Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Fintell Half Year 2024 Results Presentation. My name is Matt Timmins. I'm the joint CEO of Fintell, and I'm delighted today to be joined by my co-CEO, Neil Stevens, and CFO, David Thompson. As we get into the agenda of the presentation on the following slide, I will cover off an overview of the business for those of you less familiar with Fintell. I'll then hand over to David, who will take you through a financial review, and David will then hand over to Neil to go through the divisional summary. As well as an overview of the strategic investments and M&A that we've embarked on over the last six months before finishing off with an outlook for the future.
First of all, for those of you less familiar with Fintell, on the following slide, we prepared an overview of the market in which we operate in, which is retail financial services. We operate right at the very heart of this strategically important market. Within retail financial services, customers have access to thousands of different financial products, everything from home insurance to car insurance, to banking, to investments and pensions. These products are offered by hundreds of different product providers at a price and value which is commensurate with the competitive nature of the market. It really is a great market for consumers to operate in. As I said, thousands of different financial products offered by well-capitalized manufacturers at a price and value, which is very attractive to consumers.
The difficulty for consumers in this market is choosing which of those products is the most appropriate or the most suitable for their needs. And in order to make those decisions, consumers will consult lots of different people, from friends and family to professional advisors. And in the main, 80% of all mortgages and 80% of all investment products go from product manufacturer to consumer via a financial intermediary of some description. It is a heavily intermediated market. So a great market for consumers to operate in, lots of products, but for financial intermediaries and for product manufacturers, it really is a tough market. It's heavily regulated, it's highly fragmented, there are thousands of different advice businesses scattered all over the U.K.
Around 12 thousand IFA businesses, pretty much the same 12 to 14 thousand, mortgage broking businesses, and 4 thousand wealth management firms. Lots of firms operating all across the UK in this highly fragmented market. There's a lack of quality data in the market, and there's lots of different fintech solutions that these intermediary firms are using on a regular basis. It's a great market for consumers, tough market to operate in for product providers and intermediaries. All of these participants within the market have a common and binding need for regulatory support, for data and technology to help them do a good job for their clients, and for product information and the ability to compare products against each other. That's where Fintell comes in.
Over on the following slide, you'll see that we provide services and solutions to the three key components of this market. First of all, there are product providers, those people who manufacture the products, the banks, the building societies, the insurers, the asset managers. Financial intermediaries in the middle, this highly fragmented group of businesses who are responsible for 80% of the flows of products across the market, and then for the end consumers.
We provide lots of different services and solutions and technology for these three groups. In the main, the outcomes that we are trying to drive, first of all, if I concentrate on the middle section here for intermediaries, is we want to help intermediaries to do a great job for their clients. We want to enable those intermediary businesses to serve more and more clients more effectively.
For product providers, we want to help those product providers to be able to distribute their products to this big intermediary market in a really effective and efficient way. And also to take the data on, consumer behavior, on purchasing behavior, and to help product manufacturers to build better products for the future. For consumers, we want to help them to make smarter financial decisions by providing them with a comprehensive view as to the underlying quality of the products that they're looking at. And we primarily do that through our Defaqto business and the star ratings that we attribute to 43,000 financial products. If we go on to the next slide, we're gonna concentrate for a second on the intermediary market.
So when you run an intermediary business, whether there is two or three advisors within the business or thousands of advisors within the business, the complexities of running that business are largely the same. You have to do lots of activities and a lot of workflow just to run your business and give advice to clients. So you need to make sure that you store client data in a recognized CRM system, that you're compliant with the rules and regulations around Consumer Duty. That you undertake ongoing CPD and demonstrate that to the regulator, that you're able to give your clients access to a portal or website with their investments in.
And then when you actually go out and give advice to those clients, you have to go through a financial planning process to look at financial products, to be able to give advice on things like tax advantage products, to help clients who might want to switch their pension. And then to be able to trade those products via the recognized platforms that are out there in the market, and our aim is to provide a comprehensive platform of solutions for the intermediary market. On average, an intermediary business uses nine different pieces of fintech or nine different software packages in order to give advice to their clients, and that's wholly inefficient. There's a lot of data rekeying, there's a lot of differences between the UX and the UI of these products, and as I say, very, very inefficient.
