IntegraFin Holdings plc

As you know, I'm Alex Scott. I'm Group CEO of Integrafin, and with me today I have Ewan Marshall, our Group Chief Financial Officer. I'm going to kick off with an overview of highlights from the Group's financial year, and then I'll hand over to Ewan to run you through the Group's financial performance in the period. Then I'll give an update on the Transat platform performance and our strategic progress before moving to Q&A. We're very pleased that the Transat platform finished the year with record high levels of funds under direction, FUD, aided by strong net inflows onto the platform of £2.5 billion, as advisors continue to deepen their trust in our market-leading client service and platform functionality. We delivered record year revenues of £144.9 million, helped by the strong growth in daily average FUD during the period. The excellent performance by our staff in delivering our services and our platform functionality have been consistently recognised over the year, with Transac bringing home the Schroders Awards for Best Large Platform and Best Platform for Discretionary Investment Management. Delivering positive client outcomes has always been at the forefront of what we do across the business, and we've continued to pass to clients all of the interest earned on their cash balances. Our established business model continued to drive growth in FUD clients and advisors over the course of the financial year. Advisor numbers were up 5% and client numbers up 2% despite us continuing to close very small portfolio portfolios during those 12 months. The record levels of group revenue drove underlying profit before tax up 12% and increased our underlying profit margin to 49%, even with our previously guided investment in the group's software development and IT infrastructure. We continue to deliver strong cash flows and have a debt-free balance sheet, and we've declared a total dividend of £10.4 per share for the financial year 2024. At this point, I'm going to hand over to Ewan.

Thanks, Alex.

Moving to the financials for the period, the top left graph shows average funds under direction, which has grown 11% year-on-year to £59.6 billion, at an impressive 11% compound annual growth rate since FY20, buoyed by our ongoing strength in net inflows performance and also assisted by positive market movements. Looking across to the top right graph, The growth in our average FUD has translated into revenues of £144.9 million for FY24, an increase of 7% from FY23. Our group revenues have continued to grow over the years by a compound annual growth rate of 8% whilst in parallel sharing the benefits of scale with our clients by providing them with targeted price cuts. The bottom left graph shows that these record revenues have driven group underlying profit before tax up 12% to £70.6 million. Underlying profit before tax performance for the year has also been helped by an increase in net interest income earned on corporate cash. As displayed on the bottom right graph, the group delivers a consistent dividend and we have increased the total dividend this year to 10.4 pence per share. The group has shown underlying EPS 7% growth over the year at a lower rate than pre-tax profits due to the full annual impact of the change in UK corporation tax. But considering group revenue in more depth, we can see in the top graph that platform revenue represents 97% of total group revenue. Growth in average daily FUDs during the year drove increased platform revenues, with our annual charge revenue increasing 9% to £126.1 million. Wrapper fee income increased 4% on the year, and that reflects the increase in open wrappers on the platform and the continued underlying growth of client numbers. These two recurring revenue streams combine to deliver 99% of total platform revenue. Other income continues to reduce as we fully removed by commission midway through FY24, following the earlier reduction in FY23. Also note, the group does not generate any revenue from retaining interest on client cash. As you'll see in the lower half of the slide, Time for Advice has seen healthy growth in the number of licence fee paying users, with the corresponding revenue also up 10%. Although total T4A revenue has increased modestly, we're pleased to see that the income from recurring licence fees has become a larger proportion of T4A's revenue year on year. Moving on to our administrative expenses for the year. In FY24, we managed costs in line with our guidance and therefore total underlying administrative expenses rose 11% over the year. Employee costs make up the largest proportion of the overall cost base and these rose 9% in the year because of two factors. Firstly, an increase in average staff headcount in the year and secondly, an enhancement of staff salaries to reflect the inflationary environment and to ensure we provide competitive salaries to attract and retain high quality individuals within the business. Other costs increased due to a number of factors, but predominantly due to the increase in irrecoverable VAT and the removal of tax relief due to shareholders from administrative expenses, which we disclosed at the half year. Moving on to slide nine, you will see the steady moderation of revenue margin over the years. The platform revenue margin reduced over the last year for two main reasons. Firstly, because of targeted price reductions consistent with our group pricing strategy. Secondly, due to platform revenue margin moderating marginally as platform FUD grows. This occurs when client portfolio values increase and therefore the additional portfolio value can move into lower charging bands. Overall, this demonstrates our standing as a premium platform offering at a competitive price. In the table on your left is the group's liquidity position. You'll see a surplus of £32 million at the year end after making deductions for regulatory and operational requirements, along with other cash encumbrances. I'm also pleased to say we have approved a second interim dividend of 7.2 pence per share, resulting in a total dividend for the year of 10.4 pence per share, representing 63% of total underlying profit after tax. Finally, I'll talk you through the group's guidance for the new financial year. I'll talk through revenue first. Consistent with the group's pricing strategy and sharing the benefits of scale with our clients, we will be making two targeted price cuts that will take effect in FY25. Firstly, the platform will now charge one wrapper fee per pension type in family-linked portfolios, taking effect from 1st April 2025. The annualised impact on revenue is expected to be a reduction of around £2 million. The second will be a reduction in the charges applied to non-advised client portfolios, taking effect from 1 January 2025 at an annualised cost of around £1 million. These changes will aid the retention of assets on the platform, including intergenerational wealth planning, whilst ensuring that we continue to attract a strong market share of advisor platform flows. We expect the platform revenue margin to continue to moderate in FY25 to reflect the impact of these price changes as well as the ongoing marginal impact of revenue margin as platform FUD grows. Moving on to costs. We expect total administrative expenses to increase by 9% in FY25. This excludes a £2 million one-off cost to move to a new London office in 2025. The cost increase in FY25 is also driven by the full-year impact of the staff headcount increase in FY24. Finally, in FY26, we expect total administrative expenses to moderate and therefore to grow by low to mid single-digit percentages. And with that, I'll now hand back to Alex.

