IntegraFin Holdings plc

Good morning and welcome to Integra Finholdings' four-year results presentation for the 12 months ended 30th September 2023. I'm Alex Scott, Group Chief Executive, and I'll kick off proceedings today with an overview of the Group's performance in the past year. I'll then hand over to Jonathan Gumby, Chief Executive of Transact, our investment platform, to provide you with an update on the performance of the platform and the market over the year. I'm pleased to confirm that Ewan Marshall, our new chief financial officer, will be starting with us on the 3rd of January. So for now, I'll also cover the financial update and guidance for financial year 24 before we open up to Q&A at the end of the session. We finished the year with record high funds under direction on Transact. Performance over the period being resilient in the context of difficult market and economic conditions, delivering continued organic growth in revenue, funds under direction, and both advisor and client numbers. Our market opportunities remain strong. we continue to gain a greater share of the growing UK advisor platform market, demonstrating the continuing strength of the Transat platform. We now have a 10% share of funds under direction in the advisor platform market. This is testament to the quality of our offering, which continues to be recognised, with Transat winning Platform of the Year at the recent Schroders UK Platform Awards. The Transat platform is strongly aligned to the new consumer duty regulations. Our high-quality service proposition provides value for money on fees, and we pass all client interest earned on clients' cash back to clients. Though the macroeconomic outlook remains uncertain, our business model continues to attract inflows and grow client and advisor numbers, while our digitalisation plan will further deliver efficiencies and operational leverage for the platform. I appreciate many of you will have seen this slide before, but I think it's worth repeating. We remain focused on our strategy and business model. We aim to be the number one provider of software and services for clients and UK financial advisors. Our business model and strategy drives growth in FUD, advisor and client numbers. We continue to believe that this is best achieved through the delivery of the highest quality customer service, delivered by highly skilled staff and underpinned by high quality in-house technology. With our focus on efficiency and quality, we will continue to deliver on profits and dividends. During the 2023 financial year, our business model has continued to deliver steady growth against a challenging market backdrop. The number of advisors and clients registered on Transact both increased by 2% over the financial year. The platform delivered strong positive net inflows of £2.7 billion during the period in the face of continuing investor caution and heightened withdrawals seen across the sector. Our average daily funds under direction for the financial year increased 2% year-on-year, growing group revenue by 1% to £134.9 million. This even after the full-year effect of the fee reductions introduced in the 2022 financial year and a slightly smaller reduction in FY23. This resulted in underlying profit before tax of 63 million, a modest decrease as expected from FY22, driven by the planned ongoing investment in software and IT infrastructure. Our profit before tax margin remains strong even with this investment, which is already delivering enhanced operational leverage on the platform. Cash generation continues to be robust and the balance sheet remains strong with no debt. This has allowed us to declare a second interim dividend of 7 pence per share, giving a total dividend of 10.2 pence per share, maintaining the total payout at the same level as FY22. Moving to slide 6, this graph demonstrates Transat's consistent track record of delivering positive organic net inflows, as seen by the dark blue bars. Our gross net inflows have been particularly strong as a share of advisor market net inflows over the last 12 months. These robust net inflows have helped grow our share of the advisor platform market, heading towards 10% over the last five years, as seen in the lower trend line. This all emphasises the strength of our proposition as we continue to deliver against a challenging backdrop. Our digitalisation programme is enhancing our proposition and making the platform more efficient, helping provide a higher quality service to our clients. In financial year 23, we have grown both online platform functionality and advisor self-serve options and advanced the digitalisation of many paper-based forms and processes. We have also hired a UK-based chief technology officer to continue to drive our platform digitalisation programme. Advisor firm uptake of our functionality has been strong, with two key efficiency drivers, but live chat and code browse usage up 25% and 41% respectively in the year. The digitalisation plan has helped enhance Advisor experience on the platform, as our client services teams have been more able to focus on the value-added tasks. We have received good feedback in our own Transact Advisor survey, as well as in external third-party surveys, ranking first for service out of the large platforms in Investment Trends Report 2023, and this is further reflected in our 95% client retention rate. Beyond the FY23 year, we expect to benefit from enhanced economies of scale, ensure all new developments are digital first, and continue to develop the interface between Time for Advice's Curo and the Transact online product. I'll now hand you over to Jonathan for the platform update. Thank you, Alex.

