Thank you, Mark, and good morning to everyone. Thank you for joining us today. This year marks Challenger's 40th anniversary, a significant milestone. I'm pleased to say that today our company lives and breathes our purpose of helping Australians achieve financial security for a better retirement. We have quite literally decades of experience understanding retirement, which gives us today a contemporary and valuable perspective with so much focus on developing the retirement phase of superannuation. Our experience as an investor and trusted brand are essential attributes for success as we look ahead. We anticipate the retiree needs and, in turn, demand for our capabilities will only grow from here. For those approaching, those entering, or planning wealth transfer, or in the care years of retirement, 2025 has been a year of strong performance, strategic progress, and delivery against our targets.
Today, I'm joined by our CFO, Alexandra Bell, to deliver our FY 2025 Financial Result. In our presentation, we'll cover the key drivers and our outlook, with the overall objective of meeting the growing needs of our customers and continuing to deliver sustainable, profitable growth. Let me start with the FY 2025 headline numbers. Earnings were up 9%, driven by momentum across the organization and actions to simplify our business model. Group return on equity continued to improve and exceeded the target. The business is strongly capitalized, with significant current and future financial flexibility. We've grown the dividend 11%, reflecting confidence in the business. This performance was powered by focused delivery of our strategy. Sales remix has lengthened the tenure of liabilities and is supporting stronger, more sustainable returns. The steps we've taken to streamline and focus our business are starting to deliver benefits.
We've strengthened our existing customer relationships and built new partnerships across the retirement market. We've expanded our leading asset origination capability, and our new income platform and LiFTS 1 Notes underline our capacity to innovate. Importantly, we achieved this financial result before the benefit of our new retirement partnerships on sales, prior to our digital customer and data transformation coming online, ahead of regulatory and government reforms, and while Australia's retirement market is still formative. Over the last three years, we've reset Challenger and are ready for the future. Building a financially strong business has been a priority. We have evolved our balance sheet investment strategy to best meet the current capital standards. This has materially strengthened the balance sheet, which has reduced capital volatility and improved financial flexibility. We've made year-on-year progress towards achieving our ROE target. Importantly, we've achieved this whilst investing for growth.
We also took a strategic decision to focus on our core strengths, where we see most opportunity for growth: retirement, investment management, and asset origination. As a result, Challenger is becoming a simpler, more contemporary business. We're now seeing the outworkings of our strategy to drive growth and sales momentum. Our focus on longer tenure, more valuable sales has improved the maturity rate, supporting high-quality book growth, which supports higher returns. The restructure of our business around the customer and steps we've taken to better understand our customer needs has expanded our impact and driven improved growth with advisors and clients. Whilst the advisor channel remains central to our strategy, we've opened up new customer channels and secured some of the first retirement partnerships post-RIC, as well as strengthening engagement with platforms and wealth managers.
Over the last three years, we've made meaningful progress in building Challenger's financial strength, simplifying the business model, and delivering profitable growth. This is demonstrated by the near double-digit earnings and EPS growth, exceeding the ROE target in FY 2025, and year-on-year dividend growth. This is only the beginning of what our business is capable of. FY 2025 has been another year of focused execution. Two years into our new brand and marketing campaign, we've seen a material improvement in engagement with our target customer market. We've also continued to strengthen relationships across the retirement market and support the wave of innovation in retirement underway. Most recently, we secured a pivotal partnership with Insignia Financial. This demonstrates our ability to deliver innovative retirement solutions for large clients at significant scale. Our lifetime sales continue to perform extremely well, and the opportunity here will only improve as we look ahead.
Our strong partnership with Mitsui Sumitomo Primary Life, which we extended early in FY 2025, delivered record Japanese annuity sales. Very pleasingly, we are progressing new product and partnership opportunities with Mitsui Sumitomo Primary Life that will expand the ways we work together. Last week, we announced Challenger's innovative new income platform and LiFTS 1 Notes, which was significantly oversubscribed. The first-of-its-kind note structure leverages our balance sheet and asset management expertise and reflects our focus on expanding our range of income solutions. Our listed income note will be the first in an ongoing series, providing a market-leading solution into the rapidly growing income market. Asset origination capability is core to our growth plans, and this past year has seen us materially increase our private credit origination. Investing to grow origination, which now includes direct whole loan origination and servicing, has delivered attractive yield for the balance sheet and clients.
We've now completed the launch of the new Japan Property Trust, Challenger Life Essentials Property Fund, cornerstoned by two leading Japanese institutions and seeded by property assets we owned through the Life Company. Fidante also welcomes System Capital, a global long-short manager, as investors increasingly seek high-quality alternative investment capability. Challenger's digital transformation journey will future-proof our business and is well underway. Our multi-year investment to uplift our customer technology will accelerate sales growth and see us integrate our retirement offering across the financial system. To provide some context of the scale of our customer transformation, it covers 70 systems and applications and 60 legacy and contemporary products. The program will be launched in two phases. Our new core registry will be running internally ahead of Christmas, and end-to-end functionality will be launched before the end of the financial year.
The partnership and transition of Investment Administration and Custody to State Street continues at pace. Our Investment Operations Team, Custody, Back Office, and Investment Administration Services for Equity Managers have now transitioned in a program that accelerates our path to a highly scalable administration platform. 2025 also saw material changes to our strategic shareholders. We welcome Tao Daichi as a strategic shareholder, a business very aligned to Challenger's, and we also look forward, and we also see it as further endorsement of our strategy. Retirement is different to accumulation and is not a single life event. Retirement and a retiree's needs can phase and will change over 20 - 30 + years. Developing a market that supports the various stages of retirement is now a priority for regulators, government, and industry. Most of our country's wealth sits with those preparing for and in retirement.
This will only grow as Australians retire with more years of compulsory super savings and in ever greater numbers. If proof were needed that retirement is a megatrend, retirement assets within the super system will grow from AUD 1 trillion today to almost AUD 4 trillion over the coming 20 years. Whatever success we've achieved, we have a lot left to do. Today, less than a third of Australians feel confident about retirement, and only 40% of Australians aged over 65 receive an income stream from their superannuation, which is why the next stage, developing a system that provides financial security for the millions of Australians entering and in retirement, is so critical. More broadly, Challenger's operating environment will continue to evolve in FY 2026 and beyond. Looking at credit markets, whilst they remain broadly supportive with low credit losses, credit spreads are at historic lows.
