Standard Life plc

Good morning. Welcome to Standard Life's half-year 2026 results presentation. I will now hand over to Andy Briggs, Group Chief Executive Officer, to introduce the session. Andy, over to you.

Thank you, Claire. You said that without moving your lips. It was quite impressive. Look, good morning, everyone, and welcome to Standard Life's 2026 half-year results. Today, I'll begin with an update on how our delivery is building momentum across our strategic priorities. Nick will take you through the detail of our financial performance which supports achieving our 2026 targets. I'll then return to update on our next phase of growth before taking your questions. We're now in the final stages of our three year strategy and I'm delighted with the progress we've made since 2024. First, the UK market is one of the most attractive globally for retirement savings and income and we're uniquely positioned in that market because of the capabilities and platforms we've built, our leading brand and our commitment to putting our customers at the core of everything we do. Second, we're building momentum through execution of our strategic priorities which is driving growth across our key financial metrics. and means we've already achieved some of our end 2026 targets with our strong half-year results and we're on track for the remainder. Third, we're poised for further growth and an acceleration of our strategy through both the £2bn Aegon UK acquisition and the recently announced £2bn UK plc partnership. Together these are a step change in strengthening our capabilities in customer offering and provide access to a broader customer base. All of which means we are accelerating our vision to be the UK's leading retirement savings and income business, a retirement champion, helping customers achieve better outcomes and greater financial security. It also means we have even greater financial flexibility to further invest in growth and deliver strong shareholder returns. As I mentioned, the execution of our strategy continues to translate into strong performance across cash, capital and earnings, as demonstrated here. Once again, we have good growth in operating cash generation, and we remain confident in mid-single digit percentage growth into the long term. Our growing business is generating surplus capital, which we've used to improve the quality of our capital by paying down debt, while remaining in the upper half of our solvency range. Finally, on earnings, we remain on track to achieve our £1.1 billion operating profit target in 2026, having delivered another period of strong operational performance. And we continue to grow our dividend, bringing total dividend payments to £1.4 billion across this phase of our strategy. In 2024, we set a highly ambitious three-year strategy underpinned by three strategic priorities – grow, optimise and enhance. We've made excellent progress against all of these in the first half, which has contributed to the strong financial performance that I just covered. Under grow, we announced the Aegon UK acquisition and our UK PRT partnership. I'll come back to these later. Alongside these transformational developments, we're also continuing to innovate, launching Future Opportunities, a new alternative default solution designed to improve customer outcomes by opening up access to high-quality private assets. And we're increasing the allocation of private assets in our main default fund. The overall investment in our new business capability is driving strong outcomes. I'm particularly proud of the workplace wins in the first half, which I'll touch on later. Under Optimise, we achieved our deleveraging target ahead of plan and increased the amount of annuity-backing assets managed in-house to £12 billion. Under Enhance, we delivered £210 million of cumulative run rate cost savings using technology, including AI, to reshape our organisation, enhance our colleague experience and create a more efficient and scalable business. The message is simple. We're executing with discipline, delivering against our strategy and building strong momentum for the second half and longer term.

Let's look at the market we operate in.

I continue to believe that the UK market has never been this exciting. And better still, in this rapidly growing market, we're the only scale UK player solely focused on the full savings and retirement life cycle, with strong existing market positions, workplace, retail and annuities. This slide will be familiar, as we've used it before, but we've now added our pro forma market positions to reflect Aegon UK and our new PRT partnership, both of which significantly strengthen those market positions. Specifically in workplace and retail, we moved to having number two positions in both markets. And in USEs, we moved to a top three position. Let's now talk to the progress we've delivered in the first half in our key markets. The themes on the left hand side of the slide are the key reasons we're winning in our chosen markets consistent with what we set out in March. Each of these are underpinned by a broad range of capabilities which we continue to enhance to meet the evolving needs of our customers and which are further supported by the trusted Stand of Life brand. I'm delighted that our relentless focus on delivering better customer outcomes is in turn translating into strong operational performance. Starting with workplace at the top of the slide, where winning requires three things. A leading employer proposition, excellent customer service and cost efficient administration. We're strong in all three as demonstrated across a collection of key customer metrics. We've seen our net promoter score increase four points this year to 64. We have maintained an exceptionally high level of client retention at 99.8%, which demonstrates how happy our customers are with us. We secured £6.2 billion of new scheme wins in the first half, including the largest ever for Standard Rye, which will support our flow trajectory into 2027. Scheme wins are lumpy, but the £6.2 billion compares very favourably to the £1.5 billion of wins across the whole of last year. So more great progress and hugely exciting that this market will be further supercharged by market consolidation as minimum fund sizes enforce and expected contribution increases. Moving to retail, this is an area that we more recently focused on. We're investing to ensure effective customer engagement and that we offer the right products and solutions at the right time. For example, to help our customers navigate some of the recent budget changes, we've re-entered into the onshore investment bond market, which you can see in the flow-up list on the right of the slide. We're also preparing to expand our advice proposition to include inheritance tax planning and aim to launch our first targeted support proposition around the end of the year. I call out in the dotted box that we still have a significant opportunity to leverage our digital infrastructure and there's more to do here. This is an area Angela Byrne has been focusing much of her energy on since joining earlier this year and will be further bolstered by the arrival of Wendy Redshaw who will join us in our newly created role of Chief Digital and Technology Officer in the coming months. The outcome of our existing efforts in retail are already encouraging, visible on the right of the page. Similar to workplace, our retail customer satisfaction scores are improving with our net promoter score of 61, a six point improvement in the first half. I'm particularly pleased that our advice proposition is resonating so well with customers, with 95% of them rating it as good or excellent value. Lastly, the annuities business in yellow, which includes both individual annuities and PRC. Winning here is all about having a leading employer proposition, excellent member experience and competitive pricing. Our strength in all three is why we're winning in both these markets. Growth in our new individual annuity products continues, up 14% year on year. A disciplined approach to annuities is evidenced by the attractive returns generated, with lifetime IRRs in our annuity business maintained at more than 20% in the first half. From a PRT perspective, our existing business is delivering strongly, actively quoting on a pipeline of about £7 billion. And with huge client interest in our new partnership, it means that we expect an even stronger pipeline once it launches. With that, I'll hand you over to Nick, who will cover the financials in more detail.

