I do ask that all questions be put through me as Chair of the meeting. If shareholders wish to ask multiple questions, please note that we will take one question at a time from each shareholder or proxy and then return for further questions. Votes on each resolution that are the subject of this meeting will be taken by way of a poll. The poll will be taken on all resolutions at the end of the meeting. I'll briefly explain prior to voting how the polling process will be conducted. I'll now commence with my address. In what will be my final year as Chair of Credit Corp, I'm pleased to report a return to strong earnings growth and the creation of an excellent platform for sustained growth over the years ahead. Your Board and management have worked hard over many years to build the resilience and capability to respond to changing external conditions and deliver outcomes for stakeholders. Despite increasingly volatile times, Credit Corp is confidently looking forward to continued growth from lending businesses coupled with an exciting pipeline of innovation and expansion. During the year, Credit Corp expanded on the foundations established over a long period. These foundations comprise a strong group of businesses leveraging a core expertise in working with credit-impaired consumers and the ongoing development of unique capabilities to ensure sustained performance. It is this focus on maintaining and enhancing a portfolio of businesses and capabilities that has continued to provide the Company with the flexibility to respond to varying circumstances while preserving Credit Corp 's long-term prospects. The success of the strategic diversification of Credit Corp, which has taken place over many years, was demonstrated again in 2025. The Company's commitment to sound strategic planning has long recognized the challenge of sustaining growth in the credit-impaired consumer segment of financial services while being overtly reliant on earnings and growth from just one or two closely correlated businesses. Strategic growth initiatives in consumer lending and U.S. debt buying have developed organically over the past 13 years and Credit Corp into the diversified financial services group that it is today. In 2025, the U.S. and consumer lending businesses produced over three-quarters of the Company's earnings. While those businesses will continue to drive growth, some important steps in establishing a platform for further expansion were also taken in 2025. These included the achievement of key business improvements, the addition of innovative new lending products, and progress towards the entry into a new geographic expanding Credit Corp's footprint as a global operator. The Australian and New Zealand debt buying segment produced a solid result despite constrained conditions. The contraction in total market purchase debt ledger sales volumes over several years continued to impact the segment. By the end of the year, however, the effect of this contraction had largely run its course, and earnings from this business began to stabilize. There were also some encouraging signs that this market may return to growth. Aggregate unsecured personal credit has started to increase, and a large credit provider took initial steps for a return to debt sale after having withdrawn from the market six years ago. In the U.S., confidence to invest grew alongside improved operational performance. Local leadership was enhanced with additional appointments to key roles, and the team continued to execute on a comprehensive program of business improvement. Purchasing was limited over the first half of the year as the results of the program were assessed. As collection results improved, the rate of purchasing doubled from $50 million in the first half to $100 million in the second half. While more work will be required, the year concluded positively with record quarterly collections over the three months to June 2025 and the securing of a strong pipeline of purchasing for the year ahead. Strong loan book growth in the prior year propelled the Australian lending businesses to impressive segment earnings growth of over 31%. While demand across the credit-impaired sector fell, refreshed marketing ensured sufficient volume to grow the loan book over the course of the year. The expanded book has provided a sound platform for another strong result in 2026. Behind the solid headline business performance, there was disciplined execution of a program of improvement and expansion to sustain competitiveness and growth into the future. The Company devoted considerable resources to the development of enhanced digital and artificial intelligence, or AI, capabilities. The deployment of improved tools and resources increased the number of collection outcomes produced by digital interactions by more than 50% over the prior period. Credit Corp has been a leader in the use of analytics to price risk and direct operational activity in 2025, a separate AI function was established to harness the power of large language models. An appropriate governance structure was established, and the technology has already started assisting in areas including software development and the automation of collection activity record keeping. Work is also now underway to deploy large language models to assist in enhancing the quality of customer interactions. While the category-leading Wallet Wizard cash loan product has driven of Credit Corp's success in consumer lending to date, other products are required to ensure continued growth. After a pilot period, the innovative Wizard digital credit card has been deployed for rollout in Australia. Wizard is unique as the only card credit offering in Australia to the credit-impaired consumer segment. The product's performance through the pilot phase demonstrated that it complements Wallet Wizard by appealing to a broader group of customers and can be distributed through a wider range of products. Late in the year, terms were agreed for a small acquisition to accelerate the Company's entry into the UK lending market. The UK credit-impaired consumer segment is considerably larger than Australia's and is presently underserved. Credit Corp will adopt the same responsible positioning it has established in Australia by providing one of the most affordable offerings in the market and plans to commence consumer lending during the 2026 financial year. Strong businesses and capabilities are built by people and a positive culture. The values of transparency, accountability, and discipline define the culture at Credit Corp. Transparency to honestly appraise business prospects, identify shortcomings, and set a plan of action. Accountability to embrace and achieve challenging goals. Discipline to follow through with the right execution to deliver sustainable long-term outcomes. It is the day-to-day application of these values by Credit Corp's people that will underpin its success into the future. It's been a great privilege to serve on the Board of Credit Corp for 16 years, including more than four years as the Company's Chair, working with my fellow directors and the management team to grow a positive culture. I'm pleased to have been part of this exciting strategic transition of a mono-line Australian debt buyer into an ASX global financial services provider. I had initially planned to retire as Chair following this AGM. However, I have agreed to remain in my role as Chair until a replacement Non-Executive Director and Chair is appointed. Having helped lay the foundation of Credit Corp's next phase of growth