So our job over the course of the last eighteen months has been to build, acquire, and deliver the most comprehensive platform of connected products and services out there in the UK to financial intermediaries. We've invested in the best technology. We have acquired what we consider to be the market-leading, best businesses in this sector, to bring them together in one connected platform to offer out to intermediaries, which will ensure they're able to run their business, sorry, in a much more efficient manner. Taking data from one system into another system, eliminating the need to rekey, creating common workflows and common UX and UI to enable a truly connected platform of solutions out there for intermediary businesses.
So that's been the reason we have acquired the businesses that we have over the last six months of 2024, and indeed 2023, in order to be able to build out the most comprehensive connected platform in the marketplace. As we go on to the next slide, I'm gonna cover very briefly a quick overview of our performance in the first half of this year. We've delivered strong revenue growth, up 13%, and a very solid 30% EBITDA margin. We've increased the recommended dividend by 9% compared to HY 2023. In addition to the strong financial performance, we've really invested into the business. We have invested GBP 2.2 million into a product called Matrix 360 through our Defaqto business, which Neil will cover in the latter part of the presentation.
We've completed four acquisitions during the period, and again, Neil will go into the detail of those acquisitions later on. We've had some really important new partnership wins with the likes of Legal & General and Timeline. We've been voted the fourteenth Best Financial Services Company to Work For in the U.K., increased that from twentieth position in 2022. We're delighted with the performance of the business and the way in which we're being recognized by the Best Financial Services Company to Work For. And then as we look forward to the latter part of this year and beyond, we have a real confident outlook on the market, and that's primarily due to the strong levels of recurring income that we have within the business. Gives us the ability to predict the future relatively well.
We've got really good underlying strong cash flow conversion, over 100%, and underpinned by strong market dynamics. So the intermediary market is in really good health. The mortgage market has had a tough run over the course of the last sort of six to 12 months, but looks like it's picking back up now. We've started to see some green shoots in the mortgage market. And Consumer Duty and ongoing regulation helps drive demand for the businesses within fintech. So very positive market dynamics. And finally, for me, over on the next slide, a quick overview of the business before I hand over to David. So in the first half of this year, we have delivered incredibly strong financial performance, and completed some really important acquisitions within the business.
One of those being the acquisition of threesixty, which has added over nine hundred firms and 10,000 advisors to the customer base of the business. A really strong customer extension, a business that we've respected for almost 20 years now, since the business has been running, and we've been tracking its progress for at least the last decade, and finally we've been able to make that acquisition and really, you know, strengthen the customer base. We've also really enhanced the proposition within the business, making solid investments into the development of Matrix 360 and acquiring a number of different fintech solutions over the course of the last six months and 2023, and we're operating in a very attractive market, and there is a demand out there from intermediary businesses for integrated technology.
Businesses are fed up with running inefficient models where there's no transfer of data, there's no common workflow, and the UX and UI is different across lots of these nine different pieces of fintech they're using. We believe that the connected platform we are building will be well-received by the intermediary market at large. There is increasing regulation that continues to bite from the regulator, and we're well positioned to help every intermediary across the business in finding solutions to that increasing regulation. Finally, we believe that as we go forward in the latter half of this year and in 2025 and beyond, that there will be the mortgage market will return back to a normal market, and it will benefit from the recovery in that market.
So with that, I'll hand over to David, who will take you through the financial performance of the business in the first half of this year. Over to you, David.
Thanks, Matt, and morning, everyone. Great to see you again. Now, as you've just seen from the opening section with the acquisitions and strategic delivery that we've been doing, there's quite a lot of activity to cover in the period. We're gonna focus on the key value drivers in the core business in this section. But what we do include later on in the appendices is some additional financial analysis that should help address any other additional questions you might have. On the next slide, on 19, you'll recall the key value drivers are core revenue growth, core EBITDA margin, and SaaS and subscription revenues. Here we can see core revenue up 13% to GBP 31.2 million.