Nick. Thank you, Andy. Thank you. And good morning, everyone. I am pleased to be presenting today another strong set of results at the half-year point of this year as we navigate towards the delivery of all of our 2026 financial targets and prepare Standard Life for the next stage of its journey. Starting my presentation with the usual financial headlines, operating cash generation of 745 million in the first half was in line with our mid single digit growth guidance while total cash generation stood at 900 million. We have achieved the leverage ratio target at 30 June while ensuring that our solvency cover remained in the upper half of our operating range at 169%. IFRS operating profit was 25% higher at 563 million supported by asset growth and cost savings which reached 210 million on a cumulative run rate basis. Adjusted IFRS shareholders' equity was 2.7 billion, benefiting from strong growth in operating profit that now covers recurring uses, offset by the negative hedge-related market impacts. In line with our previous practice, we have declared an interim dividend of 28.05 pence per share, up 2.6% year-on-year. Overall, we remain on track to deliver all the targets at the end of this year. I'm very pleased with the step-up achieved in our operating cash and earnings performance over the last two years. In line with what I indicated back in March 2025, this has provided us the headroom to reduce leverage, improving the quality of our capital, and has lifted IFRS operating earnings to more than cover our recurring uses. I will now take you through the financial results in more detail, starting with the performance of our main businesses. Backed by our leading propositions and brand, our pensions and savings business continues to grow assets, margin and profitability. Workplace saw growth inflows of $4.9 billion in the first half of 2026, including $0.8 billion from new schemes. A total of 6.2 billion of new scheme wins have in fact been secured this year, most of which are expected to insert in early 2027, and we continue to see a healthy pipeline of new opportunities. Excluding rather the contribution from new schemes, regular growth inflows were 4.1 billion in the first half, highlighting once again the strong flywheel effect of this business. Outflows reflect the higher asset base and the natural attrition from members taking the pensions. Turning to retail, gross inflows are up 9% year on year at 3.6 billion, benefiting from continued momentum in international bonds and the early fruits of our retention efforts. Growth outflows remain sizable at 7.3 billion, but we expect these to continue to improve as a percentage of AUA as our retention focus gains further traction. In the top right, you can see how these flows have combined with positive market effects to lift the overall AUA base to a combined 2 to 6 billion, up 7% year-to-date. In the bottom half of the slide, I summarized the drivers of the financial performance for pensions and savings. Given the capital light fee based nature of this business, we consider IFRS operating profit to be the most suitable performance measure. Average AUA grew 10% year on year to 217 billion, which combined with an improved operating margin of 22 basis points, drove operating profit 36% higher to 244 million, highlighting once again the power of our scale advantage and operating leverage. Our retirement solutions business also delivered a strong operating performance in the first half. As I have previously stated new volumes are not the primary driver of profits here. We run over 40 billion of annuity assets and it is the management of this large book that drives our profitability. We have two main product lines in this business namely individual annuities and PRTs. For individual annuities, product innovation and rising consumer demand, so new premiums grow by 8% year on year to $0.6 billion, supported by a 14% growth in premiums secured in the open market. PRT premiums in the first half total $1.6 billion, with a further 0.4 billion completed or at an exclusive stage since the end of June. Our stated aim is to deploy up to 200 million of capital to annuities this year, provided we secure sufficiently attractive returns. As Andy mentioned, new business returns were broadly similar to those achieved in 2025, but given ongoing low credit spreads and competitive pricing, we expect these to be lower in the second half. We remain disciplined and confident in our ability to win in this market and our competitive position will be further supported by our new UK PLC partnership with prominent global financial institutions. The drivers of performance for retirement solutions are covered in the bottom half of the slide. Given the capital utilizing spread based nature of this business, we consider OCG to be the most appropriate performance measure. Our effective management of the enforced book, combined with our scale, efficiency, and expertise in delivering asset portfolio optimization actions, enabled us to sustain the annual spread-based margin of 222 basis points, which applied to our growing average AUA of 42 billion produced OCG of $466 million, up 5% year on year. I will now move to the group metrics, starting with operating cash generation. In line with our guidance, OCG increased 6% to $745 million, reflecting both growth in the surplus emergence and higher recurring management actions, which contributed $318 million in the first half. The composition of these management actions is broadly similar year on year with further detail provided in the appendix. We're confident in achieving our guidance of 500 million recurring management actions each year as the capabilities and dynamics that underpin this performance are both differentiated and enduring. On the right, you can see the business segment analysis of OCG P&S grew by 23% to 203 million, supported by underlying business growth. As covered earlier, the OCG from retirement solutions grew by 5% to 466 million, while that from with profits, Europe and others taken together produced 76 million. Turning next to the group solvency walk for the first half, after covering recurring uses, We generated 0.2 billion of net recurring capital mostly in the form of own funds which added five percentage points of solvency cover. Non-recurring items netted to a small negative amount and included 0.1 billion negative contribution from economics net of hedging. The operating capital generation in the period combined with support from the opening surplus position enabled us to retire 0.5 billion of debt in June. The resulting shareholder coverage ratio declined to 169%, but with the debt reduction program now behind us, we expect this ratio to rebound in the second half. Turning next to leverage, our ratio improved to 29%, reflecting the 0.5 billion debt redemption outlined in the previous slide. We have achieved our 30% target in the first half of 2026, while remaining in the upper half of our solvency operating range. Since the end of June, we have issued a 350 million RT1 debt instrument to fund a portion of the cash consideration for the Aegon UK acquisition, and a further 300 million debt raise will be undertaken ahead of completion. I would remind you that the mixture of debt and equity funding of the transaction has been structured to produce a leverage ratio on completion that is in line with our 30% target, a level which I consider appropriate for our business going forward. Turning next to cost savings, where we remain on track to achieve our 250 million target net of inflation by the end of this year. On a run rate basis, we have achieved $210 million of savings up to the end of June 2026. Savings on an earned basis in the first half of 2026 were $95 million, which was some $55 million higher year on year, with broadly two-thirds of this uplift reported through earnings, and the remaining one-third accounted through the CSM. The chart on the left depicts the delivery timing of the 250 million cost savings, with the final 40 million component expected in the second half of 2026. On the right, the pie chart shows where the cost savings have come from, highlighting how we have structurally reduced our ongoing cost base through a combination of migrations to end-state platforms and business simplification. These actions will both underpin and sustain the improvement in our operating margins as we grow the business from here. Moving to the IFRS results, our adjusted operating profit increased by 25% to 563 million. Profits from pensions and savings grew by 36% to 244 million, while those from retirement solutions increased by 13% to 324 million. With the pensions and savings earnings growth outpacing that from retirement solutions, we have continued to improve the capital light mix of our profits. These performance improvements were driven by business expansion, cost savings, and higher investment margins, reflecting the successful delivery of our growth-optimized and enhanced strategic priorities. We are on track to achieve our 1.1 billion operating profit target at the end of this year. This next slide completes the IFRS basis picture. As you can see in the dotted box, the improved operating profit performance is now covering our recurring uses in line with what we said would happen in 2026. Non-operating items include the planned investment spent to deliver our strategic priorities and 25 million of expenditure relating to the strategic transactions announced in the first half. Adverse economic variances of 473 million were almost entirely driven by negative marks on equity hedges following an 11% blended rise in markets. As previously explained, this is a known consequence of our hedging strategy which protects cash and solvency capital but gives rise to an accounting mismatch volatility under IFRS. The resulting IFRS shareholders' equity level continues to pose no practical restrictions to our strategic and capital flexibility, nor to our ability to pay a dividend. As I have previously indicated, this adverse variance is offset elsewhere in our financials, which I will come to next. I have updated the slide that I first shared in March, which shows where these offsets come through in our financials, namely in the increases in our two key stores or future value. These are the insurance contracts CSM and the investment contracts value enforced which grew by 0.1 billion and 0.6 billion respectively year to date before tax with 0.5 billion of the combined increase coming from market effects. These future stores of value are now over 10 billion on a pre-tax discounted basis and will emerge through IFRS earnings in future years providing a strong underpin to our performance trajectory for many years to come. In my final slide, I would like to take stock of the notable transformation in our ability to generate positive excess cash since 2023. By growing OCG and moderating our recurring uses, we have significantly improved our ability to both cover our growing dividend and generate a rising level of excess cash. In the first half, this excess was 2 to 9 million, and we expect this to be 0.5 billion at the full year, the level required to cover the 2026 debt redemptions from in-year capital flow. Also in 2026, we have announced two strategic transactions, namely the acquisition of Aegon UK, which is expected to enhance recurring excess cash from year one, and the new UK PRT partnership. Both will allow us to accelerate the growth of our main businesses and will provide further support to our mid-single-digit OCG growth guidance. With these transactions in place and the leverage ratio target achieved, our capital allocation focus from 2027 will be directed to growth and shareholder returns. I will now hand you back to Andy.

