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Welcome to 2026 Half Year Results of Aberdeen. I will now turn the call over to Jason Windsor. Please go ahead.

Good morning, everyone, and thank you very much for joining Siobhan and me for Aberdeen's Half year '26 results presentation on what I know is a busy morning for you. Today, we're here in our Manchester office, the headquarters of Interactive Investor. We're hoping to be the first FTSE company to present results from Manchester under the new Prime Minister. Anyway, I'm going to begin with an overview of our strategic and financial performance, and then Siobhan will take you through the financials in a little more detail before we return to Q&A.

So just let me start with a reminder of our ambition. Our aim is to be the U.K.'s leading wealth and investments group, and our purpose is simple, enabling our clients to be better investors. We're building on a strong foundation. Interactive Investor is the U.K.'s #1 direct-to-consumer platform measured by net flows and now has over GBP 100 billion of customer assets. Adviser is the U.K.'s third largest advice platform, serving over half of the U.K. adviser market. And Investments is a specialist asset manager with nearly GBP 400 billion of assets and strengths in a number of attractive growth areas. And our group is united by a common set of priorities. We remain focused on transforming performance, improving the client experience and strengthening our talent and culture. Together, these priorities underpin our strategy to generate sustainable growth and create long-term value for our customers and shareholders.

So on to progress in the first half. Aberdeen's continued its positive trajectory through the first half of the year, and I'm increasingly confident in our ability to deliver the ambitious 2026 targets we set out for the group. Adjusted operating profit increased by 21% to GBP 151 million, and net capital generation increased by 47% to GBP 163 million, benefiting from revenue growth, improved efficiency and the actions we've taken to unlock value from our pension surplus. ii delivered another excellent result, increasing profit by 22%. In Adviser, profit was broadly flat. We've improved service levels and taken action to strengthen the proposition and improve the client experience. Flows remain a challenge, however, and I'll talk more on our plans to address that in a moment.

And in investments, we are delivering improvements in investment performance while continuing to focus on operational efficiency, with profits up 9%. These results demonstrate how better execution is translating into improved profitability. Let me now quickly review the businesses, starting with ii. ii continues to perform exceptionally well across its key metrics. Customer numbers increased by 14% year-on-year to 525,000, while SIPP customers increased by 35% to 125,000. Net inflows reached a new record of GBP 6.8 billion, with positive markets also lifting assets under administration to almost GBP 108 billion. Trading activity was high, in fact, above trend in the first half with daily average retail trades up more than 40%.

Importantly, we continue to improve our competitive position. Our repricing has landed well and brand awareness has increased materially over the past year. We are growing share across trading, assets and new accounts while continuing to attract high-value customers with average customer account sizes now over GBP 200,000, which is approximately double the market average. We're also continuing to expand the proposition. The rollout of ii360 and ii Advice continues, and there are further opportunities to attract and engage more investors on the platform, including services like ii Community, which has seen membership double in the last year. Combined with our compelling pricing model, excellent service and continued investment in the brand, we are well positioned to capture the long-term structural growth in U.K. wealth. We're all excited about ii's growth prospects as we take a growing slice of a growing market.

Turning now to Adviser. In Adviser, our focus through the first half has been on further improving and streamlining our proposition to our clients and their advisers. We've made significant investment in the platform, strengthened leadership with the appointment of Rich Denning as CEO. And in July, earlier this month, we brought servicing in-house from FNZ. That gives us greater control and end-to-end ownership of the client experience. We're already seeing benefits of the actions we've taken. Our Net Promoter Score is well ahead of target at plus 53 and customer satisfaction has reached 97%. This is because service performance has improved and straight-through processing has increased.

Let me give one example. Firm onboarding times have improved by over 90%. At the same time, we're clear that flow performance needs to improve. The market has evolved with adviser consolidation, panel rationalization and greater competition for transfer business, all having an impact. So our focus now is on converting stronger foundations into sustainable commercial performance. We're sharpening our distribution strategy and deepening our relationships with strategic adviser firms. We have a developing pipeline of strategic partnerships and back book migration opportunities, supported by our new and improved onboarding capability. And we're taking a disciplined approach to areas that create structural drag.

As you know, we previously anticipated that a turnaround in flows would be achieved in 2026. We now expect this return to net inflows to take longer, and we'll come back with more color on this in due course. On this, Rich has already completed a detailed segmentation analysis with early highlights showing where we are growing and where we have work to do. Let me be clear, our conviction in Adviser is unchanged. The proposition is strong and the platform works well and the operational progress we have made gives us a much stronger base from which to improve flows over time.

Turning now to investments. The Investments business made further progress during the first half, delivering increased profits, improved investment performance and encouraging momentum in several specialist growth areas. AUM increased to GBP 398 billion, supported by positive market performance. 3-year investment performance improved to 86% of assets performing against benchmark, significantly above our target of 70%, while 1-year performance increased to 88%. We're seeing positive momentum in a number of our equity strategies, particularly emerging markets and thematic capabilities, alongside continued strong delivery from fixed income, liquidity, quants and alts. We're also seeing encouraging momentum across our specialist capabilities. Real Assets generated GBP 1.4 billion of net inflows in the half.

Our infrastructure also completed a successful first close of approximately GBP 800 million for its flagship rail fund. In the wholesale channel, we have delivered positive flows in 10 of the last 12 months, with demand improving across equities, fixed income and commodities as market conditions stabilized in the second half of Q2. Our emerging markets franchise continues to see strong client interest, supported by a number of 4- and 5-star rated investment strategies. Looking ahead, we remain focused on accelerating growth across our highest conviction opportunities, including private markets, closed-end funds and commodities, supported by deeper strategic partnerships.

With the completion of the Stagecoach and MFS transactions and the forthcoming addition of Herald, we have further strengthened our investing capabilities and supported profitability. Our target of GBP 100 million of adjusted operating profit in investments for '26 was always an ambitious goal. That said, with profit for the second half expected to be materially higher than the first, not least reflecting the earnings benefit from our bolt-on acquisitions, I expect we will be broadly in line with this target based on annualized second half profit.

A few words now on AI, a theme which is rightly at the front of mind for many investors. AI is emerging as a meaningful enabler of growth and efficiency across our group. Our aim is to invest and adapt meaningfully so that AI becomes a core part of how we operate now and in the future, of course, whilst always acting in a responsible manner. What has particularly encouraged me is the enthusiasm of our colleagues. As we roll out Copilot Premium across the business, colleagues are embracing the opportunity to learn, experiment and apply AI in their day-to-day work. We also have teams operating at a strategic level, deploying AI into products, software development and accelerating processes, building on some excellent work we've undertaken on unifying and structuring our data.

Adoption continues to increase rapidly, and colleagues are reporting meaningful time savings and improved outcomes. But it's premature to forecast how AI will affect the business or our markets. In fact, I don't believe anyone knows. What I do know is that our culture has embraced AI and the strong early adoption to date across our group sets us up very well to benefit from artificial intelligence. And just a quick comment on progress against our group targets. We're less than 6 months to the end of the current plan period, we're confident in our ability to deliver the full year 2026 group targets, which were adjusted operating profit of more than GBP 300 million and net capital generation of around GBP 300 million.

The first half has demonstrated we're on track to achieve these targets. Our focus beyond '26 remains on achieving our growth potential across the group with sustainable profitability supporting investment in the business and the dividend, all underpinned by a very strong balance sheet. As part of this and as we set out at the time of our full year results, we expect 5% to 10% growth in net capital generation per annum over the medium term on top of our '26 targets, obviously, without any major market irregularities.

So thank you. With that, I'll hand over to Siobhan to take you through the financial performance.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Let me take you through the financial performance for the first half of 2026, our capital position and our outlook for the remainder of the year. The first half of 2026 was characterized by strong financial performance across the group. We continue to grow the business while maintaining our focus on efficiency and capital discipline. The strong organic growth delivered by Interactive Investor, stable profitability in Adviser and continued cost discipline and investments all contributed to a significant increase in group profitability. As a result, adjusted operating profit increased by 21% to GBP 151 million. IFRS profit before tax was GBP 276 million, reflecting investment gains and interest income.

Cost savings delivered in recent years and our ongoing focus on efficiency are enabling us to drive positive operating leverage across the group. This has created capacity for us to invest in growth opportunities, improve client outcomes, support sustainable profitable growth and reduce costs in absolute terms in the first half. Capital generation was also particularly strong. Net capital generation increased by 47% to GBP 163 million, benefiting from higher profitability, actions taken to unlock value from the defined benefit pension surplus and materially lower restructuring expenses. In line with our policy, the interim dividend has been maintained at 7.3p per share. Dividend coverage has strengthened significantly with adjusted capital generation now covering the dividend 1.39x. The dividend is now also fully covered by net capital generation with coverage at 1.24x.

Let me now turn to the performance of the individual businesses, starting with Interactive Investor, where all figures exclude the financial planning business we sold in January. Pleasingly, Interactive Investor delivered another excellent period of growth and continues to demonstrate the strength and scalability of its business model. Total customer numbers increased by 14% to 525,000. And within that, SIPP customers grew by 35% to 125,000. Net inflows reached a record GBP 6.8 billion, up 66% year-on-year. The combination of these strong inflows and positive markets has seen AUMA increased by 15% to GBP 108 billion in the first 6 months of this year. And this growth has also been reflected in financial performance with revenue increasing by 22% to GBP 173 million. Subscription revenue increased by 15% to GBP 30 million, supported by continued growth in customer numbers.

Trading revenue increased by 9% to GBP 49 million. This was driven by record trading activity with daily average retail trades increasing by 42% to 35,700, more than offsetting the impact of the repricing and reduction in FX fees earlier in the year. Treasury income increased by 33% to GBP 100 million, driven by higher average cash balances. The average cash margin in the first half was 234 basis points. The business has increased investment in marketing, technology and future growth capacity while continuing to do this in a disciplined way. Given the strong growth achieved and the inherent scalability of the business, key measures of cost efficiency have strengthened with the cost-to-AUMA ratio now at 18 basis points. As a result, adjusted operating profit increased by 18% to GBP 84 million.

Turning now to Adviser. AUMA increased by 5% to GBP 85 billion, supported by positive market movements. As Jason has already outlined, net flows remain challenging. Net outflows were GBP 1.3 billion in the first half compared with outflows of GBP 0.9 billion in the prior year. While gross flows -- inflows increased by 9%, this was more than offset by higher redemptions. Flow recovery, therefore, remains a key priority. Revenue increased modestly to GBP 103 million, with growth in AUMA partially offset by the continued impact of strategic repricing and tiering, the combined impact of which was to reduce revenue yield to 25.3 basis points, in line with our guidance. Expenses increased by 3% to GBP 62 million, reflecting the end of the temporary third-party outsourcing discount that benefited the first half of 2025 as well as an increase in AUMA-related costs. Against that backdrop, adjusted operating profit remained broadly stable at GBP 41 million.

Looking now at investments. The business continues to execute against its priorities while benefiting from improved investment performance and ongoing cost discipline. Assets under management increased by 2% to GBP 398 billion, driven by positive market movements. Within Institutional and Retail Wealth, net outflows, excluding liquidity, principally reflected the approximately GBP 4 billion of lower margin equity withdrawals previously announced. These were partially offset by net inflows of GBP 1.4 billion into real assets as well as net inflows into quantitative strategies and fixed income. Q2 net outflows of GBP 0.5 billion do not include the previously flagged GBP 1 billion of credit win, which funded at the very start of July.

Insurance partner net outflows improved significantly to GBP 0.8 billion compared with GBP 4.5 billion in the prior period. Revenue across the Investments business as a whole was 2% lower at GBP 363 million. Management fees were broadly unchanged, although revenue margins continue to reflect changes in asset mix. Other fees that are, by their nature, one-off and performance driven, such as performance and development fees were lower in H1. These are expected to be H2 weighted. Importantly, costs reduced by 3% to GBP 325 million. As a result, adjusted operating profit increased by 9% to GBP 38 million.

Turning now to capital generation. Adjusted capital generation increased by 26% to GBP 182 million. This reflected higher profitability and a GBP 19 million benefit from using the defined benefit pension surplus to fund defined contribution pension costs. In line with our expectations, restructuring and corporate transaction expenses were significantly lower year-on-year. This benefited net capital generation, which increased by 47% to GBP 163 million. Our capital position remains strong. Total capital coverage increased to 229% compared with 218% at the end of 2025 and remains well above our medium-term operating range of 140% to 180%. Given our strong capital position, we expect to redeem GBP 210 million of Tier 1 debt at its first call date in December 2026, subject to regulatory approval. This debt is contributing circa 25 percentage points to the capital ratio at half 1 2026.

Turning finally to our financial guidance for 2026 as a whole. For Interactive Investor, we expect revenue growth to continue in line with growth in customers. While costs will increase in absolute terms as we invest in the business, we continue to expect a cost-to-AUMA ratio of below 18 basis points. In Adviser, profitability is expected to be broadly flat in H2, reflecting higher markets and the growth in AUMA-related expenses. Investments performance in the second half will be stronger, benefiting from revenue associated with recent bolt-on acquisitions, higher market levels and expected other fees. Expenses will increase modestly, reflecting investment in growth opportunities and AUMA-related costs. At group level, we are confident in delivering our 2026 full year targets of adjusted operating profit of more than GBP 300 million and net capital generation of around GBP 300 million. The year-on-year improvement in group AOP versus 2025 is expected to be predominantly revenue driven with expenses broadly in line as we continue to invest in growth.