Equally, whilst RBA interest rate changes generally do not have a material impact on absolute annuity sales, they can influence the tenure. The inverted yield curve has driven customer preference for shorter-term sales. Reverting to an upward-sloping yield curve will support longer term annuity sales. We see credit spreads as largely cyclical and in line with broader risk markets like equities. We will use the breadth of opportunities we can access to mitigate the impact and remain disciplined on pricing. Legislative reform underway, including current consultations on advice and retirement product suitability, will provide the framework for Australians to receive the education, guidance, and help to retire with financial confidence. APRA's capital standard reform marks a fundamental change for issuers of annuities, improving financial resilience, quality of earnings, the industry's capacity to innovate, as well as improving customer outcomes.
The reform agenda will lay the foundations for Australia's future retirement ecosystem, and Challenger is engaged in every stage of the process. Improving advice outcomes will change how advice is delivered for retirement, and for millions of Australians, that will mean lifetime income becomes a building block in their retirement plans. We're drawing on our decades of retirement expertise to partner with superannuation funds, wealth managers, platforms, and advice technology providers to maximize our opportunity in the growth of the system. More broadly, business models across our industry are evolving. The established institutional savings model will be replaced by a customer or member-focused model that reflects the individual personal needs of Australian retirees. The future will be a retirement system that provides Australians with retirement plans, tools, and advice to turn their savings into regular income and a paycheck for life.
Challenger has the expertise and capability to help deliver this. I'll now pass to Alex, who will provide the detail of our full-year result.
Thank you, Nick, and a very good morning to everyone. It's a pleasure to be here today to present our FY 2025 financial results. This year's performance reflects the strength of our strategy and the discipline of our execution. We've delivered for shareholders, navigated a challenging macroeconomic environment, and laid the groundwork for sustainable growth. What you'll see today is not just a strong set of numbers, but a business that's evolving, becoming more efficient, more focused, and more confident in our ability to deliver long-term value. Let's begin with the headline group results. We delivered normalised net profit after tax of AUD 456 million and normalised earnings per share of AUD 0.663 per share, both up 9%. Statutory NPAT of AUD 192 million was up 48%. Our normalised return on equity of 11.8% is above our target, and we have increased our FY 2025 dividend by 11% to AUD 0.295 per share.
This performance reflects a combination of higher life spread earnings, strong funds management fee income, and disciplined cost management. Expenses growth was contained to just 1% year-on-year, improving the cost-to-income ratio by 150 basis points to the bottom end of our target range. Importantly, we've structurally reshaped our expense base, not just by cutting costs, but by investing in the right areas to support future growth. This is a result that's not only strong in the moment, but sustainable over time. Return on equity is one of the clearest indicators of value creation, and I'm pleased to say we've exceeded our normalised ROE target of the RBA cash rate plus 12%, which is then reported after tax. In the second half of the year, normalised ROE reached 12.1%, up 130 basis points on the prior comparative half.
This uplift was driven by strong life performance, higher funds management earnings, and a cost-to-income ratio at the bottom end of our target range. We are confident in sustaining normalised ROE above our target and through the cycle. Against a backdrop of multi-year inflationary pressures, we have made a permanent shift in our cost base. Total expenses were up 1% to AUD 316 million, and that includes strategic investments for growth. Our cost-to-income ratio improved to 32.3%, the lowest it's ever been for a full year, reflecting our focus on capturing efficiencies. Our technology and investment operations partnerships with Accenture and State Street delivered net savings of AUD 8 million so far, and we reinvested AUD 6 billion into growth and regulatory initiatives. This reflects not just discipline, but a scalable platform that allows us to grow without growing costs at the same rate.
As a reminder, our expense base also includes annualized transition costs of approximately AUD 9 million, which we've reported as a separate line item in the analyst pack. These are the costs associated with our legacy investment operations platform, which will cease upon full transition to State Street towards the end of FY 2027. We've reported these separately to show the further step change that it will create in our cost base once complete. In significant one-off items this year, we reported AUD 8 million of one-off costs associated with our customer technology uplift program and the transition to State Street. I'd like to take a few minutes to walk through the key reconciling items from our normalised to statutory end part. The first bar shows AUD 102 million of adverse AASB 17 timing differences on the accounting valuation of our life insurance liabilities.
These relate to new business strain and the life risk portfolio, which is impacted by changes in relative interest rates and exchange rates. Both of these are non-cash and will unwind over time and are great examples of why a normalised framework is so important, as it gives a clearer view of the underlying economics of our business. Positive other liability experience of AUD 67 million is driven primarily by the change in mortality assumptions in our Australian portfolio, as mortality improvements have been more modest than expected. We saw an AUD 80 million underperformance from our property portfolio, which is made up of AUD 38 million of normalised growth, as well as AUD 42 million of net revaluations downwards at 30 June. Pleasingly, we saw property values in retail, industrial, and Japan all appreciate, but this was offset by domestic office properties falling 3.8% in fair value.
Absolute return funds underperformed their long-term assumption this year, which is based on actual performance in the medium term, but still delivered a 2.7% total return for the year and outperformed benchmark indices. The life business continues to evolve and is benefiting from a higher quality sales mix, balance sheet diversification, and capital strength. Normalised end part of AUD 461 million, up 6%, driven by higher cash operating earnings. We maintained pricing discipline in a challenging rate environment and continue to focus on longer duration, higher quality sales. This result reflects a business that's not just growing, but growing in the right way, with quality, resilience, and long-term value in mind. In FY 2025, we delivered another AUD 5.2 billion in annuity sales, which translated to 4.9% annuity book growth, with record retail lifetime sales of AUD 1.1 billion and record Japanese sales of AUD 984 million.
While total life sales were down 6%, this was a deliberate shift away from shorter tenure business. We're seeing strong demand for guaranteed income, especially in retirement and aged care, and our remix strategy is working. The outlook for Index Plus sales remains positive after we won another large, long-dated mandate with a leading global investment manager that was partially funded in the fourth quarter, with the remaining funding in the first half of FY 2026. As you heard from Nick, this is a market with structural tailwinds, and we're well positioned to lead it. This slide shows the impact of our ongoing remix strategy. Longer duration sales liabilities now make up 81% of our annuity book, up from 72% in FY 2022. The average tenure of new sales is 6.3 years, and the maturity rate is down to 24%, improving book quality and supporting sustainable growth.