Thanks, Ewan. In this next section, I'll provide a more in-depth look at how the Transat platform has performed in the financial year. Moving on to slide 13, here on the left you can see how the size of the UK advisor platform market presents a great opportunity for the group, with UK platform market assets having passed £1 trillion for the first time. Of that £1 trillion, over £680 billion is currently on UK advisor platforms. On the right-hand side, we see strong projected growth in the UK's advisor platform market, as illustrated by the estimates provided by the independent provider Fundscape. As one of the leading platforms in the market, we're well positioned to take advantage of this potential growth, with the current 9% share of the UK advisor market FUD and approximately 20% share of net inflows. The direction and tailwinds for the advisor platform market remain very positive. During FY24, the Transact platform delivered impressive gross and net inflows, including our highest ever grossed inflow in a financial year, demonstrating the platform's strength in attracting new business. Focusing on the second half of the year when macroeconomic pressures eased a little, we built strong flows momentum with our net inflows returning to market-leading levels, half a billion ahead of the prior year comparison and also ahead of the first half period, which is usually higher due to the inclusion of the tax year end. Outflows were elevated during the financial year but did moderate during the second half. The solid performance in the second half of the financial year meant that in total for FY24, net flows were £2.5 billion, evidence of the group's high quality of service and advisors' desires to use our leading online functionality. Our award-winning service proposition continues to drive growth in client and advisor numbers and remains a key competitive advantage. This year, we were the only platform to improve our net wealth score. We also won the Schroeder's Best Large Platform Provider Award, as well as the Best Discretionary Investment Manager provider. We're very pleased with this second award, particularly as the use of discretionary investment managers has become an important tool for advisors as they plan their clients' financial futures. In FW24, we continue to grow the numbers of advisors and clients using the platform, and our client retention rate remains strong at 94%. This is net of our periodic closure exercise for low-balance portfolios. Moving on to slide 16, here on the graph on the left highlights our impressive growth and track record of adding advisors and FUD to the platform over time. The chart on the right shows the source of growth inflows to the Transact platform. Of particular note, 58% of gross inflows come from established advisors who have used the Transact platform for over a year and who are still adding new clients and their assets to the Transact platform. These strong flows demonstrate the success of the platform digitalisation that we have delivered and the quality of service for advice firms and clients. During the financial year, Transact ranked third for gross and net inflows, demonstrating ongoing consistency of flows to the platform. Our market share of net inflows to the advisor platform market remains strong during FY24 at above 20% and all of our flows are organic. The advantage of owning our own proprietary software allows us to maintain our regular update cycle, delivering new functionality and improved efficiency to the platform each month. The decision to further invest in our proprietary software has delivered major enhancements to the platform. 90% of portfolio applications are now opened entirely online. Additionally, 90% of client portfolio records are now updated online directly by advisor firm staff. We continue to make progress with the development of operational straight-through processing capabilities, with just over 50% of transfers to the platform now being completed without the need for any client service staff involvement. Our new advisor fee API has seen strong market uptake, with firms managing over $17 billion of FUD now making use of it. This has resulted in a much smoother automated reconciliation process for advisors and their client payments. These changes have seen significant online adoption and a reduction in manual and paper processes, thereby improving our service and operational efficiency. Looking ahead to the next financial year, we will further develop platform functionality and, as ever, continue to improve service delivery. One area of particular focus is enhanced integrations, helping to increase the speed and ease of data sharing between the Transact platform and the back-office systems used by advice firms. We will also continue the platform digitalisation plan. For example, a focus on moving the processes for opening of investment bond wrappers and pension income changes are all to be moved online. And we will continue to expand our digital support to help advisors navigate the evolving regulatory environment. Altogether, these developments will maintain our position as a market-leading platform, helping attract a greater share of net inflows and keep client retention levels high. We are cognisant of the shift in policy landscape heading into 2025. The new Labour government presented their autumn budget in late October. with the announcement of a couple of key changes to the UK savings environment, both of which we believe will drive the need for financial advice. The Treasury announced an increase in the rates of capital gains tax and also announced that from April 2027, most pension pots will be bought into the scope of inheritance tax, where they are not passed on to a spouse. It is expected that both of these changes will encourage clients to freshly engage with financial advisors, as clients will need help to navigate the ever more complex savings and retirement environment, and to ensure efficient intergenerational transfer of their wealth, savings and investment. The group's unique offering of proprietary technology allows us to respond quickly to new government legislation and policy changes, and our experienced and high-quality technical team are always on hand to guide advisors through these new complexities. These two factors will continue to drive clients and advisors to our platform. Platforms remain the best solution for advisors to manage the long-term financial plans of clients, and we remain well-positioned to capitalize on this growing demand. As advisors spend more time guiding their clients, the need for a superior client relationship management system increases, helping the demand for T4A's Curo advice firm software. To sum up, our investment case as the leading UK advisor platform remains compelling. We provide an award-winning market-leading platform attracting high-quality gross and net inflows and have managed to do so in a challenging macroeconomic environment. We've delivered strong financial performance this year with increasing revenue and earnings. We generate free cash flow efficiently and at a healthy profit margin. And furthermore, we're committed to delivering good customer outcomes and great value for money for clients. And finally, platform digitalisation is supporting the group's future growth through enabling operational efficiency and a continuing delivery of flows to the platform. Thank you for your time. We'll now open up to questions.