and transformation, I look forward to continuing to support Credit Corp during this transition and in time participating in its ongoing success as a shareholder. I thank my fellow directors and our CEO, Thomas Beregi, and his management team for leading through values and establishing a positive outlook for the future. On behalf of the Board and shareholders, I also thank all employees for their ongoing commitment and dedication to Credit Corp. I'll now hand over to Thomas, who will provide an update on the Company's performance to date and an assessment of the outlook for the balance of the financial year. Pleased to hand over to our CEO, Thomas Beregi. Thank you, Thomas. Thank you, Eric, and welcome everyone today. Good to see you all here, and also welcome to those who might be viewing the webinar. Look, our objective is to lead in the credit-impaired consumer segment. We work with consumers who've had trouble with credit, most of them having defaulted on a previous obligation. To succeed, we aim to stay ahead in three key areas. We operate at the risky end of the consumer credit spectrum, and that requires well-developed analytics and the discipline to apply the analysis objectively. Our customers require specialized approaches, and that creates complexity, which demands strong operations. We are more likely to encounter people in hardship or suffering from some kind of vulnerability, so we have to be very responsible and compliant to deliver on our promise to our debt sale clients, other stakeholders, and the community in general. Applying these three competencies, we target to deliver strong earnings growth into the future while producing acceptable returns, which we define as a return on equity of 16% with a conservative financial structure. We have great metrics and approaches for each of these competencies across our three businesses. Our focus is delivering an outlook of sustained growth. The impact of the contraction in the size of the Australian and New Zealand debt buying market, which Eric drew attention to, has made it hard for us to grow our earnings over the past several years. As Eric mentioned, that has now largely run its course, and you can see that last year we produced solid double-digit earnings growth, and we're on track to follow that up with 12% earnings growth at the midpoint of our guidance range for 2026. All three businesses are off to a solid start in the current year. In the U.S., collections are up. This is first quarter collections are up 22% on last year. Lending has already produced a record first quarter loan volume with growth of 3% over the prior year. The Australian and New Zealand debt buying business is tracking to expectation. Looking at the U.S., operational improvement has produced a further lift in productivity over the first quarter. As we've stepped up our investment there, there has been a strong conversion of that investment outlay into collections. Purchasing has been up by $30 million over the past 12 months. As you can see, annualized collections for the first quarter are up $31 million. That's a very strong flow-through, very strong conversion of that investment into collection outcomes. That's helped produce record quarterly collections for the U.S. business in the three months to September. In our lending business, refreshed marketing has driven record first quarter loan volume, delivering year-over-year loan book growth. That sets us up well for strong interest income over the balance of the year. As we move into the seasonable peak period for our lending business, we should see further book growth. Our expansion initiatives are also on track. Wizard, as Eric mentioned, is the only credit card available to credit-impaired consumers in Australia. Already, having just brought the product out of pilot in July, it is exceeding the expectations in terms of volume and customer acquisition. Similarly, arrears and costs are in line with pro forma, so that rollout is looking very positive. Our entry into the UK is also on track. We recently completed the acquisition of a small non-operating licensed company to accelerate our commencement in this very underserved market. We've started the process of building the systems and controls necessary to start lending in the UK, and we should commence writing our first loan over the balance of the year. We have the balance sheet to deliver on our growth agenda while maintaining the flexibility to seize other opportunities as they arise. Our gearing level remains as one of the lowest in the world for our industry, at just 30% of the carrying value of our financial assets. We have more than $140 million in undrawn borrowing capacity to apply to additional investments and opportunities that may arise. Just to conclude and wrap up, we are reconfirming the 2026 guidance we issued at the start of August. We're expecting net profit after tax in the range of $100 million- $110 million for the full year. That represents earnings growth in the range of 6% to 17%. Very strong earnings growth on the back of last year's 16% growth. With that, I thank you for your attention, and I'll hand back to Eric. He didn't get a round of applause either, James. Come on, Pierre. Okay, thank you very much, Thomas. We'll now move to the formal business of the meeting, including questions in respect to each of the items of business, and then open the meeting up to general questions after the formal resolutions have been put. The only items of business to come before the meeting today will be those specified in the Notice of Meeting. We have four items of Ordinary Business that you have had the opportunity to review and consider through the circulated Notice of Meeting, and I will take that Notice of Meeting as read. Votes on each resolution that are the subject of this meeting will be taken by way of a poll at the end of the meeting. Rashad Bashana of Boardroom Proprietary Limited, our share registry, will act as returning officer in relation to the poll. I'll briefly explain how the polling process will be conducted prior to voting at the end of the meeting. There have been proxies given in respect of today's resolutions, which I intend to disclose when each of the resolutions is considered. As mentioned in the Notice of Meeting, it's intended that any undirected proxies given to the Chair will be voted in favor of the relevant resolution. Item one on the agenda is to receive and consider the financial report, the director's report, and the auditor's Credit Corp for the year ended June 30, 2025. There will not be a formal vote on this item. I'll now invite questions in respect of this item. As a reminder, if you'd like to ask a question, please raise your voting card. When the microphone is brought to you, stand up and give your name, the name of the shareholder you represent if you're a company representative or proxy, and then ask your questions. Are there any questions in relation to item one? Yes, sir. my microphone on? There is a microphone coming. Peter Richardson, representing PNM Richardson Superannuation Fund. My question really is around directors. Four of your directors, Brad, Sarah, Lyn, and Phil. Two of those have no shares in the company, and the other two have minimal shares in the company. I came to your AGM maybe two or three years ago and raised this, and I Credit Corp might want to consider doing what other companies do and implement a system whereby directors must accumulate shares to the value of their annual remuneration. I kind of got short-shrifted that time, so I'm