In FY 2026, we expect the maturity rate to fall modestly again to 23%. The life COE margin for FY 2025 was 3.19%, up 7 basis points on the prior year. This reflects higher investment yields across an optimized asset allocation, including higher life risk income. The second half, like FY 2024, was elevated for the seasonality of cap bond distributions. The analyst pack contains more details on these movements, period on period. This is a business that's delivering consistent, high-quality returns despite the persistently tight credit spread environment. Now turning to the balance sheet. Our asset allocation remains steady, with 74% in fixed income, 13% in alternatives, 11% in property, and 2% in equities and infrastructure. Our fixed income exposure is 77% investment grade, above our target of 75%.
The portfolio is high quality, diversified, and resilient, with strong credit performance and low default rates, which are inside our normalised assumption of 35 basis points. This period, four investments were downgraded, and as per our policy, all investments rated below B - are treated as being in default. Looking ahead, we expect to see more deployment into whole loans and private credit, which offer attractive risk-adjusted returns. Today, alternatives remain a necessary part of our diversified portfolio. We continue to see alternatives as a source of diversification and resilience, particularly in volatile markets. Property now represents just 11% of the portfolio, following the sale of three retail assets. Now turning to the strong result for funds management. Normalised end part was AUD 53 million, up 41%, driven by higher net income and lower expenses.
Performance fees rose 57%, and the cost-to-income ratio improved to 60%, down 9 percentage points as we capitalized on the benefits of our scalable platform and strategic partnerships. This is a business that's growing, becoming more efficient, and expanding its reach, particularly in Europe and Japan. Our Fidante distribution powerhouse had solid flows in retail equities and alternatives, and we're seeing particular momentum in Europe. During the year, headline net flows were impacted by low margin institutional outflows in fixed income and equity affiliates. These outflows, together with higher margin growth sales, improve the outlook for Fidante fund margins going forward. We've also reported strong performance across our affiliates, with 77% of funds outperforming over five years and 82% of strategies rated as either recommended or highly recommended by research houses.
Challenger Investment Management drives the majority of the Life Company's balance sheet and is making significant progress, winning third-party business. Challenger IM manages AUD 16 billion in fixed income, which includes AUD 6 billion in private credit, AUD 3.8 billion of which was originated in FY 2025. We continue to invest in our asset origination capability and our mortgage servicing platform. As Challenger IM evolves to meet the demands of income and private credit exposure, we are launching our new innovative ASX listed notes. The strong demand for our first issuance sets the stage for further notes in the near term. This is a business with deep expertise, strong relationships, and a clear growth trajectory. We remain strongly capitalized with AUD 1.7 billion in excess capital and a PCA ratio of 1.6 times the minimum requirement. Whilst the PCA ratio moderated 7 basis points year-on-year, it was steady on the half.
It remains in the top half of our target range and reduced because the PCA requirement increased, not because our capital base got smaller. We're holding significant liquid capital, giving us dry powder to deploy into attractive opportunities. Our capital base is a source of strength and a strategic competitive advantage. In June this year, APRA initiated a pivotal consultation on capital settings for annuity products and stated its desire to move towards a more market-sensitive illiquidity premium with appropriate risk controls. This marks a significant evolution in the regulatory landscape and is set to be the most meaningful change in capital settings since the introduction of Logic. The proposed changes to APRA's capital framework are expected to materially reduce capital intensity and improve alignment between the capital valuation methodologies for assets and liabilities.
This alignment will not only lower capital volatility and reduce our cost of capital, but also unlock greater flexibility for product innovation across the retirement income sector. Even with a well-matched portfolio, the current capital standards unduly exacerbate financial stress during market events. The proposed changes directly address this imbalance, removing structural barriers that have historically constrained the development of innovative, competitively priced longevity solutions. In our submission to the APRA consultation, Challenger advocated for changes to the determination of the illiquidity premium to remove the procyclical nature of the capital standards. The expected day-one benefits from a more market-sensitive illiquidity premium include an increase in the capital base, as well as a lower PCA requirement. Coupled with lower capital volatility, this will meaningfully reduce Challenger's cost of capital. The day-two benefits arise as we write less capital-intensive business and transition our asset allocation towards more fixed income.
We welcome these reforms and are actively engaged in the consultation process. This is a positive development for the industry, and particularly for Challenger, as it reinforces our ability to deliver sustainable, capital-efficient retirement income solutions to Australian retirees. This slide provides an insight into our capital allocation framework. We prioritize investment in organic growth, as well as the payment of sustainable, fully franked dividends. In the event that we have capital in excess of our immediate organic opportunities, we will look to return surplus capital via buybacks subject to market conditions or pursue inorganic growth where it enhances our core business. We remain disciplined and focused on delivering shareholder value, demonstrating that we are good allocators of capital. Looking ahead to FY 2026, we're guiding to normalised earnings per share, as we see this as a better reflection of the shareholder outcome.
It is important to note that the guidance and the outlook that we're providing today are based on the current prudential settings. Our normalised EPS guidance range of AUD 0.66 -AUD 0.72 per share assumes normalised NPAT of AUD 455 million -AUD 495 million and no material change in the total number of issued shares. The midpoint of the range represents 4% growth on FY 2025. Our through-the-cycle targets of normalised ROE, cost-to-income, the dividend payout ratio, and PCA ratio all remain consistent. We enter FY 2026 with confidence in our strategy, our execution, and our ability to deliver for shareholders. In summary, FY 2025 was a year of disciplined execution and strategic progress. We've delivered strong financial results, improved returns, and positioned the business for sustainable growth. Thank you for your time today, and I'll now hand back to Nick and look forward to taking your questions.
Thank you, Alex. Looking ahead, our strategy will unlock growth and capitalize on structural market drivers. We're on a journey to become a more capital-light business that generates strong growth and more fee-related income. This includes continuing to expand our offshore reinsurance capabilities, which has the potential to deliver spread and fee-related earnings. APRA's capital standard reform marks a very positive development that will see Australia's prudential framework come into line with the rest of the world. Through our digital transformation, we'll have a contemporary and highly scalable operating model. We will grow our investment platform, including increasing our asset origination capability to maximize investment returns and support our growth ambitions. The need for high-quality, dependable income as Australians prepare for and enter retirement presents one of the most exciting opportunities in the market.