Thank you, Nick. We continue to be focused on delivering our promises for 2026 and we are really excited about what comes next as we progress to our next phase of growth. So let me cover some of that now. When we started the strategic plan, we set out a clear vision to be the UK's leading retirement savings and income business. We began building out the capabilities shown here in blue to achieve this vision. And the evidence of this comes through in our strong first half results. The light blue box at the top, a digitally enabled and personalised customer interface focused on data, guidance and advice is the last bit of the picture. Building this out is now very much our focus and expect to hear more on this in 2027. Through both our £2 billion acquisition of Aegon UK and the up to £2 billion PRT partnership, We can scale and accelerate that same strategy. And in doing so, help more customers achieve better outcomes and greater financial security in later life. It's not just me who's excited about what is to come from Standard Life. It's fantastic to see the collective energy from our colleagues throughout the organisation. With the Agon UK transaction, we're bringing together two businesses with shared goals, ambitions and social purpose to create a new leader in pensions and savings. This transaction is both strategically and financially compelling. Let me remind you of the logic behind this is set out on the slide. First, it gives us increased scale. Standard Life will become the largest retirement savings and income business in the UK. Second, it's really complementary in terms of capabilities, which I'll come on to. Third, it accelerates making us a more capital-like business. Fourth, the financial metrics for the deal are attractive. We expect to unlock £0.8 billion of net synergies and increase our excess cash by £0.4 billion over the next five years. That will give us even greater flexibility to invest in growth and return capital in the future. Finally, the funding structure is efficient and enhances our capital strength. We continue to make good progress towards completion, which is expected around the end of the year, subject to regulatory approvals. And I look forward to welcoming Aegon UK colleagues into the Standard Life family at that point and working together to capture the huge potential in front of us all. As well as giving us increased scale, this acquisition strengthens our capabilities and what we can offer our customers. Many of you will be very familiar with Standard Life's existing products and solutions which are set out along the top of the slide in the dark blue box. Aegon UK has a number of areas where our Standard Life business has less of a presence today and we regard as being very important to our offer going forwards. In workplace, standard life tends to be stronger with EBCs, while Agon's strengths lie more with corporate advisors focused on small to mid-sized workplace clients. In retail, Agon's advisor platform will extend their advisor reach and relevance, while the financial advice proposition will add significantly as well. And the additional products, including ISAs and general investment accounts, that will broaden our range. Agon's expertise in these and other areas will help to significantly accelerate our growth ambitions and better meet our customer needs. The enlarged group will have broader waterfront capabilities, strengthened distribution, with an enhanced digital and technology offer. Another important milestone this year is the announcement that we're expanding our PRT business through a £2 billion partnership. This is, first and foremost, about helping more customers achieve greater financial security in retirement. As more defined benefit pension schemes look to secure member benefits over the coming decade, we see a significant opportunity to expand the strength of standardised PRT business to schemes above £2 billion. Schemes at this upper end of the market represent over half of the £1.1 trillion of UK scheme assets. The majority of which are expected to be de-risked over the next decade. And customers here are currently only served by three providers. Second, we thought carefully about the best way to serve this part of the market and concluded that this structure creates a differentiated and unique proposition for trustees of the UK's largest BB schemes. As the partnership combines Stand of Life's trusted PRT expertise, customer service and operational capabilities with substantial long-term capital and specialist investment expertise from our partners. Here our brand, a household name, will be a key differentiator. Trustees have specifically told us they want Stand of Life to participate in the larger end of the market. We've selected partners who have similarly strong brands and reputations. The partnership will bring access to diversified private market origination through multiple leading global institutions. This consortium approach gives us access to a broader range of asset classes, sectors and geographies than will be available through any single provider, which means more competitive pricing and structuring flexibility, and this is available to the whole of Standard Life. Let me now touch on the attractive financials of the partnership. In addition to the attractive returns the partnership expects to generate, Standard Life will receive fee-based payments for its oversight, operational services and origination of PRT transactions, creating a new capital-light earning stream for us. Together, these underline our confidence in delivering mid-single-digit growth in operating cash generation and also growth in operating profit over time. The partnership is expected to launch in the first half of next year, subject to regulatory approvals, and will build volume over time. On this slide, we outline the structures of our PRT businesses in a bit more detail. On the left-hand side, you can see our existing business as it stands today, a leading player in the PRT market that has completed over £32 billion worth of transactions. We allocate around £200 million per annum of capital to this business which generates around £6 billion per annum in total annuity volumes. This business remains unchanged but will have the additional benefit of private market origination provided by the specialist capabilities of our partners. There is clearly a lot of private capital interest coming into this market which shows the opportunity. What makes our offering unique is the nature of the partnership. We've deliberately brought together multiple global institutions with very strong and complementary private credit origination capabilities, including CVC, Prudential Financial and Goldman Sachs. I'm also delighted to further deepen our long-standing strategic partnership with MS&AD. This investment reflects their confidence in both the UK PRT market and the strength of the proposition being created through this partnership. The potential is for £5-7 billion per annum of incremental business from the partnership. And of the £2 billion total over five years, Stand of Life expects to fund its £500 million capital contribution from yearly excess cash generation. So, two different ownership structures, but trustees and sponsors will continue to engage with Stand of Life directly. and received the same high standards of service, governance and member experience that have underpinned our success in the PRC market to date. Putting all this together, within the pensions and savings market will be the largest player underpinned by a number two position in both workplace and retail as I outlined earlier. What is unique to us is that we're big in both of these markets, which brings real synergistic benefits, whereas the other players are really big in one or the other. And the additional annuities capacity from our PRT partnership, on top of Stand of Life's existing business, moves us to being a top three player in the annuities market as well. But we will remain disciplined in our approach with a laser focus on value over volume. Put another way, these transformational developments extend our participation. We're now able to play in the one third of the retail profit pool, which we weren't before, with the added products of ISAs and general investment accounts. And we're opening up the other half of the profit pool in PRC. Overall, we'll be the UK's largest retirement savings and income player, with half a trillion pounds of assets. To give a sense of scale, the number two player is around 300 billion of assets. This scale supports greater commercial advantage and further operating leverage given a high proportion of costs in our sector are fixed. We'll use our expanded scale and expanded capabilities to be better for customers, advocating for better retirement and helping our customers achieve lasting financial security. as we champion the belief that everyone's journey to and through retirement can be better. So to summarise, we operate in one of the most attractive retirement savings and income markets in the world, and we are uniquely positioned to benefit. Our strong execution is delivering better customer outcomes. We're building momentum through executing on our strategic priorities, which means we're on track to achieve our 2026 targets. and will poise for further growth with Aegon UK and our UK PRC partnership. Post-2026, the broad strategic direction of the standard of life will be in line with our current vision. In November, we'll share a high-level view on our future strategic priorities as well as new financial guidance. We'll also outline uses of excess cash for 2027. Executing on our vision gives us greater financial flexibility and the luxury of generating excess cash and capital. And we'll look to strike the right balance between investing in growth opportunities and shareholder returns. In summary, I'm really confident and excited for what is to come from Standard Life. So with that, let us move to questions. We'll start with questions here in the room or then go to any questions online. So, Abid, hand first up there, very quick and keen.

