Good morning and thank you for joining us as we present AUB Group 's Financial Year 2025 Results. On the call this morning, Mark and I will take you through the results and then I'll close with our positive outlook and initial guidance for FY 2026. We'll then open the line for Q&A. Turning to Slide 2 before.
We move to the detail of the.
Results, let me reflect for a moment on what we are building at AUB and the returns we have generated. AUB Group Limited has undergone a substantial transformation over the past four years, emerging as a leading global insurance broking group. In FY 2025, our roughly 6,000 team members across nearly 600 locations placed approximately AUD 11 billion in premium on behalf of clients. While we now operate in close to 20 countries, the majority of our teams are in Australia, New Zealand, and the U.K. The charts on this slide highlight our strengthening footprint and the growth we have delivered. We've built scale and increased the diversification of our business across geographies and business units. Wholesale and agencies have expanded significantly while the retail broking segment remains our foundation, contributing 62% of global revenue.
The bar charts on the left demonstrate our consistent delivery of profits and shareholder value with underlying net profit after tax and earnings per share compounding at 32.3% and 18.8% per annum respectively over the past four years. Today's strong results continue our momentum and we have a great deal further to go. Slide 3. In FY25, AUB Group delivered another strong result as we executed our growth and efficiency strategies both domestically and internationally. Underlying net profit after tax rose 17.1% to AUD 200.2 million and the EBIT margin increased to 34.7%. This outcome sits above the top end of our guidance range and reflects an uplift on the outlook provided in May. During the year, we completed 16 smaller investments in bolt-ons alongside strategically significant investments in Pacific Indemnity, Momentum, and Movo.
Momentum and Movo have accelerated our U.K. retail business with premiums growing from GBP 110 million in FY 2024 to GBP 340 million in FY 2025. Agencies and BizCover continued to perform strongly, delivering profit before tax growth of 30% and 26.8% respectively. In Australian broking, ongoing optimization and consolidation supported EBIT margin expansion to 37.8%. Looking ahead, we have started FY 2026 well. We have a positive outlook and expect ongoing earnings growth. Initial guidance is for FY 2026 underlying net profit after tax to be in the range of AUD 215 million-AUD 227 million, representing year-on-year growth of 7.4%- 13.4%. I will now hand over to Mark.
Thanks Mike. Good morning. Turning to Slide 4, during FY 2025 revenue increased 12.7% on FY 2024 to AUD 1.5 billion. I'd like to highlight the continued expansion of our EBIT margin to 34.7%. This is a particularly pleasing result, marking a substantial uplift from the 26.9% margin for AUB in FY 2019. Underlying EPS increased 9.5% on FY 2024 to AUD 1.7175 per share. The board has determined a final dividend of AUD 0.66 per share, bringing the total dividend for FY 2025 to AUD 0.91 per share, up 15.2% on FY 2024 and representing a payout ratio of 53% off UNPAT. The waterfall chart on Slide 5 illustrates the key drivers of FY 2025 UNPAT growth. Strong organic growth of 11.9% was complemented by a 12.1% contribution from acquisitions. These gains were partially offset by FX headwinds, modestly reduced funding costs, and the impact of the previously mentioned bonus period realignment at Tysers.
Moving to Slide 6, AUB's balance sheet and funding capacity are well placed to support our growth strategy. At 30 June 2025, AUB Group Limited had AUD 375 million in available liquidity comprising cash and undrawn debt with a leverage ratio of 1.97x . The table on the bottom left outlines the composition of the group debt facility. On the right, we compare look through trust and operating cash balances against look through debt, showing cash exceeding debt by over AUD 300 million. This is relevant because while we pay interest on our debt, we also earn interest on a substantial portion of cash. We have factored further interest rate reductions in the U.K. and Australia into our FY 2026 forecasts. The Tysers earn out was settled in March 2025, reflecting a 95% achievement of the maximum performance targets set at acquisition. I'll now hand back to Mike.
Thanks Mark. Slide 8 summarises divisional performance. I'm pleased to say we delivered revenue and profit growth across all our businesses. Australian broking revenue grew 8.4%. This, together with a 100 basis point expansion in EBIT margin, lifted AUB's share of profit before tax by 12.8% to AUD 135.6 million. BizCover delivered another standout year with revenue up 15% and the margin expanding 380 basis points to 45.8%, driving a 26.8% increase in AUB's share of profit before tax to AUD 19.1 million. Agencies revenue rose 25.1% to AUD 220.5 million, supported by the Pacific Indemnity investment, while the EBIT margin expanded to 44.2%. Profit before tax from agencies increased 30% to AUD 72 million. In FY 2025, New Zealand revenue grew 10.3%. As outlined in February, we saw an opportunity given industry changes to accelerate market share growth and we invested in a team to attract new brokers and clients.