We will leverage our trusted brand as an income provider and build a catalogue of income solutions. In Fidante, we have a world-class set of managers today, and supporting their growth is a priority. We will also bring new managers to our multi-affiliate platform, prioritizing income and private markets capability to meet rapidly growing demand. Our modernized customer platform will see us integrate our retirement products and solutions across the financial system and enable innovation. We have a strong pipeline of retirement opportunities today that will see us extend our partner network and deliver retirement at scale. To win in the growing retirement income market, we will lead with customer experience. That means offering a full range of innovative retirement and income solutions through a seamless digital interface supported by excellent customer service.
To close, over the last three years, we have reset the business to focus on our financial strength, core capabilities, and drive growth. This has delivered a marked improvement in our financial performance and customer and shareholder outcomes. 2025 demonstrated another strong financial result where we delivered against our targets. We now have a unique and contemporary core business that has the capability and ambition to meet the retirement megatrend. We will maintain our financial discipline, deliver a compelling customer experience, and broaden our range of retirement and income solutions. This will drive profitable growth and shareholder value. I look forward to sharing more detail on our growth plans at next month's Investor Day. Finally, thank you to the Challenger team for the hard work and their energy, and Alex and I now look forward to taking your questions.
Okay, just as a matter of process, we'll take questions from the floor first in person, then we'll move to the telephone, and then if there are any questions via the online portal, we'll take those. Can I please ask, when asking a question, can you please introduce yourself and try and ask all your questions at the same time? Let's begin. Let's go with Sid first. Thank you.
Siddarth Parameswaran from JP Morgan. Two questions, if I can. The first just on the guidance. I was hoping you could just maybe provide just a bit of color around what you're assuming for the midpoint, both in terms of cash rate cuts, and also maybe if you could just flesh out your expectations around the COE margin there. I know that you did mention a few things around competition. I think you have a competitive backdrop from an inverted yield curve. Sorry. I think you're growing in wholesale. I was just hoping you could provide a little bit of color on those two components of guidance.
Yeah, absolutely. I'll take them in two parts. Maybe if we talk about the guidance first. First of all, to say we've obviously moved to the EPS guidance range, but we've provided insight on what the numerator and denominator are there. The midpoint would see us growing 4% year-on-year, and the sorts of things that move us around the range are the same sorts of things that we have had in previous years. Things like the variability of performance fees and transaction fees in our funds business, as well as some of our asset returns. Specifically, we don't make any forward assumptions around the cash rate when we provide the guidance. At the start of the year, we don't assume any movements upwards or downwards from an interest rate change perspective. When we think about COE margin, COE margin is now up at 3.19% for the full year.
What we did call out on the slide is that we have in the last two years seen some seasonality in the second half of the year, which is a function of some of the timing of when cap bond distributions come through. In the second half of the year, you also saw those two rate cuts impact some of our interest expense in the COE margin too. Those are probably the key things to note.
Okay. No problems. Okay. If I could just ask a second question just around capital. I mean, you provided a helpful slide on some of the main possible impacts from the capital changes, but I was hoping if you could just help provide us maybe a little bit more quantitative feel for what the midpoint of the current draft standards from APRA might mean in terms of capital relief. If you can't provide that, maybe if you could just at least help us think strategically what you're going to do if we do get capital coming out of your business or capital requirements coming out of your business. You know, will you use that to grow or will you use that to, you know, will you keep the ROE higher?
Sure. Let me take that. Maybe just if we take a step back and remember what it is that APRA is actually trying to do with these capital standard changes. They're trying to ensure that we are more aligned with some of our global peers in the jurisdictions, the capital standard jurisdictions offshore, remove the obstacles for other players and Challenger to develop more innovative retirement income solutions and good pricing outcomes for customers, and also remove that procyclicality. If you think about the challenges we've had as a business historically, in times of market stress, we've needed to take management action on our balance sheet, which is not representative of the long-term view that we take of holding assets. The changes that they've proposed directly address those. We are very, very supportive. It would be premature to put any definitive numbers around it at this stage.
APRA is still reviewing the responses to the consultation, and obviously, as soon as we hear anything more definitive, which might even be by Investor Day, as soon as it is, we'll provide some more detail around that. A way to think about our reflections internally is in the sort of day one and day two buckets. On day one, without making any changes to our balance sheet, we will have more capital. Our capital base will be higher and our PCA requirement will be lower. Depending on where APRA finally lands, that does feel likely that we will be in a surplus capital position at that point and could be in a position to return some capital.
In a day two sense, and probably the most exciting part in some ways, is how we can then grow more organically because we'll be able to write business and much larger quantums of business at a much less capital-intensive way. You can see that sort of self-sustaining capital flywheel being much more effective under the changes that APRA is proposing.
In my own terms, there'll be a mixture. Part of it will go to customers to encourage growth, and part of it will basically be taken for shareholders.
I think if you think about one of the reasons of having the capital allocation slide that we had today, it was to just give people a sense that obviously you would, you know, management would assess what all of those opportunities are, what does the growth look like immediately in front of us, but to also give, you know, shareholders confidence that, you know, if we find ourselves in an excess capital position, we're not going to sit on that capital. You know, that would be deployed if we don't have those opportunities right in front of us.
Thank you.
Can we go to Freya and then to Kieren?
Hi, Freya Kong from Bank of America. Just following up on the APRA changes, what's the timeline that you're expecting on this, i.e., when's the earliest you can anticipate making the day two changes?
I'll give Alex a breather there because I'm making the first two. At this stage, APRA has completed the formal part of the consultation. They're in formal discussions with the insurers who have made submissions around the standards. We're expecting to have pretty firm direction of travel by the year-end, with implementation at the end of this financial year as our sort of working assumption.
Okay, thanks. On the annuity sales outlook, because we have the yield curve inverting, hopefully in the next 12 months, have you seen any pickup in demand for the longer-term annuity sales yet?
Okay, I might pick that one up. When we talk about the impact of the yield curve, you're tending to talk about it through the term book. What you've seen, until we've seen that, we've seen three rate cuts now come through, we've actually got a positively sloped pricing curve in our term business. If you looked at that six months ago or 12 months ago, the longer dated term product was at a lower rate than the one year. When we talk about the impact, that's just natural consumer behavior. It sort of brings it short. When you think about the longer dated business, the lifetime business, that's not impacted by the base rate. It's impacted by longer-term moves in the yield curve. Indeed, with inflation expectations, yield curves backed up a bit.