And with that, I'll hand back to Jason.

Thank you, Siobhan. And just let me just complete with a few comments. Aberdeen's continued its positive trajectory through the first half of the year. We've improved profitability, strengthened capital generation and continued to execute against our strategy. The strong performance of Interactive Investor, improving momentum across investments and the continued strengthening of Adviser's foundations give us greater visibility and confidence as we move into the second half. Consistent execution remains central to achieving our ambitions over the remainder of the year. Delivering our '26 targets will demonstrate the strength of our business, the commitment of our people and lay the foundation for Aberdeen's next phase of growth. While we can take some satisfaction from our progress, we are still far from where I want Aberdeen to be. Our focus remains on delivering better outcomes for our customers and clients, improving performance further across the group and creating lasting value for shareholders.

With that, I'll close, and we'll move on to your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

We will now take our first question from Nicholas Herman of Citi.

A couple of questions from me, please, on Adviser and Investments. So on Adviser, I guess there's a couple within this one. But you said Rich Denning has identified where you need to do better. Can you just provide more detail there where his key focus areas will be in the short term as you work towards net positive flows? And the second one on Adviser is now that you've had the pricing cuts, does that mean that the margin should remain at around 25 basis points going forward? And then the final question on investments flows and specifically equity. Look, it's encouraging to see the strong improvement in equities' performance and also an increase in gross inflows. But equally, the outflows have continued. I'm surprised actually see net outflows increased in EM in Q2 in particular. But could you just talk about client engagement and the pipeline for equities and how you expect your equities flows to trend from here, please?

Thanks, Nicholas. I'll take them in the order that you asked them. So in Adviser, I'm delighted Rich has joined us. We've done a -- as you'd imagine, the new CEO would come in and think hard about how we're trading. And what we've segmented broadly the market into, I think it was 8 or 9 groups. I think the -- what I said in my remarks, we've seen considerable consolidation in the IFA market and considerable movement in the way people want to face into the platform market. And frankly, we probably could have been quicker in that regard. And what we need to do is engage with firms and the shareholders of these firms and these families of firms to make sure that we engage them in the way that they want to trade to serve them better and frankly, to be more commercial in the way that we face into that. And that will give us opportunities in back book migrations in particular, with some of the bigger firms that we have relationships with.

At the same time, the work that has gone on to improve the performance and there's an engagement around other firms to make sure that we have got that priced first position on the panel, and that just requires a little bit of reinvigoration of how we face into the more regional IFA market. I think on the margins, yes, we did sort out our go-to-market price. I mean there are deals also that are required. I think it wouldn't be the case to see that revenues would be flat. I think you would expect a degree of competition to continue, and that would manifest in some basis point reduction over, say, a 3-year period in revenue margin. I couldn't be more precise than that, but I would expect some of that competition to manifest itself in slightly lower revenue margins at the same time where you've got growth in AUA from markets and from flows.

I think just to add, so we've given guidance of 25 to 26 basis points in the past. We are at 25.3 basis points for this first half. So you have some of the benefit -- some of the impact of the repricing from last year still coming through. Also, in this business, you get the impacts of tiering. So what I'd expect as AUMA grows for the tiering to impact. So you will expect some natural kind of movement in that as the AUMA grows.

That's helpful. So just to clarify, it sounds like Rich agrees with you that the pricing is now in the right place and now it's much more around client engagement.

Yes, the standard pricing, that's right. But we'll continue to -- we're seeking to grow it so that the commerciality of the business will continue. Okay. On the flows, as we talked about Q1 for equities, which obviously is the main part of the first half and it was tough. We did lose a couple of mandates and an investment trust that we talked about on the previous call. We've also -- in Q2, we did have one client actually redeem, but we expect them to reinvest in a similar equity strategy in the second half, and that's quite a large movement that we're supporting them through a restructure, but that has gone out, but we expect it to come back in. So I think more broadly, the -- particularly the GEM income product has been selling very well, wholesale and institutional.

So that's continued to do well. The performance of both value and income across the emerging market products has improved significantly over the last 12 months. And that's been supported by better commercial outcomes. I think across the piece, we do expect the second half to be better and rightly so. So we do continue to face into that and make sure -- but as I said, the -- we've got some specific wins in the pipeline that we do expect to fund in H2. We've got much better performance in the wholesale channel, and you can see some of that in the gross flows in equities is coming through the wholesale channel. So we are gearing ourselves up for a better second half.

We will now take our next question from Hubert Lam of Bank of America.

I've got 3 questions, 2 on ii and one on Investments. Firstly, on ii, I saw that the cash margin was 234 basis points. I'm just wondering how sustainable this is and whether or not you have guidance for this for cash margin for this year and next year? And also related to that cash balances have also come down quarter-on-quarter. Just wondering what's driving that?

Second question on ii. I know you've given the guidance around cost there being less than 18 bps. Just wondering about just how we think about cost growth and operating leverage in ii from here. And lastly, on investments, I noticed also the fee margin went down to 18.5 basis points. I think previously, you guided for 19 bps for the year. I'm just wondering if that's still the case and how we should think about the second half?

Okay. I'll take the ii ones and then, do you want to do the Investments. So I think the cash margin was slightly higher. We did see, I think, as everybody knows, quite a significant change in the expectations for short-term interest rates during the half. So we were slightly above trend. I think our long-term guidance of 2.1% to 2.2% approximately stands. I think we have been above that. I think we'll probably be slightly above that in the second half, but we will stick to that as a guide. But within that range, we're not trying to sort of fine-tune every basis point, but that is, I think, a reasonable guide.

The cash balances were actually slightly high at the end of March. I think on -- broadly on trend, I think at around 8% of AUA at the end of June. Why were they high at the end of March? Well, 2 reasons. One, we had extremely high transfers coming in. Some of them come in cash, some of them come in [indiscernible] but that was a particular high point. We saw a lot of activity in Q1. And secondly, of course, we were still in the first throes of the conflict in Iran, and we saw some investor hesitancy just to put the money to work. Some of that's now taken place, as you might expect during Q2. But we would sort of guide the cash as a percentage. as market levels have gone up, cash has come down a little bit just arithmetically. But so it's around 8%. But we think we've said in the past, 8% to 9%, that's about right.

Investment margin, Siobhan?

Yes. So on the investment margin, so you're right, it was 18.5 basis points. Within that, actually, there are a couple of moving parts. So the I&RW revenue margin actually went up 1 basis point and the insurance down. The insurance partners one is driven by asset mix, asset allocation and winning in the DC business. If I look forward, we're still guiding to around that 19 basis points. We have got the 2 acquisitions that are coming in. MFS is around the average -- the equity margin around the average of the book margin there and the Herald investment trust will be around 100 basis points. So that gives you kind of some guidance for the second half year on the 19.

And then just back on ii costs, our guidance is below 18. We are continuing to invest in growth. But if you just do the arithmetic on the costs, the spot, you'll see that number lower. We guide on an average basis. So I think we will continue to sharpen that. But the trend of that figure, I'm not seeing a huge step down, but I think you could see that trending down over time as the platform grows. But the priority is to invest in the brand and in the proposition to make sure we can continue to grow. But we're already extremely efficient. That is a key feature of our competitiveness, and I and the whole ii team will continue to protect that.

And we will now take our next question from Charles Bendit of Rothschild & Co. Redburn.

I've got one on ii, one on costs and one on capital coverage, please. So the one on ii, I was wondering, you saw DARTs increase to 35,000, 36,000 in the period and trading revenue go up 9% with -- that's despite the repricing. So wondering how you think about taking pricing even lower possibly to 0 as the online brokers did in 2019, given the considerable amount of revenue you generate on FX. Just keen to hear your thoughts on the extent to which commission repricing, not just the fixed fee model, drives your competitive positioning and market share gains.

Second question on costs. So you said you're targeting lower absolute costs while still investing for growth. Where is that cost flex actually coming from? And how much further do you think the cost base can be reduced before it starts to grow again in line with wage and general inflation? And then thirdly, on capital coverage, 2% to 9% against the 140% to 180% medium term target. So you highlighted the GBP 210 million Tier 1 redemption planned for December. What can we expect in terms of buyback or special return beyond that?

Okay. Let me start on ii. What was your second question on the group or ii cost, just so I'm clear.

It was on the group, Slide 12.

Okay. Look, I'll deal with the ii question first, and Siobhan can cover the second 2. Our proposition isn't purely to try and win trading business based on teaser rate commissions and then like some of the other online brokers, as you mentioned, and try and sell them other things, CFDs and the like. We are in the long-term savings and investing business. So we have a package. The judgment that Richard and his team made to adjust the pricing has served us very well. It's landed very well with clients. We've sharpened the proposition. We sorted out the pricing in FX, and we continue to have an attractive proposition across the whole piece. And obviously, our price competitiveness, certainly in the -- anything above 25,000 to 50,000 above that level is incomparable to the rest of the market, and that is attractive and it's also allowing us to drive trading.

We continue to sharpen that, but we do see -- I think in the first half, we did -- I think we probably saw above, as I said, above trend trading. That slowed down a little bit in July, back more to trend. It's not falling off a cliff, but it slowed down. So our expectation is once the pricing and the market conditions sort of settle down is to continue to grow that. But we're not in the -- we continue to be very competitive, and we continue to make sure that clients do see the benefit of the proposition as a whole.

Just on costs. So we have -- as we've said on the slides, on Slide 12, as you referenced, the costs have reduced in the first half. In my final remarks on -- and that we're pleased to see that reduction that's come through in investments and in corporate costs. Clearly, we've seen some growth in costs in ii. As Jason has just said, we're continuing to invest in that. As we look into the second half, we expect the expenses to kind of in an absolute level, be flat. The benefit of the transformation costs have come through. We are seeking to invest in growth opportunities. There will be some natural AUM-related costs that will increase. And I'd expect the second half cost to be slightly higher due to things like performance-driven VC coming through in the second half. So that gives you where the expenses are. So we're very pleased with the performance in the first half and the second half, we'll see some natural changes as you -- as the business grows.

Capital?

On capital, we have -- as we have said today, we are looking to pay down the Tier 1 debt. When we spoke at the year-end, when we look at our capital usages, it's been to look at repaying our debt as we have higher levels of debt than we would like. And what we've looked to do -- what we'll secondly do is look to invest in the business. So where we see opportunities either organically or inorganically, we will invest our capital in that regard. So those are the key ways we're looking at usages of our capital in the medium term.

I think from a return perspective, the dividend is now covered by net capital generation. It's been covered by adjusted for a while. But part of the plans that we put in place was to grow the fundamental capital generation net of all costs -- that has grown 47% in the first half, on track to hit GBP 300 million for the full year. So that getting the balance between the balance sheet, which has been very strong and will be with lower debt going into next year with the capital generation higher, we continue to pay out a high dividend relative to earnings. But that's okay because of the strength of the balance sheet, but we certainly aren't planning anything else at this stage.

[Operator Instructions]

With no further questions on the line, I would like to hand it back to Jason Windsor for some closing remarks.

Well, nothing to add really. Thank you all very much for joining. As I said, I think we've had a strong performance in, frankly, a very, as I call it, dynamic but eventful first half, and we look forward to continue to update you during the second half. Thank you very much.

Good morning, and welcome to the Aberdeen Q1 2026 Trading Update Analyst Call. This call is being recorded. I will now hand over to Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer. Please go ahead.

Thank you, operator. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining Siobhan and me for our Q1 call. It doesn't seem very long since we saw you all in person at the start of March. But the past 7 weeks have proven to be a long and turbulent period in world news and in the markets. Of course, there's continued uncertainty as to the outlook for markets and rates, but our business configuration and our resolute focus on our clients are designed to withstand these events.

Our group AUMA was GBP 548 billion at the end of the quarter. But in fact, that had increased to more than GBP 570 billion by the end of last week, that's GBP 25 billion higher than March, evidence on its own of the recent volatility. So through this period, in Q1, we've continued to deliver against our strategy. This has been supported in particular by a record quarter for interactive investor. Close within Adviser, while stable compared to last year were negative, but we did see an increase in gross inflows. In investments, we saw some net outflows as we highlighted to you at the time of our full year results. And within that, we saw net inflows into fixed income and real assets. Just a quick comment on each of the 3 businesses for me. Interactive Investor continues to perform very strongly, with total customers up 14% year-on-year and another record quarter for both flows and trading on the platform.

The pricing changes which took effect in February have been very well received and have reinforced ii's leading position in the structurally attractive and growing U.K. wealth market. In Adviser, we're taking further significant action to reposition the business for a return to growth. This includes bringing key service teams back in-house from FNZ to improve client outcomes. In fact, we've already made great progress this year with the best tax year-end for many years. In May, Noel will hand over the baton to Rich Denning, who I look forward to welcoming to Aberdeen. Rich brings extensive knowledge of the adviser markets and the technology solutions necessary to Win. In Investments, our strategy to achieve a step change in profitability by creating a resilient focused and better performing business has made good progress. Asset levels may continue to be volatile, but we're positioned to serve our clients through the ups and downs of markets and events. And we have seen better results from our recent commercial activity, giving us growing confidence in our pipeline.

