Aberdeen Group Plc

Thank you, and good morning, everyone. And thank you all for joining Siobhan and me for our Q4 call. Q4 last year already seemed some time ago, and we've had a very busy start to the new year. But let me just take a couple of minutes to reflect back on the last quarter, which was a good quarter for us, particularly in terms of strategic delivery. Aberdeen is in much better shape than it was a year ago, with each of our three businesses making progress as we deliver on our strategy to become the UK's leading wealth and investments group. Group AUMA now stands at £556 billion, which is the highest level since Covid, and it's up 9% year-on-year, supported, as you know, by positive markets. Interactive Investor continues to perform very strongly, ending the year with half a million customers and another record-breaking quarter for trading on the platform. This growth, along with a number of exciting new proposition launches, mean that the business is well set up to sustain this impressive performance. Turning to Advisor. On the positive side, 2025 as a whole saw a material improvement in net sales by over 40%, but we are still in outflow. Q4 saw the important launch of our new SIP, which is seamlessly integrated on the platform. We also saw higher outflows than expected, mainly from tax-free cash. We still have further to go to return to growth as we continue to invest heavily in our platform experience for IFAs and clients. In investments, AUM increased to over £390 billion, again aided by positive markets. Flows benefited from encouraging trends in a number of asset classes, as well as the Stagecoach pension scheme that we announced in early December. During 2025 as a whole, gross flows were the best for many years. So we are getting a lot right. However, our focus on continuing to improve flows and financial performance remains undiminished. Taken all together, with the positive momentum at the start of this year, I'm optimistic about the outlook for the group in 2026. With that, I'll hand over to Siobhan for a little more detail.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Starting with Interactive Investor, momentum remains strong across key metrics. As Jason mentioned, total customers reached half a million, up 14% year-on-year, with SIP customers rising 30% to 105,000. Daily average retail trades were at their highest level levels at 29.2 thousand, up 40% versus Q4 last year. Net inflows of 1.4 billion in the quarter brought full year flows to 7.3 billion, a 28% increase year on year and representing 9% of opening AUMA. It's been a very busy quarter in II, with the launch of our managed SIP, soft launch of II Advice and II360 now in advanced testing. The pricing changes we announced in December will become effective in the next two weeks, which will simplify our proposition and further enhance our competitive positioning. Finally, the sale of the financial planning business we announced in August is due to complete imminently. In advisor, AUMA increased to over £80 billion, driven by positive markets. Outflows in the fourth quarter of £0.8 billion were elevated compared to prior periods. This principally reflected the uncertainty in the market ahead of the UK budget, which resulted in an increase in tax-free cash withdrawals of around £250 million in the fourth quarter. Full-year net outflows improved by 44% to £2.2 billion. This reflected the repricing earlier in the year and our ongoing focus on service, the latter of which has been reflected in our strong average net promoter score for the year of plus 45 points. Turning to investments, assets increased by 6% during 2025 to end the year at £390 billion. Q4 net outflows of £3 billion included the previously flagged low-margin £4.5 billion quants withdrawal, reduced net outflows in equities and insurance partners' outflows of £1.2 billion. Positively, institutional and retail wealth saw gross inflows in Q4 increase by 26% year-on-year, with higher gross inflows in multi-asset, alternatives, fixed income and equities. Excluding liquidity flows, which are inherently volatile, and the Phoenix assets we include within this business line, net flows for INRW for the year were positive at around £5 billion. Multi-asset net inflows included the £1.2 billion from the Stagecoach pension scheme agreement announced in December. We also saw continued good momentum in alternatives, with commodity ETFs being the principal driver behind an 85% improvement in net flows. AUM, increased across our total commodity ETF range, now stands at £15.8 billion. Given the flow trend seen in the latter half of the year and the resultant change in asset mix, we now expect our full year 2025 revenue margin in investments to be around 19.2 basis points. Turning to the group as a whole, full year 2025 adjusted operating profit is expected to be in line with current market expectations and we are confident in the outlook for the business as reflected in our full year 2026 targets of at least £300 million of adjusted operating profit and circa £300 million of net capital generation. In addition, we are pleased to note that with effect from year end 2025, our capital requirement will be lower and is now based on the group's internal capital assessment. We will provide a fuller update on this at our full year results in March. I will now hand over to the operator and Jason and I will be happy to take your questions.

Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and want to withdraw your question, please press star two and please ensure your lines are unmuted locally, as will be prompted when to ask your question. So again, to join the queue for questions, please press star one on your keypads. Our first question today comes from the line of Herbert Lam from Bank of America. Please go ahead.