Thanks, Andy. That's the same from . I've got three questions, I think. The first one is on PRT partnerships and the economics there. Just wondering if you can explain how the credit risks are shared between the partners and what you will receive in terms of the economics. You gave us some flavor there, but just for example, on a one billion pound PRT transaction, what would be the absolute OCG or OCG margin on AUA or IRRs if that's on a relevant electorate? That's the first question. And then the second one is on Europe and other. There looks like there's an OCG drag there coming for the numbers. Just wondering what the stable base there is. Is there anything structural or strategic that we should be aware of? And then finally, on the transformation of the group, you're acquiring Aegon and you're launching a PRT partnership. Are there any other capabilities that you need to add to the group? I'm thinking here of asset management more broadly.

So I'll take the third of those and then get Nick to take the first and second. So I mean we're pretty happy already as we sit here today with the capabilities we have and I think you can see that in the strong operating momentum that we're delivering in the business. I think the move to bring Aegon UK in and the PRC partnership both add to that and I covered in the prepared words in particular adding ISAs and general investment accounts opens up the other third of that retail profit pool at their strength in the small to mid-size employers in workplace the advisor platform you know similarly we're basically playing in in just under half of the prc market with schemes up to two billion in size and we're now playing in the whole market So from here, very confident that we can build out everything we need organically. I mean, I wouldn't rule out, you know, capability-based bolt-ons, but equally don't feel that we need those. Very confident that we can go organically from here. You know, there's a lot to do. We're launching a new partnership. We've got the ADA on UK. business to integrate as well as all the further steps we want to make on the retail side to drive to positive flows. So we've got a lot on our plate and quite happy to get our heads down and crack on with all of that. Nick, do you want to take the first?

Okay. Let's start with the second one, which is the simplest, and I'll come back to the PRT economics. So you will recall, or you may recall, last year where we classified the AUA from international bonds out of Europe and other and into UK retail. We didn't move the profits or the OCG that related to that, the numbers were small. But we have reflected them in the half year 2026 numbers and they were 8 million on IFRS and 12 million on OCG for the six months this year. On the PRT partnership now clearly it will take a little time for the business to ramp up and to deliver OCG and operating profits. We have been careful to guide you to say that this is a component of us delivering the mid single-digit guidance which isn't changing of OCG growth and think of it if you like as this is us laying the tracks further down the line for you know continued growth in OCG because the mid single digit guidance is over the long term guidance which I believe is very attractive given a business of our size with a base of OCG that we have today soon to be augmented by another 160 million plus from Agon. When we look at the economics I mean clearly the vehicle itself will produce an attractive overall return. I mean that's why ultimately both us and our partners are investing. We'll be able, as Andy said in his pre-prepared notes, we'll be able to augment the return when we bring it into the totality of standard life because of the deal origination fees and the servicing fees that we will levy on the vehicle. Therefore, if you like, the underlying performance of the entity plus those fees should mean that the business we transact is written on roughly the same economics of what we're doing in PLL today, which benefits from bigger diversification. From the partners' perspective, they'll be able to augment the underlying entity returns from the fixed income for fixed assets, private assets, origination fees. So we're excited. As I said, we're excited by the transaction. We're excited by the fact that it gives us access to half of the value pool that we didn't have previously. We're doing it with partners that bring not only capital but capability. And as I said, this is us laying down the tracks for the long-term delivery of our OCG guidance.