The Challenger annuity and the lifetime product this week is getting more than a Challenger annuity and a lifetime product 12 months ago, and you've had three base rate cuts. That's different pricing dynamics. What we saw when we had a steep yield curve in the term book back in 2022, 2023 was we were able to push the sales there longer. One observation I'd make, one of the things we're so excited about with the new LiFTS 1 Notes product is it gives us, under the Challenger brand, a product that actually probably sales benefit as rates go down because the spread that we can offer over the base rate increases. We're building a really blended portfolio of product there that can manage through different interest rate cycles and shapes of the curve.
Okay, thanks. One final question just on the big difference between the statutory and the normalised earnings, around AUD 220 million drag from asset underperformance versus normalised assumptions. Any comment on how it's tracked year to date, and are you still confident in the normalised assumptions you're using?
Yeah, thanks, thanks Freya. I think we've provided a lot of detail around all the individual drivers between the normalised and statutory profit. One of the things I would just emphasize is that post the implementation of AASB 17, it probably highlights the need for that normalised framework more than ever. The sometimes slightly counterintuitive impacts of AASB 17, which will unwind over time, don't cloud what is our underlying performance. That really is a huge part of that difference. Cumulatively, we now have nearly AUD 700 million before tax of new business strain and AASB 17 adjustments that we've had in the last few years. That's the most material driver. To your point around normalised assumptions, we absolutely look at those every year. For the absolute return funds, which underperformed our normalised assumption this year, that was just in FY 2025.
If you look from COVID to FY 2024, they performed in line with our normalised assumption. We have seen that dip below that in FY 2025, and we revisit that each year. We don't move it around from one year to the next. Obviously, if we saw another year of the same sort of performance, we'd reconsider it. Equally, it could bounce, it could easily bounce back.
Kieren.
Good morning, Kieren Chidgey, UBS. Might just start again on the APRA capital changes. You've had a bit of time to look at it, and I'm not asking for sort of dollar estimates of what's going to change. The one thing I'd like a view on is the market focused very much on the standardized illiquidity premium definition of 50% - 65% of a credit spread. APRA also flagged potential for a more internal model. Just interested in your views on how much more beneficial that internal model could generate relative to that standardized approach.
I think where the two models differ, if 50% - 65% is still an incredible move on from where we are today. That would be extremely positive for us. A risk-based adjustment to a benchmark or a more representative credit portfolio would be, again, less procyclical, particularly in a point of market extreme. We advocate for the latter would be a better outcome, but the former would still be a very, very good outcome from where we are today.
Okay, Nick, if you were to sort of characterize the internal model under a standardized framework as a percentage of a credit spread, could you give us a feel for how much higher that percentage would move?
I think.
Looking at [crosstalk] .
It's hard to say until they come out definitively, but the percentage would be much smaller. What we've advocated for is a risk adjustment that is a fixed deduction in a basis point sense rather than a %percentage. If you leave it as a percentage, you still have an excessively conservative sort of impact during times of stress. If you have a basis point assumption for defaults that is fixed, because your default experience should be the same through time, that will be a sort of the great end of the outcome spectrum. That could be more in the teens in terms of less than 100. You get more up to sort of 80%+ of the credit spread allowance.
A second question just on capital. Alex, you flag reduction in capital volatility here. Can you talk about how you're thinking about your PCA target range given that reduction in volatility?
Yeah, thanks for the question. It's fair to say that, just as a reminder, the PCA ratio is an outworking of our internal capital model. It's not a target per se that we are aiming to achieve. As you can imagine, those capital models will be entirely revisited. Depending on where APRA lands on the various components, there are actually scenarios in which the PCA could go down or up. It's actually premature on that one, but we will definitely give our outworkings on that as soon as we've got them.
Thanks. Just a second, a lot of questions on the cost outlook you flag. I think in the account AUD 7 million of a Tiger transition costs. I think you mentioned in your slides that you're expecting those costs to go through to the end of 2027. Can you give us a feel for how much is embedded in the 2026 guidance and what we should expect into 2027?
Yeah, thanks, Kiran. The transition costs that you're talking about there are the costs associated with the team of technology people that we've still got in the Challenger business running our legacy Dimension platform whilst we're in the process of migrating everything to State Street. In FY 2025, that was AUD 6 million, and that will annualize to about AUD 9 million. We will have that full AUD 9 million in our cost base for all of FY 2026. By the end of FY 2027, those costs will drop off once the transition is complete. You'll get that step change.
Okay, thanks. Just a last sort of partly expense-based question, more on your systems, your ILIP annuity system integration. Nick, it sounds like that has been delayed. You'd previously flagged potentially the ability to launch that post this 2025 year end, but now it sounds like part of it will be here by the end of this calendar year, part of it by the end of the 2026 financial year. Just wondering what the issues are around the slippage.
Sure. We're bringing it back and explaining what we're doing with ILIP. It is part of a complete takeout of our existing registry and putting in place a whole new data architecture. As I noted in my remarks, there's about 60 systems, or 70 systems, I should say, that are being impacted by it. We've built ILIP. ILIP is now most of the way through testing with our partner Accenture. That will go live this side of the year. What is pushed into next year are some of the customer portals. Customer portals we don't have today because we don't have customer journeys. Everything is as we do it today. Some of it's form-based, some of it has some limited interface to customers. There's no impact on what we're doing today.
The customer portals will come on in the new year, but I would say it's not stopping us doing partnerships and business. If I look at other companies undertaking these sort of transformations, we're certainly not alone, that the complexity of these transformations does add time. We de-risk the go live by putting in ALIP this side of Christmas, so the team internally can be training on it, working on it with the portals going live. Final comment on the portals, the journeys have now been built in those portals. They're just not ready to put into market because we need to do it right because we are end-of-lifing an entire set of systems before turning over and flicking over the new systems. It's super exciting.
Through this process, our conviction in the program of work has only increased because there's no way that we can succeed in integrating ourselves into the financial system and being part of what's happening across platforms and super funds unless we had the sort of technology that we're bringing into the business.
Thanks.
Andrei.