While this investment offset profit growth in FY 2025, the early results are promising with new business up 34% versus FY 2024, giving us confidence in this growth potential. International revenue increased 13.3% with EBIT margins slightly lower at 23.5%. We remain confident in achieving our medium term margin targets, supported by the breadth of opportunities across the international portfolio, which I'll cover in more detail shortly. As shown on slide 9, in Australian broking, we continue to optimise the portfolio of businesses to enhance margins, and this includes simplifying the portfolio, pursuing bolt-on acquisitions, and increasing equity stakes where appropriate. This disciplined approach has delivered consistent revenue growth and margin expansion, as shown in the charts on this slide and highlighted by a four-year CAGR in revenue of 9.5% and a steady annual improvement in EBIT margin.
I'd like to acknowledge the strong contribution of MGA and Insurance Advisernet, two of our largest brokerages.
In financial year 2025, we completed five.
Acquisitions including three bolt-ons, four portfolio restructures, seven equity step-ups, one equity step-down, and two disposals, a very active year. Importantly, shortly after the year end we finalized the merger of AEI Group and AB Phillips, two of the largest businesses in the Austbrokers portfolio, a move expected to accelerate both growth and margin improvement. Our underlying client portfolio continues to deliver strong organic growth with average commission and fee income per client rising 9.3% year- on- year, bolstered by an increase in fee income. Moving to slide 10, BizCover's strong customer growth is driven by its unrivaled value proposition and market-leading technology platform. In FY 2025, revenue grew 15% to AUD 105.8 million, supported by the addition of 30,000 new customers. EBIT margins improved across both Australia and offshore operations, and client retention remains robust, underpinned by an excellent NPS of 74, a reflection of BizCover's excellent service teams and processes.
Investment in technology and product innovation also continued, with Vero joining the Express Cover platform and the new Rely On Business pack launched in partnership with Chubb and HDI. Since AUB Group Limited's investment in FY 2021, BizCover has delivered compound annual EBIT growth of 21.8% and expanded margins by almost 1,000 basis points, highlighting the strength and scalability of the business model. Slide 11, the agencies division delivered an excellent year with premiums up 20% to AUD 1.3 billion and revenue rising 25.1% to AUD 220.5 million. Profit before tax growth comprised 11.5% organic and 28.8% from acquisitions, most notably Pacific Indemnity, while the EBIT margin improved to 44.2%. Our EBIT margin target of 45% assumes a 40% underlying margin plus approximately 5% from profit commissions. In FY 2025, the margin excluding profit commissions of 42.5% exceeded this target.
However, profit commissions of AUD 6.7 million were only 6.9% of agency EBIT this year versus a historical average of 10%. The chart illustrates this, showing EBIT growth over the past four years including the proportion derived from profit commissions. On the left-hand side of the slide, you can see the agency premium mix is now close to the 40/30/30 target for general, commercial, specialty, and strata set four years ago, and their total premiums have surpassed our original AUD 1 billion goal. The strata division has experienced lower retention rates than in the past, with overall.
Premiums remaining flat year on year.
This reflects a deliberate decision to balance growth with disciplined underwriting. Pleasingly, our Longitude Strata agency delivered an excellent result despite challenging conditions in the Strata market. Portfolio transfers between General, Commercial, and specialty mean these categories are not directly comparable. Year on year we've built an exceptional agencies platform comprising market-leading businesses. The division continues to offer significant growth opportunities while our disciplined approach ensures sustainable profitability in partnership with our insurer partners.
Slide 12. In New Zealand, profit before.
Tax growth of 11.4% was largely offset by a AUD 2.1 million investment in resources focused on new business growth, resulting, as expected, in a reduced margin. We're optimistic about the strategy with new business already 34% higher in FY 2025 versus FY 2024. This business has been significantly transformed in recent years with a clear uplift in financial performance. Our two largest brokerages, ICIB BrokerWeb and Runacres, continue to perform strongly. The Lola technology platform is now live in 10 of the roughly 40 brokerages in our network, with further rollout planned for FY 2026. During the year, we completed six acquisitions including four bolt-ons as well as four equity step-ups and two equity step-downs, and these transactions are strengthening scale and equity partnerships across the country. We see substantial further opportunity for AUB in New Zealand.
Slide 13 On a constant currency basis, the International division delivered organic EBIT growth of 12.3% with acquisitions contributing a further 14.6%. These gains were partly offset by the bonus performance period changes at Tysers. A one-off impact on FY 2025. FY 2025 was a year of strong progress across the international portfolio. In wholesale, we appointed a new CEO and strengthened Tysers by attracting new teams, particularly in financial lines and marine. We also made targeted investments in specialty brokerages, MGAs, and portfolios to expand Tysers' live in North America and our marine yacht capabilities in the U.K. and Europe. In Belgium, we increased our shareholding, completed a bolt-on acquisition, and appointed new leadership. In the U.K., we commenced execution of our retail expansion strategy by appointing a new CEO.