Looking ahead, we remain focused on delivering our 2026 targets while always supporting our customers. And now I'll hand over to Siobhan for a little more detail.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Starting with Interactive Investor, the business continues to grow strongly and perform excellently. We have seen increased customer trading during the current period of heightened market volatility and benefited from our improved competitive positioning following the implementation of our simplified pricing approach earlier in the year. Total customers reached 513,000, up 14% year-on-year, with SIPP customers increasing 32% and year-on-year and 10% in the quarter to 116,000.

Net inflows reached a record level at GBP 3 billion, up 88% year-on-year. Customer cash balances at the end of March were GBP 8.7 billion, also circa 9% higher than at year-end, partly reflecting customer behavior in these markets. Daily average retail trades we're at the highest level ever at GBP 35,000, around 21% higher than Q4 last year, the previous highest quarter. The divestment of the financial planning business at the end of January reduced AUMA by GBP 3.6 billion. Adjusting for this, AUMA at the end of March of GBP 95 billion was roughly 2% higher than at year-end, with the benefit of record net inflows, only partly offset by lower markets. In Adviser, net outflows in the quarter of GBP 0.6 billion were an improvement on Q4 and in line with Q1 last year. This included higher gross inflows, offset by higher redemptions, although redemptions reverted to levels below the heightened position at the end of last year. AUMA of approximately GBP 79 billion also reflected negative market movements in March, ending the period 2% lower than at year-end.

Pleasingly, we have seen good momentum in Aberdeen SIPP, having now attracted 3,000 new customers since launch in December 2025. And turning now to Investments. Within our institutional and retail wealth business, net outflows, excluding liquidity of GBP 5.1 billion, largely reflected the previously announced GBP 4 billion of low-margin equity redemptions. In addition, there were small net outflows from our commodities-based ETFs, partly driven by some profit taking and portfolio rebalancing following a strong rally in commodity prices. Gross inflows, however, remained strong and in line with recent trends. We saw net inflows of GBP 0.4 billion across developed markets credit and emerging markets fixed income funds, as well as a GBP 0.1 billion into real assets. Looking ahead, we expect Q2 net inflows in I&RW to include a circa GBP 1.2 billion advisory mandate within real assets and a GBP 1 billion sterling credit Win by a newly established insurance client team. Insurance partners flows were net 0 in the quarter, a significant improvement on recent trends. AUM of GBP 169 billion was up slightly on the year-end position. This benefited from a positive GBP 1.2 billion of market and other movements, primarily reflecting the benefit of a GBP 2.3 billion transfer in from an I&RW MyFolio fund range.

Turning to the group as a whole. Ongoing geopolitical tensions are expected to lead to continued heightened levels of market volatility, at least in the short term. The diverse revenue streams across our business helped to mitigate the impact, and we remain fully focused on the actions we can control to drive long-term profitable growth. As set out at the full year results, we are firmly committed to the delivery of our full year 2026 group targets of adjusted operating profit of at least GBP 300 million and net capital generation of circa GBP 300 million. I will now hand over to the operator, and Jason and I will be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

The first question is from Enrico Bolzoni from JP Morgan.

Just on ii, clearly, very strong performance there. So the first question, in light of the repricing, have you seen a change in the composition of new clients coming to the platform. Historically, you appealed a lot wealthier customers because clearly, all the flat fee structure. Now you're becoming even more attractive from a fee point of view. So I was wondering if you're seeing clients maybe with smaller amount of money joining the platform?

And related to that, in terms of the composition of flows you're seeing, do you see a greater amount of back book transfers? Perhaps clients that move entirely their investments on other platforms, on Aberdeen or the split between, let's say, clients who just put fresh money to it and back book transfer remain roughly the same?

And then a question, again, with ii, within ii on trading, clearly, very, very strong activity over the quarter. Have you've seen many clients joining the platform over the quarter, specifically for the trading offering? So you see that they are just active on the trading part of the business, but perhaps they have not moved yet assets that they may have in other sorts of investments such as mutual funds, that might come at a later stage.

Okay. Thanks, Enrico. We've got -- I mean a number of questions, all pretty similar coming in from what is the source of the growth within ii. The primary source is SIPP transfers. I mean you can see the growth in customer numbers and the growth in SIPPs is strong. We haven't seen a large pickup in pure trading. It is many people -- so of course, that is an opportunity to trade through the platform with the direct market access that our products offer. If anything, we've seen average AUA per client going up, not going down.

And I think we've seen continued activity. This level of money is clearly coming from transfers from somewhere, from platforms and from mainly insurance providers, the 2 big sources that we've seen coming in. And the new -- the pricing activity of ourselves is obviously simplified and sharpened up our proposition across subscriptions and commissions and FX. Others have made other choices. And I think that's -- we've been the net beneficiary of that. And you can see how that's come through in our numbers.

We'll now take our next question from Gregory Simpson from BNP Paribas.

Two questions. First, you mentioned on Adviser, you were taking some staff in-house from FNZ. Can you just talk through the rationale for that and also the kind of cost implications, if any, just the strategy there? And then the second question was with Standard Life acquiring Aegon's U.K. business, can you maybe share some thoughts on the implications for Aberdeen given they will own a rival adviser platform business, that they're a larger business, and you have the asset management business. Just wanted to see if you could share some initial thoughts on the impact for you and your stake?

Okay. Well, yes. Obviously, Standard Life Aegon last week was relatively new news. We anticipate it closing by the end of the year. Look, we stay very close to Standard Life. I've got to call them that now, not Phoenix. And if I get it wrong, it's somewhat hard for us given our heritage. But the relationship on a trading basis is close. We support them as our largest customer every day. We do multiple things across the piece. And I think broadly, Standard Life having a bigger asset base and expanding is a good thing for us. Andy said numerous times, he wants to rationalize and focus the provision of Asset Management to Standard Life to fewer. We're clearly the largest. We're clearly the most important to them, we expect to continue to do that.

So I'm not in a position to communicate and nor do I have or if we agreed anything specific. But on that expanded canvas, we do anticipate more opportunities. I think on the FNZ adviser thing, there's no immediate cost impact. What we pay them frankly, is roughly the cost that we'll be bringing over. The purpose of this is to actually gain end-to-end control of our process such that we can really get a grip for the benefit of our clients. Streamline that and make sure there are no handoffs and technology solutions and process maps, and all that fun stuff is actually implemented without missing a heartbeat across that such that we can get the service levels even better.

And just to add, longer term, I would expect to see some benefits from a cost perspective into the future.

Our next question is from Ben Bathurst from RBC Capital Markets.

Just one question from me, please, if I may. On the Adviser business. I saw that the net outflows reduced but within that, there's higher inflows but an increase in outflows. I just wondered if you could comment on whether or not that increase in the outflows was driven more by funds transferring to other platforms? Or if it's more of a case of clients putting more money into cash in the quarter? Just hoping for a bit more color there.

Hi Ben, it's a bit of both. We're pleased to see that there's been an increase in the gross redemptions -- sorry, in the gross inflows. And on the redemption side, what we've seen is it revert back to the levels kind of at the end of Q3 last year, but where the outflows are going is primarily to do 3 things is to people taking pensions as we expect, taking the money as we expect, there's a bit of transfers in the main. So those are the 2 things going on.

We'll now take our next question from Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

Sorry, I joined the call late. So hopefully, these haven't been answered yet. First question is on Insurance Partners. You had flat flows in the quarter when normally, this line has had outflows per quarter because of the runoff. Just wondering if any one-offs here and we should expect it to go back to outflow in subsequent quarters? Second question is, you mentioned a few mandates, Wins in Q2, including advisory mandates and in real assets as well as a credit win. Can you talk about the fee margins there? Are they kind of in line with the asset class or the category they're in or lower because of larger mandates?

And last question is you also mentioned that you expect good inflows by year-end into your GEM equity income strategy. Just wondering what gives you confidence or is it the new fund you're seeing contraction with and any size in terms of import there?

I'll start -- I'll do them in reverse order. Siobhan, you want to do the insurance one. The -- in GEM, we've got some one not funded mandates, simply enough. It's not always immediate when you win these mandates and clients will be moving from certain portfolios into our strategies, but that's what gives us confidence there. We've also seen actually that particular strategy. Great performance, good ratings has been selling pretty well through wholesale channels for about a year now. So we can see that being attractive and that's continuing month by month.

In terms of the mandates that we're flagging in the GEM income one is an attractive margin. The Adviser one is a low margin and the real assets is pretty much on par with what the rest of the book. So there's ups and downs within that. But the -- as we said in the in the release, we're not trying to sort of hype this, but we've seen -- the pipeline is good. We have confidence and the go-to-market products that we're very focused on are selling well.

Yes. And finally, just to -- on the insurance partners, we've seen some benefits come through from Wins that Standard Life have had in their workplace DC business. So that's what's driving that in the main. So that line will move up and down. But as they have said in the past, that's where we'd expect to win, and we've seen some of that come through this time around.

Our next question is from Jacques-Henri Gaulard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Just a very quick question on the corporate action. The minus GBP 3.6 billion is from the financial planning. There is an elimination positive of 2.5%. Just wondering what that was?

Yes. So it's the advisory business that we sold at the end of January. Some of it was on the Wrap platform. So hence, that's what's the -- why you've got elimination there.

Lower elimination, yes.

There are currently no further questions. With this, I'd like to hand the call back over to Jason Windsor for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, look, thank you all for joining. I know it's a busy day and there's a number of other events reporting and otherwise going on. Look, we're pleased to give you the update. Any questions, feel free to call IR. Siobhan and I are happy to take them if that's sort of help you or your clients. But thank you for your interest. Speak soon.

Good morning, everyone. Siobhan and I would like to welcome you all to our full year results presentation. Looking back over last year, I'm encouraged by the progress we are making against our strategy. Our efforts mean that the business is now in much better shape as we pursue our ambition to be the U.K.'s leading wealth and investments group.

Before I kick off, just a quick word on the agenda. I'm going to begin with the highlights, and then I'll hand over to Siobhan, who will take you through the financial performance and our capital position. I'll then provide a closer look at our strategy, including progress in each of our businesses. And as usual, we'll open up for Q&A.

So let me start with the highlights. 2025 was a year of significant progress, a year in which we grew group profits, grew in wealth and continued to reposition our Investments business. Having set out our strategy a year ago, I'm pleased with what we've delivered so far through a continued focus on execution. We've taken critical steps toward improved profitability, and we're all excited about the opportunity ahead of us. We have 2 leading businesses in the fast-growing U.K. wealth sector and a more efficient investments business that is focused on real areas of strength.

Last March, we set out our strategic priorities alongside our group targets for 2026, which, as you'll remember, were adjusted operating profit of at least GBP 300 million and net capital generation of around GBP 300 million. We remain firmly committed to delivering these group targets this year. We're entering 2026 with positive momentum. Following interactive investor's very strong performance in '25, this business will again play a more substantial role in 2026. We will see the full benefit of the transformation programme coming through as well as other initiatives, all designed to make us a stronger and more efficient group orientated to growth. Achieving our '26 group targets will be an important milestone for us. However, let me be clear, we see opportunities to drive sustainable growth beyond this.

So just a quick summary of the progress we made in '25. We delivered group adjusted operating profit of GBP 264 million, up 4%. We saw a very strong increase in ii and improved efficiency in investments, which more than offset the actions that we took to reposition Adviser. Net capital generation was also up slightly. This was after increased cost of funding our transformation and simplification projects, which have exceeded our target and delivered GBP 180 million of savings.

As we highlighted at the Q4 update a few weeks ago, AUMA across the group increased by 9% to GBP 556 billion. And with talent and culture critical to the future success of the business, I'm encouraged that colleague engagement increased by 10 points in the year to 67%. Combined with the strength of our capital position, we see exciting opportunities to build the value of the group over the long term. We're set up to deliver sustainable growth beyond '26. We're now targeting net capital generation growth of 5% to 10% per annum on average, absent any major market irregularities.

Touching now on each of the 3 businesses. Starting with interactive investor. ii is undoubtedly one of the U.K.'s most exciting fintechs. For the second year running, ii was the #1 D2C platform by net flows. And looking ahead, we see significant opportunities for future growth. In Adviser, the strategic repricing impacted our profitability. However, we made progress with net outflows almost halving year-on-year and improved platform and better client service. We have more to do, and we're taking the necessary actions to improve our service further, enhance our proposition and return to growth in flows as soon as possible.

In Investments, cost discipline supported a 5% increase in adjusted operating profit with gross flows in IRW, excluding liquidity, strengthening by over 50% and 3-year investment performance ahead of our target at 80%. I'm confident we're repositioning investments for long-term growth.

I'll now hand over to Siobhan to take you through the financials.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. It's good to be here and meet you all in person, and I'm looking forward to taking you through our results and taking your questions later. This is an exciting business to be part of. And today, we're showing results that underscore both the real progress we've made and potential to come. So let me start with some performance highlights. During 2025, we made good progress across the group as we implemented the plan set out last March. Highlights include the continued very strong growth across a range of metrics in interactive investor, significantly improved flows in Adviser and in Investments, encouraging progress in gross flows and improved investment performance.