going to raise it again and ask whether that's a consideration. Okay. I'm sorry if you thought you got short shrift, but it certainly was. No, nothing certainly. I guess I got short-shifted. We're certainly listening, and we have implemented directors, non-executive directors policy now that will have all directors meeting that requirement at the end of a three-year period. I think we've. Thank you. I think that's it. That's really it. We were listening, and we have adopted, and we will be compliant for all directors at the end of that three-year period coming into effect at June 2026. We need to obviously build it up dramatically. Thank you for your question. All right. Any other questions on that, Pierre? Hi, Eric. Thank you for, I also want to ask you exactly the same thing. I represent Panacotics Proprietary Limited and also Team Invest. Apart from the fact that we've had discussions before, Team Invest believes that the better way to remunerate is not best or incentivized, is not based on TSR, but rather on earnings per share. That's what the management can influence. Share prices move. Usually, it's sometimes it's just sort of some event that people believe that it's going to impact on the company and that sort of thing. I know we've had a lot of discussion on this, and I'm simply raising the question that it's still going to be pushing to try and get TSR replaced by EPS. That's up to the company. Okay, thank you, Pierre. That is, as you know, a perennial which we do review every year. Previous Chairman sitting in front of you had strong views on that as well. I don't know, Phil, if you want to, we've had feedback as well from proxy advisors on that issue. In fact, we have a question coming up on notice about the influence that management has on the share price, which is basically covering that issue. Phil, would you like to add anything to that? Thank you very much, Eric. Pierre, thank you for your question. It's a very pertinent question, and we've looked at it. As we do every year, we review our remuneration structure to make sure it is fitting with the market and expectations of our shareholders. We use TSR, relative TSR, against a group of companies that are very similar to us in market capitalization, where we compete in the marketplace for employees and executives. We believe that as you, as shareholders, you have an opportunity to invest in those companies as well. We also believe that we need to rank ourselves up against them to show to shareholders that we can also be a good company to invest in against those peers. We use the ASX 200, similar companies, similar market capitalization, etc. We exclude the mining and energy sector because that's not really relevant to us. The whole idea is to make sure that we align properly with our stakeholders and our shareholders to say if we don't perform in our share price, even though sometimes I do agree it's out of our control, over a longer period of time, we should be able to compete against our peers, and therefore your investment dollars will attract to Credit Corp. One suggestion that does come up quite often is, is there a way that you can actually create a blend in the sense of bringing EPS and TSR also working together? Yeah, absolutely. That's the only suggestion. Yeah, no, that's a very good suggestion. As I said, we do look at these things constantly. We have to also be cognizant of our particular industry that we're in. For example, with EPS, we use in our LTIs, we use an ROE gate opener, which is quite a challenging 16% return on equity, as you know. That's how we make our investment decisions when we purchase debt portfolios, particularly in the U.S., where we have a minimum target of 16% return on equity. In order to do that, we want to incentivize our people the same way. We also don't want, when it comes to EPS, if there's excess capital around, that they're going to do dysfunctional things like buy back shares, which may stop us from realizing opportunities where in the debt ledger market that we could make a purchase, and we want to be, you know, flexible and able to be able to do that. We think it's the right structure for us. As our business changes over the years, that may very well change, but we do think it's very peculiar to us as a business, and we believe it's the right thing to do at this stage. Okay, thank you. Thank you, Pierre. I can assure you we will certainly be reviewing that again this year. Are there any other questions in relation to item one on the agenda? Yes, please. Yeah, my name is Terry Lee. I'm a shareholder. Under the new Trump administration, I just want to know, is there any regulation that would affect our business going forward, like interest rates and things like that? One day he's saying one thing and the next day he's raising interest rates. I'd also like to, you're going to the United Kingdom, just share us your vision, what do you see over there, and so we can, you know, how much our assets are going to be tied up in the UK that you're moving over there as well. Thomas, would you like to address that? Sure. Oh, I can't. I'll hop up a minute. Sorry, Eric. All right. It pales you. Yeah, look, thanks for those questions. In terms of the U.S., obviously, you know, there's all sorts of different policies. There has been a small increase in unemployment. That won't be positive for our business. In order for people to repay us, they will generally need to remain employed, particularly in a market like the U.S. where the welfare safety net is not as strong as a country like Australia. However, since that small increase in unemployment in the U.S., we have not observed any degradation in collection outcomes. At this stage, that doesn't appear to be affecting us. Tariffs and their impact on consumer prices and cost of living, I guess there's debate as to whether they have actually flown through into prices that consumers in the U.S. are paying. That could potentially be adverse if people have to pay more for goods and services. Perhaps there's less to repay debts. Once again, we have not seen any impact of that at all either. Probably the third and maybe most significant item in the U.S. is the end of probably the last item of Biden administration COVID stimulus. That is the forbearance on the collection of federally guaranteed student loans. Up until May this year, people in the U.S., and think about it, 25% of the working age population in the U.S. has a federal student loan with a significant outstanding. All of those people could either choose to or choose not to repay or continue repayments on those loans. As at May, about 20% of those people or 5% of the working age population in the U.S. was in arrears on their student loan. If you think about our business, it's going to be skewed towards younger people who may be more recent graduates. Those people are overrepresented in our book of debts that we're collecting on in the U.S. They represent about 14% of our customers. Collection recommenced in May. Since then, we haven't seen any degradation in performance. Collection may ramp up in the future. Who knows what we will see in the future? At this stage, no degradation. I guess they're the things we're looking at. They're the things that have happened to date that could impact our business. By the same token, there will be policies that are positive. Similarly, as we've seen with the Trump administration, if there are adverse impacts, they may be reconsidered and there may be changes going forward. We simply don't know. It's part of the general uncertainty