Key investments in the Movo and Momentum broking networks significantly increased our scale, with Movo's equity businesses complementing existing Tysers retail branches. As a result, U.K. retail premium grew from GBP 110 million in FY 2024 to GBP 340 million in FY 2025. Our owner-driver model is well established and highly successful in Australia and New Zealand. These recent investments in the U.K. have enabled us to commence replicating this model there, effectively leapfrogging into a strong market position. Whilst relatively unfamiliar in the U.K. and other international markets, our engagement with industry participants suggests our owner-driver model is already being recognized as a clear competitive advantage for AUB . Looking ahead, our focus in FY 2026 will be to further expand the U.K. network to continue to enhance wholesale capability and to leverage the scale and operational capabilities we have now built.
Slide 14 highlights the transformation of the International division since the acquisition of Tysers in FY 2023, underscoring both the scale achieved and the opportunities ahead. As we execute our strategy at the bottom of the slide, you'll see strong financial progress. Premium and revenue have grown significantly. The EBIT has increased at a 19.5% compound annual rate and margins have expanded by 480 basis points. Good momentum to achieve our 32% margin target while overall headcount has grown. We have also optimized operations, reducing 110 FTE through restructuring. Other key changes are summarized on the slide. I'll emphasize three in the enhancement of our capabilities in major global insurance hubs, the separation and build out of U.K. retail, and the strengthening of Tysers wholesale across marine, property and casualty specialty, and Tysers life. In parallel, we have significantly upgraded critical support functions including technology, legal, risk compliance, finance, and tax.
As shown on slide 16, a key.
Focus for AUB Group has been to expand divisional EBIT margins to achieve medium term targets first set in FY 2022 and updated in FY 2023. EBIT margins in Australian broking, BizCover, and agencies have each improved by more than 900 basis points over the past four to six years, while the international division margin has risen 480 basis points in the two and a half years since acquiring Tysers. In New Zealand, we have deliberately prioritized market share growth, temporarily reinvesting margin into expansion plans until the end of FY 2026. We review progress against margin targets annually. Given the strong performance of the agencies division in FY 2025, we are increasing its medium term margin target by 2%- 47%. No changes are being made to other divisional targets at this stage, but we do see scope for future improvement.
It's worth noting that margin targets for Australian broking, BizCover, and New Zealand were each upgraded twice during 2023, while the international division target was also revised upwards during that period. Now we expect questions on whether the agencies margin target has been lifted enough given the strong underlying performance in financial year 2025. After careful review, we believe this adjustment is appropriate. While there are significant revenue growth opportunities from recently seeded agencies and new launches planned for FY 2026, these growth investments do temper our operating leverage in the near term. We therefore consider the revised target both realistic and appropriately set.
Having delivered this growth track record on.
Slide 17, we outline six execution priorities for FY 2026 as firstly, to continue optimizing broking portfolios in Australia and New Zealand to enhance margins through bolt-ons, mergers, and portfolio restructures. Secondly, to scale new and recently established agencies to accelerate revenue and margin growth while also seeking to replicate the strong performance of Australian agencies in our international portfolio. Thirdly, to grow market share by better leveraging the breadth of AUB's broking businesses in New Zealand or to facilitate further growth in BizCover with a particular focus on accelerated progress of Express Cover and further expansion in New Zealand. Fifth, to optimize U.K. retail by leveraging the increased scale and capabilities from the Momentum and Movo investments, and finally, sixth, to continue building our Tysers and other specialty capabilities while driving greater efficiency in middle and back office functions.
As you can see, AUB has multiple earnings drivers across the group, independent of broader macro conditions.
Turning to slide 18 for FY 2026, we.
Expect underlying net profit after tax in the range of AUD 215 million-AUD 227 million and earnings per share of between AUD 1.8441 and AUD 1.947, representing growth of 7.4%- 13.4% on FY 2025. At this stage, our forecasts incorporate only those acquisitions and equity investments we consider highly likely to complete. Other key assumptions underpinning this outlook, including our views on foreign exchange and interest rates, are summarized on the slide. As has been widely reported, premium rates in certain geographies and risk classes have moderated over the past 18 months and remain the subject of speculation. AUB Group remains confident that rational pricing will prevail and, importantly, that we continue to have a range of levers available to outweigh the impact of premium rate movements, something we've already demonstrated through our performance in FY2025.
