IntegraFin Holdings PLC

Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Integrafin's interim results presentation for the six months ended 31st March 2026. I'm Alex Scott, Group CEO, and joining me today is our Group CFO, Ewan Marshall. I'm going to kick off with an overview of the excellent results that the Group has delivered over the past six months, highlighting our strength in platform inflows and accelerating growth in profitability. I'll then hand over to Ewan to run through the group's financial performance and provide an update on the progress of the group cost and efficiency programme. Finally, I'll share an update on the operational performance of the Transact platform. In particular, I'll explain how the group positions itself as an attractive proposition for all sizes of advice firms, including consolidators, and I'll discuss the opportunities for AI use, both in the IHP business and in the wider financial advice industry. Then we'll conclude with Q&A. The group has delivered a step change in profitability with impressive earnings growth in the first half of the financial year. The Transact platform demonstrated strong performance in flows and FUD thanks to the enduring appeal of our market leading proposition that combines proprietary technology and personal service. This strategy has helped secure the group's prominent position in the growing UK advisor investment platform market. Our exceptional market position is the result of our consistent, resilient business model and long-term focus. Clients, advisors and shareholders alike benefit from a stable platform that delivers reliable profitability and plans for longevity. Our results since IPO have demonstrated our capacity for growth with the implementation of key initiatives including our cost management program and our focus on delivering technology automation. We anticipate even stronger growth in future. Half year 26 gross and net inflows were at or near record levels, with net inflows growing 14% compared to the half year 25, and average FUD up 17% at £77 billion. Our platform revenue grew 11%, with 99% of that coming from recurring sources. Meanwhile, efficiency and productivity enhancements from our cost management initiatives drove a moderation in administrative expenses growth in line with our guidance. The reduction in the rate of underlying cost growth supports an enhanced profit margin and in time will reduce the cost to serve the platform clients. As a result of this coordinated strategy delivery, we achieved 16% profit before tax growth for the half-year period. and expanded our PBT margin to 51%. We see further profit margin expansion as sustainable thanks to the broad-based strength of our business. Our business model is highly cash generative and has delivered growing dividends. I'm pleased to announce we've raised our first interim dividend for this financial year to 3.8 pence per share, up 15%. Focusing on our inflows performance, this half year saw considerable strength in platform flows, with gross inflows reaching a record level of over 6 billion. Net inflows were 2.4 billion, up 14% on the half year 25 comparative, a reflection of the ongoing quality of the Transact platform and the digital and integration enhancements we've made over recent years. Transat was in the top three in the advisor platform market for both gross inflows and net inflows for the period. Client numbers were up 5% over the period, reaching over 254,000, and we also improved our transfer ratio over the previous half-year period to 2.8 in the half-year 26, sitting in our strong competitive position. I'd like to highlight three key work streams essential to our continued growth. Data access and data quality are of paramount importance, especially as use of AI tools becomes more widespread among financial advice firms. We're renewing our focus on integrations and APIs to ensure that Transact interfaces seamlessly with advice firms' chosen technology stacks. Relatedly, we are assessing ways in which we can further leverage automation and AI to reduce processing time and deliver efficiencies, both internally in support functions and operationally for our clients and advisors. We're exploring how we can use AI tools to enhance the coding capabilities of our development team to the benefit of our proprietary technology. Our third key program of work relates to delivering the cost and efficiency program announced last year. This programme is progressing well and we are already seeing moderation in cost growth in half year 26 compared to half year 25. We have seen great success with the restructuring of our support functions and the introduction of new tools to increase efficiency. Executing and delivering on these three key workstreams will strengthen our proposition, delivering greater client numbers, strong net inflows and increased profitability. I'll now hand over to Ewan for a more in-depth look at the financials for the period. Thanks, Alex.