we're operating in. We'd love to be investing more in the U.S., but there is uncertainty and that does put a cap on how much we invest. In terms of your question on the UK, that's a very big market. Many multiples in terms of the credit-impaired consumer lending market that we operate in. It's many multiples. The size, probably five to six times the size of the Australian equivalent market. Big market, very underserved. There were some large operators servicing this part of the market. Many had been around for a long number of years. They were listed companies. They have had to exit due to regulatory troubles and large claims that they have sustained. That has meant that the consumers still have the need for this form of finance, but no one to satisfy it. Even the regulator itself has recognized this and has expressed a concern that consumers may be resorting to the unregulated market, which would be a poor outcome. Our entry is to take advantage of that opportunity and service what is presently unmet demand. We would hope to have a business in sort of four or five years' time that might be the size of the Wallet Wizard business we have in Australia. Beyond that, we would grow even further. If you think of it, our Wallet Wizard business is producing over $50 million in profits after tax. That's a big opportunity to build a business of that size. We're very excited about the UK. We haven't started yet. It's all on the horizon for us, but it is a great opportunity. Thanks. Okay, thank you, Thomas. Are there any other questions in relation to agenda item one? If not, I'll move to item two on the agenda, which is the reelection of directors. Item two A concerns the reelection of Ms. Trudy Vonhoff as a director of the company. I'd like to invite Trudy to say a few words. Trudy, thank you. Thank you, Eric. Apologies in advance. I'm battling a cold today, so my voice is probably not what it usually is. Thank you for the opportunity to address shareholders and seek your support for my election to the Board as a Non-Executive Director. I appreciate the trust and confidence placed in me since my initial appointment six years ago. My Credit Corp and its success remains as strong as ever. As per the notice of meeting, my career has been built in financial services where I led businesses through operational challenges and strategic transformations. This experience in operations, finance, strategy, and people leadership continues to inform my contribution to Board discussions. Currently, I serve as a Non-Executive Director on the ASX-listed boards of Iress Limited, which is a technology company, and Cuscal Limited, which is a pay`ments company. To balance my Board portfolio, I also serve as a Director on Australian Cane Farmers, which is a public company, and as an Independent Director on the Nominations Committee for Tennis Australia. This portfolio reflects both depth and diversity, and these experiences help me bring additional perspectives while maintaining my focus on what Credit Corp. earlier, eric briefly Credit Corp has commenced our journey into the world of AI. I think we all acknowledge the potential of AI, and my view is that with great power comes great responsibility. This is why, in addition to my ongoing professional development and commitment to lifelong learning, I recently completed the AI Fluency Sprint, which was run by Sydney University in conjunction with the Australian Institute of Company Directors. I have to confess that the sprint at times felt like a marathon. In this world of change, the AI opportunity raises risks that need to be carefully managed and opportunities that need to be captured. We will continue to strengthen our risk management frameworks to ensure that we're well positioned to navigate this and other opportunities responsibly. I'm prepared to dedicate the necessary time and energy to fulfill my duties effectively. I continue to be excited about the opportunity to to Credit Corp's success and to work alongside my fellow Board members to create value for all our stakeholders. Thank you for your support over the years, and with your continued support, I seek reelection. Thank you. Thank you, John. Thank you, Trudy. And thank you for making the effort today because I know you certainly aren't well at the moment. The resolution reads Ms. Vonhoff retires and, being eligible, offers herself for reelection in accordance with clauses 20.1 and 20.7 of the company's constitution. Proxy votes received in respect to this resolution are shown on the slide. As already noted, voting is by way of a poll, which will be conducted at the end of the meeting. Are there any questions for Trudy while she's still on her feet? We'll let you off now. Thank you, Trudy. If there are no further questions, I will move to the next item of business, which is the reelection of Mr. James Millar as Director of the company. I'd like to invite James to say a few words. Thank you, James. I'm glad you got a clap. That's terrific. Thank you, Eric, and good morning, everybody. I have the privilege this morning of having my reappointment as Non-Executive Director confirmed or not by you, the shareholders. I joined the board four years ago. I Credit Corp after an executive career as a corporate reconstruction professional and as a former CEO of a large consulting business. My executive career was spent refining and rebooting businesses in various states of financial or operational distress. It was a learning career, and I have to say my career is still a learning career, being exposed to the failings of many while also being part of the reconstruction of large numbers of businesses through that time. It's great to see them go on and thrive, both in my Non-Executive Director career and when as an executive. Over the last 16 years, I've served as an independent director, chair, or advisor with a dozen or so organizations, both public and/or private, across industries as diverse as property, banking, print, broadcast media, forestry, Credit Corp continues to evolve. My time on the board so far has seen, within that time of that four years, I've seen an escalating transformation in both its operations and its governance. I believe that the next decade will again see the business move up another notch as it deploys its considerable and growing human and financial capital in pursuit of its strategic aims. I believe that I bring to the board a wide and varied level of skills and learnings from both my board and executive careers. As Chair of the Audit and Risk Committee, we will continue to lead and navigate the management of risk and the challenges to our core businesses while simultaneously advancing new opportunities as they arise. I thank you for your time and your support. Thank you. Thank you, James. The resolution reads Mr. Millar retires and being eligible offers himself for reelection in accordance with clauses 20.1 and 20.7 of the company's constitution. Proxy votes received in respect to this resolution are shown on the slide. I'll now invite any questions in respect of this resolution. Are there any questions? Okay. Thank you. If there are no further questions, I'll move on to the next item of business, agenda item three, being the adoption of the remuneration report for the year ended 30 June 2025. The text of the resolution is on the slide now. The resolution to adopt the remuneration report is a non-binding resolution, and there is a voting restriction which applies to it. The company will disregard any votes cast in any capacity on this resolution by or on