Thank you. I've got two questions, but it may feel like four. So the first question is on retail. Can you talk about what you see as your kind of in-house addressable market as in your own retail customers? I mean, what is addressable there for you? How would you attack that with additional capability? And what is this digital tool that you're talking about? Is that just a platform? Is that what you mean? That's question one. The question two is the philosophy that you see in terms of capital management going forward. One end of that could be we're going to use all of our surplus cash to grow and to return to shareholders because we think we're adequately capitalized and have a good leverage ratio, for example. The other end would be, well, actually, we want to keep some surplus going forward because we feel like it's important for our cost of equity to do that. So I'm just kind of wondering how you're thinking about it philosophically. Thank you.

Okay, so I'll take the first and Nick will take the second. So on the first, Baruch, if you look across our total customer base, it'll be around 10% will have an active intermediate relationship and where there's an active intermediate relationship we work with that intermediary to serve the needs of the clients but ninety percent won't have an active intermediary and therefore they'll turn to us for help and support and guidance as they journey to two and three retirements so so the opportunity is massive absolutely massive because they're more and more of these customers getting into 58 plus age bracket they've got multiple pension pots from different employments they don't really understand it all and they need help and support yeah So basically delivering that health and support is really all about three things. It's about having the right means by which to engage with customers. So the fact we're launching our first targeted support proposition later this year, the fact we're extending our advisors into inheritance tax planning, it is great. And Agon adding 100 plus new advisors really helps that engagement side. We need all the right products and services, and we had those in the pension space, but adding on the ISAs and general investment accounts just enables us to broaden and deepen that relationship with customers. So that's in train as well. So most of the residual work is actually the visual infrastructure, that sort of third box on the retail slide. And that's basically about two real key elements to it. The first is getting our customer data into a customer 360, which is what we call our customer database, hooking that in with the Salesforce CRM system and then developing a series of proactive nudges to customers to engage them on that journey to and through retirement. At the moment, others are basically engaging them before we do and that's why we have the outflows. We need to get that proactive engagement going earlier. And then the second thing we need to do is basically sort of drive up the coverage across that because the real focus there prior to the Agon acquisition is the 7 million pensions and savings customers. Of those 7 million, 4 million are standard life branded and half of them are engaged with us digitally. So let's get the other half engaged digitally and then we need to build the digital front end across the Phoenix Life and Reassure branded customers as well to engage those as well. So there is some investment in that. It's not big, big numbers. There's some investment because we're focused on our existing customers. It is going to take a period of time, and ultimately it'll take time for two reasons. Firstly, if you think of the pace of turnaround we delivered in workplace and PRT, but you've got a small number of professional buyers there in kind of buying in bulk for a corporate as a whole. Here, we're trying to engage 7 million existing customers, 11 million existing customers when Agon comes on board. and secondly you try out these different proactive nudges and different approaches but you actually want to see what works well and what works less well before you scale it yeah so summary of all of that is we've got a massive unique advantage over peers in having all these customers with the trusted standard life brand there's work to be done not massively expensive but there's work to be done to get all those capabilities in place really confident in the long term, but it will take time for all of that to come through.

Okay. On the second, Farouk, it's not lost on us that we have an existing capital financial management framework that has served us well over the last few years and that elements of it have been completed. So fully appreciated that it needs to evolve. And we're going to tell you in November. What I will say is at this stage is that however we deploy this capital will be entirely value driven. We will look to do the best we can to improve and enhance the intrinsic value of this business. Completely value rational.

And the other thing I'd just quickly add is what we'll cover is the plan in 2037. Firstly, things will change over the ensuing year and we'll want to make the right allocation decisions for 2028 when we get there because different options will have different returns over time. And secondly, let's recognise that we only actually get the keys for Agon at the turn of the year and while we've got a very good sense of the business from our due diligence, in my experience you always learn a bit more when you actually own a business and so we'll be able to give more colour as we take full ownership of that business. Where next we go, Andrew behind?

Great thank you for taking my questions Andrew Baker, Goldman Sachs. First one apologies can I return to the capital framework so you've been pretty clear that sort of next phase is growth shareholder return for 27. Obviously there's a bit of an interplay between shareholder return and leverage I guess how do you think about that interplay and what would be the sort of maximum amount of shareholder return you could do before i guess leverage grows any thoughts there and just how you're generally thinking about that would be helpful second one i think i'm apologies i've got the numbers wrong but you said a seven billion prt pipeline um in the release this morning should i assume that's just for schemes under two billion and if so do you have a sense of what that pipeline could look like if you were to include schemes above two billion and then finally Just on the shareholder equity walk, obviously good to see the sources in excess of usage. Notice that doesn't include non-operating expenses, which I appreciate will come down next year, but should still be a bit of a drag, and also taxes are positive. Next year, should we expect, if we were to expand that sort of to include those categories, should we expect that still to be covered on that basis? And I guess just directionally, a tax is going to be a positive or a negative into next year on that equity walk. Thank you.

So I'll let Nick take one and three and I'll take the second one. So the seven billion pipeline we talked about is very much dominated by the existing sub two billion PRT business because we only launched the partnership three weeks ago. But what I say in terms of potential, I think it's huge because to date, most of the PRT that's been done has actually been what I call small to mid-sized cases, up to around 2 billion. What we're seeing now is that the larger schemes, and of the 1.1 trillion of DB assets in the UK, over half of it is schemes above 2 billion pounds. More and more of those are actively looking at de-risking and buy-in or buy-out. So, for example, the five major banks in the UK, four of the five are actively engaged in this. I was talking to one household named client recently where they were wanting to explore this and they actually, you know, were really, they basically only want to deal with a household brand and their scheme is, you know, in the teams of billions. and they were very keen that Standard Life were participating in this market because they wanted a larger number of household names that they could put to their customers, sorry, their employees and members of their scheme. So I do think the Standard Life brand will be even more powerful and important at this larger end of the market as well. So I think the pipeline I would expect to grow very significantly now as we get that partnership launched.