Importantly, we've done this while embedding efficiency and maintaining a disciplined approach to cost. We've delivered GBP 180 million of annualized savings through our transformation programme, exceeding our target. This in part has created capacity to invest in the business while reducing expenses by 5%. The excellent growth in ii and continued cost discipline in Investments more than offset the impact of the repricing actions in Adviser. As a result, adjusted operating profit for the group increased by 4% to GBP 264 million. IFRS profit before tax was GBP 442 million, an increase of 76% on 2024. This was largely driven by a GBP 236 million increase in the fair value of our strategic investment in Standard Life, until recently known as Phoenix.

Our business model is supported by a strong balance sheet and capital position. In '25, we moved to our internal capital assessment, which has reduced our regulatory requirement. This, in turn, has led to an increase in our capital coverage ratios and provides more flexibility. I will talk more about this shortly.

And finally, in line with our policy, we are maintaining the dividend at 14.6p per share. Dividend cover on both an adjusted and net capital basis remained broadly unchanged year-on-year. So looking at the performance in the businesses, starting with ii. It's pleasing to see very strong momentum in the business across key metrics. It's been an excellent year of growth for ii. Customer numbers were up 14% to reach GBP 0.5 million at year-end, with particularly strong growth in SIPP accounts, up 30%. Net inflows increased 28% to GBP 7.3 billion. Coupled with positive markets, this resulted in AUMA increasing by 26%. Revenue was up 19% to GBP 330 million. Within this, trading revenues rose 44% to GBP 101 million, supported by record activity levels, including high levels of international trading and strong customer engagement.

We saw DARTs increase by 32% to over 26,000, and we continue to see strong momentum into 2026. Treasury income grew 17% to GBP 161 million. This was driven by higher average cash balances, helped particularly by an increase in SIPP customers. Cash margins were 221 basis points, slightly lower than the 229 basis points in 2024. Subscription revenue increased by 3% to GBP 62 million, reflecting the growth in customers, although some customers benefit from our differentiated pricing plans. We continue to invest in this growing business and expenses increased by 8% to GBP 175 million. This principally reflected investment in brand awareness, proposition developments, including ii Community, ii 360 and ii Advice as well as additional capacity to support current and future growth. Interactive investor is a very scalable and efficient business. This has been reflected in its cost to AUMA ratio, which improved from 19 to 18 basis points. As a result, adjusted operating profit was up 34% to GBP 155 million. And consequently, ii has become the most significant contributor to overall group profitability.

So looking now at the Adviser business. As we recently reported, the flow position in Adviser is much better year-on-year. This is despite an uptick in outflows towards the end of '25 with tax-free cash withdrawals having increased by around GBP 250 million from their normal levels as a result of the U.K. budget during Q4. Net outflows across '25 improved by 44%. While this is an improvement, we're still an outflow, and that means there's more to do. The actions we took to restore service levels, enhance platform functionality and implement competitive repricing drove this improvement. The repricing action was necessary and was the main driver behind a 14% reduction in revenue.

Treasury income on client cash balances reduced by 10% to GBP 30 million, largely reflecting a lower average cash margin. And we expect the cash margin in '26 to be lower as a result of base rate cuts. Other revenue reduced by GBP 6 million, reflecting the sale of 360 in July '24. Expenses were higher at GBP 119 million due to a reduced benefit from a temporary outsourcing discount, which ended in February '25. Adjusted operating profit was 32% lower at GBP 86 million.

So turning to Investments. We've seen encouraging progress in the year. Xavier and his strengthened leadership team have focused on driving efficiency, improving investment performance and delivering an improvement in flows. Excluding liquidity, which is inherently volatile, our institutional and retail wealth book returned to a small net inflow in '25. This is a GBP 4.8 billion improvement from last year and reflects a 55% improvement in gross flows. This improvement was driven by positive momentum in most asset classes, including significant mandate wins in quants and fixed income, strong demand for commodities as well as the agreement to manage the GBP 1.2 billion of the Stagecoach scheme. There was also a material improvement in investment performance, which at 80% outperformance over a 3-year period is now above target. However, revenue in I&RW was lower. This principally reflects the impact of the annualization of recent flows and continued changes to asset mix. To give you some context, I&RW total average AUM was up 1% with average equities AUM down 13% and average quants AUM up 26%. As a result, revenue yield across our I&RW book was 2.8 basis points lower at 28 basis points.

Insurance Partners net outflows increased to GBP 6.8 billion, principally reflecting heritage business in runoff. Revenue was 13% lower and revenue yield decreased to 7.4 basis points, again, as a result of changes to asset mix and repricing. Given these revenue changes, we remain focused on improving efficiency across the business with Investments the key focus of our transformation programme. This enabled us to reduce expenses by 8%, in turn driving a 5% increase in adjusted operating profit to GBP 64 million.

So turning now to look at transformation in a bit more detail. Since its launch in early '24, the transformation programme has exceeded our expectations, not only delivering a material improvement in operational efficiency, but also improvements in both client and colleague outcomes. Over this period, it has delivered GBP 180 million of annualized run rate savings, exceeding the original GBP 150 million target. In total, 239 initiatives were completed by the end of '25, with key savings achieved, including the renegotiation of third-party contracts, the outsourcing of transactional work, process simplification and automation.

In the chart at the top, you can see how these cumulative annualized savings were delivered over time. We expect circa GBP 30 million of residual annualized benefit to be reflected in '26. Transformation savings were the key driver of the 5% reduction in group adjusted operating expenses in the year. We have, however, continued to invest in the business, in particular, in ii and have seen some general expense inflation. As we look ahead, our focus is to embed a culture of efficiency while also optimizing how we work and creating capacity for investment to drive profitable growth, improve client experience and automate processes.

So moving on to capital generation. Adjusted capital generation increased by 5% to GBP 323 million, principally reflecting higher adjusted profit after tax. Adjusted net financing and investment return increased, largely benefiting from gains on seed capital and co-investments. ACG has also benefited from actions taken to unlock value from our defined benefit pension scheme surplus as we are using this to fund contributions to our DC pension scheme. This contributed GBP 16 million in the second half of the year and is expected to benefit capital generation by circa GBP 35 million in '26.

Net capital generation was up slightly at GBP 239 million, with improvement in ACG offset by increased restructuring and corporate transaction expenses of GBP 84 million net of tax as we continue to transform and simplify the business.

Let me now briefly turn to the Stagecoach deal we announced last December and its financial implications. This is a groundbreaking deal that is testament to the breadth of our specialist capabilities within the group as well as our ability to execute. This deal delivers real benefits for Stagecoach, its pension scheme members and our business. The combination of our investment capabilities, balance sheet strength and the scheme's strong funding position enabled us to take on this opportunity, which has seen us take on the responsibility for the scheme's funding as well as the management of the GBP 1.2 billion of assets. It brings AUM into our solutions franchise with associated annual investment management fees of circa GBP 3 million to GBP 4 million.

In addition, this AUM will also act as a potential source of seed and co-investment capital into productive assets in private markets, an area of strategic focus as we look to grow our Investments business. We will also be entitled to a minority share of any future distributed surplus as it emerges, obviously subject to trustee approval. In terms of the accounting treatment, the scheme is not controlled by us and is therefore, not consolidated on our balance sheet. The investment management revenue will be recognized in the Investments business. The entitlement to a minority share of the surplus in our role as sponsoring employer is accounted for under IFRS 17 as the contract is caught by the standard due to the associated longevity risk. This is reported within the Other segment.

The present value of expected future cash flows is GBP 63 million, and we expect the associated annual benefit of circa GBP 3 million to be reflected in adjusted operating profit from '26. Given the strength of the scheme's funding position and the investment strategy that has been put in place, this arrangement has only a limited impact on capital.

So turning to our capital position. Our balance sheet and capital strength provide us with a firm foundation to deliver our strategy and through this, sustainable growth and returns. We disclosed in our Q4 update that with effect from the end of '25, our capital requirement is now based on the group's internal capital assessment. As a result of this change, our regulatory capital requirement has reduced by 17% to GBP 879 million. Our CET coverage ratio has improved to 163% compared to the equivalent of 139% at the end of '24, while our total coverage ratio has increased from 198% to 218%.

Going forward, we expect to operate with a total capital coverage within a range of 140% to 180% as we reduce debt and continue to invest in the business. So to our set of debt and our principles for capital allocation. We have clear principles by which we allocate capital across the group with the overarching objective of directing resources to where they can generate the best returns for shareholders. With the revised internal capital assessment, the value of our debt that contributes to the capital coverage ratios is now less than GBP 400 million.

Given this, we will look to optimize and reduce our debt over time as a key priority. Our aim is to sustainably grow profit and net capital generation, which is the source of capital for future investment for dividends. Across '24 and '25, we've invested GBP 160 million in our Transformation programme and around GBP 60 million in accretive acquisitions, including adding scale to our closed-end fund franchise and increasing our stake in Tritax. Over time, we expect a closer alignment between adjusted and net capital generation as restructuring and corporate transaction costs reduce. And we are committed to our target of generating circa GBP 300 million of net capital generation in '26.

And finally, let me take you through our guidance and financial outlook for '26. Taking each of our businesses in turn and starting with interactive investor. The simplified pricing we rolled out in early February is expected to result in lower FX and trading fees in '26. This will be more than offset by an increase in both subscription revenues and treasury income, with growth in cash balances being only partly mitigated by a slight reduction in cash margin. We expect the cost to AUMA ratio to improve slightly relative to what was reported in '25. Adviser will continue to reflect the impact of strategic repricing as well as the end of the outsourcing discount referred to earlier. The total revenue margin in this business is expected to be slightly lower than '25, largely due to the competitive nature of this sector.

Turning to Investments. Revenue margin is expected to continue to reflect changes in asset mix with a headline rate of approximately 19 basis points. Against this, expenses will reflect the benefit from the transformation savings delivered in '25, partly offset by investment in the business and inflation. Investment net flows in Q1 are expected to include circa GBP 4 billion of outflows from known equity mandates, including Murray Income Trust, the impact of which is expected to be partially offset elsewhere in the business.

And turning lastly to group. Restructuring and corporate transaction costs in '26 are expected to be materially lower than '25. And as I said before, net capital generation is expected to reflect a full year benefit of circa GBP 35 million from the actions taken in relation to our DB surplus.

With that, I'll hand back to Jason to take you through the strategic and operational highlights.

Thank you, Siobhan. Let me start with the progress we're making in delivering our strategy. Aberdeen has the privilege of working every day to help millions of people turn their financial goals into reality. Our ambition is to be the U.K.'s leader in wealth and investments and our purpose is clear; to enable our clients to be better investors. And that purpose ties together all 3 of our businesses. In ii, we have a fast-growing direct investing platform that is competitively advantaged, operating in a structurally attractive and expanding market, and the team are already demonstrating their ability to win.

In Adviser, we operate at scale, supporting around half the U.K.'s IFA market. The opportunities for growth in this business are clear. In Investments, we've undertaken crucial repositioning work that will support our future success. Lower costs, better investment performance and the alignment of our strengths with key growth areas give us a strong platform to meet our clients' needs. All of this is underpinned by a culture that prioritizes excellent client service and focuses on technology and talent.

Just turning for a moment to the environment we operate in. This slide sets out some of the structural forces shaping our key markets, which, of course, will be somewhat familiar to you. At the headline level, we continue to see significant growth potential in U.K. savings and investments. Across the U.K., long-term savings and investment needs are becoming more personalized. Individuals are increasingly responsible for managing their own retirement planning and their investments. And the demand for accessible trusted solutions continues to rise. And while confidence in self-directed investing is growing and many more people are comfortable with managing their money online, there's still a large savings and investing gap. This creates significant opportunity for both of our wealth businesses with the overall addressable wealth market in the U.K. estimated to be at least GBP 3 trillion.

Interactive investor is ideally positioned for self-directed customers. Adviser, meanwhile, is well placed to support IFA serving customers who want the reassurance of individual support and may have more complex needs. In investments, we see increasing demand for multi-asset solutions, active specialty asset classes, private markets and most recently, emerging markets, areas where we have competitive strengths. The multi-decade transition to low-carbon infrastructure, combined with the greater appetite for diversifying portfolios will continue to create opportunity for asset managers with scale and capability in these areas.

Aberdeen is competing in markets where growth is structural and with focus and strong propositions, we are well placed to capture that growth.

Let me turn to each of the businesses in a little more detail. Starting with interactive investor, which had a truly exceptional year. 2025 was characterized by strong customer growth, increased engagement and excellent financial performance. ii now serves 0.5 million customers, which is up 14% year-on-year, with particularly compelling growth in SIPs. ii was #1 for D2C platform net flows with 20% market share and 29% market share of U.K. retail trading, truly a market leader. Customer experience is becoming ever more important in this competitive market. ii's service remains industry-leading. The introduction of automated processes, better insights through AI and continuous investment in our digital interface all support high-quality experience.