behalf of any key management personnel who are the directors and members of management whose remuneration is detailed in the annual report and their closely related parties such as their families. However, those persons can vote as proxies of other eligible shareholders where they have been directed how to vote, and the Chairman can vote undirected proxies on behalf of eligible shareholders. Under the Corporations Act, the resolution of shareholders that the remuneration report be adopted or any failure to pass that resolution is advisory only and does not bind the company or its directors. Proxy votes received in respect to this resolution are shown on the slide displayed. I'll now invite questions in respect of this resolution. Are there any questions? Thank you. If there are no questions, further questions on it, we'll move to the next item of business, which is agenda item four, being the issue of performance rights under the long-term incentive plan in respect of the 2026 to 2028 performance period for the Managing Director and CEO, Thomas Beregi. The text of this resolution is now on the slide, and again, there are voting restrictions which apply to this resolution. The company will disregard any votes cast in any capacity on this resolution by or on behalf of Mr. Beregi or any of his associates. Similarly, it will disregard any votes cast as a proxy on this resolution by any key management personnel who are all the directors and members of management whose remuneration is detailed in the annual report and their closely related parties such as their families. However, those persons can vote as proxies of other eligible shareholders where they've been directed how to vote, and the Chairman can vote undirected proxies on behalf of eligible shareholders. Proxy votes received in respect to this resolution are shown on the slide displayed. I'll now invite questions in respect to this resolution. Are there any questions? Okay. If there are no further questions, that concludes our discussion on the items of business for today. We'll now run through responses to the questions that have been submitted by shareholders ahead of today's meeting. After this, I'll invite any remaining questions from shareholders and proxies related to my address, to the CEO's presentation, and any other relevant matter a shareholder or proxy wishes to raise. All questions must be addressed to myself as Chair of the meeting, and where appropriate, I'll call on specific directors, management, and the auditor, or other advisors to respond to shareholder or proxy questions. If shareholders wish to ask multiple questions, please note that we will take one question at a time from each shareholder or proxy and then return for further questions. Here are responses to the questions submitted prior to the meeting. The first question we had was, what are you doing to fix the share price? To an extent, that's an issue that was raised earlier by Pierre and others. The share price, as Thomas stated earlier, is not something that is under our direct control. As a management team, our duty is to ensure that we produce consistent earnings growth, as well as keeping the market informed as to our risks and opportunities as a company. To that end, I guess that's the extent to which we can control or influence the share price. It is not something that we control directly, and a point that Pierre himself made earlier in the meeting today. I don't know if there's anything anyone wishes to add to that, Thomas. I think you addressed it largely in your own talk earlier. Yes, look, I only just say reiterate that point I made earlier. What has held back our earnings growth, and there will be a correlation between earnings growth and the share price in time. What has held back our earnings growth has been the contraction in the Australian debt sale market, which now represents, in terms of annual sale volume, less than half what it was five or six years ago. There's simply less business for us to do there, and that used to be a very big part of our earnings, and our earnings have similarly contracted significantly. The good news is, as I mentioned earlier, that has now run its course. That is, we no longer have to straddle a business which is going backwards very quickly. That's now leveling off, and it means that growth from the U.S. and the lending business can now flow through into our total earnings growth, and that's how we were able to produce 16% earnings growth last year and why we're on track to produce 12% this year. Hopefully, as the market becomes comfortable that we have a strong outlook for earnings growth, we can see that reflected in the share price over time. Okay, I think that hopefully covers the question itself. Clearly, if we had not embarked on that strategic diversification and growth path, the impact on the share price, if we'd have stayed where we were, we shudder to contemplate. That is therefore the importance of proper and careful strategic planning of our growth in earnings and diversification of product. The next question we had was, why did you and Crouch withdraw his consent to nominate for the board? When will Eric Dodd retire as Chair? First thing Pierre asked me this morning. I'll leave it to you, and as we announced, did initially accept the role of Non-Executive Director and subsequently as Chair and has withdrawn from that now. We've recommenced the process of electing a new, or appointing, should I say, a new Non-Executive Director and Chair for the organization. I will stay on until that process is finished, which I think makes sense in terms of the stability and continuity for the board. That's about as much as I can add at this point in time. Oh, when will I retire as Chair? I certainly won't be at this time next year. The next question we had is, what is the history of proxy advisory firms covering us, and did any of them issue reports ahead of today's meeting? If so, were there any recommendations against and on what grounds? I'd like to take that question because it's a good answer, but I think to be fair, it's something that Phil, as Head of the Remuneration and HR Committee, should address. Phil, would you like to? Thanks, Mr. Chairman. Yes, we did receive three proxy reports by Ownership Matters, ISS, and CGI Glass Lewis. All of them voted in favor of all the resolutions. The Chairman and myself also had met with them on a number of occasions over the last two or three months where we engaged with them about the REM structure. Most of the considerations were dealt with, and that's probably why we had a positive report from all three of them. Okay, thank you. The next question we had was, how many FTE, full-time equivalent staff, do we have, and is this likely to fall over the coming 12 months with the rollout of AI? Which parts of our operations are the most prospective for AI productivity gains, and how energetically are we embracing those opportunities? We've talked a little about AI and what we're doing on that, but Thomas, would you like to add anything in terms of answering that specific question? Sure. As at June, we had 2,065 full-time equivalent staff, and we don't anticipate that falling over the next 12 months. If you think about our organization, I talked about analytics and analysis being very important because of the risk nature of the businesses we're in. I talked also about the operational complexity associated with very specialized and bespoke conversations being conducted with our customers. What AI really delivers is it gives us greater insight