Okay, on leverage, as I said in my pre-prepared remarks, 30% is where we want to manage the business kind of going forward. It's what I believe is appropriate for this group when I have regard to the kind of three criteria that are central in making that judgment, that decision. One is what do we want the weighted average cost of capital of the business to be vis-a-vis the returns that we can execute, strategy, how we generate value, when I look at our ability to cover the ensuing interest payments, and when I look at the kind of rating that I want to have for our business. So 30% is what we're going to target. There is a mechanism for managing that, whether it's bringing it down or taking it back up, because we have a lot of debt that needs refinancing over the next three years. So if we need to do a little less, we need to do a little more, then it provides us kind of a ready-made mechanism. On the shareholder equity walk, yes, on a stand-alone, standard-like basis, our commitment was that it would, excluding economics, it would be positive. Of course, it would capture the tax. The tax is not difficult. It's roughly 25%. on the totality of the profits. And in the interim financial report, we give the split how much of that attaches to the operating performance as opposed to the non-operating. So you can form a view. You can take out the component that relates to economics. So that was the plan. Of course, everything else being equal, everything else isn't equal. We have the Agon acquisition. So that will bring its own pluses and minuses. And as Andy said, when we're in control of that business, we'll be able to update any guidance. What I would say, I guess in case it needs saying, at the moment that the acquisition completes, we'll see a big step up in the stock of our IFRS equity, which will be the amount equivalent to the market value on the date of completion applied to the 181 million shares that we're issuing to Aegon Group.

So, Andrew, then Masif.

Good morning, it's Andrew Cream for Autonomous. Could I ask on two or three areas? Firstly, on the cost-saving program which is completing at the end of this year. how do you view that going forward in terms of the ability to release the second another cost saving programs and this is basically a function of you bringing all those closed books together and i can see it whether you can continue on that secondly could you talk a little bit about uh the competition in the prt market at the moment how you're seeing around this year And then thirdly, on Europe, do you have any plans for that business in terms of maybe extricating yourself from some of those businesses?

Okay, so I'll take the second and third and get Nick to cover the first. So the PRC market has definitely got much more competitive this year. I think the team did an outstanding job to write the 1.6 billion we did in the first half at the margins we did. I was really, really pleased with that outcome. As Nick said, we don't expect margins to stay at that same level in the second half. The market has got a lot more competitive. Our real edge here is our brand. In fact, we're far more diversified than most of our peers. We have real innovation in terms of the longevity swaps. We're very confident that we can win. We continue to build and add to that capability. So we've now got 12 billion of the assets in-house, for example. But broadly, Andrew, my kind of view of this is that most of our competitors are mono lines and and they they that there is a focus in some of them around volumes that they're they committed to generate either internally or externally and so when the market has been a little bit smaller um then that competition has been more intense i think when market demand increases again the reason market demand has been a bit less is there was a focused last year around the government consulting on getting a return of surplus from an ongoing scheme. What's basically transpiring there is that trustees continue to see that the buy-in or buy-out is the gold standard in terms of member protection for their members, but also the corporate sponsor is seeing that the best way to get a return of surplus is to do a buy-in or buy-out because you're effectively extinguishing your liability and therefore that the surplus becomes available. So what we're seeing is the pipeline is building up strongly again now. We just had a bit of a period of lower volumes. When those volumes get greater again, I would expect pricing to be not as competitive as it is currently in the market. From our perspective, being a multi-line player, we will remain very disciplined. And if we write less volume for a period of time, we will not be the least bit concerned about that. will be very disciplined, will only allocate capital where we can generate attractive returns. It's one of the advantages of being a diversified multi-line player. In terms of Europe, the performance of the Europe business is strong. So in particular, the international bond is one of the key parts of our UK retail business, but it's actually manufactured in our Dublin operation. the Irish domestic business is also performing strongly so we talked about this before we're still working through some of the work on the internal model in particular the migrations and more modern technology that will give more optionality in the future but at the moment I'm pretty pleased with how the European business is performing for us and in reality the value opportunity lies much more in successfully integrating Avon UK and launching the PRT partnership alongside all the BAU activity we've got going on in the UK at the moment. Do you want to take the question?

Yeah, on costs, really our focus post the completion of the 250 million program will be twofold. The first one will be to extract the cost savings that we committed to at the time of announcing the Egon UK acquisition. We said we would target 110 million. on a base of roughly 360, so that's around 30%. So that will be high on our agenda. Beyond that, in terms of standard life stand alone, my expectation, ambition, target would be, or objective, you know, would be to ensure that we can absorb inflation in relation to the proportion of our costs that relate to maintenance. Clearly acquisition costs are good costs if they bring flows and business at good returns. So that will be what we're striving to do from 2027 onwards.

Thank you. Firstly on operating surplus emergence, that's not growing 5%, it's not growing on cash, that's growing about 3% and also on funds. The growth in non-funds over the first half was 0.2. Last year was 0.3. So what, given the business has grown 12 months, what's driving that? Secondly, on management actions, non-recurring and recurring. Recurring, you've done more than 300 million, so double that, you're above the 500. Is there any reason why we shouldn't be doubling? And on the non-recurring, you've achieved the 700, but you're still doing the with-profits migration, so we should expect something more in the second half. Is that correct? And finally, on UK GAAP earnings within the subsidiaries, Nick, can you give an update on what you've generated in the first half?

They're all unique, I'm afraid.

Yeah, I didn't quite understand the first point. I mean, the surplus generation, the operating surplus generation, I think your question, these are rounded numbers. I think, you know, it's growing broadly in line. in unrounded numbers to what we're seeing on OCG. Look, on funds there's, yeah, inevitably there's many moving parts in any six months of the period. Again, we're not concerned by the shape in which the, whether it's the OCG or the OSG coming through. It's delivering to what we want to see from capital formation in our business. On recurring management actions, you know, inevitably, you know, the target is the target of 500 million. Inevitably, in the course of the year, you will see events or actions that create a first half or second half skew. You saw that to an extent last year. For example, on the yield optimization, there was the Liberation Day event created a market dislocation. We delivered more yield re-optimization actions in H1 as a result of that. This year we had the Iran crisis, created the dislocation to undertake the activity that we needed. Also capital formation actions are also, optimization actions also have a skew. So I, as I said, the target is 500. very disciplined when we set targets and we set them at a challenging level and we try hard to deliver them and if we can then we will outperform. The UK gap capital formation was positive in the light businesses in the first half notwithstanding taking the hedge related gains and our expectation is that at the end of the year will be broadly similar levels of UK GAAP distributable reserves with what we entered the year. Based on the filed statutory accounts in our life businesses, we came into the year with one and a half billion UK distributable reserves, in fact 1.8 if you include Ireland, and as I said earlier, barring what happens to markets, subject to what happens to markets from here, my expectation is that I would be back roughly the same levels.