We anticipate another positive year ahead and look forward to updating you about this during the roadshow. I'll now pass back to the moderator for questions.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press STAR and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press STAR and two. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question today comes from Tim Lawson from Macquarie. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi gentlemen, thanks for taking my questions. Just specifically on the international segment, obviously the EBIT was ahead of where the market was going for. Can you just unpack what your expectations and where it came in versus your expectations on revenue and expenses please?
Yes, thanks Tim. I think a few top line observations. Revenue is stronger in wholesale and retail.
Than our original estimates.
Expenses were a bit higher, particularly in some of the acquisitions and investments that we made during the year. Broadly, I guess the revenue is higher. Expenses were a bit higher, so the absolute EBIT was better than.
We forecast margin probably slightly behind what we margin percentage slightly behind what we forecast.
Is there any particular reason why the wholesale and retail did better than your initial expectations?
In terms of the revenue? No.
I mean, look, it's hard obviously to predict these things. The reality is, you know, we had probably a bit better new business growth than we'd anticipated. We saw a bit more flow through, interestingly, some of the levers. Without overcomplicating the answer, there's some macro commercial services agreement type revenue that we didn't get resolved during the year.
That we thought we would.
At the beginning of the year, looking forwards, I just said let's call it regular revenue as in new clients, revenue from existing clients, etc. That always at or slightly better than we expected. Revenue from overlaying commercial services type agreements from insurers, we made less progress on that than I had anticipated. You know, sort of a tailwind, headwind combination.
Net net's still better than you had expected.
Correct.
Mainly on New Zealand, just what you're hoping to achieve from that strategic growth investment you're putting in. You've called that out in one of the bridges.
I referenced it at the half year. In December we made a decision to recruit and carry a team of resources. This is in the dozens rather than the single numbers to focus on new broker and new customer wins or acquisitions, on the basis that we feel that there is a particular market opportunity for us to grow market share through those.
Two types of acquisitions.
Early signs are very positive. It is a significant investment. We made a conscious decision, without putting too fine a point on it, obviously during FYv2026. By the end of FY 2026 it'll either have generated revenue that more than compensates for the incremental cost, or we will address the cost accordingly and adjust the cost.
Okay, thanks for taking my questions. I'll definitely queue.
Thanks Tim.
Your next question comes from Andrei Stadnik from MS Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning Mike and Mark. Can I ask my first question around the premium growth? You saw the international division? I think you got about 15.15% headline premium growth. Can you talk a little bit about maybe the underlying growth excluding U.K. retail acquisitions and also just curious if there's any multi-year, I guess revenue items in international.
Not multi year. That one's easy, Andrei. They tend to be, I mean obviously there's quite high intermediary retention, and a lot of the wholesale revenue comes from business with MGAs and retail brokers in other parts of the world. It's not multi year, but there's a relatively high retention rate, not multi year as in, you know, I don't know, 10 year premium contract or anything like that. Obviously, the sizable step up in premium is from acquisitions of retail. If you put that to one side, I think the one difficulty of comparing premium growth with revenue growth is just to emphasize the premium is at a point in time.
For example, if we bought a business a month before the year end with AUD A7100 million in premium, that full AUD 100 million will be added to our premium numbers, whereas the revenue obviously is the accounting measured revenue for the year. There's a lead and lag effect of conversion of premium to revenue. The underlying growth in the business is good. In fact, if you talk about wholesale, Tysers was a pleasant surprise for us in terms of revenue for the year. We don't want to be presumptuous about it, so we're not predicting an extrapolation of pleasant surprises. The reality is we were pleasantly surprised. It did better in the second half than we anticipated, and good performance from the international team's point of view.
Thank you.
For my second question, can I ask around the comment about the 9.3% average being commission per client in Australian broking? Can you help just like investors reconcile a little bit how that 9.3% comes.
In ahead of overall revenue growth, it holds broken about 8.5%.
Sure. I'll illustrate the calculation. Don't take the numbers explicitly accurately. Our commission and fee income last year, you've got to apply a retention rate to that. Assume 90%. If you took last year's commission and fee income, multiplied by 90%, grossed it up by 9.3%, and then the difference between that number and the FY 2025 commission and fee comes to about AUD 50 million difference. I think AUD 52 million difference. Some of that comes from acquisitions, some from new business, net new business. Genuine organic new client, new business. If you assume, not completely accurate, but if you assume the same split as we've split profits between organic and acquisition, then you get to about a 10% new business growth. That's how the best to reconcile those. You can apply the same thing in New Zealand. The difference in New Zealand is that our new business growth is higher.
Our retention rate is lower.
Thank you.
Does that answer your question, Andre?
Yes. Excellent.
Your next question comes from Scott Hudson from MST. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning, gentlemen. Firstly, I just understand in terms of your guidance for FY 2026, does that capture any, I guess, meaningful cost out within the international business as a result of the, I guess, acquisition of the two retail businesses?