Thank you, sir. As a reminder, to ask a question at this time, please signal by pressing star 1 on your telephone keypad. And please make sure the mid-function on your phone is switched off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Again, it is star 1 to ask a question. We will pause for just a moment to assemble the queue. We'll now take our first question from Ben Bathurst from RBC. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone. I've got questions in three areas, if I may. On costs, I wondered if that 9% admin expense rate, the 25 that you've guided for today, could you give some color on how much of that is expected to be driven by possibly a backup. Secondary is on the competitive environment. You've obviously been able to accumulate market share in 2024. I wonder if there are any anecdotal evidence or forms that might interest CERN, might it suffer any form of recontentional damage and perhaps starting to cede share with respect to net flows. And then thirdly, On the VAT trend of IAD, I recall back at the time in 2022, you stated you were planning on contesting the HMRC ruling. I know that all the impacts of that change are provided for in your numbers and guidance.

Hi, Ben. Thanks for the questions. I'll take the cost guidance piece and then hand over to Alex for the other two. So on the 9% cost growth year on year, the main driver of that is actually the annualisation of the increase in headcount that we had in FY24. Plus we're nearly where we want to be on headcount, but we do see a bit more growth there. in the year ahead. From a non-staff cost perspective we are continuing to invest also in our back office infrastructure as well and that's leading to a little bit more cost in that area. When it comes to the property costs as well we see this as a one-off piece where we've got an overlap in the two leases that we have as we move properties so that will subside again as we move into FY26. disappearing completely.