Hi, thanks for taking my questions. Just on the first one, possibly the quicker one. In the retail growth outflows, are you able to tell us how much of the negative 7.3 million is from legacy business and runoff and from drawdown? And then kind of sticking to some of the theme within pensions and savings, you're building quite a sizable solvency to this. Can you just talk us through the lapse risk embedded in that value? Solvency sensitivities in the presentation suggest a potentially meaningful exposure to higher lapses. And I think Nick mentioned some initiatives in terms of working on retention there. So if you can just chat us through that exposure and if you're seeing any evidence of this risk playing through customer behavior at the moment. And then just the last question on funded reinsurance. So if I'm not mistaken, you have used some levels of funded re in the past. The deadline is coming up at the end of this month. How are you thinking of the proposed changes going forward? Is there still value in continuing to use funded RE? And, you know, if you stop using it entirely, how can we think about the impact on new business train and your lifetime IRs?

Sure. Great questions, Alexa. Thank you. So I'll take the first sort of one and a half and then get Nick to do the substitute bit and the funded RE. So when you look at the retail gross outflows, so it's roughly a third is customers taking income in retirement. And roughly two thirds is basically transfers to competitors. Yeah. And so the third taking income in retirement, you know, delighted, that's what we're here for. It's our whole social purpose. And that's the payroll of UK pensioners taking income and retirement. The two-thirds that go to competitors we're very unhappy about. And if I annualise the numbers, it's probably easier. So basically, of our inflows, so annualised, it's about $15 billion of outflow. $5 billion is income to customers. $10 billion is transfers to competitors. Of that $10 billion that is transferring, I should say, is transferring, $2 billion transfers internally with us. So we keep 20%. We need to make that much higher than 20%. Far more should be staying with us. But then also, for each pound the customer has with us, they have three pounds elsewhere. So the other opportunity is, even for the two billion we keep, persuading those customers to bring their six billion they have elsewhere across to us. So that's basically the focus here. We are making progress on this, and so the retention efforts that we've undertaken to date, the outflows as a percentage of AUA are coming down, relatively slowly, but they are coming down. We're really confident of the potential for all of this going forward, and to Ruth's question a moment ago, the key things we need to do, I answered there. The other thing I would say as well though just to sort of put this picture in the round when I look at pensions and savings as a whole is that the net fund flows on pensions and savings as a whole. Retail does mean the overall is slightly negative but it's about 1% of AUA in the first half and market growth was 6% and that's why the assets grew overall and of course because we're then reducing cost we saw further expansion in the margin. So the margin at the whole of last year was 19 basis points for up to 22 basis points in the first half. And I was really delighted with that. We're seeing the benefit of operating leverage. Our revenue margin actually stayed broadly flat at 44 basis points. With growing assets and reducing absolute costs, we see the benefit of that operating leverage come through. And of course, there's more to come still in terms of not all of the 250 cost reductions have been delivered and certainly haven't been earned through into the P&L. And while I'll get Nick to answer the question on the VIF side, but ultimately we're running this on an IFRS basis. That's the way we run it and operate it. So we're looking to acquire more customers through workplace. We're looking to retain them for longer, do more for them. We'll start focusing on ISAs and general investment accounts with these customers as well, going forward post the Agon acquisition to grow that revenue and then be very disciplined in leveraging technology, AI, and to be more efficient on the cost side and see those fuels continue to widen over time. But do you want to pick up on the VIF lapse risk and the funded rate?

So the lapse risk we carry in our SCR is directly correlated to the future profits that we bring onto our solvency balance sheet onto our own funds. And as you saw from the slide I put earlier, that's gone up from 5.9 to 6.5 for the investment contract business. So what is that? And that 5.5 or 6.5 actually captures our existing persistency, our current persistency experience. If we do better, which is the plan in terms of retaining our customers, then that should be upside in terms of what we can bring into the calculation. Therefore, the increase that you see in the SCR is a function of that increase in future profits. The sovereignty rules require us to apply a mass lapse test, which is roughly at the 40% level, what happens if. But a lot of that diversifies away with other other financial and non-financial risks. But the fact that the weight of assets on P&S, the fact that AUA and therefore future profits are higher is what's driving the slight increase in the proportion of our diversified SCR that comes from lapsed business. We don't expect 40% of the business to lapse. It's just what we're required to do. On funded RE, we're waiting to see whether the PRA comes out you know we've provided our own response we've done it through our participation of the of the ABI you know the reality is we will adapt to to the new requirements and if if it increases new business train then yeah This is one of several factors that determines returns and pricing. We will simply adapt to the new reality wherever that lands.

We'll move this side.

Hi, good morning. Thomas Bateman from BNP Paribas. Can we just come back to the capital build? I think in the slides you show five points this period from recurring uses. I don't know if we have a clean year, but do you think that is the type of run rate that this business can achieve? So around 10 points annualised or should it be a bit higher, a bit lower? Obviously based on current caps or return expectations. And then the second question is just actually a small follow-up to the last question on the retail outflows. Do you think it's products or advisors or the pricing of those products that's the key reasons those outflows um i guess what i'm looking for is what's the trigger that changes it materially and it may be the introduction of the paper and advisor network and just the third question is on recurring management actions again a small follow-up to the siege question um does that grow one for one with retirement solution assets or i think as nick is alluding to is it more event driven i.e iran whatever it might be.

Okay, so I'll take the second of those and Nick will take the first and third. On the retail outflows, it's not a product related or a service related point. It's basically others are proactively engaging our customers, particularly 50 plus year olds who have these multiple pension pots from different employments, don't really understand it all and they are saying, well, we can help you with all of that. So the single biggest thing we need to do is to build out that digital engagement and proactive nudges to our existing customers. The big advantage we have is we know who the customers are. We know more about them. We know where they live. They're our customers already. So in some cases... the customers are consolidating to another pot with another provider but more often than not it's actually a new advisor getting hold of a customer or another player in the market that doesn't have any of the pots currently that are targeting them so we have a real structural edge here with the scale of our customer base that frankly we're not fully leveraging at this stage and it will be that proactive engagement that will be the biggest differentiator there I'll take the other two, Nick.