So as Alex mentioned, we had record closing FUD as funds under direction of 55 billion, which was up 10% on prior year. And we also obviously note our average daily FUD, which was a tad lower because there was quite a lot of volatility markets throughout the year. Advisor and client numbers are both up, which bodes very well for the future. And the reason it bodes well is because our client retention is very good, our clients are happy, and therefore they tend to bring more family members to the platform and also top up their portfolios, which you'll see later. We did undertake a review in financial year 23, whereby we actually closed quite a lot of small portfolios, about 4,000 small portfolios. Often these have got small residual amounts in. It could be a dividend that arrived after the portfolio was closed. So we wanted to enjoy the operational efficiencies of not having these small portfolios. So we closed 4,000 of those, and there was associated with that about 250 advisers. As I say, that should help improve operational efficiency. In terms of net flows, you can see from this chart that we came second for the financial year 23 in terms of net flows at 2.7 billion. And the important thing to note here is that it's entirely organic. So we weren't buying firms or buying companies. in any way. This is all organic growth. And we ranked second with a market share of net flows of around 20%, which is obviously very pleasing. Thank you, Luke. Then on this chart, on the left-hand side, you can see the long-term track record of our growth in funds under direction and client numbers. Clearly in 2022, as stock market volatility was high, you can see there was a drop there. But overall, you can see that nice, steady growth in funds under direction and client numbers over time. And then on the right-hand side, this shows the source of our flows. and you'll see that the dark blue box, 55% of our inflows, this is existing transact supporters amongst that 7,000. who are actually bringing more clients to us. And that's because they're pleased with the transact service and therefore bring more clients to us. So that's very pleasing. And then on the box, which is 41%, the chunk of the pilot is 41%, this is existing clients actually bringing more money to us, topping up their ISAs, pensions, etc. So that's very pleasing. And you can see from this chart that in terms of the funds under direction league tables, we are one of the largest now at ranking third with a share of around 10%. So that's very good. And you'll also notice that we are one of the few with proprietary technology. Our award-winning service and the fact that we've always been very aligned with the consumer duty requirements has really helped us become a large platform and ranking third there. And we see the technology as a key differentiator. It means that we can... Adjust things, change things, we listen to advisors and we change our software, we change functionality based on the feedback we receive, which goes down very well with advisors. And this means that we can now deliver benefits of... Well, we benefit from the economies of scale, and that means we deliver this very good margin of 47% in the year. And remember, over the years, we've also reduced... prices to clients as we share the economies of scale that we're enjoying. So you can see more here, more evidence of our award-winning service. So by focusing on advisors and their client needs, we continue to be highly rated in the quantitative studies and to win awards. So investment trends and core data, these are both large quant studies that that are obviously totally independent. And then also there are various awards which tend to be expert panels, etc. But we do well in both of those. And, you know, despite our size, we remain very focused on advisors' requirements. I personally speak to advisors almost every day. I personally present at every one of our roadshows to IFAs throughout the UK. and I encourage all of my colleagues to stay very close to the market. When we get the results from this research and client feedback, then we share that amongst the management team. So when they're considering changes in their functional area, the requirements of the advisor and their clients is always front of mind. Of particular note is the high level of satisfaction amongst our regular users. So this is the fourth bullet point, and it's from Platform, which is a research company, and we get the highest satisfaction rating from primary users of any platform. You can see there, which is particularly pleasing. So we continue to meet advisor needs. We continue to meet client needs. On charges, we aim to provide value for money. And as Alex mentioned, we always pay 100% of cash interest to our clients. In fact, many, many of our clients, about a quarter, actually have their entire transact charges offset by the interest that they're earning on that small percentage that's in cash on their portfolios. And on service, we continue to rank top for platforms with over £10 billion of funds under direction. And we like to reference the independent research rather than anecdotal feedback and a very much evidence-based approach to considering how well we've done. And please note our number one ranking for supporting advisors, and that's because we are providing a wide range of wrappers, we provide a wide range of assets, we provide a wide range of discretionary investment managers. So we're helping support the advisor's proposition overall. We do a lot of work, technical support, and the way we allow families to link their portfolios, even move money between family-linked portfolios. So we're helping advisors who often think of their clients as the household, not just mum or dad, but the entire household. So we help them in fulfilling their proposition. This is some data from Fundscape, a third party who provide these estimates of the growth of the platform space. And you can see here that their midpoint is 11% growth over time. which results in very, very strong growth in the platform sector, adding something like $350 billion over the next few years. So we feel we're in the right place because there's all these assets moving to platforms, and we want to remain the best player in the right space. We've always been very aligned to the consumer duty requirements. We've always paid all cash interest to clients and our current rate is around 4.9%. We manage this very actively across seven highly rated UK banks and as we're allowed to within the Client money rules, we hold some of this on 7 days, 14 days, right up to 90 days, so that we can return really good interest back to clients. Currently, it's about 7% of our funds under direction that's sitting in client cash, so whether that's in an ISA or a pension wrapper or whatever, there's this higher percentage than normal sitting in cash, earning these very good interest rates. We actually rank, we're market leading for this. So there's various league tables produced by Citywire and others and we're always right at the top there. So we have a very clear, transparent charging model. We believe in providing fair value, no hidden charges. We don't have complicated menus like some people might, often called Ryanair-type pricing. We just don't do that. It's very transparent, very clear, and we aim to provide value for money. We have a very wide range of wrappers, the widest in the platform market. So as well as the mainstream areas like SIPs and ISAs, we have things like Section 32s, insurance bonds, both onshore and offshore. So we're giving the advisor the widest range of wrappers so that they can meet the requirements of their customers. we've seen an increase in the use of third-party discretionary investment managers over the last few years and we're agnostic to which discretion investment manager advisors select in fact we have over 120 different discretionary managers on our platform and over a thousand models there to choose from we do have um A relationship with BlackRock, where we partnered and we do provide a BlackRock model portfolio service, which is extremely well-priced, exceptionally good value, and that is exclusive to Transact. And in all of our communications to clients, you know, a big requirement under consumer duty, we try and make it as simple as possible and really keep our literature easy to understand so clients know exactly what they're getting with Transat. Okay, thank you. I will pass back to Alex now to provide the financial update.