There's a revenue bridge slide shortly that shows the contribution to growth from organic and acquisitions, and we'll come onto that in a second. We continue to deliver on profitability, the core adjusted EBITDA increase of GBP 0.5 million to GBP 9.3 million period on period. Again, you know, bear in mind, that's in a time when we're integrating eight acquisitions as part of our one-stop shop service offering that Matt talked you through earlier, and continued to invest in our own software development, primarily at Matrix 360 after a successful deployment of the new Defaqto Engage product. Thirdly, we can see SaaS and subscription revenues have grown to GBP 20 million, which is up GBP 1.2 million period on period.
That weighting's fallen slightly from 68% to 65% of the business being SaaS and subscriptions, as we've acquired some of the businesses that are events and ratings-based. Although recurring, they don't qualify as SaaS or subscriptions themselves. But in the second half of the year, you'll see with the acquisition of threesixty, which is primarily a membership-based type revenue, you'll see that weighting increase back up again. Over in slide 10, so you can see the constituent parts of how the revenues progressed over the prior period. So growth in the period breaks down into organic growth of GBP 600,000 or 3%, plus growth from acquisitions of GBP 4.8 million in the period, post-acquisition. Again, there's a slide later on that shows the detail for how the acquisitions have contributed, and it's in the appendices.
Again, that's because, you know, when you make eight acquisitions in a short space of time, it's important that you break the detail out so that all investors can see how each of them are performing, and make sure we're on track to deliver what we said we'd deliver. So that gives you total revenues of GBP 33 million, but you've got to remember, too, we have to have a reduction of core software revenues of GBP 1.8 million, and that's purely down to the fact that we now account for a software reseller agreement on a net basis. So we signed a new contract with iO for five years, and that meant that we netted down the revenue and the cost of goods sold.
So the EBITDA in that contract of circa GBP 1.3 million stays the same, and it's simply sales and COGS reduces equally, and by GBP 1.8 million. So over in slide 11, we've got our revenue stack. So as discussed, you can see in the gray-colored segment that non-core has increased by GBP 0.4 million to GBP 4.5 million, and that's due to the initial recovery in the U.K. housing market. Again, that's primarily from software property valuation surveys. So as you're aware, the core business is also affected by movements in the U.K. housing market as well. Although the revenue is generated on completion, the revenue in the core business takes longer to come through rather than non-core, 'cause that's at the point of survey.
Basically, any recovery in the mortgage market, we'll see once a person essentially gets the keys and moves into the house, and that's when we get our revenue. Despite an increase in surveys on the way through, we won't see that recovery till later on in the second half of the year. If you look at the middle section, it's GBP 11.2 million, and as we'd factored in, a slight reduction in revenue in the mortgage lending panel, and that's offset by good growth in the Defaqto ratings product, including the effect of the acquisitions of MICAP, AKG, and also Owen James Events is in there, too. That leaves the key driver of value, which is the green section, which is the SaaS and subs revenue, and that's grown 6% or GBP 1.2 million.
Again, that's not quite the whole story because you've got to remember that GBP 1.8 million reduction, so like for like, it's actually up 17%. And then in the bottom right-hand side, there's a bridge that shows the non-cores up GBP 0.4 million, core recurring's up GBP 2.4 million, and SaaS and subs is up GBP 1.2 million. So good growth across all areas of the business from a revenue perspective. Then over in slide 12, we've got our operating segment performance. So you'll see for the first time, we've broken out the slide. So we use this slide every time we speak to the market, and we've included an organic and inorganic section just so you can see the relative contributions. So you can see Intermediary Services revenues increased GBP 0.9 million, or 8% to GBP 12.4 million.