And this positive experience, coupled with the strengthening of our proposition has also led to higher levels of customer engagement, which we've seen not just in daily trading volumes. ii's customers are engaged as investors, and they voted on 34% of all shares that could have been voted on in 2025. To be clear, this is the highest level of voting compared to U.K. platforms by a considerable margin. In addition, we've seen the number of customers who engage with each other to share ideas via ii Community grow by over 180% in the year, with ii also the U.K.'s #1 platform for customers investing in ETFs.

Our success was also supported by the ongoing focus on building the brand, including the launch of our Penny Drop campaign, which dramatizes the moment people see the value of flat fee investing. Through our marketing campaigns, promotions and continued support of our customer base, we saw prompted brand awareness rise from 25% to 37% over the course of the year.

Turning now to the priorities for 2026. As I just mentioned, ii customers are already enjoying industry-leading service. We'll build on this by improving our customers' digital experience with increased AI adoption supporting automation and improved insights. We will continue to promote and strengthen the awareness of the ii brand, highlighting ii's leading value proposition and service. We're also broadening the proposition for customers, whatever their level of confidence or life stage. We've enhanced our product range with the launch of a new managed SIPP that has been designed with simplicity and lower confidence investors in mind. This is manufactured by Aberdeen Investments. In Q4, we also soft launched ii Advice, a digital-first simple advice service, which, of course, also has a disruptive flat fee approach. In December, we launched the pilot of ii 360. This advanced data-driven tool has been designed to meet the demands of more sophisticated investors around enhanced trading.

This year, we'll fully launch ii Advice and ii 360 with associated promotion activity designed to broaden the customer appeal. A few weeks ago, our new pricing went live. This is aimed at maintaining a very simple set of options for investors and further improving our competitiveness, and it's landed extremely well with customers. Our new plans, Core, Plus and Premium retain the low flat fee value that ii is known for, while we have reduced trading and FX fees.

Our revised pricing structure offers every customer an ISA, a SIPP and a trading account all for one fee. In addition, customers are able to consolidate their family's investments and accounts onto the ii platform for one fee. The combination of ii's disruptive price, innovative proposition and award-winning customer service is what gives the business its competitive edge. And they are the foundation on which the business will continue to grow.

Turning now to Advisers '25 highlights. We've made progress on proposition, price competitiveness and service, but we've got more to do. As previously mentioned, the strategic repricing was a necessary step to rebuild our position in an advice market that remains attractive but is becoming increasingly competitive, particularly in relation to price. Beyond price, excellent service is at the heart of success. We have continued to improve service levels with our success reflected in our average Net Promoter Score for our call hub increasing to plus 45, a significant pickup from the plus 34 a year ago.

While other key service indicators such as speed to answer calls and customer satisfaction also improved, we do have ambitious plans to go further. We've continued to enhance our proposition with the launch of the Aberdeen SIPP, giving us a market-leading offer in this critical product. Our innovative new SIPP is designed to deliver more value for customers via our automated drawdown price locking and intergenerational planning through family linking and the junior SIPP. We've already seen over 1,800 new SIPPs taken out on the platform, which is just 3 months post launch. The improvements made to our service and proposition have received industry recognition.

In February, Defaqto awarded both our Wrap and Elevate platforms gold service ratings, upgrading us from silver. While I'd never celebrate an outflow, I was pleased that the sustained improvements to service have contributed to significant improvement in our net flows in 2025. Looking ahead, there is still work to do to return to net inflow.

On the next slide, you can see our priorities for 2026. With improved service levels and the launch of the new SIPP, the business is doing the right things to return to growth, but with more to do. So this year, we'll deliver more automated processes with the aim of reducing the administrative burden faced by Advisers, freeing up their time to focus on their customers. We'll simplify our operating model and further enhance control over end-to-end service. This will drive fewer handoffs, clearer ownership and faster processing of client demands.

We're improving the interface between our platforms and client software to create further capacity for Advisers. To underpin these improvements in the proposition of the platform, we built a new product development team of over 40 starting from scratch, taking control and bringing these important capabilities in-house. We've made some progress in improving net flows in '25. We're now targeting net positive flows this year with the target of achieving GBP 1 billion of net flows deferred to 2027.

Let's now turn to Investments. This is a business that's showing clear signs of positive momentum following a repositioning. Building on the progress we made last year, our 1-, 3- and 5-year investment performance has improved year-on-year with our 3-year outperformance now at 80%. This is also reflected in our 4- and 5-star Morningstar ratings, which now cover 42% of AUM. Pleasingly, fixed income, multi-asset and quants strategies once again delivered strong relative performance. Equity performance is also on a positive trajectory, supported, for example, by very strong performance in our global emerging markets income strategy and our thematic funds. This has had a positive impact on flows. Net flows into I&RW channel, excluding liquidity, improved by GBP 4.8 billion to return to a small net inflow position. And as mentioned, this was underpinned by an over 50% improvement in gross flows.

In the face of continued client preference for passive investment strategies globally, our business growth strategy includes renewed focus on wholesale and private markets. And let's take a little bit of time to look at that in more detail. We have 2 targets for our Investments business. To deliver consistently strong investment performance and to achieve a step change in profitability. To deliver on these targets, we set 3 priorities for 2026. First, we will look to grow profitability where we have specialist capabilities.

To step back for a moment, we estimate that over the next 25 years, 2% of global GDP will be directed toward the infrastructure needed to drive productivity and to support population growth. With nearly GBP 80 billion in our private markets AUM and our agreement to take full ownership of Tritax by 2029, we are well positioned to benefit from the growth in this sector, particularly in real assets. Wholesale distribution is projected to grow at 7% a year and offers attractive margins. We'll continue to grow in this channel by promoting strong relevant products such as emerging markets, credit and quants as well as our new suite of active ETFs. Siobhan already covered the Stagecoach deal in a little detail. We believe there's more we can do to deliver solutions and partnerships inspired by this model.

The second priority is to continue to deliver strong investment outcomes for clients, enhancing our investment processes and employing technology to drive insights and support decision-making. Given our deep expertise in pensions and insurance, we're well positioned to build meaningful partnerships across the market, including with global financial institutions. We'll also build on our continued strengths in closed-end funds, where we are the fifth largest manager worldwide with over GBP 20 billion of AUM.

And thirdly, we will continue to enhance our operating model to strengthen execution and efficiency. This includes deploying a next-generation front office system, increasing automation, simplifying processes and having the right talent and leadership in place.

This nicely takes me on to one of my key strategic priorities for the group, strengthening talent and culture. A strong culture is essential ingredient to success. I'm proud of the way colleagues across the group have united behind our plan, helping to drive a 10-point uplift in employee engagement. The arrival of Siobhan in the summer further bolstered our leadership team as we pulled together to accelerate progress. The streamlined group operating committees bedded in well and improved the pace of decision-making. And our extended executive leadership team is ensuring we have the right commercial conversations.

We've launched new career development tools, and we saw improvements across all underlying drivers of engagement. We're deepening our investment in all of our people. And this year, we'll be doing that with a particular focus on leadership with tailored training for over 500 of our leaders. Everyone is clear. We will seek automation wherever we can and that efficiency is essential to be competitive now and in the future. To do that, we do need to continue to optimize our operating model, in-sourcing where this makes sense and building essential capability close to the customer. We're evolving Aberdeen into a place where talent is our competitive advantage, where teams are empowered, where innovation is embraced, where we constantly seek to drive better outcomes for clients.

To close, let me just spend a moment on the path ahead. As I mentioned in my introduction, our '26 group targets are clear. We still have lots to do to achieve these targets, but they do reflect our confidence in the trajectory and performance of the group. Building on what we have achieved in '25, 2026 will benefit from a full year of annualized transformation savings, the positive impact of transactions as well as continued strong contribution from ii.

Looking beyond '26, once we've met our group targets, we are targeting NCG to grow by 5% to 10% per annum on average over the medium term, of course, absent any major market irregularities. Our commitment to disciplined capital management will continue, and we've clear principles that underpin our approach. Central to that is maintaining a strong balance sheet, investing in our business for the long term while offering shareholders strong cash returns in the form of dividends. As Siobhan outlined a moment ago, our capital coverage has strengthened significantly during the year.

Over the medium term, our target is to operate with total capital coverage in the range of 140% to 180%. In '26, we will reduce our debt and continue to invest in the business. This investment will be closely overseen with our strategy and driving sustainable earnings growth, the cornerstones of our approach as we demonstrated in 2025. We have the building blocks of a stronger, simpler and more profitable group, strong momentum in ii, foundations in place for Adviser to return to growth and a more focused Investments business. A year into delivery with the business more focused, my team and I are impatient to go further and achieving our full potential.

Thank you. With that, Siobhan and I are happy to answer your questions.

Who wants to go first. Hubert, you've got the mic.

Hubert Lam from Bank of America. I've got three questions. Firstly, on costs, you cut cost by 5% as a group for last year. Just wondering what your guidance is for absolute cost for this year? First question.

The second question is on the equity outflows. You mentioned of GBP 4 billion in the quarter. Just wondering where is it coming from? What's driving that? Is it due to your fund performance? Is it -- or your clients moving the passives? Just wondering what's driving that and what the fee margin is for these assets?

And lastly, on ii, obviously, great performance last year, strong trading volumes. I'm just wondering what -- you're guiding for lower fees in trading, but I think that's mainly due to the margin rather than volumes. Just wondering what your outlook is for volume growth just given the strength last year.

Okay. Well, I'll start with the last one first and then I'll take a couple of the others. So ii, yes, we've simplified and lowered fees, particularly on FX. Actually, trading volume was significantly higher in '25 month by month, and we've seen actually pretty strong start to 2026. Obviously, the last couple of days has had another elevated level of trading. So I think -- overall, it was a simplification for the strength of the proposition. It's working. Actually -- and I can talk about that in a bit more detail in a moment, somebody asked me, but the growth within ii in Q1 is very, very strong. The growth in customer numbers, in AUA and also supported by trading is all doing well.

So our expectation, as I said, is ii will grow its profits in 2026, and we'll continue to grow that as we go through this price change. I mean just to comment, I'll let Siobhan say something on costs in a moment. I mean, I touched on this. We set out an ambitious transformation programme a couple of years ago. We've achieved about 90% of that, some unders and some overs, as you might imagine. There's a little bit to complete. One of the things that we weren't expecting to do, but we've in-sourced quite a lot of contracts and quite a lot of work under Richard's leadership and COO because we want to get control. And there was a bit of an outsourced MAX structure that we inherited. And we brought this in-house to get capability and just be more in control of what we're doing.

So we're very comfortable with that. It's taken a little bit of time to build those teams, but we expect the efficiencies. We've had a bit of double running. But as those contracts terminate and we'll run into taking it on to ourselves, we do see opportunities for cost reduction next year.

Yes. And just to give you some specifics, that's working, I guess. To give you some specifics, we have said that there are about GBP 30 million of annualized cost savings will come through. I'd expect some of that to drop through to the bottom line. As Jason has just said, it is about reducing costs to invest into the business. And we also pointed to the fact that the restructuring costs would be lower, about half of what we spent this year. So the total cost, that gives you a bit of guidance as to where we expect that to go. In terms of the equity mandates that we mentioned, there was one that was Murray Income, which was -- came out, was announced in December of last year. The others are some mandates, primarily in equities, a range of fee rates, but I would expect them to be slightly higher than the average of the total book in total, but significantly lower than the equities numbers, the equity margin.

Yes. There was one particular mandate that was a very low equity margin. So perversely, we'll see lower revenue, but the margin rate will go up. Just to be fair on that. It's materially lower, about 1/4 of the average margin in the book. So yes, there we go. Nicholas, want to go next, sorry.

It's Nicholas Herman from Citi. I also have three questions, please. Two on capital, one on ii. On capital, on the NCG guidance, I appreciate the guidance of 5% to 10% is an average, but it seems a little bit potentially on the low side. I mean, I guess in 2026 alone or you're expecting to incur GBP 25 million of restructuring charges. I guess there will be some corporate expenses on top of that. So taking the restructuring charge out alone in 2027 would imply 10% growth. So just could you rationalize why that growth is only 5% to 10% given those -- yes.

And on the surplus capital, just how do you conceptualize 140% to 180% coverage ratio being the right level for the business? And you said that paying down debt is a strategic priority. You've been very consistent there. Just to clarify, is it fair to assume that, that gets paid down in mid-2027 at the reset? Or would you repay earlier?

And then finally, on ii, you've generated GBP 54 million of subscription revenues and GBP 100 million of trading revenues last year. If you had put through the new pricing that you announced a few weeks ago last year, could you just help us understand how that would look, please?

Okay. Look, I think on the outlook for capital generation, one sense, you're right. We are optimistic about the opportunity to grow the business further as we go into '27 and beyond. I think we are being thoughtful about the overall performance of all of the businesses together. Hitting the big stepping up in '26 is first order of business. I think there will be some restructuring costs probably in '27 and beyond. We're not calling a number right now, but I don't think it will be 0. We will want to find opportunity to invest into the business, but it won't be the level that I think I inherited a number that was in the mid-150s. It was a big number. We've been bringing that down, and we've got real benefits. So our discipline about achieving benefits on our spend is absolutely paramount, and we continue to push that as we go further forward.