Good morning, Andrei Stadnik from Morgan Stanley. Can I ask my first question around the new listed notes, the LiFTS 1 Notes? Can you talk a little bit about where the revenue is going to be booked, which division, and also do these notes represent kind of the life and the funds management divisions working closely together for holistic products, and do you expect more of that going forward?
Thanks, Andrei. Okay, so what is the LiFTS 1 Notes? It is definitely that, the latter. It is the life company and the funds business working together. We had observed over a number of years' demand for income and been looking at what structure you could best put this type of private credit and public credit into that would give investors liquidity without giving them over-exposure to equity market risk. Typically, anything listed right now, you're getting a lot of equity market risk. The structure of a six to seven year term is very advantageous for that. The life company has played a critical role in two ways on this, in being able to warehouse the assets to go into the structure, but also taking the junior note part of the structure of the LiFTS 1 Notes.
It's definitely a great example of the power of having the balance sheet alongside the asset origination and funds management business.
Just to be clear, the revenue and the earnings are going to go through the funds management?
There's revenue to funds management, and as the holder of the notes, there's COE, there's income to life company.
So both?
Both.
Is there a clear skew, or is it, I think, roughly 50:50?
It mostly sits in the funds management business.
Okay, yeah. Gotcha. Can I just revisit the guidance? You're guiding a 4% increase in normalised EPS, which seems kind of conservative in the sense that second half normalised COE margin was up by 15 basis points, so quite a sharp pickup. What could be holding back guidance of fairly modest EPS growth in light of how strong COE was in the second half?
Yeah, thanks for the question, Andrei. We've spoken about some of the movements in COE margin, and I would just highlight again that seasonality of the second half of the COE margin. I think more broadly, the biggest thing that we stare into at the start of this financial year is just quite how tight credit spreads are, with most of the balance sheet in fixed income, and a lot of the earnings for FY 2026 based on assets we would have originated in FY 2025. That's really the sort of the big macro headwind for us. We're doing what we can from a tailwind perspective to make sure that we're being as disciplined as we can around costs, being right at that bottom end of our cost-to-income ratio and starting to see some real momentum in fee earnings in the funds management business so that they provide some counterbalance to that.
Maybe the last question, but can I ask a slightly kind of maybe boring question, but actually a real question? You mentioned the AUD 60 million positive gains were largely driven by a mentality of rate assumptions. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What's changed? Is it just annuity products?
Yeah, sure. One of the drivers between statutory to normalised differences were mortality assumption changes that we put through on the Australian portfolio. Last year, you might recall that we put through mortality assumption changes on our U.K. book, so our life risk book, and this is just the same again, but on the Australian portfolio. Across the board globally, there still are mortality improvements, but they're slower than had been originally estimated by those actuarial assumptions. In our business, that's a favorable outcome, and you see a release of some of the liability valuation.
Thank you.
Okay. Operator, are there any questions online?
Thank you. I will just remind phone participants, if you wish to register a question, please press the star key, then one on your phone. To cancel your request, please press the star key, then two. You have a question from Simon Fitzgerald from Jefferies. Go ahead, thank you.
Hi there, thanks for taking the question. Sorry to harp on the APRA rules, but just wanted to ask a little bit about how the contract liabilities are actually valued. From memory, it's an RBO rate plus an illiquidity premium. I mean, any sort of rate cut could chew this up pretty quickly. Would that be the correct way to think about it?
Thanks, Simon. The calculation uses the risk-free rate rather than the RBA cash rate, so you won't have that impact.
Okay, all right, thank you for that. Also, a day two effect, again on the APRA rules. Do you envisage that, say, the normalised profits and statutory profits will start to converge a little bit closer, at least all things being equal, but the majority of investment marks in the past have been credit spread changes? Also, on that level, do you envisage there might be any sort of one-off adjustments for the fact that we have profits and losses from previous marks that will look to unwind as those securities start to approach maturity?
Thanks for the question, Simon, and quite detailed, and we'll definitely come back on for the full detail when we have the view. I think, you know, to your question about the day two impacts, if we kept the balance sheet exactly the same, then some of the differences that arise between statutory and normalised, which are created by our more capital-intensive assets, which can have return profiles that are more volatile, would stay. What we have signaled is that in a day-two world, we expect to move the balance sheet away from some of those more capital-intensive assets towards more fixed income, which has a much less volatile earnings profile. Therefore, you would see those statutory and normalised positions start to come together in a more meaningful way period on period.
Yeah, that's very helpful. Just one last question here. I'm just looking at a debt composition. The repos have gone up about 12%. Just trying to learn a little bit more about that. I understand that they are normally used to hedge interest rate risks, but just looking at, say, the contract liabilities are up 4% and then even the investment assets increased by 3.7%. Just wanting a little bit more color in terms of the larger balance and the repos.
Thanks, Simon. In all honesty, a lot of that is just timing. At any particular balance date, we can have a larger balance of liquids and repos. I wouldn't read anything more into it than just timing at a balance date.
Very helpful, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question is from Nigel Pittaway from Citi. Go ahead, thank you.
Good morning, guys. First of all, I wanted to ask a question on annuity demand. Obviously, if you look at what APRA says, they're saying their proposals will not change the market for annuities in Australia. There's an implication there. They don't think it's going to be a key demand stimulant. Yet, I noted when you went through the presentation, you were quite bullish, you know, demand will only grow from here. Life opportunities are only going to improve as we move ahead. Are you expecting any further initiatives down the pipeline, maybe from ASIC and the like, and what's building this confidence that demand is going to be so strong as we move forward?
Thank you. Thanks, Nigel. On the APRA point, their perspective is they can't control for demand. Their role is to support supply. It's not, in some ways, as they've indicated, for them to determine whether or not there will be significant demand. I think where our confidence is coming from, and I don't want to put it just onto government policy because you don't want to be a taker of policy as to how you're going to run your business. If you think about even our most recent announcement with Insignia Financial, that is an example of where, similar to the other retirement partnerships, there is a real industry recognition that the retirement products of the future need to be developed, and they will incorporate a building block of lifetime income.
If you look at the Treasury or the government actuaries, who, in their paper that they put out from Treasury the other day on product design, if you read through that, the government actuaries state very clearly that a 15% to 30% allocation of lifetime income would materially improve the income outcomes, the income of Australians in retirement. I think there's a real government policy recognition building around that, but we're actually seeing it more importantly in the business that we're doing. The other point I would make is that retail advice has always been our stronghold. Until today, there has not been a retail advice system or process that has actually modeled retirement, including lifetime income products. They tend to look at an asset allocation view of portfolio construction.