That includes that GBP 1.8 million reduction that we've already spoken about, a 0.2 reduction in core revenues, organically, and offset by growth of GBP 2.9 million from acquisitions. It's in the slide later on in the appendices, but that's the acquisitions in this section are VouchedFor, Competent Adviser, Synaptic and F&TRC . Now, continued investment into that cost base and more heavily weighted profitability in H2 from the acquisitions, sees gross profit increase 2% to GBP 5.3 million. The incremental margin from acquisitions being half of that, and as seen later on, the acquisitions performance slide in the appendices, you'll see how that moves into the second half of the year.
Moving to Distribution, the organic's flat overall, and that's some marketing revenues up against some mortgage revenues slightly down, but you can see a GBP 0.8 million increase in revenue from the acquisition of Owen James Events. And in Fintech and Research, again, it's performed well, 8% organic growth and an additional GBP 1.1 million from the acquisitions of MICAP and AKG. So that lets you see where all the acquisitions sit in terms of operating segment, and that gives that 19% growth overall. And the gross margin of the core group with the acquisitions still sits at 52%.... And then over on 13, you can see the development of the capital strategy. So look at cash and balance sheet now. So you see the strengthening of the balance sheet since the acquisition of Defaqto in 2019.
Now, that was a big acquisition at the time. We integrated it well, and it's clearly a key part of the Fintell group now, particularly with ratings and the Engage software product that we give to the advisors, and that's now doubled its EBITDA since we acquired it. So when the group returned to a completely debt-free position in early 2023, we recommenced deploying capital into the current growth strategy, largely through M&A. And you'll see the utilization of our own funds and the revolving credit facility. We've invested in both external businesses and further internal development expenditure as we work on, particularly Matrix 360. And the point of that is that the business took Defaqto on, highly cash generative.
It paid the debt off relatively promptly, and it, from a capital allocation standpoint, it was time to go again and build that one-stop shop for advisors. So you'll see that cycle repeat over the next eighteen months to two years. So we gave some additional guidance for the full year to December 2024 in the full results at RNS, and that, after additional investment in H2, we'll see the net debt increase to a peak of circa GBP 30 million, and that will give us a leverage of circa one point three times. And then the strong cash generation that we have, we'll see the business start to deleverage from that point. So you'll just see that investment phase, deleverage phase, repeating again. Then a bit more on the micro.
Over in slide 14, we provide a bit more detail on the six-month period and just how that cash generated has been invested or returned to shareholders. So as we continue to invest, we'll obviously keep providing greater clarity of how the investments have been made. So we start on the left with GBP 12.7 million of cash. We generated GBP 9.9 million operating cash in the period, and we drew GBP 5 million of our debt facility, and that gave us gross cash resources of just over GBP 28 million in the period.
We then invested the majority of that into investments, acquisitions, and internal software development, returned GBP 2.7 million to shareholders by way of the final FY 2023 dividend in June, and we paid out GBP 4.6 million in respect of the Value Builder long-term incentive plan that matured in May. Then we've got tax and debt service costs, GBP 2.3 million in tax, and one point six million income tax paid on account and GBP 0.7 million of financing costs, and that gives you the closing cash balance of GBP 7.4 million that you see. Slide 15 just looks at that a slightly different way in terms of cash conversion.
So this is a slide we present every time, and you can see there that, you know, we have increased the net spend on capitalization from our early Matrix 360, and that's up from GBP 1.9 million to GBP 2.2 million. That slightly offsets the increased operating profit to give us that underlying operating cash flow conversion of still circa 100%. We would expect that to be in the range of 80%-90% on a full year run rate basis. We also include other cash conversion metrics there. We tend to focus the operating teams on operating cash flow, and leave sort of tax and interest and lease payments to the central group.
So we use the green part there, the underlying operating cash flow conversion to manage the business at an operating level. And finally, over on sixteen, like, you know, like it's summary, we continue to invest in a strong service offering, as you've seen from Matt's section, support retail financial services, and with the benefit of strong cash generation from our current business model, we continue to invest. And we've finally grown the dividend 9% to GBP 0.012 in line with progressive dividend growth policy and the profitability growing in the business in the first half. And with that, I'll hand over to Neil, and Neil will take you through the strategic highlights of the last six months.