Thanks, Jonathan. So moving on to the financials for the period. Group revenue remained steady over the financial year, increasing to £134.9 million in the face of economic uncertainty, ongoing investor caution and the full year effects of the Transat price cuts affected in July 2022. In line with expectation, financial year 23 has delivered a moderately lower underlying profit before tax figure than the previous year. This is due in part to the planned investment in additional IT staff for the enhancements to platform digitalisation, as previously discussed, as well as the impacts of inflationary pressures on salaries and other costs. IFRS reported profit before tax rose by 15% to £62.6 million. There were two key drivers for this increase from the prior year IFRS result. The first being the historical VAT cost included in FY22, which obviously doesn't recur. And the second is that we've concluded that time for advice is not meeting the stretching target thresholds required to earn the additional consideration. Hence, there's been a reduction in the non-underlying expenses as this accrual has been released. During financial year 23, there was a moderate decrease in platform revenue yield due to the effects of targeted price reductions that have been implemented. As we can see, the rate of revenue yield decrease has slowed this year compared with the prior year trend. The 2% increase in average daily FUD on the platform helped increase annual commission income to £116.1 million for the financial year. Even with the 412 months of the reduction in annual commission rate, which having been implemented in July 2022, only affected three months of that financial year. Wrapper administration fee income increased 6% year on year. This is due to an increase in the number of open tax wrappers and reflects the continued underlying platform growth. These two recurring revenue streams, annual commission and wrapper administration charges together, contributed 99% of the total platform revenue. On time for advice, the current Curo 3 software continues to attract new users. Overall, there's been a 22% increase in paying licensed users year on year and a corresponding 23% increase in revenue. This recurring license fee income is the main revenue stream for T4A. In mid-2024, we will deliver the new advanced Curo on Power Platform software to the UK market. We continue to manage costs carefully and in line with our guidance. The main driver of increase in total group costs was staff costs, which for the period increased 14% year on year. This increase in staff costs is due to several factors, the key ones being an increase in total group headcount due to the planned recruitment of additional IT and software professionals, a Chief Technology Officer and a new Chief Risk Officer, as well as proportionate salary increases for group employees to reflect the impact of inflation on the cost of living. This increase in IT and software professional headcount is an investment to support our long-term growth plans. The investment is already delivering greater operational efficiencies this year and we expect the impact to increase moving forward as more developments are implemented. Regulatory and professional fees have remained flat for the year, whilst the modest increase in occupancy costs is driven mainly by accounting treatment. Moving on to slide 22, as shown in the table on the left, the group continues to maintain a healthy liquidity position and strong cash generation. I'm pleased to announce that the second interim dividend of 7 pence per share has been declared, resulting in a total dividend of 10.2 pence per share for the financial year, The total dividends have been maintained at the same level as last year. Looking forwards, our cost guidance for financial year 24 remains unchanged and we will continue to manage our costs carefully. The staff cost increases for financial year 24 are the final element of the one-off step-up investment in our IT and software professionals as part of the platform digitalisation plan. The current investment in IT and software staff is already delivering efficiencies and operational leverage and we expect this final staff cost increase to further enhance these efficiencies. We expect the post-combination consideration cost of time for advice in respect of years 24 and 25 to reduce to £2.2 million and £0.5 million respectively, as only the deferred consideration element will now be recognised. On the revenue side, we will make two focused platform pricing changes which have limited cost to us. First, we plan to remove the platform buy commission. This is a small charge applied when clients purchase assets. This will be removed completely in April 2024. This simplifies our charging structure further for clients and opens up a small market of advisors who currently will not use Transact whilst we have this fee. Secondly, at a very low cost, we will also remove the wrapper fee on junior ISAs to encourage more intergenerational planning. as used regularly by advisors. Looking beyond financial year 24, we expect the platform digitalisation programme to be substantially implemented and deliver in operational efficiency. We expect a significant moderation in our cost growth rates as our IT recruitment is finalised and inflationary pressures start to abate. Our platform pricing will be kept under review as always. In summary, we've delivered robust results and continued growth in volatile markets amidst an uncertain macroeconomic environment. The opportunities in the UK advisor sector remain compelling, and we are well positioned to take advantage of these opportunities in 2024 and beyond. Our award-winning proposition, the Transact platform, continues to win share of Flows and FUD, delivering resilient net inflows and remaining strongly aligned with consumer duty regulation. The platform will continue to be enhanced through our digitalisation programme, improving our service and functionality whilst driving efficiencies. And we remain strongly focused on our aim to be the number one provider of software and services for clients and UK financial advisors. Thank you all for your time and we'll now open up to questions.

Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad. Please make sure the mute function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, please press star one to ask a question. We'll pause for just a moment to assemble the queue. And our first question comes from Alex Muthurst from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Yeah, morning, Alex. Morning, John. Thanks for the presentation and good stuff with the results today. A few from me, if that's okay. Firstly, you're clearly a decent way through the digitization investment program now. Can you talk a little bit about how your tech and service scores internally are tracking versus your ambitions? And also maybe give a word about just how the competition is progressing on these types of metrics. Secondly, clearly there's some commentary about T4A not meeting the sort of stretch targets. Can you give your assessment of the T4O deal now that we're sort of over a year down the line and perhaps lay out your updated ambitions for this business into the medium term? And then finally, just touching on consumer duty, I mean, it looks like Transact is pretty well positioned really for consumer duty. But I wondered if you could just maybe give a word about the impact of the duty on the end market, you know, small IFAs, you know, how much pressure are they under at the moment and what do you think is the outlook for that part of the market. Thank you very much.

Thanks, Alex. I'm going to hand over to Jonathan to pick up your first and third parts of that, and then I'll come back at the end and clear off the time for advice question.

Yeah, so on digitalisation, thanks for the question, we've completed a lot of the work. So, you know, people can open a portfolio, they can open wrappers, all online, all digitally signed. There are some lesser-used forms, let's call it, that we're also going to put entirely online so advisors can do that themselves. And there's certain processes that we are revisiting. So, for example, there are times when we insist upon a client signature, albeit an e-signature, and we're looking at... whether we might actually adjust that and allow the advisor to provide consent. Obviously, the client will be fully informed. etc. But it could simplify some processes as well. So we've done the core bit and we're looking at these others. In terms of the competition, it's a huge spectrum. I mean, we're still ranking in the top quartile of how digital we are by the third parties. Some new entrants are more digital. They are allowing advisors to consent on behalf to on behalf of clients for certain things, which is why we're considering that. So it's going very well. We do this incrementally. We're very cautious. We test things very carefully before we release software into production. So that's digitalization. On consumer duty, we find... Our users, they're very aligned with the Transact way of doing things. So their own charging is always very transparent. Most advisors actually have... more than enough clients, so they don't seem to have difficulty in attracting clients. And I think that's because the UK personal taxation is one of the most complicated in the world. I mean, the latest pension changes, by the way, I mean, that's a whole other load of complications. So I think the demand for advisor services is high, and I think the quality... advisors, you know, have tended to be aligned with consumer duty for many years. I mean, many of our users have been charging fees. Well, all of them have been charging fees since Transat was launched. So when RDR came along, there was no change for them, for example. So, you know, our cohort are very aligned with consumer duty. Alex, maybe I'll pass it to you for the time for advice question. Yeah, I can pick that up, Jonathan.