into what's happening in those conversations. The large language models are much better at transcribing and monitoring sentiment on these customer interactions. We can apply our analytics to this new source of information so we can better optimize, get real sort of statistical insight into what we should say and when on one of these conversations, and ultimately deploy that optimization in assisting our operators on the call or communicating digitally in making sure we say the right thing that's going to produce the best Credit Corp and hopefully the consumer as well. In the interim, these tools are helping us in a number of different ways. Already, as Eric mentioned, the tools have largely eliminated what used to be after-call wrap-up, where an operator would finish a call and then have to note various changes in status and different switches in our operational platform to indicate what happened on the call and also provide some additional freeform notes. Now the machine can do all that, and it's dramatically reduced the amount of time operators have to spend in that activity. That is driving efficiency and productivity. By far and away, the key message is the big gain will be in optimization, in being more effective, making our people more effective rather than just efficient. By that, I mean they will get more outcomes, they'll have more successful conversations that lead to payments, and those payments will hopefully be better payments, more optimized to the consumer's circumstances and their financial capacity. We are pursuing all of this with some vigor. We have a dedicated AI implementation team that is focused on it alongside our operational teams. There's a lot of work. It all sort of seems very easy when you get onto AI and you ask a question and it delivers an immediate answer. In a business context where the requirement is for high levels of accuracy, you can waste a lot of resources and also get yourself into trouble when things go wrong. There's a lot of manual work in categorizing and labeling data and correcting in order to train these models and then subsequently doing the more traditional regression type analysis to get that optimization. We're pursuing it with some energy and enthusiasm to ensure that we remain competitive across all our businesses. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. The only thing I'll add is that the Board is equally as involved, if you like, in terms of getting on top of the whole AI issue. Trudy mentioned it in her talk earlier. Next question we have is, thank you for disclosing the proxies early. This year, could you please add the headcount data, like with a scheme, so we can see how many shareholders voted for and against each item and get a better gauge of retail shareholder sentiment? I don't think we have any plans of including this disclosure, but we will certainly revisit that again in 2026. Michael, you or Thomas want to add anything to that? As I say, we will revisit it, but we don't plan on disclosing anything more at this stage. I'd now like to invite any other questions from shareholders in the room. Do you have any questions? Yes, please. I have a few. I have a few, Mr. Chairman. I'll start off, perhaps an easy one on the AI topic. You mentioned in your talk that you've invested considerable resources into the AI space. We have, yes. I'm just wondering, is the Board aware of the actual number that has been invested into AI? In terms of a dollar number, Thomas, do you have a? What I can say is, you know, AI is a somewhat. Can you quantify specifically? Yeah, what I can say is it's a rather sort of ill-defined concept, I guess. Being a very analytical company, we have always used lots of data. Our lending process is very statistical. Martin, who stood up earlier, is our Head of Analytics, and Martin runs a team of some almost 30 analysts, most of whom, or many of whom, are qualified actuaries and statistical analysts. We've been doing that for many years. Prior to the deployment of large language models, we were using a previous generation of technology to transcribe our conversations, not as good as we can achieve today. On that initiative alone, we probably spent almost $2 million. Martin's team isn't cheap either. We spend several million dollars on that annually. In terms of AI to date, you know, investments, expenditures on large language models, and the team involved, it's probably running at about $1 million. A half per annum. That will probably increase over coming years, but there'll be, you know, for each item of expenditure, there'll be a business case and offsetting improvement. As I indicated already, the deployment, in terms of call summarization and note-taking, is probably already offsetting that incremental investment Is the word considerable expense? I just wondered what considerable meant in context. The other thing I would say in relation to IT projects is that, quite often, they don't have a return on investment piece that goes with them. Do you guys look at return on investment on your IT projects, AI projects? Yes, we do. For everything, we look for a return on investment. You're absolutely right. In some ways, you know, AI is something you can't ignore, because your competitors will do it, and, you know, someone will find a way to make it work. Yes, we do have a strong business case discipline for every investment, to ensure that there is the prospect of a payback on each individual investment. Whether that comes to fruition is sometimes another story, and sometimes you achieve success in a way that wasn't contemplated in the business case. It's not always certain, but we do start off with that basic discipline, yes. I guess that ROI will be the same as your targeted ROI for the business of at least 16%. Yeah, yeah, that's right. Thank you. Any other questions? Is there a question up the back? Yep. Hi, Eric. David Badham. You mentioned, or Thomas mentioned, the AU New Zealand core debt collection and the drop-off in the last three years of 50% in NPAT. You said it's run its course. Does that mean we've stabilized and you expect it to stay at that relatively low level historically, or do you now see opportunities for it to increase, start increasing again every year? Yeah, look, the debt purchasing business itself in our segment reporting, we consolidate it with our collection services business as well. Michelle Court, who heads up that business, is in the room. I'm not sure she was mentioned earlier. The two businesses side by side should produce NPAT this year very close to last year's. They're largely because there is still some contraction in earnings from the debt purchase business, but there'll be some offsetting improvement in the collection services business as we go through a process of consolidating systems from some historical acquisitions. Provided we used to outlay in our debt-buying business, on average, around $170 million across Australia and New Zealand. The average over the last few years has been around $100 million. Last year was a bit lower than that. The year before, it was a bit higher. If we can outlay $100 million or so going forward, then our earnings should stabilize where they are. There'll be no further contraction. We have a reasonable pipeline at the moment. We've guided to a purchasing of $80 million- $100 million, and I think we're at about $65 million at the moment. We're very close. We're looking like we're on track for at least the midpoint. We're pretty much there. That's good. Yes, there will be some slow recovery. Eric drew