Thank you, David. Thank you, Matt. So overleaf, we'll dive into the intermediary sector. As you've heard, we've made some really strong developments to the business and the quality of our platform through both organic developments and investments and through a very selective program of M&A. We believe we know the things our customers are gonna need for the next phase of structural change in this sector, and the benefit of a lot of experience and time spent in financial services has helped us find the strongest brands and the best capabilities to come and sit alongside the things we already do as Fintell. And we're already starting to get some of those benefits out to our customers. In the first half of the year, the intermediary sector has had a big upgrade to its financial planning technology.
So we're rolling out more planning tools for financial advisors so they can give more advice to more clients and do it all on our system. That helps us reuse data, brings more audience for our ratings and research, and I'll talk about the improvements on the trading on that side. And it just embeds us deeper into our clients' businesses as our software, data, and know-how is used across more of the things they do to earn money. We've been delighted in the first half of the year to extend our strong position in investments technology through a partnership with Mortgage Brain into the mortgage market. We are strategically backing the mortgage market as a structural growth. We already have some great exposure to that, and you've heard there's latent potential in our trading as that market comes back...
And we think we can make that market even more attractive by having a strong technology play alongside the other things that we do. So fantastic partnership with Mortgage Brain means we'll be taking tech out to mortgage advisors in the second half of this year. And I think that's gonna really strengthen our offering considerably. There's been a lot happening in this sector. Matt talked about regulation, and you probably can't, you know, ignore or fail to have heard just how much change and regulatory change is coming to the sector, and we think a lot of businesses are gonna deal with that by embracing more connected technology. One of the acquisitions that we made, VouchedFor, is the sector's leading provider of Consumer Duty client engagement software.
So there's a big piece of regulation coming in, and we've got this enormous audience of customers, and VouchedFor is a great piece of technology that we're able to take out to help them deal with Consumer Duty and also helps them find more business and connect with more end clients as well. So I think we're seeing the, you know, really strong green shoots of accelerated growth of the things that we're bringing into the business, while improving the quality and breadth of what we offer to all of those existing customers we look after. Strengthening that member proposition, getting people on more technology, more embedded in our technology, and generating a lot more data month by month as we continue to deploy that. On the next slide over, you'll see the distribution solutions.
We've been very pleased to take on some flagship new clients in this area of our business. Equally so, we're getting more of our intellectual property out to this market, so more investment managers are buying our market insights. They're licensing our strategic asset allocation to help them design products that IFAs will want to choose for their clients. And I think this is delivering, again, stronger, more embedded relationships with the investment managers, alongside all the other great stuff we do for general promotion and helping them educate and take their products to market.
We were able to again develop something we'd done in the investment world into the mortgage lenders in first half of this year, as we've launched the Mortgage Portal. And the Mortgage Portal lets the lenders look in onto buyer behavior and broker behavior in the market.
We're building out more data services, again, extending that out across the mortgage market as well. The final division is Fintech and Research. This has seen continued strong organic growth, on the next slide over, 20. This has been kind of a tale of two halves. We've seen the revenue growth coming in from the acquisitions made of MICAP and AKG. Those are two ratings databases that sit alongside the Defaqto service and expand the range of things we're able to provide data on. They're very, you know, value add into the existing service. They've helped, you know, jump up organic growth, which is really strong, both from what we had before and the acquired businesses that we've bought in as well. We're seeing really good progress on our consumer reach as well.
So, two things achieved in the first half of this year. The first one is the partnership with News UK. That sees Defaqto established as a key expert voice on what's happening in financial services across flagship publications, Times, Sunday Times, and the Money Mentor as well. So again, that's gonna really help to build that brand. Already an incredibly strong brand in the sector, it's gonna become more visible and more valuable to the end consumer. In addition to that, the VouchedFor business we've purchased sees us publish the Top Rated Adviser G uide, which is received by nearly three million consumers in the UK, and that is a good news story about the value of advice and the value of seeking professional advice alongside the rated guide of all the best financial advisors, as voted for by their client feedback.