Yeah, so on that, Alex, obviously we actually purchased time for advice now back in Jan 21. So they're a fair way down their track and through the performance structures that we set in place. When we did that deal, we paid an upfront fee. of just over £8 million, and then we had four future payments that were guaranteed but were actually dripped out and won't be finished until January 25. They're all about two million apiece. And that ties everyone in and make sure we kept all the developers and everyone aligned with what they were doing. And on top of that, we had another potential earn out of another eight million that was based on performance targets and delivery of revenue streams and profit. over the whole four-year period. And those were pretty stretching targets and they have failed to be met now to a point that we are able to release what we'd accrued on those fees and we will not be paying that bonus. That doesn't mean that they're actually not making good progress. As you can see, they've been growing their revenue The losses have been narrowing, and the beta test that we put out that was with a relatively major IFA group has actually gone very well, and that is now in production and runs business as usual. The lessons we've learned from that are being implemented into a new version of that software, and that will actually be launched with another user in February. And so long as that all goes smoothly, we then can look to roll out the product much more widely in the second half of FY24. So I expect to see the... T4A position move into profit towards the end of 2024, early 2025, as those revenue streams actually are increased. Because we have these relationships ready and waiting to go. We don't actually have to go out and sell this. These deals have been done. We just need to get this product finalised now and start to get it rolled out. So in terms of where I am with it, I'm very happy with the product. I'm happy with the development. They've delivered slower than we would have liked, but we built in these contingencies in our pricing, and I'm comfortable that it was actually delivering where we expect it to be.

Great. Thank you very much.

Very clear. Ben Bathurst from RBC. Please go ahead so your line is open.

Good morning. Thanks for the presentation. Got questions in two areas, if I may. Starting with costs, it does appear that you've been able to undertake some one-off staff cost savings in the year for FY23. Just looking ahead into next year, what are the prospects of you being able to do something similar, do you think? And then secondly, just on the client interest income, I think fair to say some of the guidance within the FCA's latest DSCEO letter on the topic is fairly open for interpretation. I just wondered how much interaction have you had with the regulator over the subject over the recent months? And obviously you've seen this week one of your competitors has announced new charging structures whereby they're effectively using the higher client interest income to somewhat subsidize charge reductions from other areas. I just wondered, does that disadvantage you at all competitively? And what sort of view do you expect the regulator to take of that practice? Thanks.

Thank you. If I answer the client interest one first, please. Yes, so it's been quite a week. We've had, as you say, I've received a letter from the FCA on client interest, the same as other platform CEOs. We've actually been in liaison with the FCA for some while on this. I've written to them several times. My personal view is, and our house view, is that this belongs to clients. It's exactly the same as a dividend or a distribution. It is not our money. It is clients' money and we should pay that. And we should charge in a very transparent, clear way for the platform service. That's what we do. So what the FCA said, as probably some of the listeners are aware, there's two aspects to this. First aspect was they said no double dipping. and that means you can't charge a platform fee and skim interest. You know, you can't do that. If you do skim interest, which is not banned, but if you skim interest, then particularly with consumer duty in mind, you know, you have to be able to justify that to yourselves and feel that that's still in line with consumer duty. So... What the FCA didn't do, it didn't set percentages or it didn't set amounts of what's acceptable and what's not. I think this is going to run for some while because if a platform is charging, like we do, 24 basis points for cash and assets that are on the platform, and another platform is skimming maybe a reduced amount but still 1.5% or whatever it is, then clearly that could come under some challenge. I think the key thing here is it's got to be aligned with the consumer duty requirements. So I do think this is going to run for some while. It's a fairly short implementation for people early next year. And then I think there's going to be lots more iterations. From our perspective, we're very comfortable with our approach. As I mentioned, there's a quarter of our clients actually have their entire transact charges offset by interest. So you can imagine advisors are very happy with this. It's easy to explain to clients, and it's certainly a key part of our proposition. And I think it supports the integrity of what we're trying to do. So, no, I don't feel it disadvantages me at all. In fact, I think it's very helpful.