attention in his address to one large seller, which is a major bank, that has taken initial steps to return. That will add some volume to the market, and if we get our fair share, that will help. The key issue we have faced has been the contraction in the issuance of unsecured credit in Australia. That was accelerated through COVID, where people were able to use superannuation, other stimulus, lack of spending to repay unsecured credit. There has been a slight rebuild. In my own view, we won't see the sort of volumes that we saw historically, but I think we are on a slow trajectory of improvement. That ought to be enough for us to hold our earnings and maybe grow them at low single digits in that segment in years to come. Thank you. There's another question here, please. It's Terry Lee again of shareholder. I just want to know if Credit Corp got any scope to expand into asset-backed lending for commercial properties and also let-lease lending to enhance our yield because I know that we're just too small for that. Yeah, look, our expertise is largely dealing with consumers, using that core collection expertise and that expertise in understanding consumer behaviors and how to work with that. We typically have not been very successful in any kind of commercial lending. Commercial lending would require a totally different capital structure. We're able to deliver what is a strong ROE, or we're at least aiming to, and are doing so incrementally on our investments of 16% with very low gearing, 30%- 40% gearing. To be successful in commercial lending would require a totally different capital structure and a different profile for the entire business. We would be a more risky business. Our gearing would have to be in excess of 90%. We would need to borrow 90% of every dollar we lend, if not more, and the yield we would earn would be a very small margin over what we would have to pay for that capital anyway. Any sort of hiccups in the economy, rises in interest rates, and we would be exposed to losses and degradations in our earnings. As a business, we have decided that strategically we should back the areas where we have strength and we can compete. We're trying to compete not by having the most efficient capital, but try to compete by having really strong operations and being ahead of everyone else, and therefore, earning a great return. Most lenders would be targeting an ROE in that range of sort of 13%- 16%, but they're targeting to do so with a lot more gearing. Our proposition to you as shareholders is we will target that same ROE but at much less financial risk and try to do so by having really strong operations. Strategically, that's what our focus is on. That's why you can see us focusing on unsecured lending, and trying to expand our footprint, particularly in that credit-impaired area where we can use our operational expertise to not only select the customers who are more likely to repay us, but also manage the collections on those who have trouble doing so. That's where we try to get our advantage. Thank you. Thank you, Thomas. We have another question. I'll come back to you. Go ahead. Peter Richardson again. The UK opportunity sounds like a great opportunity. Three years ago, the US opportunity sounded like a great opportunity. A year later, we had to, as shareholders, take a large impairment on our valuation. I don't necessarily disagree with taking those risks. I think it actually shows that the Board of Management have actually addressed the US issue, and they've got the business running. I think that's, I've got a lot of confidence in them. Are there any learnings from the US that should apply to the UK? I mean, you start a new business. There are cultural issues, staff issues, regulatory issues, implementation issues. What are the learnings from the US that might give us some comfort that the UK is not going to be a similar path? I can assure you from a Board perspective, we did raise all of those issues and have discussed all of those issues prior to taking a decision to enter that market. There are always learnings, learnings we had from the U.S. If we hadn't made those decisions to move into those markets, we'd be in a very different position today. We don't enter markets blindly. We go through a lot of in-depth analysis. We're fully aware of the difference in culture and regulation and so on. All of those issues have been well and truly addressed. We will be growing, growing a base, not buying a big business. That same approach is one we've taken in all jurisdictions, and I think it's worked for Credit Corp. you want to add anything, Thomas? No, I think that's very good. I mean, look, anything we do will involve risk. Overall, our strike rate is probably pretty good, in that the US is now on track and producing solid earnings and growing towards that target ROE. Our lending business did not experience the same hiccups, although in startup phase, recorded losses for a number of years before it transitioned to profits and now very strong returns. In terms of lessons, yes, there are always lessons. For a number of years, we were successful in the US without a lot of on-the-ground executive leadership. When circumstances changed, however, we weren't as integrated with the market and didn't respond quickly enough. We were only really reading the signals from our own business. We weren't enmeshed in the local community. That has probably cost us, and that was a lesson. With this UK expansion, we already have two people on the ground in the UK. We already have some local leadership right at the start. I think that learning has been adopted. We've benefited in the US from having some of our support functions that support that business located in Australia. That means key investment decisions, risks, and financial control have been able to be overseen very tightly from Australia. That has been a contributor to success, and that will be the case for the UK initiative as well. Okay. David, did you have another question? Yeah, thanks. Back on AI again, there's a lot of positives with AI. There's a lot of negatives with AI, and everyone's still learning about it. I'm sure all of us in this room have at some point experienced dealing with companies through chatbots, which is not a pleasant Credit Corp committed to maintaining human-to-human interactions with their customers in the longer term, because they technically could be replaced by AI to some degree? It's not very pleasant for anybody. I just wanted to check that we're going to have humans interacting with humans, mostly so the customers are happy, essentially. Okay. Yeah. So look, at the moment, all of our AI initiatives, a particular sort of governance overlay that has been put in place, is they all involve what's called human in the loop. It may be that if somebody is having a dialogue, a digital interaction, it may be that the automated agent, the AI, might draft the communication, but it will always be reviewed and potentially adjusted by a human before it's deployed. Look, and similarly, with our sort of voice-based interactions, our call center activity, at the moment, the particular sort of use case, as that term is known, that we are pursuing is one where the automated agent is prompting the human. It's monitoring and providing suggestions rather than actually talking directly to the consumer. That's our aspiration at the moment. It's a difficult one, David, because it's a competitive environment, and, you know, we have to deliver returns. When we're there stumping up bidding for debts, if we've