Not a result of the two retail businesses. There is still a little bit of a hangover of actions that. Let me start by saying we never used to call out what we've called, you know, strategic change initiatives. Last year we got a question about. In fact, no, I think it was at the end of FY 2024 we got a question about that. Since then we've been calling out explicitly. It used to just be part of our acquisitions cost line in the, in the, you know, the reported profit calc. What we did was in FY 2024 we started explicitly calling this out. Basically when we acquire a business we have an acquisition plan about how we're going to improve the margin of that business.
It is part of our acquisition case.
That acquisition plan includes identifying some cost out. It includes potentially, I don't know, a replatforming or an IT piece moving them onto our IT platforms. Those costs, provided they're in that acquisition cost or in that acquisition plan, we put below the line. Obviously, any other costs, just let's call it a normal redundancy, et cetera, goes above the line. It's the.
It's restructuring linked to acquisitions.
There is still some further work to be done on executing our acquisition plan related to Tysers and some of the international businesses, but not explicitly for the U.K. retail networks that we bought.
Is the cost out opportunity within, I guess, the Tysers business in relation to headcount that was previously servicing the retail division there?
There is a bit. As we action these things, we identify exactly what's possible. We obviously had a case and then the reality. FY 2026 will be when we start really, now that we've separated out retail from wholesale. We do have ways that we can now look at leveraging some of the operational efficiency of the new acquisitions to service the historic Tysers retail business. That will unlock some opportunities for us to look at the way in which we can realize savings in, let's call it, Tysers, you know, historic Tysers.
Great, thanks. In terms of your guidance and in particular your organic growth, if the Tysers bonus accrual is a one-off cost in FY 2025, I'd assume the underlying base is already at 211. Can I just understand why the organic growth is relatively anemic in comparison to what's been achieved through FY 2025?
Yeah. A bunch of comments. I'll start by talking about FX and interest costs actually or interest income. The headwinds in that organic growth column include about a AUD 3 million post-tax headwind on interest costs going down. As a reminder, we are. We have trust and operation. The trust cash, which exceeds our debt cost, but it doesn't really matter how. If we save, so interest rates go down, we'll save on the funding cost piece, but that's a group cost and it's below the EBIT line. The actual reduction in income from invested funds affects our organic growth profit number. We actually have a AUD 3 million headwind built into that. You could say that you've got.
To take 11.2 and add 3 to it.
We also have an FX headwind which on a like-for-like basis, basically, if you restated FY 2026 using FY 2025 forex rates, both hedged and unhedged, you'd have about another AUD 1.5 million post-tax impact. If you took the AUD 11.2 million plus AUD 3 million from interest plus another AUD 1.5 million, you're up at about, what's that, AUD 15 million as the base number. That's the first point I'd make, Scott. The second piece is we do have a headwind from the fact that, as the business performs better, obviously you get some upside in terms of revenue. The difficulty with the bonus piece, firstly, it is a once off.
Right.
You can just arithmetically add the AUD 11 million from FY 2025. What makes it complicated is that you've then got the—how much, what will the net bonus adjustment be in FY 2026? The reality is we're trying to predict. We've got hundreds of people earning bonuses, a lot of them are production bonuses. We're trying to predict a mix of business, we're trying to predict bringing in new teams. There might be an element where there's some guaranteed first year bonus. You've got that whole mix of things. It's not scientific at all. Based purely on sort of an estimate, I'd say realistically I'd add AUD 6 million or AUD7 million of the AUD11 million to the AUD 200 million.
If you genuinely want an organic growth comparison, you might say to me, okay, then I want to take the AUD 6 million off the AUD 11 million, but the AUD 6 million is roughly neutralized by the FX and interest headwinds. Broadly, I'd say that the organic growth as represented is on a like-for-like basis, you know, the organic growth rate.
Okay, thank you.
Your next question comes from Siddharth Parameswaran from JP Morgan. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my question. I had a question firstly on.
Hi there.
Just a question on the Australian broking business. I just wanted to check on the sharp increase that you flagged in organic growth in the second half. I think the full year growth you're flagging was 9.1%. I think the first half was around 5%. It does suggest very sharp uplift in Australian broking organic growth in the second half. I was just wondering if you could comment on that in relation to what I thought was a slowing cycle. Maybe some of that revenue or other things are coming through. I was hoping you could flesh out what's happening with that.
I guess, and apologies to those of you who've heard me prattling on about this for several years now. If you look at the dynamic of insurance brokers, the reality is that when rates are hard, premium rates are hard, clients are very focused on the rate and they're willing to, in fact they're insistent on rate, you know, sort of savings to compensate or mitigate for the increases versus exposures.
Right.