So there's a lot more contact and visibility with end consumers, helping them map back and access the intermediaries. I think that's great for everybody involved, and again, will help to really build the brands of our business. We've made a very significant investment in Defaqto's Fintech as well. And, I'll say a few more words about that in just a moment when I talk about Matrix 360. So if, on the next slide over, we can go, one more, please, just to look at the focus that we've had in 2023 coming into 2024. M&A has been on our strategy for a number of years. David described how we acquired Defaqto in 2019, and that was a big deal for us at that time.
We didn't really do anything else for a good few years. We thought the market wasn't right. Prices were inflated. Too much demand for not necessarily quality assets. And so, you know, we took our time. We spent the correct amount of time to integrate Defaqto and really get value from that. Then things changed in 2023. We were able to go out and originate the kinds of deals that we thought would bring the value to Fintell. Everything we've bought gives us an essential capability. We're buying key capabilities and some great customer bases that sit right at the core of our business. Most of these are businesses that we've known and dealt with for many years, and so we had a real insight into the value they can bring and how they'd fit with Fintell.
As well as M&A, product development and developing our platform is a key part of our focus as well, and I think we've been able to achieve both things in the first half of this year. I think it's been the right time to make these investments. I think we've got great insight into what the market will need next and what our customers will need next, and I think we've stolen a march on the sector in the things we've been able to achieve in the first half of twenty twenty-four.
The first of those on the next slide over is the acquisition of threesixty, a business that we've known for nearly twenty years. A very strong brand in the sector, a very complementary, slightly different customer base to SimplyBiz. Respected quality, compliance, and technical advice to large and medium-sized financial and discretionary fund managers.
Threes ixty is a pure-play regulatory consultancy, and so I think there's gonna be quite significant opportunities to bring other Fintell services to that customer group. That's important we do that in the right way and at the right pace. You can't rush these things, but we are very confident indeed that in addition to growing threes ixty's core business, we'll be able to bring all of the Fintell developments and technology and data and wrap those around to really enhance what they offer and to drive more value at the core as well. So, a great customer base, really fantastic team, and we're delighted to bring them on board. On the next one over as well, you'll see a few more highlights of the things that have come into the Fintell family in the first half of this year.
I'd mention Mortgage Brain, which gives us key technology in the mortgage space. It is the market leader. It has a fantastic customer base. It has just finished investing in the next version of all of its technologies, providing a full suite of services for mortgage advisors. In addition to our relatively small initial investment in Mortgage Brain, we've signed an enterprise deal. That means we will have access to that technology, and we'll be able to bring it to our members very quickly in the second half of this year. So it's a great start to a partnership with an organization that we believe is the market leader. A relatively small initial investment we've made, but we've you know high desires to develop that connection and that partnership quickly in the next eighteen months.
Synaptic is a business that does similar sorts of things in the insurance protection market. So again, we're able to offer more technology to advisors so they can do life insurance, critical illness, income protection, quotations, and applies. It has a really high alignment with mortgage brokers, really high alignment with IFAs, and I think that will again help us develop and connect up more technology in the sector. We've announced the conditional agreement to acquire RSMR. That one is subject to regulatory approval, but again, we hope to bring that into the business in the second half of this year, and that will add lots of extra ratings and fund research that's complementary and adjacent to the work that Defaqto already does.
So again, we're building out this waterfront technology, data, research, and ratings, trying to cover the full gamut of U.K. retail financial services. These companies are class leaders. They are the strongest brands in their individual areas. They're proven capabilities in the market. They have large customer bases, proven technology, and we've known these businesses in many cases for 10, 15 years or so. And so, now has been the right time to get out and get busy and to build our platform, and I think we've done really well to bring the best into Fintell.