Good morning, everyone. The first slide that I'm going to share with you this morning is an overview of our KPIs. What you will clearly see as I talk you through these metrics is the acceleration in the financial performance of the business coming through, which is resulting from the ongoing delivery of our strategic priorities that Alex has described. As shown in the top left graph, average daily FUD has grown 17% year-on-year to £77.5 billion. Aside from market movements, this has been driven by record gross inflows of £6 billion during H1, of which the main driver has been the strengthening of our net transfers as the platform continues to attract more business from our competitors. We have achieved an impressive 14% compound annual growth rate in average daily FUD since HY23. Now looking at the top right graph, the growth in our average FUD has translated into group revenue of £85.8 million for HY26, up 11% from HY1 last year. I'll discuss platform revenue which constitutes the majority of group revenue in more detail on the next slide. The bottom left graph shows that this record revenue, combined with the slowing growth in the cost base, has driven group underlying profit before tax up 16% to £43.9 million and delivered an improved underlying profit margin of 51%. Moving on to the bottom right graph, the group delivered strong growth in underlying EPS, up 14% on the prior year to 10 pence per share. As a result, we have increased the first interim dividend by 15% to 3.8 pence per share. Looking in more detail at the Transact platform revenue for HY26, we can see investment platform revenue increased by £8.5 million or 11% in comparison to the prior year to £83.2 million. The majority of platform revenue is driven by annual charge income and the 17% growth in average daily FUD during the period translated into 14% growth in this revenue stream to £76.4 million. As we have previously discussed, the lower increase in annual charge income in comparison to average FUD is mainly as a result of clients benefiting from the natural movement through our tiered pricing structure as the value of their portfolio increases. Taking this into account, roughly three quarters of the FUD growth drops through to annual charge income. Wrapper fee income reduced in comparison to last year, reflecting the reduction in charges for family-linked portfolios that we implemented in H2 of the previous financial year. These two recurring revenue streams combine to deliver 99% of total platform revenue. As a reminder, we continue not to generate revenue through retention of interest on client cash. T4A revenue increased slightly to £2.6 million. Following next on the platform revenue margin, the graph highlights how revenue margins continue to moderate. The reduction of one basis point from the prior year comes primarily as the result of the natural progression of client portfolios through our tiered pricing structure and the effect of the reduction in charges for family link portfolios that was implemented at the start of H2 last year that I described on the last slide. Given that the impact of the reduction in family-linked portfolios is included in last year's H2 revenue, we anticipate a more noticeable moderation in revenue margin as we move forward. I'll now provide more detail on our H1 cost base and cost initiatives. Firstly, as an overview of our cost initiatives, we have made good progress during the first half of the year. Across our support functions and operational areas, we have been implementing efficiencies and structural changes. Our platform operations have continued to focus on increasing the level of straight-through processing and automation, resulting in a reduction in manual tasks and processing times. Both of these in combination have enabled us to remove headcount in certain functions during recent months. In parallel, we will continue to invest in our market leading proposition and also in staff who focus on enabling the delivery of future efficiencies, including more automation. You'll see that staff costs have been the major driver of the 4% or £1.7 million rise in administrative expenses in H1. But you also see in the bottom graph that headcount in the period has reduced by 16% or 3%, meaning that staff cost run rate is in a good position as we enter H2. Non-staff costs have fallen this year as a result of some rebates on property provisions, but also through rigorous review of our contracts with third-party suppliers. We remain confident in meeting the 3% or £94 million administrative expense target for FY26. Future roadmap deficiencies which offset planned investments also put us in a good footing for achieving our cost target for FY27. These actions have put us on a clear path to long-term sustainable growth, including reducing our cost to serve per client, while creating a more focused and resilient business for the future. Next, moving on to liquidity. The liquidity buffer has not changed meaningfully since the year end, mainly as a result of higher regulatory capital requirements in our regulated entities. We have also disclosed the liquidity held in our group company and surplus held in our group subsidiaries, as it illustrates that there will always be timing differences between profit generation in our operating subsidiaries and surplus liquidity in those entities flowing up to the group company. As a result, as well as taking into account the timing lags that I've just described, we maintain a liquidity buffer to ensure we have resilience against external shocks and can continue