Thanks, Jonathan. Ben, coming to your point on staff costs, the lower staff costs have been managed through two or three different routes. First and foremost, after some discussion with our staff groups, actually managed to bring in an inflationary increase that was tiered across the group, so it actually supported the more junior and lower paid staff more, whilst the senior staff and the managers took a lower rate. that actually managed to bring us in below the numbers that we were originally sort of expecting on an inflationary level. And I think it's actually indicative of the way we work as a business, that everyone is committed to making us successful and delivering, and that we're all in this together and everyone sort of has chipped in to do their bit to manage the expense piece down. So that's one side of things. And then on the other side... As we've been sort of growing our IT staff and starting to deliver on that side, we've, one, actually built that team at a steady rate and have been delivering, but have not actually needed to add quite as fast as we had originally projected. We would still like to bring the same number of people in, but so far we've been able to deliver on a slightly steadier route. And those deliveries are already producing some efficiencies, helping us improve areas where we can develop straight through processing, actually get advisors actually probably doing more at their end that gives them more control but means that we're not having to rekey or actually not chasing up correcting errors on things that they've done. So a lot of that has actually helped us on our operational side. So whilst we've still been adding to our operational staff as the business has been growing, the rate of pace of that growth has been able to be maintained at a slightly lower level. So all of those combined have led to the lower rate of increase than you would have expected. Looking forward, as you suggested, I think the IT people will still be coming in over the next year as we sort of finish that off. So I still expect that those costs will come through, as we've said in our guidance. But as we've done over the last 12 months, we will recruit the right people at the right price when they're available in the market. in line with delivering what we need to deliver. So we certainly won't be rushing out and paying silly money for them. So it may not deliver reductions on what we're suggesting, but we certainly wouldn't expect to be going over it. And there may be slightly less scope for the inflation-driven piece because we're all expecting inflation to come down a bit next year. But I'm sure we'll go through much the same process. When we'll take those views at the time that we're discussing it, we'll go through the same consultations with people as we did this year. so you know our approach is much the same um the deliveries will be dependent on the the absolute levels of those two over the year great thank you for that the next question comes from rahim kareem from investec please go ahead hi good morning guys hopefully you can hear me um two questions if i if i may um

obviously very strong performance with respect to to net flows um you know and and you kind of surpassed by true potential which has obviously been driven by acquisition just was wondering how you guys are dealing with the issue of consolidation within the market and and the risk that that presents from both an advisor client number and from the flow perspective and then The second question was just to get a better sense of what has driven the slight degradation in client retention in the year. So if I'm not mistaken, that's dropped by a couple of percentage points. Still a very high number, but just trying to understand what had gone on there.

Yes, okay. Thank you. Jonathan here. On the consolidation point, obviously there's a number of players in the market, circa 30 players of varying size in the market that are backed by private equity. We know all of them. We monitor all of them, as you can imagine. They're very different. There's not just one consolidated type. Some of them are focused very much on achieving operational efficiencies. Some of them are looking to do centralised investment proposition, very much work with existing platforms. Others have said, well, we'll actually build our own platform. So they're very different types. collaborate with with all of them we've selected the ones that we enjoy working with where our strategies are aligned and what we don't therefore you know we don't therefore do is somebody that's dead set on providing an advisor as platform etc we we don't partner with those type of consolidators So I think it's a matter of understanding the cohort that we want to work with and then doing that exceptionally well. So we've got very good relationships with several of the consolidators and that works well for us. So that's our approach. And you can imagine we monitor daily the acquisitions that all the consolidators make. It can be very good for us because if a consolidator, you know, buys a few firms, some of those are Transat users, they tend to be the happiest group amongst the firms that... They're bought and therefore, you know, actually help us bring other firms across to transact. So it can be very positive for us if we play with the right type of consolidator.