I'll hand over to Alex on the other two.

On the interest piece, Ben, it's very difficult to be sure whether it's having any reputational damage on people at the moment. I think one of the things that we do expect is now that there seems to be an expectation of interest rates staying up higher for longer, I think that something that a lot of people may have thought would have slipped away from the regulator's radar perhaps won't slip away as quickly as people thought it would if interest rates do continue to stay up, because it will continue to be a prominent amount of income for several platforms. I can't say what the regulator is going to do, but I certainly still think that they are still looking at this and I'm sure it won't be dropping off their radar at the moment. And then on the VAT issue, we are still challenging. We still have our case actually stayed behind other cases that are going through the HMRC tribunal. So we stayed behind Barclays. The Barclays case went through its first findings yesterday. And there is actually an appeal going on at the moment, and we are stayed behind that. So we are actually still in sort of communication with HMRC directly and the tribunal. And what we're trying to do here is make sure that we don't expose ourselves to any problems if we do not manage to win our position. So we have always paid everything that's due as if we were fully vatable. And we're also trying not to spend a fortune on legal fees. So at the moment, it makes far more sense for us to stay our case behind the likes of Barclays whilst sort of the decisions on their cases are made. Obviously, the outcome of those cases, we will have to review and consider the actual findings against our own specifics. but at this moment I'm expecting the Barclays appeal part, and I think HMRC may also appeal the second part of the ruling in that case, because there were two separate rulings, one effectively in favour of HMRC and one effectively in favour of Barclays. So I'm expecting that appeal to go through, I think probably within the next three to six months.

I don't know if there's any more you want to add to that, Ewan, or I missed anything. I think that's pretty thorough, Alex. Yeah, but as Ben, as you've pointed out, there's only potential upside here.

And as Alex has said as well, we keep paying our VAT as if we need to. Yeah. I hope that answers the questions, Ben.

Great. Yeah, it does. Thank you very much. Thank you. We'll now move to our next question from Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas Exxon. Please go ahead.

Yeah. Hi, guys. Thanks for the presentation. Three on my end. Firstly, just on gross outflows, which have been running at a higher level recently, 10% of opening flood this year versus more like 6% to 7% in prior years. What would be your kind of outlook here? What are you kind of hearing about those gross outflows from clients? And also, do you think pensions coming under inheritance tax are pushes up the redemptions of pensions. And then the second question would be, if there is no cut to the headline platform fee this year, is there kind of a rule of thumb to think about the natural attrition to the yield because of the tiering effect? Say if markets go up by 5%, how much would the commission, the platform yield fall by? And then thirdly, can I just ask how much of Transac's platform assets are in kind of passive products? Now, if you have that number, I would be kind of interested to see where IFAs are on that shift. Thank you.

Okay, Ben, I'll pick up the first and the last one of those. The gross outflows, I mean, they've definitely been elevated. And I think with the environment that I referred to earlier on the interest rate piece, I think we're going to continue to see outflows being elevated somewhat above the norm. for a little while to come yet. And I think whilst we would anticipate that they would drop back, I think we all expect that they will drop back to a newer norm that will be above the old norm. And part of the reason for that is that where people are taking pension drawdowns, those increases are baked in. And as, unfortunately, several people found out when they tried to change their pension positions, post-expectations of budget outcomes, HMRC is being very clear that these things cannot be unwound on a cooling-off position. So they're certainly not going to be able to be changed on other bases. So, yes, I think we are expecting that they will come back in time, but certainly to a new level. Just picking up on your point on passives, I mean, from where we sit, I mean, around 85% of our funds are in managed assets. of our FUD is in managed funds and of those managed funds if we do a look through basis about half of that is invested in equities sitting within those funds I can't really be any more specific than that without digging around a lot as to which are just tracking and which are sort of more sort of active but you know given that a large predominance of our funds are held in pensions I think it's fair to say that there's a fair expectation that quite a lot of that will be passive. But we can provide a fuller answer to that, which we'll put online. But I don't have the specifics on passive to hand. Ewan, you were going to pick up the material point.