But nor do I want to have a situation where we're not going to spend anything in the business. We are trying to invest for growth and to make us a better company. So we'll probably -- as we get through '26, we'll probably recalibrate that a little bit for you. But I think on average, that's a good guide, notwithstanding restructuring costs as to where we see the growth potential of the business.

I'll take the ii one because I'm going to answer it. Because it is easy? I don't have the numbers to hand is a simple way of putting it. As I said at the Q4 call, we see this as NPV positive. Richard and I and all of Richard's team ran plenty of scenarios about this. So there's no absolute certainty. But the reaction to date has been very strong. We see profitability actually being strong in 2026. As we go through that, we see the subscription revenues actually growing. They were a little bit depressed by a number of customers in '25 as nobody from Jarvis paid any subscriptions. They all had a fee holiday. So that will come through in 2026. But we're obviously after profitable growth, and we think the steps that Richard and his team have taken set us up well for that.

And in terms of the debt, so we have 2 pieces of debt, one, which is callable at the end of this year and then a bullet in 2027. So I think you can see kind of how it's structured. And we are -- the operating range is a range that we were happy to bounce around the top of. The clear priority for us is to pay down the debt and then invest in the business.

Gregory Simpson from BNP Paribas. Three from my side, please. On ii, are there any early comments on behavioral impacts you've seen from the fee change and also your -- the largest player in the market made a fee change as well. So any comments on market share momentum? Secondly, on ii as well, given the development in AI, are you seeing an opportunity to be more aggressive on -- the kind of advice opportunity in terms of D2C platforms going after the advice market?

And then thirdly, on Investments, revenue margin saw 2 basis points of pressure last year to 19% and you're talking about 19% for '26. So what gives you the confidence in that more stable path on margins?

Siobhan take that one first, and I'll come on to ii.

Yes. So in terms of the revenue margin, in last year, of the GBP 10 billion of equity outflows, 40% was from Asian equities. So that's what really impacted the revenue margin last year. If I look forward and look at the mix of businesses coming through, we are seeing strength in pipeline in things like real assets, EMD and ETFs. So that will actually give some support to the margin. Also last year, we only had kind of 2 weeks of the Stagecoach scheme. So again, that will support the margin going into 2026.

So on the fee change and activity from competitors, I mean, I don't think I've had a shareholder meeting where I've not been asked to speculate on this. It's now happened. We've changed at the same time, certainly the other largest player changed. I think from our perspective, it's working for us. I'll go as far as saying I am pretty convinced that Q1 '26 will be our best quarter ever, surpassing '25 -- last year in Q2, which I think was our previous best quarter. So watch this space. But when we come to April, we'll be able to update you on the customer numbers, the flows and the growth within that segment. So that's all sort of good. And we believe in price competitiveness. We believe in the pricing structure, and we believe in the quality of the service. This is the important elements to success.

On -- everyone is very interested in how AI can change the world that we operate in. So we've been implementing it in areas to create better efficiency, to improve customer outcomes, to increase productivity. We have a pilot up and running in Investments to improve investment performance. We're not changing the decision-making framework, but we're augmenting it with AI to help investors improve their access and speed and timeliness to decision-making. And that's -- we've been working on that for a couple of years. It's more than a pilot. It's actually been rolled out across that area. So that's important. But we're not changing that the individual portfolio manager is responsible for managing the business.

Within the business that we have -- the nascent business that we have in ii, the advice business, we think that's really exciting. We think it's the proposition actually that customers need. They are paying for advice. We're taking responsibility for guiding them through that process. It's primarily digital. We've got every opportunity to augment that with AI as is helpful. It's at a price point that is incomparable to IFA pricing. So it's probably for a different customer segment, but actually, we think it's a very interesting opportunity to grow that. So there'll be a bit of test and learn as we go through '26, but it's up, it's running, and we're very optimistic that it can make a big difference.

And just the final thing I'll say on it because I wanted to say this is it does work across the businesses. ii customers taking advice will be hosted on Wrap with investment solutions provided by Aberdeen Investment. So it brings together the thread through the group. Who's next? Back there.

Jacques-Henri Gaulard from Kepler Cheuvreux. Maybe the question back on Nick's point about the 5%, 10% growth. Is it fair to say that if we were to include the CapEx you're going to need for technology for AI, that would be more like [ 7 12 ] for example? Is there ingrain into that a technology CapEx structurally to just being able to keep up?

Look, we've got quite a big envelope above the line already for investment in tech. And we have a smaller envelope below the line, as you might call it, we call it restructuring and transaction costs, but sort of below-the-line costs. There is no hesitancy from me, Siobhan or Richard to invest in tech for the good of the company. We'll continue to do that. We've grown expenses in areas that we want. We've taken expenses out where we've had to. I'm not going to get into quantifying it, but across the group, look, the technology cycles are changing from months to weeks to days, right?

So -- and actually, the pricing of this is also going to change. Nobody knows, right, how much this costs. But everybody can see the use case and the increased use is going up. That's not news, but we see the same thing across our business, and we will continue to push to be as forward thinking on tech as possible. Any more we got on the line. We are going online, Douglas? Duncan, sorry. Is there any questions online? No? are we done in the room?

Well, look, thank you all very much for coming. Hopefully, you've picked up your chocolate freebies in the form of an ii Penny Drop. Apparently, I'm not open minded yet, but it looks pretty good. We do appreciate you all coming in and your focus. And obviously, we are available for any further Q&A, either Siobhan or myself, management team or into ii -- or into IR sorry -- or ii, I don't mind. Go for it. Thanks very much.

Good morning, and welcome to the Aberdeen Q4 AUMA and Flow Trading Update. I will now hand you over to Chief Executive Officer, Jason Windsor. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining Siobhan and me for our Q4 call. Q4 last year already seemed some time ago, and we've had a very busy start to the new year. But let me just take a couple of minutes to reflect back on the last quarter, which was a good quarter for us, particularly in terms of strategic delivery.

Aberdeen is in much better shape than it was a year ago with each of our 3 businesses making progress as we deliver on our strategy to become the U.K.'s leading wealth and investments group. Group AUMA now stands at GBP 556 billion which is the highest level since COVID, and it's up 9% year-on-year, supported, as you know, by positive markets. Interactive investor continues to perform very strongly ending the year with 0.5 million customers and another record-breaking quarter for trading on the platform. This growth, along with a number of exciting new proposition launches, mean that the business is well set up to sustain this impressive performance.

Turning to Adviser. On the positive side, 2025 as a whole saw a material improvement in net sales. by over 40%, but we are still in outflow. Q4 saw the important launch of our new SIPP, which is seamlessly integrated on the platform. We also saw higher outflows than expected, mainly from tax free cash. We still have further to go to return to growth as we continue to invest heavily in our platform experience for IFAs and clients.

In investments, AUM increased to over GBP 390 billion, again, aided by positive markets. Flows benefited from encouraging trends in a number of asset classes as well as the Stagecoach pension scheme that we announced in early December. During 2025 as a whole, gross flows were the best for many years. So we are getting a lot right. However, our focus on continuing to improve flows and financial performance remains undiminished. Taken all together, with the positive momentum at the start of this year, I'm optimistic about the outlook for the group in 2026. And with that, I'll hand over to Siobhan for a little more detail.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Starting with interactive investor, momentum remains strong across key metrics. As Jason mentioned, total customers reached 0.5 million, up 14% year-on-year, with SIPP customers rising 30% to 105,000. Daily average retail trades were at their highest ever levels at 29,200 up 40% versus Q4 last year. Net inflows of GBP 1.4 billion in the quarter brought full year flows to GBP 7.3 billion, a 28% increase year-on-year and representing 9% of opening AUMA. It's been a very busy quarter in ii with the launch of our Managed SIPP soft launch of ii Advice and ii 360 now in advanced testing.

The pricing changes we announced in December will become effective in the next 2 weeks, which will simplify our proposition and further enhance our competitive positioning. Finally, the sale of the financial planning business we announced in August is due to complete imminently. In Adviser, AUMA increased to over GBP 80 billion driven by positive markets. Outflows in the fourth quarter of GBP 0.8 billion were elevated compared to prior periods. This principally reflected the uncertainty in the market ahead of the U.K. budget which resulted in an increase in tax-free cash withdrawals of around GBP 250 million in the fourth quarter. Full year net outflows improved by 44% to GBP 2.2 billion. This reflected the repricing earlier in the year and our ongoing focus on service, the latter of which has been reflected in our strong average Net Promoter Score for the year of plus 45 points.

Turning to investments. Assets increased by 6% during 2025 to end the year at GBP 390 billion. Q4 net outflows of GBP 3 billion included the previously flagged, low-margin GBP 4.5 billion quant withdrawal, reduced net outflows in equities and insurance partners outflows of GBP 1.2 billion. Positively, institutional and retail wealth saw gross inflows in Q4 increased by 26% year-on-year with higher gross inflows in multi-asset alternatives fixed income and equities. Excluding liquidity flows, which are inherently volatile and the Phoenix assets we include within this business line, net flows for I&RW for the year were positive at around GBP 5 billion. Multi-asset net inflows included the GBP 1.2 billion from the Stagecoach pension scheme arrangement agreement announced in December.

We also saw continued good momentum in alternatives with commodity ETFs being the principal driver behind an 85% improvement in net flows. AUM increased across our total commodity ETF range now stands at GBP 15.8 billion. Given the flow trends seen in the latter half of the year and the resultant change in asset mix, we now expect our full year 2025 revenue margin in investments to be around 19.2 basis points. Turning to the group as a whole. Full year 2025 adjusted operating profit is expected to be in line with current market expectations and we are confident in the outlook for the business as reflected in our full year 2026 targets of at least GBP 300 million of adjusted operating profit and circa GBP 300 million of net capital generation.

In addition, we are pleased to note that with effect from year-end 2025, our capital requirement will be lower and is now based on the group's internal capital assessment. We will provide a fuller update on this at our full year results in March. I will now hand over to the operator and Jason and I will be happy to take your questions.

[Operator Instructions]

Our first question today comes from the line of Hubert Lam from Bank of America.

Three of them for me. Firstly, in terms of the investment fee margin, you now you're guiding for lower 9.2 basis points for the year. It implies, I guess, a bigger drop in the second half of the year. I'm just wondering what the dynamics are behind it? I know you mentioned mix. Is there a seasonality around that? Or -- and also like what was your outlook for 2026? Should we consider the H2 margin to kind of the starting point? That's the first question.

My second question is on Adviser. I don't think mentioned in the press release, but you're still guiding for GBP 1 billion of inflows in 2026. And the last question is on the capital requirement. I know you'll give more detail on the full year results, but I just guess what does it mean for excess capital and strategic flexibility?

So if I take the question, so the fee margin is 92 basis points. It is primarily driven by mix. you can see the equities in there and there has been the mix coming through on that. In terms of -- if I look at the -- for the run rate for next year, I'd expect it to be around 19 basis points overall as we look into 2026. In terms of the adviser flows of GBP 1 billion, you can see we've given you a bit more color in terms of the outflows from the tax free cash in the quarter and we're still guiding to that GBP 1 billion for 2026.

And in terms of the capital requirements, it is -- as I've said, we've moved to the ICARA basis, which is the internal capital model. We will update at the -- in March. I'd expect us to give you a bit of guidance there in terms of -- we gave you last year how we think about our capital allocation, and we'll expand on that in March as appropriate.

The next question comes from the line of Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan.

So one on ii. I saw you had a nice uptick in the cash balances, which I guess is related to clearly the growth of the business and the SIPP penetration. Can you just please remind us what sort of margin you expect to make on these cash deposits and whether you think this will continue on 2026? And then I had a question on Adviser. I appreciate that the budget created a lot of uncertainty. We saw additional redemptions. But can you please remind us of the dynamics?

So if a client withdraw, let's say, money from SiPP account within Aberdeen adviser vector, can this money remain on the platform or are actually transfer, for example, to a bank account? Because otherwise, I would maybe expect to see slightly higher redemption, but also pair by also higher inflows as we saw in some other players that have reported. Just a clarification would be helpful.

Interesting, Enrico. Actually, the 2 questions are somewhat related. As part of the -- but slightly different answer. Part of the increased cash in ii was some of the wrapper, the SIPP wrapper releasing tax-free cash that remaining on the platform. So you can see some of that.

Some of it is the backlog of SIPPs that haven't yet fully invested, so the backdrop to the uptick in cash in ii. I think in terms of margin, I don't think for 26, we expect materially different to what we've seen in '25.

No, you will -- you'll have the impact of the rate cut at the end of the year coming through, but it will be in the 210 to 220 basis points range.

So that sort of that range, we'll sharpen up guidance on that when we get to March. The -- I think in our adviser, we -- people tend to use the adviser platform more as a product as an account for their overall savings. So we do tend to see more cash when it's redeemed leaving that platform and staying on it. ii is more of a household account, people use it for the trading, ISAs, whatever cash investing. It tends to be taken off platform on adviser.

We do have a cash product. It's got a small balance in it that people can use. We can probably do better at getting more to stay in that product on platform. And then there's further functionality that we'll be adding in terms of some of the bonds and the other investment opportunities. So there is upside potential for us to retain more of that cash. But at the moment, we're seeing most of it leave platform from adviser.