to invest in the business while continuing to pay dividends to our shareholders. We remain confident that at this point in time, we have the right level of available liquidity to help support the future requirements of the group. In terms of cash flow, the business continues to be highly cash generative, with the majority of profit flowing through into cash. We generated an additional £34 million of liquidity in HY26, in comparison to profit after tax of £33 million, giving a conversion of just over 100%. Cash conversion of around 100% is expected for the full year and on an ongoing basis. For those of you that want to understand more on corporate cash flows, a reconciliation of this figure is provided in the appendix to the presentation. The high level of profit to cash conversion allows us to continue to pay dividends on an ongoing basis. I'm pleased to say we have approved a dividend for the half year of 3.8 pence per share, a 15% increase on HY25. Our dividend policy continues to be to pay out 60-65% of profit after tax for the year over our two dividends. Next, I'll talk you through the group's guidance for FY26 and FY27. In summary, there are no changes to our revenue and cost guidance. We're focused on managing the platform revenue margin. We expect the reduction in this metric to slow, with the main driver of the reduction being clients moving through with the tiered charging structure. As I highlighted on our cost slides, we remain on track to deliver total underlying administrative expenses growth at 3% per year in FY26 and FY27, with cross-growth in H2 of this year slowing in comparison to H1. Given changes to interest rate expectations over recent months, we now expect net interest income to be a little higher than anticipated earlier in the year. We have uplifted expectations to £10 million in FY26 and £11 million in FY27. We continue to expect net gain attributable to policyholder returns to be in the region of £2 million per year. Moving on to my final slide, I wanted to highlight again the three core levers on which we are focused in order to drive earnings growth. Firstly, we've invested significantly in the business over the last few years. We believe this investment has been fundamental to improving our prominent position in a competitive market. with market share of net inflows consistently being in excess of 20% over recent periods. This investment now puts us in a position where we can focus on margin delivery. The second and third levers focus on revenue margin and on cost management, and leave us in a position to accelerate earnings growth and enhance shareholder value in future years. You're already seeing this come through in the H1 financials through underlying PBT growth of 16% and profit margin improvement to 51%. The strategy is delivering and we're confident in ongoing delivery moving forward. That concludes my part of the presentation. I'll now hand back to Alex.

Thanks, Ewan. In this next section, I'll provide an update on the group's operational performance and the key developments within the financial advice market. I'll discuss how the group has been adapting to make our proposition more appealing to advice firm consolidators, and I'll also provide some colour on how we're implementing automation and AI into the group's processes, and how our market-leading proposition is well-placed to keep winning in an evolving advice market. We operate in an expanding market with a compelling growth opportunity. The UK advisor platform market grew by 13% in the past 12 months. A market research forecasts an average annual realistic growth rate of 12% for the next five years. There also remains a large and growing pool of UK investable assets with potential to move into the platform market. Within this attractive market, Transac continues to take a strong share of net inflows. Our share of net inflows in the first half of financial year 26 was 25% of the market, reflecting the quality and competitiveness of Transac's proposition. Transac's stability and consistency is a key factor in our success. We have a 10% share of UK advisor platform market FUD. We continue to seek to improve our technology and service to further improve our position. A key trend in the UK advice market is the growth of financial firm consolidators. This is not a new trend, and importantly is one that we've been actively aligned with for some time, with the broadening of our Transact proposition for large and consolidator advice firms. Therefore, Transact is already a highly attractive platform partner for consolidators and large advice firms. We continue to see strong transfer in ratios both across the market overall and specifically from consolidators. Our net transfer ratio in ratio with consolidators is increasing as firms consolidate assets onto a smaller number of strategic platforms. Known as platform panels, many consolidators are choosing to include Transact in their selection of platforms. Central to this success is that Transac's proposition is closely aligned with consolidators' priorities. They are focused on continuing to grow assets under advice, drive efficiency through scale, and managing regulatory and taxation complexity. The Transac platform allows them to do this. Our breadth of wrapper capability, including bonds and trusts, is an attractive proposition for consolidators across their asset base. At the same time, our full service model and advisor succession service support advice firms scaling without sacrificing service quality. From an efficiency standpoint, APIs, platform