got a hand tied behind our back saying, "We won't do this," and there's competitors out there that will do it, and they can produce superior outcomes doing so, and that's an important point, then, you know, all these rules that we may put in place today will always be subject to question. It's always going to be a competitive consideration. We're very committed to having our workforce interacting with consumers. We do think it produces better outcomes already even today. While we, while Eric drew attention in his address to a large and growing component of our interactions being conducted digitally, we know that like for like, had that interaction been conducted on the phone, we might have got a larger repayment or a better outcome from the consumer. However, some consumers choose not to interact with us on the phone and prefer the digital channel. There's always going to be a balancing act, and economics and competitive factors are always going to play a part. At least for now, very much the controls that we have in place will ensure that it is always human-to-human interaction. Thank you. Thanks, David. Right. Another question here. A sensitive issue, Mr. Chairman. I was personally less than enthusiastic when you announced the appointment of a Non-Executive Director and new Chairman. My fears appear to have been borne out through the situation that's occurred since then. Without wanting to dwell on that, I'm very interested in the process that you did go through and whether the new process will be different. There must be some big learnings from that process for the Board. I just want to get your thoughts on that. Okay. Thank you, Peter. We are certainly embarking on a process and have started already in terms of seeking out a new Non-Executive Director and Chairman. We're not using the same external facilitators for that that we used before. That's all I'll say on that subject. We believe that the combination of the work that we do internally as well as the assistance we get from a search firm, which we will use, we haven't decided finally yet, Trudy, on that, but we're almost there, will deliver the outcome that we need. I can't obviously comment on your reaction to the previous appointment, but we will certainly make sure that we have an appointment as soon as possible to basically take that important role to chair this company from here on in. I don't know if I can add anything more than that, really. You'll understand the sensitivity there if you don't mind. That's all right. Thank you. Thanks. Don, you've got a question? Thank you, Mr. Chairman. My name's Don McLea. I represent Torres Industries and still retain a large holding in Credit Corp personally. In fact, it's my company's largest single shareholding. I take an interest in the company. As the Chairman alluded to before, I was a Director of the company until four years ago. Now that I'm retired, I've got a lot more time to have a look at my portfolio and its performance. It was very disappointing to see the company drop off the ASX 200 composition. I know from your point of view, Eric, you must feel very pleased now. At least some green shoots are starting to appear before you step down from your time on the Board. Yes, Don. I can assure you that in terms of your reaction to that, we've felt exactly the same, and we're doing everything that we can to return very quickly to that position, which is so important to us for so many reasons. I'm pretty, I'm pretty. I'd like to pick up on Peter's point, if I may, because I'd have to say that those that followed the company were gobsmacked at the Nomination Committee's recommendation for chairman-elect. That's not any comment about the personal integrity of the individual involved, just the situation that person's involved in at the moment. I can't believe, particularly as James said, governance has been improved in the company. I think that was an appalling governance failure, and it suggests that nobody on the board is looking out the window. You didn't have to go very, very far to find that that was or would be a very controversial appointment. I'm sure the proxy advisors have shared that with you already. I really want to go on, though, and make a suggestion that the board may or may not like to consider. Considering this company has stayed the same size for a number of years, seven independent directors on the board just seem a huge excess. It also puzzles me that within that large number, there is no potential chairman-elect, that you have to go outside. I would like to strongly suggest to the board that they may consider downsizing the board. If that means rearranging the chairs, then, in fact, that includes someone who is the potential chairman-elect. I just think that it must be very embarrassing, I know. It just seems to me there's a lot of people here, and there's not a lot happening. Okay. Thank you, Don. Thanks for those comments. We certainly will take them on board. Any other questions from anybody in the room before we move to the poll? Thank you. I'll now conduct the poll. I'll go through voting instructions. The persons entitled to vote on this poll are all shareholders, corporate representatives, attorneys of members, and proxy holders who hold yellow voting cards. If you are attending the meeting in more than one of those capacities, for example, as a shareholder but also as a proxy holder, you will have been issued multiple voting cards. Detailed on the reverse of your yellow voting card is the resolution being put to this poll. Relevant instructions are also printed on the reverse of your admission card. The procedures for filling in the voting cards are as follows. If you're a proxy holder and have only directed votes for or against as shown in the summary of votes attached to your voting card, all you need to do is print your name and sign the yellow voting card and lodge it in the ballot box. By completing the yellow voting card, when instructed to vote in a particular manner, you are deemed to have voted in accordance with those instructions. If you're a proxy holder with open votes, as shown on the summary of votes, you will need to mark a box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your open votes. It's important for proxy holders to note that for their votes to be counted in this poll, you must submit your voting card. For shareholders, on the yellow voting card, shareholders also need to mark a box beside the motion to indicate how you wish to cast your vote. Either a cross or a tick is acceptable. Please ensure that you print your name where indicated and sign the voting cards. Any unsigned voting cards will be invalid. If you require any assistance, please raise your hand. Rashad Bacciano of Boardroom, our share registry, is on hand to assist. When you've finished filling in your voting cards, please place them in one of the poll boxes provided by Boardroom. I will now pause to allow you time to finalize your vote. Please raise your hand if you require help or more time to vote. Does anybody require any more time? All right. There being no request for further time, I hereby declare that voting is now closed and ask the returning officer to count the votes. The results of the poll will be released to the stock exchange later today. Ladies and gentlemen, that concludes this meeting. There being no further business, I declare the meeting closed. On behalf of the Board of of Credit Corp, thank you all for your participation, both here and online in today's meeting. I wish you all a very good day. Thank you.