Yeah. So on the recurring, net recurring result, on an annualized basis, 10 to 12 points is what you've seen us do over the last two and a bit years. So the five or so were pretty much where we thought we would be. there's so many moving components there but as a guide that wouldn't be a bad one and on the recurring management actions yes it is on the I guess I illustrated the example because to demonstrate that there is a skewness but ultimately it is driven we're talking about 40 or so transactions every week that we execute it is primarily driven by the overall size of the asset base and actually probably more so the non-illiquid portion, the liquid and the government component. So that's what drives it going forward. And I don't want to overemphasize those two specific events, but hopefully we've been doing it now for a number of years. You've seen us deliver consistently year in, year out since we've set the target. We've done it when spreads have narrowed. We've done it when spreads have widened. We've done it when treasuries and guilds were high yielding. We've done it when they were low yielding. So it's really the, yes, there's a certain level of volatility that you need in the market, but really what drives this is the capability that we have in-house to unlock it. I didn't answer earlier the question on the on the non-recurring management actions we look the we we there is with profit simplification to go we're around 60% of the way of the way through that program we look to get that to 90% by the end you know by the end of the year And remember, the primary reason for, or the primary driver of that is to ensure that we cover, we generate the cash and the capital, the capital in this instance, to make sure that we cover the one-off cost of our strategic priorities. So I would expect that balance to be broadly the same as we come to complete the program at the end of this year. Now we can go to Kalish.

Now Kalish, just at the front here. Thanks.

Hi, thank you. It's Kalish from History Bank of America. Two questions remaining. Just on the P&S expense margin, obviously I think you highlighted the operating margin improvement was driven by that. If I go back to Nick's slide on expenses, I think you said something like $95 million had been earned through. so when it all gets earned through given two-thirds are through the P&L is the best way to think about it that that all drops to the P&S margin that's first one the second one is almost coming back to the beginning on the UK PRT consortium can you just talk a little bit about those fees that standard life will earn how they're spread between the new business origination fee and then the ongoing fee and how we should think about that in terms of basis points. Thank you.

Let me talk a little about the P&S margin and let me start by giving you the walk between the improvement that we saw this year and actually the right comparative to use is not the half year, it's the full year of 19 basis points. We introduced an investment margin so the like for like is the full year figure. So 19 up to 22, that has two components. The first one is kind of a business underlying component, business driven component. And that was three basis points for the cost related aspect, minus one for the natural attrition that we see as kind of the higher margin business runs off. So that accounted for two points of the increase and the other point was what I said I referenced earlier in relation to including now in the numerator the contribution from international bonds. There was a small adjustment to the denominator but that was less significant. So 22 is the right clean number as we go forward from here. As regards the cost saves Two-thirds of the cost saves come through earnings, and just over half of the difference comes through the P&S, with the rest going to a number of other lines. Therefore, there is more to come through. The 22 has some tailwind to come in relation to earning through that should get us, as we've said previously, somewhere in the mid-20s. And then working against that will be the mix-related effects as the high-fee business continues to run off. Now, clearly, from next year, we will also have Agon. Agon operates at roughly 11 basis points now. The cost-saving program on a performer basis would lift it to 18. Agon has a slightly different mix. of business think of it as their mix of businesses roughly half workplace half the other half retail compared to ours which is a third workplace and and two-thirds retail so yeah you know lots lots to sorry lots to work through I appreciate for your models in that regard but the overall message is you know we have these businesses are already at scale They've been heavily invested in. We've moved them, a lot of the administration, into modern end-scale platforms. We've simplified the business. And, you know, in quarters, half years, years, where you see a big appreciation in equity values and assets, then, you know, that operating leverage pops, which is what you've seen in the six months this year.

Okay and then on the UK PRT consortium, so effectively the standard life business is running this and is doing all of the work other than where asset management is going to the private credit capabilities of the partners. So we're getting some of our costs are paid by the vehicle directly and then we have this origination fee. And so that is based on the premiums written. So it's not a manual thing. It's based on the origination. Roughly two thirds of it comes up front. Roughly a third is then performance related based on the performance of the standard life PRT solutions. And what we've said is that obviously the wholly owned business, existing business today benefits from this diversification with the other lines of business that we have. we don't have that diversification in the satellite plc solutions and therefore you know the the the sort of start-off margins there if you like aren't as high as the the holy the wholly owned existing business once you add these fees in it will be broadly the same margin from a standard life perspective the other key point to just emphasize again though is is that What I'm particularly pleased and excited about is we've got the three partners, CVC, Prefinancial and Goldman Sachs, all of whom bring very different strengths in private credit origination. So having the three is a real advantage over a single partner. And, of course, that's available to the whole of Standard Life. So the wholly owned business, the existing $41 billion and the $6 billion a year of business will be right there. in the holding owned existing business will have benefits to that same private credit origination as well as the standard life plc solutions business any someone like marcus rivaldi as jeffries firstly what's the group regulatory solvency ratio at half year 26

And secondly, you have over $2 billion of debt needing refinancing over the next three years. Are you comfortable with the group's debt profile and refinancing schedule, especially in 2029? And would you consider addressing the shape of your debt refinancing profile early?

Thank you, Marcus. Both for Nick. You're working hard today.

Okay. So it's 146%. It's disclosed on Appendix 13, Slide 44. And you can see the comparator coming into the year at the end of 2025, which was 153%. So kind of the drop-off is roughly consistent with what you're seeing in the shareholder ratio for the same reasons as outlined in relation to that. For debt, there's nothing I want to announce. on stage at this point. Our focus is on raising the balance of what we need to finance the transaction and then we'll come to what we do from 2027 onwards at the appropriate point.

Then we're on line. Any more questions in the room? Ben, did you have your hand up earlier? Okay, right.

very quick one um what happens beyond five years in your partnership i mean it's a five-year partnership is there a kind of run-on i mean what's going to happen yes so we we set it up for effectively a focus on this initial five-year period um and uh

I mean, you could definitely see a scenario where there's still substantial PRT business to be written in years 5 to 10 and therefore everyone commits further capital to that follow-on period. Equally, one of the bits I think when you think sort of longer term is that the decumulation solutions in the UK market are pretty thin and sparse at the moment. And our research tells us that 78% of consumers want some degree of guaranteed income in retirement. So if you look forward 5-10 years, it seems to me one of the possibilities of this venture is actually to develop propositions for DC customers that want some degree of certainty of their income in retirement into the long term. So we purposely kept it flexible at that point in time. in order to evolve and change with evolving market conditions and experience any jv structure that's that's that's important to do but at this stage we're kind of heads down looking to get the change control and regulatory permissions get the venture launched in the first half of next year and get out into the market uh you know where there's a lot of appetite for standard life to be present in that larger end of the market Okay, well, thanks, everyone, for joining us today. Very much appreciated. Obviously, we'll be following up. We'll be on the road with buy-side investors and be following up with sell-side as well over the weeks ahead. So I'm sure there'll be plenty of chance to talk further. But thank you for your ongoing interest and then covering us. It's very much appreciated. And we'll catch up again soon. Thank you.