Next question from Nicholas Herman from Citi.

Yes. A couple of questions from my side, please, as well. Just on your investments, I guess, particularly we've obviously seen notably strong emerging markets last year. Could you just give us an update on the investment performance of your EM equities and fixed income funds, please? And I guess, how the level of traction that you're having with your clients on improving demand for EM?

And then the second question is on ii. In the spotlight on ii in the middle of last year, you disclosed the average fee per trade in the range of, I think, GBP 14, GBP 12 to GBP 15 broadly? Obviously, it depends on various factors, including the proportion of international trades. But broadly speaking, where do you see that GBP 12 to GBP 15 going as a result of the recent pricing changes, please?

So on investment performance, we've not given the full update. We haven't got the full analysis of December data against benchmarks. But broadly, investment performance as a group has improved sharply year-to-date and we've done much better across all asset classes. So at a -- this is an estimate, but at a 1-year basis, we're 84% of funds outperforming 3 years, 80%. So that's ticked up nicely. And Peter and all the investments team have really lent in to improve. And that's across, as I just said, all asset classes with equities making quite a significant improvement in particular. We'll go through that in a bit more detail.

Particularly, I would call out within that emerging market income, where we've done particularly well. We continued to see real growth in that fund, U.S. small cap Tekla. They've had really strong performance. On the fixed income side, again, it's improved. Pretty much across the board. So that's -- performance is part of the solution to achieving sales, but signs are better this year than they've been for quite some time. Do the ii commission question?

Yes. I think you quoted GBP 15. I think that number, we would expect to be to be around the same, and we don't -- and it will come down, but we'll see an offset with activity as it comes through during 2026.

I think we're pretty excited about the price reset that we've done through ii. It is actually fueled some pretty significant growth already this year. We think in advance, obviously, the prices take hold. But everyone is now trading off basically the new price. That's obviously the fees, the commissions and the FX. That all goes live in February.

We really are at vanguard of keeping -- I shouldn't use that word. But we're at the leading edge of keeping customer value, absolutely at the heart of what we do, service and value, and that's why the platform has been so successful. We'll tell you more about how the implementation of that has gone in March. But there will be -- we do expect, and this is the opportunity for us, further activity based on a lower price point.

Come back on the investment demand and fee margin, please. I guess, just circling back there. Are you expecting an uptick in demand for your EM offerings across equities and fixed income? And if that -- and would you therefore expect that to provide some support to your fee margin this year, '26?

Yes. If we look into the pipeline and where we see asset allocation rotation and demand, we have seen that tick up. And clearly, with the strong investment performance that we'll give you more color on in March. Those 2 things together will -- we can see some small benefits coming through there.

The next question comes from the line of Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas.

Three on my end. Firstly, just a quick follow-up on the fee change again. Was it calibrated to be fairly neutral to the revenue base or positive or negative in simple terms, subscription fees went up, FX fees went down, but just want to double check on the net outcome.

Second question is on adviser. I hear what you say about the budget, but even if you add the GBP 250 million of tax free cash flow grows, you still would be negative in the quarter. So what do you think is still missing in terms of turning that around and getting back into inflows?

And then thirdly, the Stagecoach pension is actually seem quite interesting in terms of asset manager doing that kind of transaction. Is there a pipeline for some more transactions like that?

Okay. I'll have a go at these. So look, the fee changes, I just said are NPV positive and there's a whole heap of scenarios, but somewhat market condition related. But we want to attract more customers. We want to retain more customers. It's not been an issue, but it's a competitive world, and we want to be out there. We do expect higher volume on the back of the changes that we've made that may or may not come through. But the way that we set this up is to grow the business, grow the customer numbers, grow the revenues and grow the activity. We look forward to reporting more on that.

And we're incredibly focused on maintaining that service proposition, but it has to be accompanied by the best value in the market. But you're right, on adviser. I said that clearly. We've got further to do. And the gross flows have been -- we pretty consistent through the year. Q4 was about GBP 1.8 billion. So we aren't quite yet where we need to be in terms of gross flows, but the support is increasing in the platform. We have seen some challenges in outflows as we call out the specific. We don't want to over focus on that, but it's in the numbers, so we need to mention it. There is further work to do to close the jaws to get us back to that positive figure that we're aspiring to be at. And it is -- we've, as I said in my remarks, we continue to invest heavily in the platform.

We've launched the new SIPP now, which is a seamless experience. I think we've added approximately 1,000 SIPP accounts since the beginning of December. So we're starting to see growth on the platform that is necessary to get back to that. But the only thing I can say is we're laser-focused on this, and there a lot there is work to do. Now Stagecoach, that was an interesting transaction. They were looking for a solution. we've been talking to them about a number of different things. We're pleased to do it. It made a lot of sense for us to offer that solution. They've got a very forward thinking set of trustees and a corporate sponsor that did see real value in working with us, particularly for their members.

At the heart of this, this is about offering the members of Stagecoach some opportunity to participate in the upside. There was an increment that was offered immediately, which is great. And then there's effectively a profit share between ourselves and the Stagecoach members as we go further forward. That is supported by for us, with the asset management agreement, which is our core business, and we're delighted to do that. And then there's a block of capital in that fund that supports the investment mix and the opportunity for extra member benefits and for surplus to come to us.

So in and of itself, we think is a great transaction. We've got a limited appetite, but we are not ruled in or ruled out more. We are not sitting on the edge about to announce more of these. But we -- if the circumstances are right, and there's a number of things have to be right, we would look openly at this. But it's about being an asset manager that is focused on delivering for its customers. I mean that's at the heart of what we're about.

Next in the queue is Ben Bathurst from RBC Capital Markets.

I've got 2 questions on interactive investor, if I may. Starting with one on the cash balances. Obviously, you've referenced that step-up quarter-on-quarter. In light of the factors that you mentioned that have been driving that in Q4, how are you expecting the cash balances to move in the early part of 2026? And is it reasonable to expect potentially to fall away slightly in absolute pounds billions terms in Q1?

And then just on the SIPP managed portfolio, early days, I know, but have you managed to get any traction with that proposition in the first few months? And are there any views yet as to which companies which companies -- customers that proposition is appealing to most?

Hi, Ben. So just to come back on the ii cash. So we've given you it's about GBP 8 billion. We would expect it to stay at the same percentage of the overall AUA. So that's about 8% to 10%. So -- and I wouldn't expect that to change as we look forward into the future. In terms of the SIPP, the managed SIPP. It's early days. We have been -- we have had about 1,000 customers come through that. So we're pleased with the traction and we will continue to monitor and report progress on that.

And the managed [indiscernible] has been open for longer in the same -- it's obviously a smaller product, but that's also -- so I think we're doing about 50 a day and it's ticking over quite nicely. So we can -- we are seeing this pickup and we expect further interest in it. We've got, I think by the time we get to March, we'll have enough data to be able to answer your second part of your question about the customers.

But clearly, the whole thesis around the work that I have been doing is to widen the appeal of the platform to customers who aren't purely self-investing and this is part of the puzzle in broadening that there.

Our next question comes from the line of Jacques-Henri Gaulard from Kepler Cheuvreux.

I have one question left, which is about the capital. You already had quite a bit of excess capital. You have clearly even more excess capital on the basis of your capital requirements. Would you consider amending your distribution policy?

Well, you're right, we've got a strong balance sheet. We've got lots of options. We're certainly not flagging any change to that. I talked, as Siobhan mentioned about capital allocation. I think with the new CFO now armed with a more I would say, modern approach to capital management, which is to use economic capital modeling. We'll talk further about this. One of our objectives is to lower our gross debt. And so bear that in mind as we think about this. We will come back to that in our -- it will be a bit more expansive on both the numbers and the outlook for capital in March.

We'll now take the last question. That comes from the line of Mike Werner from UBS.

Just 2 questions from me, please. One just to dive a little bit deeper into kind of the fee margin. I think you got it on the investment side, 19.2% for the full year. You're at 19.9% in the first half, I believe. Should we think about this as kind of mid-18, mid high 18s, your margin in the second half and ultimately, potentially lower run rate as we go into 2026 in terms of the exit rate from '25. So that's the first question.

And the second question, if you could just better explain this is something I've been quite confused about in terms of the Stagecoach transaction, if there's any balance sheet impact on Aberdeen, it's a really interesting transaction, but I just wanted to better understand what the -- if there is a balance sheet impact for Aberdeen?

So on the fee margin, you're right, it was 19.9%, and we are guiding to 19.2% for the year. As I look forward into 2026, I'd expect it to be around 19 for the full year. The second half has got some mix effect, but as I look forward with markets with the market movement improvement, that's what will support the revenue margin going forward as the mix changes back.

On the Stagecoach, I mean no significant impact, very marginal impact. We do think about the risks, but there was no cash consideration. So it was -- we assumed the sponsorship onto the balance sheet. We thought very hard about what is the level of investment and other types of risk. I got that sort of insurance background myself. And within our framework, certainly not 0 risk, but the risk of us having to contribute extra cash is very remote indeed. But in a 1 in 200 approach, of course, that's not 0.

There are no further questions. So handing back over to Jason Windsor for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, look, thank you all very much for hopping on the call this morning. We do like to get out and talk to you all about how we're doing. Duncan and I are available for any follow-ups that you wanted to pick up that you didn't get a chance to answer. But as I've said a couple of times, we are very much looking forward to the March presentation where we'll be able to expand on a number of these points and look forward to seeing you in the office for that. Have a good day.

Thank you for joining today's call. You may now disconnect your lines.

Good morning, and welcome to the Aberdeen Q3 AUMA and Flows Trading Update.

I will now hand over to Chief Executive Officer, Jason Windsor. Please go ahead.

Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks very much for joining our Q3 call. With me today is our CFO, Siobhan Boylan. It's been another good quarter, as we implement the plan we set out in March. Net flows and other key operational metrics improved year-on-year and group AUMA of GBP 542 billion is up 6% year-to-date, benefiting from positive markets.

In interactive investor, there has been continued strong performance across the board, and the team has done a terrific job sustaining growth in customers and assets. We have a pipeline of innovative new propositions, and with increasing brand awareness, ii is very well positioned to sustain this positive momentum.

In adviser, customer services again improved and net flows were 50% better than in Q3 last year, but we are still in outflow. So looking ahead, we remain focused on returning to growth and achieving our 2026 net flows target of GBP 1 billion.

And in investments, while equities remains -- and flows in equities remain challenging, we have seen encouraging net inflows in fixed income and real assets as well as in quants and commodities. As a result, we are confident in our prospects as a wealth and investments group with the growth potential across all 3 of our businesses reflected in our 2026 targets.

And with that, I'll hand over to Siobhan to take you through a little more detail.

Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Beginning with ii, where momentum pleasingly remains strong across all key metrics. Total customers reached 492,000, including the expected circa 20,000 from Jarvis. Excluding this acquisition, organic growth was 10%. This is ahead of our 8% target.

Strong momentum was also seen in higher value SIPPs with transfers in record levels in the quarter and customers rising to 98,000, up 29% versus Q3 last year.

During Q3, customers continued to increase engagement with the platform's global trading and FX capabilities. Daily average trading volumes were up 43% and hit a record of 26,600 in the quarter. Net inflows of GBP 1.9 billion were up 58% year-on-year. Combined with the completion of the Jarvis acquisition and positive markets, AUMA increased to GBP 93 billion.

As we outlined at the Spotlight event, building the ii brand is a key lever to drive our future growth. It is encouraging that brand awareness increased to 32% in Q3. This is up from 25% in Q4 and 18% in Q1 last year. We launched our new campaign last week to continue to raise brand awareness.

In summary, ii remains very well positioned to deliver against its 2026 targets given the strong inflows, growing customer numbers, increasing customer engagement and the new propositions that are due to go live in the near future.

In adviser, assets increased 5% to GBP 79 billion, reflecting positive markets. Net outflows in the quarter improved by 50% to GBP 0.5 billion compared to Q3 last year. This reflects our strategic repricing earlier this year and our continued progress in improving service levels. As a result, our Net Promoter Score increased to 45 points year-to-date, 5 points ahead of our target and 2 points higher than at Half 1.

Turning now to investments. Assets increased 3% to GBP 382 billion, with market performance offsetting net outflows. GBP 1.8 billion of net outflows in the quarter were almost half the level of Q3 last year. This included insurance partner outflows of GBP 1.1 billion, principally reflecting Phoenix's heritage business in runoff.

Net inflows in institutional and retail wealth, excluding liquidity, improved by GBP 2.9 billion year-on-year to GBP 0.2 billion. This reflects higher gross inflows in fixed income and commodities. Redemptions in equities also improved significantly, but remained elevated with net outflows of GBP 1.6 billion.

In the quarter, we launched 2 further active ETFs on the London Stock Exchange. Our global ETF product suite now has reached circa GBP 12 billion of assets under management. In September, Phoenix announced their intention to in-source GBP 20 billion of shareholder assets. This is subject to a 3 years' notice period. We are working with Phoenix to manage this transition collaboratively and continue to have a strong relationship, as their key asset management strategic partner.