They tend to focus on high excesses or deductibles, probably an element of underinsurance in terms of the total insurance cover, etc. Obviously, when rates are more muted, it allows a broker to actually do their jobs to the best of their ability, which is all about the balance of, you know, so we can almost be more innovative in a softer cycle than we can in a hard cycle where we're actually talking about reducing the deductibles, increasing the overall coverage, adding a type of COVID where previously the client might have decided, look, it's not obligatory, therefore I'm not going to cover that type of insurance, et cetera. That's why I've always ranted about the fact that our income and the.
Amount of premium that our clients pay.
We've got a lot of control and influence over that. Therefore, the peaks and troughs are much more muted than the pure premium rate cycle as declared by the insurers. Of course, we also have much more control over the fee increases. When rates are hard and clients are experiencing, I don't know, 10%, 15%, 20% rate increase on the premium, obviously.
They're very sensitive to any cost.
Even a 5% increase in fee might be too sensitive. We tend to hold, and in fact, for several years we hold fees flat and now we're increasing them. Not massive increases, 5% or 6%, but all of that contributes to why we're able to generate more income per client and grow our commission and fee income, frankly, irrespective of the premium rate environment.
Sorry, just to clarify, what is happening with the premium environment, and are those numbers, are there any funnies in that number where the second half organic growth is so much stronger than the first half?
No, that's more a function of when our clients renew in Australia, to be honest, it's very second half weighted.
Second half like as in its full year, full year and first half, first half. The seasonality shouldn't be an issue.
Yeah, except that you still have a lot of the new business comes through. You'll disproportionately get more new business nearer a renewal period than in an off period because clients don't change brokers midway through their policy, et cetera. It tends to be that. I mean, we definitely had a stronger second half in terms of new business growth than the first half. I don't know if I can observe anything particularly from that because that's tended to be our historic profile.
Thank you. Sorry, just on the cycle. Just to try and pin you down, what is happening with the cycle there, the pricing cycle?
I sort of spoke about it a bit when I was talking about the outlook. Look, rates have definitely softened over the last 18 to 24 months. It's not been like a FY 2025 phenomenon. It's actually a 2024 and 2025 phenomenon. Rates in financial lines had softened earlier than the others, and they have, you know, they've sort of flattened out and probably slightly creeping up. I think some of the domestic lines rates are definitely flat or reducing.
I think insurers have reached rate adequacy.
In terms of the profitability of their portfolio.
I think the rates are around about right now.
I think as interest income softens and investment income softens for insurers, they're obviously going to be very wary and leery of further reductions in any profit out of their insurance and commercial insurance books. I think, as I said, we believe that rates will be premium rate determinations are going to be rational and we think pricing is going to be rational. We think that premium rates in absolute terms have probably gone up, you know, sort of mid single digits, probably 5%. It depends on types of clients, segments of clients and geographies. On average across our portfolio there's probably been a 4 or 5% premium rate impact.
Okay, thanks for that.
Okay.
My second question was just the reverse. It's on agencies where it's flipped, where the first half was very strong, 4% full year, 11.5%. Just wanted to understand what's happening there.
Probably the main thing was in strata. We saw a very, you know, a very muted strata environment in FY 2025, particularly in the second half. While we had good performance from one of our agencies, the reality is overall our strata agency premium was flat for the year. It was flat, you know, and we got worse than normal profit commissions across the board, particularly in strata. I guess, you know, that was a drag on the, on the.
Performance and the environment.
Thank you very much.
Your next question comes from Jason Palmer from Taylor Collision. Please go ahead with your question.
Good morning, Mike and Mark, thanks for your time. Two questions from me. The first one, just carrying on on the strata comments you made there. Was that a function of pricing, or is that a function of the competitive set in the market, or something else?
It's actually all about price. I suppose I'd link the two, Jason. I think when you say pricing you mean rate. For us it was about win rate on quotes. The reality is that we consciously were not willing to compete on price with some of our competitor players in the market. As a result, we had a much lower retention in strata than we have had in previous years. It was a function of price. Strata is a high volume, low premium class. It's all about price generally. You know, we obviously have certain profitability dynamics. My reference to balanced profitability and growth was really around strata. It was explicitly. We just see some of our competitors are offering pricing that we don't see as manageable or sustainable. We think that rates will revert. We think rationality will revert.
We don't want to retain clients that impact our medium term profitability on our underwriting binders.
Okay.
The second one I think was extension of Scott's question earlier and your answer on FX. It looks like the blended FX rate you converted the U.S. to the pound on was around 82 for 2025. It looks like on your outlook statement, if I take a hedging of around 50% and the unhedged spot that you've quoted is closer to 78, I don't see how that equals a AUD 1.5 million NPAT headwind to the growth. I would have thought that would have been much higher than that.
I think the headwind would be higher. Jason, did you say?
Yeah.