If we look on the next slide over, we'll change tack a little bit to some of the internal investments we've been making. Of course, we'll always have this kind of buy or build or partner optionality as to how we get into something new.
We make sure that it's based on what we think the customers need and based on conversations with customers about what they need. So we're very close to our customers, of course, and that gives us special insight into the problems they face and the things we might do for them. We already have a product in Defaqto called Matrix. It helps general insurers to develop products, to understand the competitive landscape, to think about the features and benefits that consumers will want.
We've got some great customers on the Matrix products already, so we thought it would make sense to extend what Matrix does to cover much more of the life cycle of a product. So over the last eighteen months or so, we've been building out more modules of the old Matrix on a new software platform to upgrade those customers.
So as well as doing all the competitive and feature work, we can bring in decisions about pricing, claims, service, performance, and some of the demographics and macroeconomics that affect where a general insurer is gonna wanna put product into the market. So I think, again, a very linear development for a particular customer base right now, but you know, we believe the same strategy will go across investments and banking as well in due course. So we're able to use some capital to build on an existing product with an existing customer base based on their needs and demands, and build something that again is, you know, will be truly unique in the sector. We just go one more over, and again, sorry, thinking about the future and the outlook.
I think there are lots of positives to where we see the next period. I think there's an undoubted growing demand for financial advice, and that will probably peak over the next month as things change and everybody needs to review what they've got and look again at what the right situation is for them. There's further consolidation of fintech. I think people want to use platforms. They don't wanna buy in technology from eight different places, nine different places, and try and stitch it together themselves. In every walk of life right now, people want to use platforms that give them a whole suite of services and a connected data environment, and we're gonna make sure Fintell is the leader in this market for that. And that's across the wealth and investment managers right now.
We are seeing consolidation of those technology stacks, and I believe the same is coming for mortgages and insurance. So we're front-running that with those tech developments. Consumer Duty's driving everybody to demonstrate value, and that means that providers need more information on who's buying their products, for what purpose, and what's the price of value they're delivering to consumers. That's the same whether it's direct to the customer or through a financial intermediary. So the work Defaqto's doing alongside some of those developments, I think, is very timely, and it will help embed Defaqto in more of product lifecycle management. There's ongoing demand from product providers to get more data and more market insights.
It's harder now to get into new markets or to launch new products, and so product providers have to get more information, gather more data, to help them understand where they should be making their bets. And when you see companies like Legal & General and Invesco come to Fintell to help them build investment product, I think that's a great signal of the audience we provide access to and the quality of our IP and data in helping big companies make their big decisions.
Advisors, I think, will have a continued preference to work with fewer vendors, people who can deliver the full suite of services and minimize the time it takes to bring extra modules into their business and develop their business. And I think 2024 has set us up head and shoulders above everybody else to be able to do that for our customers.
There is latent potential in the ordinary trading in our business. As that recovering mortgage market comes back, we'll see some cyclical upside in the customer base and the volumes we already attach. Yeah, we do hope that'll start coming through in the second half of this year and certainly into twenty twenty-five. Finally, from me, on the following slide, just to restate, we have an incredibly confident outlook. Every metric of health in our business is strong. We've done a lot over the last twelve months, but I think it's been the right stuff at the right time. It will help us to make even more from the structural drivers for growth that face us ahead. Increasing regulation will continue, and it will continue to drive demand for efficient, digitized, connected services. People will want an enhanced platform.
They will want to go to key partners and vendors to get multiple pieces of technology and capability in one easy-to-use environment. We think there will continue to be accelerated growth in Fintech and Research as we build out Defaqto's brand even further with more consumer recognition and more data stories and themes to help product providers. We think it will continue to be a real engine of growth for the business. And we will still have this deep well of yet untapped data capability because as we bring on these extra customers and these extra software platforms, it all creates data about what the market's doing, what the market's thinking, and what the competitive landscape looks like, and that gives us huge raw material to continue to develop future products for the business as well.