I think on first what Alex is saying as well, we're obviously an agnostic platform on what our clients invest in. So as long as we're offering the full suite of active and passive investments, then it gives our advisors and clients the ability to invest in what they wish. So that's the important point that we want to bring across there as well. On a rule of thumb on platform fees that you asked about, I think the important thing is we have a number of stakeholders as a group, one of which is our clients, one of which is our shareholders, and we look at many stakeholders as we evaluate our pricing. If you look back at the start of the presentation as well, you see that on average over the last five years, our FUD's grown by approximately 11% per year and also our revenue's grown by approximately 8%. So I'd take that as a broad rule of thumb on the ongoing moderation of platform revenue margin. I think the second thing to note as well is that we have a long-term aspiration to bring down the tiering a little further. We're currently in our lowest tier at 26 basis points for our clients and that should come down to 25 in the longer term and then on the next tier which is between 600,000 and 1.2 million that's currently at 17 basis points and we'd like to bring that down again over the long term to 15 basis points.

Really helpful. Thank you.

As a reminder, to ask a question, please signal by pressing a star 1 on your telephone keypad. Our next question comes from Andrew Watson from Zinger Capital Markets. Please go ahead.

Morning, John. Thanks for that. A couple from me. The first, could you just give me a sense of the overlap between the chargeable QRO users and Transact registered advisors? I mean, are there independent users of QRO there? And is there any intention to eventually embed the QRO functionality into Transact as an integrated proposition? And then the second one, just on the technology piece, it's quite evident that there's some more material projects going on in digitalization and API developments. Could you just give me a sense of how long that roadmap lasts, obviously alongside the business-as-usual improvement cycle that you have ongoing?

Thanks, Andrew. Yeah, I mean, the overlap of the piece on Curo users, Transat users, is actually relatively small at the moment. Curo is predominantly used by sort of larger consolidating advisor firms. I mean, I think it's an interesting point on sort of the value of FUD that sits on Curo is quite large, but the number of advisors is quite small. And certainly when you do the relative figures from that back to Transact and the FUD on Transact versus the advisor numbers, they demonstrate quite different markets at the moment. And that is one of the opportunities that is there in the longer term as we get everything up and into the right place. On your point of sort of Curo being embedded in Transact, whether it's ever actually embedded in all part of the same system, personally, I suspect that won't be the case, because if anything, that's not the world we're not. The world is moving away from everything being lumped together to everything being more individual component parts that can then be bolted together as you like them. So we sort of do envisage sort of looking forward a much tighter integration between Curo and Transact. But at the same time, both Curo... with other platforms and transact with other advisor back office systems are also going to need to build those interactions because both products need to be able to play with the other competitors in the market to ensure that we have the broadest marketing platform that we have to be able to attract anyone on board. But, yes, the best solution is where we want to drive everyone on through Kiro into Transact and provide sort of the most efficient and cost-effective service for everyone through that route. In terms of how long... A digitalization program and an integration program, Larson, and what everyone else is doing in the market and where we sit. I mean, I think it's fair to say that the digitalization piece of our work is probably 80 to 90 percent of the way through. But that was a relatively, if I dare to put it this way, a relatively easy part of the work to move forward. The integrations piece is much harder. It's a much more complex piece of work. And it's not just us. It will take everyone time to do this and to deliver the right outcomes. So sitting here, I'm not going to try and put a number on how long this is. What we have is a staged expectation of when we can deliver parts of this. And it won't be, as with most things that come out of Transat and Integrafin, it won't be a big bang. Oh, look, here we are. There's something completely new. It will be done in stages and gradual so that we manage and maintain our products. sort of control of the platform we continue to deliver on platform service 24 hours a day 365 days a year without needing to take the whole thing down for four days to replace it with a new one so you know our plans will in some ways maybe be slowed down a little to make sure that we can do that and continue to deliver in that way okay thank you very much

Thank you. It appears there are currently no further questions in the queue. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Alex for closing remarks. Over to you, sir.

Well, thank you, Sergey. I mean, from my perspective, thank you to everyone for attending this morning. Everything will be online, and we wish you a good day and a happy Christmas.