Mark's shaking his head. That's our best calculation. I think that the challenge with FX obviously is it depends where you apply it. Remembering that our exposure is really two things. One, the difference in the hedged rates between USD and sterling on the difference between the hedge contracts in FY 2025 and the hedging in FY 2026. Then the unhedged portion of the USD to Aussie that flows through to Australia as effectively the profit portion of the USD revenue as well as the unhedged, it's all unhedged, the sterling to Aussie dollar pieces. There was a little bit where the sterling Aussie dollar moved differently and actually appreciated. Our best calculation is that the net effect is a AUD 1.8 million pre-tax, AUD 1.9 million pre-tax headwind.
Okay.
Just before the smoke alarm goes.
We're ready to have.
On the into 2027, does that exposure get larger on the FX side?
Similar.
Mark says similar. Jason, I don't understand your question.
What do you mean by exposure debt on FX?
Does the exposure on the FX?
Yeah, at spot right now on organic growth.
Into 2027.
For 2025 to 2026.
I think he's talking about.
Did you say 2027, Jason?
Correct. Yeah, you've talked about the FX exposure.
Being 1.5- 1.8, FY 2026.
What's the exposure?
I think we don't know. We haven't taken a view on FY 2027 exchange rates, to be honest.
Okay, all right, thank you.
Your next question comes from Shreyas Patel from UBS. Please go ahead with your question.
Hi guys. Just a question on your long term levers. Slide 40. You've got a new column in there around flexing fees and conditions. Just keen to understand, I guess, how much more you can increase those to meet the market in each of the respective divisions.
Yeah, it's probably a couple of things. You might recall the previous version had a column for premium rate. I should have thought to it at the time, but in reality that's not a lever.
Right.
We can't apply that lever. We can flex commission earn and fee rate, and so we change that. It's really a function of some similar things. This is much more about a lever we can apply then, in answer to your question. You step back, I mean, broadly, our fee income potential in terms of our ability to apply that lever, the impact it'll have, and the runway that we have is good in Australia because we intentionally held fees flat for four years, I think it was. We first increased fees in the second half of 2024 and then in 2025. We haven't increased them, you know, massively, but the fact is we are significantly below market if you just compared absolute fees.
There's a sort of, let's call it a conceptual piece there, which is we've got a lot of runway, fair amount of fee we can still apply, et cetera, less so in New Zealand. We didn't apply the same approach in New Zealand, so less so in New Zealand. In the U.K., it's sort of a mixed bag, and we're still getting our sort of mind around that. That's the, let's call it retail broking on the commission piece. In Australia, it's probably in absolute terms a big opportunity because of the size of the business, but in percentage terms, quite small because we've been quite canny and keen about commission rates. It's really around increasing our commission earn rate. There's this phenomenon coming out of a hard cycle where we intentionally managed our commission earn down, so we've got a way to go.
Our actual commission rates are pretty competitive, as in, you know, this is not from a recipient, this is from a participant point of view. Our commission rates are good in Australia. We're not market leading. The fact is our bigger competitor earn more per dollar of premium than we do, but we're not massively off. We're probably, you know, 10%- 15% lower in commission earned entitlements than our bigger competitors. That's also true in New Zealand, but it's particularly true in the U.K. There's a big opportunity around commission rates, and that's where we need to focus. It's not a surprise that it's an opportunity because generally the more premium you have that you can place with an insurer, the more engaged they are in commercially negotiating keen earn rates. I think I've answered your question in a roundabout way.
Bottom line is in agencies, in retail broking, we believe we've got a decent way to go, particularly in, in fact in all three geographies for different reasons. Percentage terms in Australia the lowest, but because it's the biggest business in absolute dollar terms, the biggest in wholesale broking, we've got opportunities there, especially ironically as rates have softened because insurers tend to be in the wholesale environment more willing to negotiate commission rates when rates are softer than when they're hard. The third one is in agencies. Agencies is actually a function, frankly, of scale, growing our new seeded agencies and also the payaway. Obviously the challenge is when you're trying to establish an agency, you earn less commission and you have to pay away more to be competitive. As you get to big, decent scale, you can pay away less and you earn more.
It's sort of a double whammy, hence why scaling our agencies is really important.
Great, thanks.
Grant. Goldman Sachs, please go ahead with your question.
Good morning guys. Thanks for taking that question. Just the first one on the premium rate increases, I think you said 5% mid single digit across the group. Just to fact check for some of your divisions, Australia, Tysers, and agency, just around that 5% mark. Thanks.
Hi there. Yes, I was actually answering the question. I thought specifically about Australia. That rate is for Australia. New Zealand is slightly lower than that. Rates have softened more in New Zealand and also because we have a bigger mix of domestic home and motor in New Zealand than we do in Australia. In the international market, it really is a whole mixed bag. You know, financial lines rates are soft. Traditional commercial lines rates are still in the high single digit.