Just picking up on the client retention piece, Rahim, I'd just refer back to something that Jonathan mentioned when he was going through the platform performance. We did this exercise of working with some of our sort of very small value clients and the advisors around them, and that resulted in us removing, you know, with consent and agreement with the clients. This was about 4,000 clients from the... from the platform. So you can see that alone is most of the dip that you're talking about in the retention rates. So I think aside from that, everything else has been pretty much as it has always been.

That's super helpful. So if I may just maybe add just one more. Just on the headcount growth that you've been targeting, could you just remind us what the overall target is for 2024? just so that we have that number. You've given very helpfully cost guidance, but just absolute headcount number.

Yeah, I mean, on the IT side, we said we were sort of looking to, when we first announced this, we said we were going to move to and bring in 50 people. And we've sort of been working through that. And that number hasn't changed. So I'm still expecting that the total spread of additional people that we've brought in into our Australian development teams and our UK development teams and our UK infrastructure teams. We'll between them all total that 50 that we've talked about. And that will give us a total sort of IT and development number of around about 150, 160 people.

It's probably worth just adding there that we've done the big hires, you know, the chief technology officer, the architect that we required, et cetera. So obviously you want those in first. So we've done the big hires, and now we're recruiting at the lower levels. Great.

Thank you so much.

Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

guys thanks for the presentation uh first question would be if you can give an update on what proportion of registered advisors are using you as their primary platform is there any sign it's uh increasing now given you look quite a consumer duty friendly platform in terms of the simple charges and your treatment of interest and then the second question is if you can just share any broader comments on the flow outlook heading into 2024 the mood among advisors um I think Fundscape did say it was the worst quarter on record for advisor platforms in general and in pre-Q. So just wondering if you still think nearer term, some challenges from higher rates or if there's any sign of things turning around.

Thank you. So we tend to think about our advisor types in four cohorts, if you like, four segments. So we've got strong supporters of the platform. And these are advisors who have 70% or more of their assets on Transat. And this is growing. So those strong supporters is a growing cohort. Then we've got supporters, and this is our language, that have got around about 50% of their assets on Transat. That's growing. The low users, so where they've perhaps only got 10% of their business assets, with us, then we're actually proactively decreasing that. Where somebody's got one or two small clients with us, we're saying, actually, we're probably not right for you as an advisor or you as a client. So because... What we find is as advisors use us more, they become happier and therefore they bring more clients to us. So on the whole, we are growing the supporters and strong supporters as a proportion of our base. And then with regards to the, I guess, the outlook, as you say, there was many platforms that actually had... Overall, negative flows, so negative net flows in the past quarter. We didn't. You can see from our results for the last quarter we've reported upon, there were strong flows. The current quarter we're in, we'll announce that in January. We do expect the economic environment to remain tough for a while. We do, therefore, expect clients to be withdrawing monies to support their own cost of living and maybe being more cautious in terms of how much they want to contribute to their pensions and ISAs. So we think the tough conditions are going to continue for a while, given the broader economic background.

Great, thank you. And the next question comes from James Allen from Liberum. Please go ahead.

Hi, morning, guys. Hopefully you can hear me all right. Just one short question on T4A. I noticed in the wider competitive environment where T4A operates and Teleflow partnered with SS&C and their platform HubWise, I haven't seen anything on Iris recently, but I was just wondering whether you could kind of give an overall overview on the competitive environment in T4A's market.

Yes, as you say, there's some large established players like Intelligent Office and Kuro is competing with those type of players. But... What we tend to do, we listen to our advisors and they use a whole variety of different support systems, whether that's intelligence office, Curo or other things, and listen to their requirements. And then what we very much plan to do is to integrate data. We already do to quite a large extent, actually. We already provide a lot of data to many third parties, including time for advice. And clearly we've got... plans to integrate further with time for advice but what we what we're not going to do is we're not going to say to our advisors you know we won't integrate with other other back office systems we we will but clearly over time we're going to we're going to integrate more thoroughly let's say with um time for advice but right now we want the this um new iteration of curo curo on power platform we want that to be um fully rolled out which will start in q1 next year and then we'll move on to more of the of the data integration that's very helpful thank you

Thank you, everyone. That seems to be it for questions. So thank you all for your time. I wish you a good day and we'll speak to you again soon. Thank you.