You will see in the period ahead, and we'll talk about it at Investor Day, what that's going to look like. From right upstream, you're going to see the advice journeys start to show the benefits of incorporating in retirement plans lifetime income. There is some new new in that, but I definitely feel very confident around the direction of travel for growth of lifetime income for a whole range of reasons there, Nigel.
Okay, great. Thank you for that. Clear. Maybe just one on the sort of maturities and the sort of improvement in tenor. You mentioned that, or I think it was Alex that mentioned the maturity rates guided to come down just 1% from 2024 to 2023. It looks like the sort of seller volume's about the same. It's just obviously a slightly lower proportion. I do note that you did pick up a bit in the shorter dated institutional sales in the fourth quarter. How are you feeling about the extent that still, you know, close to a quarter of the book rolls off every year? It does cause negative book growth in some quarters. How do you feel about that, and is that something you'd be looking to improve upon as we move forward?
Thanks, Nigel. One of the numbers that Alex put in her presentation was that the dollar quantum of core longer dated business we've done over the last three years is about AUD 7 billion. It has been a real focus of the team. If you look at the lifetime sales, which are up 26%, or the Japanese sales, we are getting a lot more longer dated business in. The yield curve, particularly on the term side of the business, has pulled the tenor of that book or new sales in that book shorter. That's okay. That's sort of episodic, and if the reasons outlined around changes to the base rate, that could change. If you look at our pricing today versus banks or versus where it was, short to medium term right now, we've got an upward sloping, all we're more competitive than the banks today in pricing.
Our ambition is to continue to grow longer dated business. Final point I'd make, even where it is shorter dated business, we are very disciplined around our pricing and writing it to meet, to support the ROE target.
Okay, thank you very much.
Thank you. Your next question is from Lafitani Sotiriou from MST Financial. Go ahead, thank you.
Good morning. I'd like to start with Dai-ichi and asked, keen to understand how the relationship has commenced, and in particular, is Challenger exploring a reinsurance arrangement similar to the one with MS&AD? Is there anything preventing you guys from having reinsurance arrangements in place with both MS&AD and Dai-ichi?
Thank you, Leif. We certainly welcome Dai-ichi's shareholders. Their business model is very much aligned to ours. They've got a big core life business. They're very active globally now, investing into asset management, particularly around private's capability, which is not dissimilar to what Challenger does in the Australian market. That business model alignment is really important. Certainly, all the discussions that we have had, accepting that we've always done business with Dai-ichi locally, we've managed assets for the Dai-ichi balance sheet for a number of years. There have always been strong relationships between the business. We've been extending those relationships into the Dai-ichi Group to understand what the opportunities are and how we could work together.
If you look at what we've achieved with Mitsui Sumitomo Primary Life, and I think I noted in my remarks about extending that relationship for another five years, putting out record reinsurance volumes with them this year. We've doubled the size of the fixed income mandate for their balance sheet that we run. We've done more properties in Japan for their balance sheet that we've originated and we're managing for them in this past 12 months. We've broadened and deepened that relationship at a time where their parent, MS&AD, are no longer a shareholder. I feel very confident in the Mitsui Sumitomo Primary Life relationship. Leif, we would dearly love to do business such as you note. That is very core for us.
To your point, there's absolutely nothing stopping us from them, whether it be Dai-ichi or whether it be any other regional insurer that we may wish to do that sort of reinsurance business with.
Got it. Can I follow up now on the MLC and the partnership that's in place? Can you just go through in a little bit more detail? Is it how it will work, timing? Is it just going to be the front book, or is there an element of the back book being transitioned? In the same vein, can you talk to what the pipeline's like in that area?
Thanks, Leif. Yeah, so the MLC announcement, which Insignia Financial put out and some of you will have seen, spoke to them building a range of retirement solutions for their business. This is one of the largest in-pension phase super funds in the country and one of the largest super funds in the country. They're very ambitious about their retirement strategy, and they've identified the needs of their customers, which incorporates into the product suite what Challenger does well, the lifetime income products. My comments when I spoke for them, retirement is not just one product. It's not one solution. There will be a range of pre-retirement and in-retirement solutions. The pre-retirement solutions will come soonest. The in-retirement solutions will be coming out, we understand, second half of 2026. Really exciting given the size and the ambition of Scott's team over there at Insignia Financial.
Sorry, is that going to be just front book, or will there be?
Okay. When you say front book, these will be products that will be able to be sold to Insignia or advised into Insignia or MLC customers. They may be in-pension phase, or they may be approaching retirement phase, I should say. It'll, it's not block business. That partnership is not.
Sure. No existing products will be collapsed into it. It's just any new business you went into those products.
This will be MLCs. The retirement boost will be a range of new products. For them, it's their retirement strategy.
Okay, got it. What's the pipeline market like now that there's been a few deals being announced? Are there more players that are coming to market with RFPs or seeking solutions? I know in the past you've indicated that some have dragged their feet waiting for the regulatory landscape to become clearer. Has that changed?
Hopefully I didn't use those words, but yeah, I think like the formation of any new industry, you would expect not everyone moves at the same pace. What you have seen again this year relative to last year is a far broader understanding that the retirement is not saving. Bringing the same solutions for savings will not solve for retirement. You've also seen the regulator become far more prescriptive in what is expected of trustees. The government consultations that came out last week are talking about a range of obligations on trustees around retirement income products and the way that they should fit into your strategy. You are seeing a lot of scaffolding go up around it. I think what's as exciting is that for a whole lot of the funds, they're not being dragged to this conclusion.
The more they get to know their members, as was asked of them by the regulator three years ago, the more they understand their needs and they need to develop retirement solutions. The pipeline looks good. The discussions that we have right now with other big players are really prospective and we're hopeful that there'll be more to announce this year.
Thank you. Your next question is from Julian Braganza from Goldman Sachs. Go ahead, thank you.
Good morning, guys. Thanks so much for taking our questions. The first one on capital. Just correct me if I'm wrong, but the initial comment around the benefits, I think you said from moving to a representative index, is that the ratio would increase to about 80%. Just on that point, from 50 - 55. I just also wanted to understand the other two factors that you proposed, which is extending the longer term, just in terms of the application of the illiquidity premium, extending that for a longer term, what that would entail, and also just the risk adjustments. The last part on that, are you anticipating any changes to the actual stresses themselves in the additive charge for the illiquidity gas and stress as well? Thanks.