And as Phoenix have indicated, we have the potential to attract a greater share of their policyholder business as they consolidate their asset management -- manager partners.

Looking ahead, we are expecting a circa GBP 4.5 billion redemption from a quants mandate in Q4 as a result of a client-driven asset allocation change. Given the low margins on this business, this will have minimal revenue impact.

Turning back to the outlook for the group. We remain focused on improving efficiency across the group. Our transformation program is on track. And as Jason said at the start, we are confident in the outlook for the group. We continue to see the business delivering in line with our plan and targets set for 2026.

I will now hand over to the operator, and Jason and I will be very pleased to answer your questions.

[Operator Instructions] We will now take our first question from Hubert Lam of Bank of America.

I've got 3 of them. Firstly, on adviser, outflows seemed to have gone backwards quarter-on-quarter. Can you talk a bit about what's going on here? Is it seasonality? Or is there some uncertainty around the U.K. budget causing outflows in adviser to weaken in the quarter?

Second question is on the equity outflows, still continue to be quite stark despite good markets. So do you think -- do you attribute this to like general industry trends or mainly also due to your fund performance? And any update on fund performance also in the quarter would be appreciated.

And lastly, could you just give us an update on some of these initiatives you talked around ii, including advice, just what's the latest progress on them? And when should we expect them to start to bear fruit?

Okay. Hubert, thanks for your questions. I'll start with the ii initiatives. We went through those with you in Manchester a couple of months ago. I think that they're all proceeding to plan. We've got to cut through a little bit of final red tape, I'll put it like that, to get them actually launched into the market, but they are either in advanced beta testing or in pilot mode across each 1 of the 3 that we talked about.

For those of you that can't remember, that is ii Advice that the managed SIPP and ii360, which is the advanced platform trading system. We think that's all to the good to broaden the net into interactive investor and to meet the growing customer needs. So that is very much on the slate.

I'll make a couple of comments on the other 2 questions. I mean, Siobhan might want to add into that. Look, I think in adviser, we do point to, obviously, the improvement quarter on -- Q3 on Q3. And clearly, we are worse than where we were in Q2. We see sort of steady improvement in inflows and then in gross flows in. We've seen a little bit more outflow perhaps than we expected in Q3, not really to other platforms. We're actually much better year-to-date in terms of transfers from our platform to other industry platforms, just under GBP 1 billion better. It is one quarter. It is better than last year. We do continue to push hard to improve it.

Everybody here at Aberdeen is very much focused on getting back to that net positive flow target for 2026. But there's more to do, frankly. And I think -- I don't want to overstate this point, but I'll mention it that we have seen a little bit of uncertainty and cash being taken out of pensions ahead of the budget. We'll see that could play out a little bit further depending on how the chancellor kind of manages the media to a degree because there is uncertainty that is persisting.

Equities, it was a tough quarter. We are -- I keep -- make this point, we are changing the shop front such that it's the most relevant that it can be. We've seen real uptick in market levels, particularly in Asia Pac and emerging markets. We've not seen the flows. I think it's an industry matter. We've had a couple of reallocations away from us. So there's clearly further work to do there.

I think performance is better in Q3 than we reported at the half year. We aren't giving the precise numbers. So -- we've had a better quarter, which is good, but there's still further to go. So the 3-year numbers obviously take a time for that to come through. But the year-to-date performance is showing signs across the board of improvement.

Yes. I think the only thing I'd add on, it is mainly Asian equities, where you're seeing the equity outflows. But we are seeing a more global reallocation, asset allocation back into Asian equity. So we may start to see some of that come through on the adviser flows. As Jason said, there's nothing -- if you look at the gross flows, inflows, they are remaining steady. You'd expect we will see some of the supercharge pricing deals that we did at the beginning of the year come through this quarter and next.

And on the outflow side, there's nothing -- there's no -- there's a number of factors. There's nothing really to attribute those outflows to. That's a 0.2 in the quarter, a little bit of seasonality, a little bit of cash out as you would expect.

[Audio Gap]

Couple on ii, if I may, please. So one on brokerage was clearly very, very strong over the quarter. Can you give us some color on whether you expect also the margin these volumes to be up perhaps more FX trading or just to help us understand whether the profitability of brokerage clients has also been strong over the quarter? That's my first question.

My second question is a bit more general on competition. Can you just give us your view on how you see the competitive landscape for B2C investing in the U.K. evolving?

And then finally, just your thoughts on the budget. I know you already mentioned that you saw some impact of that in adviser, but perhaps, do you think the business is positioned for some of the key changes that have been rumored such as the removal, or well, the lowering the amount that you can put in a cash ISA or introducing a minimum level of investments in -- for example, in U.K. equities. So how do you plan to position the business to benefit from these?

Okay. Do you want to take the first one Siobhan on the margins?

Yes. So thank you for your question. The -- we have seen strong FX trading, and that is coming through in the income. So it is primarily due to international trading, so international equities. So we've seen a spike in volatility, mainly in the back half of Q3 and coming into Q4 -- start of Q4.

I think in the competitive part of the market, you've got sort of 2 forces at work. The actual long-term savings part of the platform is dominated by 4 players. I think we were #1 in terms of net flows last year and again in the first half. The net flows is not necessarily how we always measure our success because customer growth is fundamental. But if you look at the top 4, I won't name check them, but it's pretty obvious. I don't know the number, but that's well over 90% of the market. There's a real consolidation that has played out in that part of the longer-term savings part of the market, SIPPs and ISAs.

And on the brokerage side, there are more neo brokers and competitors with different business models. Some of them that don't really work in the U.K., some of them that have had some success, some that work with CFDs and crypto and a bit more esoteric products that we're not in. So we're faithful to our customer propositions, doing the right thing for long-term savings. We've really got a strong reputation, and we're not going to put that at risk in the way that we trade. And we feel that the brand awareness is largely coming through better customer recommendations. And actually, it's the day-to-day service that is really benefiting in creating the growth step-up. So it is competitive, but we're fighting hard and we're winning.

I think on the budget, we can speculate all day long, the kite flying exercise is kind of painful. What I want is stability and confidence and the chance of making the right steps for the U.K. Inc., which will allow confidence in U.K. consumers to invest for the long term, either in the U.K. or internationally. We've never been supportive of trying to direct the traffic. I think operationally, that would be quite difficult. And I'm not sure it's the right thing. But with a better set of -- with a better U.K. economy, there will be more direct investment from U.K. retail in particular, where ii is the #1 provider of trading in U.K. retail into U.K. equities, and we've seen some of that in the last quarter. We've also seen quite a lot of activity in the U.S., but we want to stay investment agnostic and customer-focused.

And our next question comes from Nicholas Herman of Citi.

Yes. A couple for me, please. Markets have clearly been very supportive since early April. You said that you are confident on your targets. And I can understand that. If the markets remain supportive, it seems possible that you could quickly get to a position of exceeding your target. So in that context, how should we and investors think about the marginal cost to income for your business over and above your targets? I mean, clearly, there is variable compensation, but presumably, you'd also increase growth investments, too. So could you provide some broad quantitative guidance on marginal cost to income, either at a group level or segment level? That would be helpful.

And then on ii, for the marketing campaign, will -- I guess, will marketing incentives be similar to that in prior campaigns? Can you please quantify customer acquisition from recent marketing campaigns or ii? And is it fair to say that as brand recognition has improved over time your marketing campaigns have also become more effective over time?

Okay. Well, on the targets, I think it's the first time I've been asked, are we going to exceed them, which is a new one. We are continuing to work toward them. They are our targets for the group of profit and capital generation. There was always some ambition in them, and then, we continue to see better performance than in ii. And we're taking more time in investments and adviser to come through. I think it's pretty evident in Q3 and the year-to-date trends. So there might be a slight mix change, but that is the numbers, and we're certainly not signaling higher targets.

The cost to income ratio, it's very -- I've shied away from trying to generalize the group level because I don't think you can. I think ii's efficiency remains very strong, and it's a key part of their success. And you can see we have a clear cost of asset target as part of that with the sale of FPAL that actually makes it even slightly more efficient in terms of cost to assets. So you can see -- you can do that -- those numbers, but I can't -- we'll restate that once the FPAL deal closes in Q1.

Adviser, you can see those trends come through in the half year. I think we flagged a revenue margin of 27-ish basis points. Through that, that is going to continue under pressure, and we're going to continue to push on the cost side to maintain the level of profitability. The harder one to manage, of course, is investments, where we've taken out a considerable amount of costs, but we've also seen considerable revenue pressure, mainly through mix change.

Product to product is actually reasonably consistent, but we've seen growth in the lower margin side, growth in fixed income, growth in quant and liquidity. So we're continuing to push the growth strategy through an investment because fundamental to us being more profitable in our investment business is achieving better net flows, but frankly, across the board. But we -- I've deliberately not set cost to income target just because it's quite hard to manage.

On the ii marketing -- well, sorry, there's a second question I was just unpicking my scrolled notes. Look, we've reset the brand with a new campaign, which is to try and again, broaden the name recognition. For a business that was #1 in net flows, we're miles behind on the equivalent brand recognition. So as I said in Manchester, and I can repeat now, that's frankly -- I'd rather be that way around because that shows that we've got more growth potential within ii as the brand recognition improves.

I just said, customer recommendations are really important, ii community was great addition to the platform. That's helpful. And it allows people to, a, be engaged, and b, talk about the experience that they're having. The -- it's early days. We only -- I think we launched it 10 days ago. So we're not sort of flagging yet a net progress on it, but what you should see is a sign that we continue to really believe in the brand, and we're really going to back it and make the investment necessary for us to drive the growth into 2026 and beyond.

And you can see, obviously, the growth in the organic growth, our target was 8%, and it's coming through at 10%. So that's before the brand campaign. So that will -- you'll see that growth come through as a result of that increased brand awareness.

But is it fair to say that your -- the efficiency of marketing has been improving over time as that brand has been picking up?

I think the way I would look at it is if you think about our cost per AUA, it's that metric, which obviously includes the marketing campaign, is the one we focus on. When you take out FPAL, that falls below 20 basis points. So that's the key metric we look at.

Yes. There's 2 parts to marketing, of course. There's the so-called above-the-line brand investment, which is this kind of is. And then there's the more product incentives. We are getting better at product incentives to -- and you can see that in the transfer numbers. We're not the only people to work this out, but you start to be tailored that, your personalization, your targeting does become more efficient and the cost per account, therefore, benefits from that.

And we will move on to our next question from David McCann of Deutsche Numis.

Just one question for me, please. Can you give us an update on where you are with the time line for the new Chairman?

Unfortunately, no, there is no update that we are able to provide today, David. I'm sorry with that, but that's where we are. It's a process that's being managed by the Board, and we're not providing any update today.

And we'll take our next question from Gregory Simpson of BNP Paribas.

Just on Phoenix, does the 3-year notice period, I mean the GBP 20 billion comes out all at once in 3 years' time? Can you give us a sense of the market share opportunity in their policyholder business? That's the first question.

Second one is just on financial planning. I think the CMD showed a minus GBP 8 million operating profit last year. Is that kind of the right magnitude for thinking about the financial impact from the sale?

And then thirdly, on the Jarvis deal, is there kind of more like that you can do in terms of the tail of the U.K. DTC platforms that could be kind of acquired or picked up?

Yes. If I take the Phoenix one, yes, it is subject to a 3-year notice period. So clearly, with all those sorts of things, you do work through it, so -- but it is the 3 years you should use as a guide.

In terms of FPAL, I think the -- from an operating profit perspective, I think it was about GBP 12 million of revenue in the first half, but the operating profit is 0. So that kind of gives you an idea of the size of the impact for FPAL going forward.

I think you have 2 other points. On the Phoenix inflows, I think there are some -- it's a big complex account. We remain very supportive. We've won some. We lose some. There's reallocations. There's all sorts of things going on. They are trying to consolidate their asset management providers, and we are well placed within that. There's so much ins and outs. We've got like -- I can't remember the number now, somewhere between GBP 12 million and GBP 14 billion of inflows this year, and obviously, more outflows. There's a lot going on, but we are continuing to be well placed to win that, but their asset management model is evolving, and you've seen that, as they've announced. And -- so on the policyholder side that we do expect to win more assets over time. That's a sort of a 2- to 3-year view.

Jarvis is there more -- well, we'd like to think so, there's nothing that we're sitting on, though. So we did see something similar that allowed a very clear acquisition approach. So what -- Jarvis, just to be crystal clear, we didn't buy a platform. We bought a customer book and that they all transitioned to ii accounts. So there's a real simplicity benefit there. They become ii customers. We will lose a few of the Jarvis customers part of that, and they got a 6-month subscription free period to allow them to make the decision whether ii is the right place for them or they might choose to go elsewhere.

There are no further questions in the queue. I will now hand it back to Jason for closing remarks.

Okay. Well, look, thank you all very much for joining. As we've said, it's been an encouraging quarter. We are -- particularly in ii, where we've seen real growth in customer numbers and assets. We continue to work very much toward the strategy, the plan that we set out in March, and we are pleased to announce where we've got to today, and we'll continue to engage with you all. Any further questions, please do not hesitate to call Duncan and his team in IR. Thank you very much.