rationalisation and integration with Curo and other advice firm CRMs allow larger firms and consolidators to standardise workflows and reduce operational friction as they grow. Critically, our in-house technology and regulatory support helps consolidators manage risk as their client bases expand. While the core proposition is already well suited to our consolidators, we're also evolving aspects of our approach to reflect the increase in scale and sophistication of these firms. That includes deeper multi-layered engagement with consolidator leadership teams, more tailored services and MI for larger firms. These refinements to our business model reflect the increasing scale and sophistication of consolidators, rather than the change in transactional strategy. In short, we understand consolidation, we're already winning with these firms and we're selectively upgrading our business model to be even more attractive to these firms in future. Another area of focus for business model enhancement is AI and automation. Integrations were already a key component of our proprietary technology strategy. Now our investment in the APIs that improve the quality and speed of integration for advice software is streamlining the implementation and adoption of external AI tools for advice firms. We're also adopting AI tools within the group's proprietary technology development process itself, particularly in back-end coding and testing. The focus here is on reducing development cycle times, improving consistency and empowering our experienced team of developers. Across group support functions, including finance, risk and HR, we're already bringing in new systems that will enable us to implement trusted AI productivity tools in core processes. This is about freeing up capacity and improving accuracy and allowing teams to increase the efficiencies of their workflows. Stepping back, the common theme across these initiatives is efficiency and scalability. AI can enable a more attractive platform proposition, a lower marginal cost per client, and a highly scalable operating model, all of which support further profit margin progression and are reducing costs to serve clients over time. We approach AI as we've approached all new technologies as a means to enhance our best in class service proposition, not a replacement for our core competencies. Our cost guidance already incorporates ongoing technology investment, including AI and automation. The work streams presented here are about deploying budgeted resources to improve efficiency, scalability and operational resilience. Looking at AI's possible impact on the advice market more broadly, we see it as a potential tailwind for the UK advice market. In particular, AI can help advice firms scale more efficiently within an increasingly complex regulatory environment. The development of AI tools can support advisor productivity. Examples include the recording and transcription of client meetings and tools that help support suitability requirement and client reporting processes. Importantly, these tools are about assisting advisors rather than replacing them, a complement, not a substitute. This will help advisors spend more time productively with clients, as well as growing their book of clients and assets, while maintaining regulatory standards. Taken together, these developments support the scale growth of more efficient advice firms that are able to serve larger client bases and greater assets under advice. Overall, we see AI's impact on the financial advice market as a net positive. Harnessed correctly, it can support the long-term sustainability and growth of the UK advice market. In turn, this creates a supportive backdrop for continued strong asset flows onto Transact. Integrafin's investment in AI and exploration of its possible opportunities builds atop our established competitive position. The group's unique and hard-to-replicate business model is built to both withstand and benefit from ongoing technological change. The group utilises proprietary technology and we're well-placed to benefit from AI back-end coding efficiencies. We provide a high-touch client service delivered by experienced staff, which is highly valued by both clients and advisors. We're a leading and award-winning brand with a strong reputation among the UK financial advisor community, and we have a deep understanding of the complex and evolving UK tax and regulatory regime. This combination of factors is differentiated, hard to replicate, and allows us to keep winning new business and take advantage of the new market opportunities presented by AI. So to summarise, in the half year 26, we delivered record growth and strong net inflows in a growing UK advisor platform market. We're confident of maintaining good net inflows momentum in future years. The group has delivered earnings growth with a 51% profit before tax margin in half year and earnings per share up 14% in the first half of the year. As we implement the cost management initiatives from the group-wide cost review, we expect to continue growing profitability and profit margin. Our continued investment in enhancing our market-leading proposition makes Transact an ideal platform for both large consolidators and small financial advice firms. The increased efficiency from the implementation of AI and automation in our proprietary technology will allow us to better serve our clients and deliver for our shareholders. We are well positioned to drive sustainable earnings growth. Thank you for your time, and we're now open to questions.