Thanks, Julian. Maybe just to think about the three components of the changes that we've talked about. The first one is to ensure, you know, what we're advocating for is that the credit spread index is more reflective of the asset portfolio of the insurer. Rather than just using the three-year Australian corporate bond index, which is very concentrated and very short-term, what we're suggesting is that there is something that is more reflective of the actual asset portfolio that the insurer has. In our case, that would be something that includes global securities as well as things that are more long-dated than just three years. That longer-term rate at the moment stops at 10 years. We're advocating for something that goes out ideally right to the very last date of the liability, but certainly longer than 10.
Anything sort of 10 - 20, I think was in our pre-submission, but you know, you could do it right the way out to the last date of the last liability. The risk adjustment, we spoke about this a little bit earlier in response to Kieran's question. If you've got the risk-free rate plus the credit spread index and then, you know, reduce it for some sort of risk adjustment, in an ideal world, rather than having that be a percentage, we would apply a defaulted deduction that is a fixed basis point allowance because we think that is the best representation of the actual experience that that portfolio will have. Those are the three components of our recommendations in answer to APRA's specific questions.
Okay, now that's clear. I might just ask another question just on the book growth then into FY 2026. Just how you think about the book growth, just given the maturity profile doesn't seem to be materially changing between FY 2025 and FY 2026. Also, in terms of composition, should we be expecting a similar level of book growth in terms of composition? Should we be expecting a similar level of growth that we saw in fourth quarter 2025 in the next year? Yeah, or should we expect more of the longer duration and the annuities coming through?
Yeah, so we don't specifically provide guidance to book growth or sales, but the strategy of sales remix doesn't change. We've made the comments about the pricing environment or the yield curve environment for term, which has brought some of that business shorter, which will push up the maturity rate. Reinvestment rate looks fine in the business. That's been stable year on year, but focusing on longer-dated business remains absolutely a priority. We've spent a good part of the last three years working the book. I think Alex had the number, 81% of the book's now longer than three years. On the annuity side, we announced another longer-dated index plus piece of business in this back end. There's more of that to come. Those are the areas of focus for us.
We feel confident about book growth from here, and we've had, I think, four of the last five quarters have been positive book growth on the annuity side.
I think what we can add to that as well, Julian, is obviously we'll remain disciplined in terms of the way we price and seek business. The strategy doesn't change. Nick alluded to in the presentation that, obviously, you know, and in the Q&A that a steeping of the yield curve potentially will benefit essentially longer duration, particularly on the term side of things. You would notice, obviously, in this year, index plus sales came back a little bit. There is potential there to grow, particularly as we look to extend the tenor on that type of business.
Okay, thanks so much for that. Just one last question. I think you've called out there in your presentation in terms of allocation of capital in organic growth opportunities. Just be interested in what the strategy would be around that, what that could look like. Thanks so much.
Let me make a comment in relation to that. In putting that up, we're not signaling one thing necessarily or another. We're trying to give you a framework for to the extent there is excess capital, how we'll think of using it. The way Alex articulated it, notwithstanding every dollar of annuity business we write, we'll be at a lower capital intensity than it is today, and we'll be able to support a lot more growth off our capital base. We've been, I think, pretty clear with the dividend over the last three years and pretty directional on that as part of ensuring we're delivering value for shareholders. You come into what you do with excess capital. We, like any business, will look from time to time at investments that bolster our core. By saying bolster the core, it's things that would support our growth.
What you're not hearing us say is tangential investments. What Alex spoke about there is around also the potential for capital return, and that's just very much, as you can imagine, a board consideration and a trade-off at a future point in time.
Thank you. The next question is from Marcus Barnard from Bell Potter. Go ahead, thank you.
Yeah, morning and well done on the figures today. As an observation, I'd note your comments that the politicians might listen to the government actuaries. I like your optimism. I'm not sure I share that level of optimism. Two questions. Firstly, on asset allocation, as the APRA formula becomes more open to credit spread movements, are you likely to increase your asset allocation into corporate credit? This could have real-world enhancements to the yield on the book over the long term, depending on the thought. Secondly, on your return on equity, I know you've only in the last year beaten your target, but I'm thinking if the balance sheet becomes more efficient, should you have a more demanding return on equity target? Thank you.
To start, yes, sure.
From an asset allocation perspective, when we think about the capital standard changes, Marcus, we'll see less need for some of the capital-intensive assets that we hold today that provide, you know, ready access to liquid capital. In the main, that's the absolute return funds. To a certain extent, you know, property is a capital-intensive asset too that we've been downweighting over the last few years, and you could envisage us continuing to do that. That would mean more fixed income overall, and that will absolutely include corporate credit. To your point around ROE, we have been on a journey back to our ROE targets, and it's great to have the first full year meeting the ROE target. To Kieren's point earlier, you know, I think there will be a need to revisit a number of our guidance metrics under the new capital standards.
I'm optimistic that a lower cost of capital for Challenger should be a good outworking such that, you know, you could see a world in which we could write more business that meets our ROE or is at least a meaningful improvement on a lower cost of capital. You're right, that will be a consideration as we get those final changes from APRA.
Fantastic, thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions from the phone at this stage.
Okay, one last question from Freya, and then we'll wrap up.
Hi, Freya Khan from Bank of America. Last question on the cost-to-income ratio target, which hasn't changed even though you're at the lower end of the 32 - 34%. Can I just ask what's driving this conservatism?
Thanks, Freya. You might recall that we only changed the cost-to-income ratio at the beginning of FY 2025. It used to be at 35 -37 basis points. We've brought it down to the 32 - 34. We see it as more of a through-the-cycle target than sort of specific in-year guidance. We've opted to keep it the same for this year. As you note, we're at the very bottom end of that guidance for this year, and all the things that we've talked about from a cost perspective should keep us directionally there.
Okay, that wraps up today's briefing. Both Irene and I are available on the phones if anyone has any other questions. A reminder that Challenger's Investor Day is on the 16th of September. We'll take you through some further stuff during then and hope to look to see you there. Thanks for your interest today, and we'll bring this to a close. Thanks.