I agree. Great, thanks for that. Maybe just in terms of M&A from here, just how we should be thinking about your strategy for M&A and further capital deployment, and also the sort of multiples in some of the markets where you'd be looking to actively deploy capital into 2026 and 2027. Thanks so much.
I mean, the nice problem we've got is that there are still lots of opportunities to deploy capital, and we are quite picky about how we deploy it because we're very conscious of our view on the range of multiples we're willing to pay. Generally, though, I'd say that in Australia we're looking for bolt-ons. In New Zealand we are looking to expand the number of our own network members, non-equity members that we have equity stakes in. In the U.K. in particular, it is predominantly a combination of retail expansion both in broking and MGOs as well as some wholesale specialty teams to supplement us. That's broadly the acquisitions as we've anticipated them.
In terms of multiples we should be expecting.
The range is the same as I spoke about last year. It ranges depending on the nature of the company. The bigger, higher profitability, higher growth business that's more sustainable, multi, you know, multi location, we tend to be comfortable paying, I don't know, 13x , 13.5x max. Businesses that have a greater degree of key person risk, single location, lower margin, lower growth prospects, et cetera, we'd be looking at 7x or 8x . Quite a big range. That tends to be the range that's across all of the jurisdictions that I'm talking about.
Okay, great. Thanks so much for that.
Thanks. Grant.
Our next question comes from Olivier Coulon from E&P Financial Group. Please go ahead with your question.
Oh, hi guys.
How are you doing? Mike, congrats on the result in terms of the expectations that are built in.
In M&A. I know that.
You've obviously limited it to deals that are very likely to happen. How much capital has already been allocated, I suppose notionally, to those deals that are included in the M&A expectations for guidance in FY 2026?
We could probably work it out by just taking the unpaid contribution and grossing it up and multiplying by 10.
Right, okay. The second one, just on, you mentioned that you want to scale agencies and obviously why you're not being too aggressive with medium term agency margin targets. Do you have a GWP kind of target that you can share with us as to where you expect those new and, you know, relatively newly established agencies to get to in terms of their contribution?
We don't, Olivier. I mean, unhelpfully, we've obsessed about our AUD 1 billion premium target for four years, unexpectedly achieved it about two years earlier than we thought we would. We haven't formally now calculated because the AUD 1 billion wasn't what we wanted to achieve, it was what we felt we need. We calculated a mix of AUD 400 million in general commercial, AUDB300 million in specialty, and AUD 300 million in strata, assuming a mix of business, a mix of earn rates, and a mix of margins. As a consequence, we felt at that level we could hit the 45% margin. Originally, it was 40% the margin target. The AUD 1 billion was because we felt that that was the scale we needed to be to achieve a 40%+ margin on that cost.
Base and that earn rate.
We're now at AUD 1.3 billion. I mean, I'd love us to get to AUD 2 billion. That's not just from new seeded agencies. Clearly, you get to a point where you can't continue growing at that rate. We certainly have no sense of that at the moment. If you created a jigsaw puzzle view of our agencies mapped to all the products that clients need.
Our brokers place, we, you know, we.
Probably only had about 60% of the puzzle completed. There's still a lot of agencies that we can seed or acquire, etc. We've made key strategic investments. Now it's about completing the rest of the puzzle. You could then try and turn that into an arithmetic thing and say, 60% complete, that's about AUD 2 billion of premium as 100% complete. I think that would be on today's premium. We still assume that all of it can grow. We don't see premium or top line or market share constraints. We see execution constraints and the pace at which we believe we can scale these agencies up without compromising or jeopardizing the natural growth trajectory and the rest of that division.
Yeah, perfect. Thanks for that.
There are no further questions at this time. I would like to turn the floor back over to Mr. Emmett for closing remarks.
Thank you and thanks everybody. FY 2025 has been an outstanding year for AUB Group . We delivered strong financial results, expanded our international footprint, made solid progress across every division, and executed on opportunities that position us well for future growth and profitability. Looking ahead to FY26, our priorities are clear: disciplined execution of the strategy, continued investment in growth opportunities, and a degree of prudent risk management in a, you know, have to be acknowledged, changing market.
Right.
You know, interesting world dynamics. We'll stay focused on our core markets.
We'll pursue sensible expansion and operational improvements.
The exciting thing is there are a lot of levers available to us to grow and to improve margin.
To improve profits.
I'd like to thank our teams for their commitment, our clients for their trust, and to our shareholders, a number of.
Whom on the call, thank you for their ongoing support.
Thank you very much. I look forward to seeing you with Mark and Brownie over the next few days and the next week or two. I hope you enjoy the.
Rest of your day. Thank you.
Bye bye.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your line.