Good morning, everyone. Welcome to Equity Holdings ' full year results to 30 June 2024. I'm Mick O'Brien, I'm the Managing Director of the company. I'm here with Johanna Platt, our new Chief Financial Officer. Welcome, Jo. Jo's been at EQT, not five weeks yet, and, as a reminder, Philip Gentry stepped down from that position in June following, I think, seventeen of these releases. So thanks for joining me, Jo. I've also got with me Travis Goudie , who's been ably acting as our Chief Financial Officer for the last three months. So thanks, Travis, for helping us on this presentation. So, today's agenda for this morning, I'm going to give you an overview of the 2024 year. I'm then going to hand over to Jo to talk through the financials in some detail.
Then I'm going to come back and just give you a quick update on strategy and outlook, and then we're going to take questions at the end of the session. So, let's jump into an overview of FY 2024. So the headline results. First, I'd like to say it's been a big year for Equity Trustees. We've spent a long time integrating the AET acquisition that we acquired in November 2022. We've got a range of technology developments, well and truly advanced through the course of the year, and we've been onboarding a significant number of new clients. And there's been some market assistance in these results as well. We're just on the left-hand side there, the funds under management, administration, and supervision, which we call FUMAS, is the key revenue driver of the business.
You can see it's up there at AUD 202.8 billion, so a 26.7% increase. That's up AUD 42 billion through the course of the financial year. Revenue is up 23.1% to AUD 174 million, a great result. Net profit after tax, up 10%. And on an underlying basis, net profit after tax was AUD 37.9 million, up 13.8%. So very solid increases, and Jo will cover in some detail the difference between the statutory result and what we're describing there as the underlying result. On the dividend front, the board have chosen to increase the final dividend to AUD 0.53, so bringing the full year dividend up to AUD 1.04, so up AUD 0.04 on the year.
That result, that is, you know, a decision reflecting the underlying earnings of the company. Now, at Equity, we always like to talk about all of our stakeholders and delivering to all of them, because we believe that really makes for a healthy company. Just start on the client satisfaction side. We survey our clients each year. The first time we're including our AET clients in this client base. Very good results there at a Net Promoter Score of 18, Net Loyalty Score of 33, and satisfaction of 77%. Two of those measures have increased. You know, overall, we're really satisfied with those results, particularly given the client transitions that have been going on through the course of the year. On the employee engagement side, we're also including the AET employees fully in this set of results.
You can see our engagement there as a key measure is at 72, 72%. That's up two points. That's two points above the financial services median. And, you know, I think Equity Trustees is increasingly becoming an employer of choice in this market. Delighted we've brought Johanna on board, as our Chief Financial Officer, and a couple of days ago, we also made an announcement that we've appointed a new Chief Risk Officer, a very key role in this type of organization, obviously, Nevein Versace, and she joins us, in four weeks' time, following Owen Brailsford, our current Chief Risk Officer's, decision to return to, his homeland in the U.K. Growing shareholder value, I mentioned the dividends before. Total shareholder return has been 27.5% through the course of the year.
Earnings per share is up 5.3% to AUD 0.7784. Underlying earnings per share is footnoted down the bottom there, is AUD 1.4237, and that's up AUD 0.09, and deepening community impact. Well, one key measure of that is the footprint that we have across the granting that we put into the charitable sector, the for-purpose sector, and also directly to First Nations communities around the country. You can see there, AUD 178 million, so making us one of the scale - very large-scale players in charitable giving. Now, I think it's instructive to just look at the results over the course of the last five years. On the right - the left-hand side there, you've got the funds under management, how it's growing, left-hand side, revenue.
But just on the left-hand side, funds under management over the four-year period here has grown from AUD 101 billion to AUD 202.8 billion dollars, so a doubling in four years. The company took 131 years to reach AUD 100 billion, and it's taken us four years to reach the next AUD 100 billion dollar milestone. It's 19% per annum compound growth over that period, most of it organic growth. Investment markets have also played a part in it as well. On the right-hand side, we've got revenue. You can see healthy growth rate over the course of the four years of 16% per annum. AET has been a major add to that, but our organic growth has also been very solid, at 35% of that growth over that time period.
If I just look at the two business segments in a little bit of detail now. So firstly, trustee and wealth services. And you'll see on the left-hand side that AET has assisted greatly on both the left and the right-hand side, increasing the scale of this business, but importantly in key geographies and segments. So AET had leadership in South Australia and Western Australia. It's strengthened us in the other east coast cities, and it's put us to being the leader in the health and personal injury sector and a really solid scalable business in Native Title trusts. The markets, and, you know, the fundamentals are very positive for this business, the aging demographic and intergenerational wealth transition.
We had an investor presentation in April of this year, where we spent quite a bit of time talking about the recurring nature of the revenue in this business, the long-term recurring nature of it. The FY 2024 results, the funds under management supervision has increased by 8.6%. Revenue is up 30.3%. AET is a full year contribution in that number, whereas only seven months of contribution in the prior FY 2023 year. Net profit before tax was AUD 30 million, up 16.2%. So a really good year for Trustee Wealth Services. And now I'll just talk about asset management performance. Asset management is critical to our clients. Many of our clients are absolutely dependent on the investment results that we're delivering.
As a reminder, our internal investment capability is a specialist capability built for the for-purpose or endowment sectors of the market. It focuses on capital preservation in real terms, while generating strong after-tax income that many of our beneficiaries are living off. Multi-asset class capability with a combination of internal and external strategies. We've got a team of 14 investment professionals managing over AUD 6 billion. Australian equities is the core component of, or by about two-thirds of the overall portfolio. We added a couple of new strategies in the last 18 months. The first is a global equity strategy with a growth orientation, very complementary to Australian equities and focusing in on sectors that aren't really available here in the Australian market, and a short-duration credit strategy called Spectrum, both performing well.
So you can see these are the alpha generation numbers here. Over the course of one year, everything adding positive alpha. Australian equities are a little down, 50 basis points over the course of the year, which is expected given the growth in the market through the course of the year and our strategy. If I look at the five-year numbers, the long-term numbers are very important. They are all very sound, positive alpha generation, so delighted with those results. If I turn to Corporate and Superannuation Trustee Services, this is a part of the market where we are the clear leader in providing RE services to funds, managers and asset owners, and superannuation trustee services to superannuation fund promoters. There has been a lot of growth in this business over the course of the year.
We're seeing increasing demand from global fund managers to enter this market, and we're having great success in securing those clients. We've been investing in technology in this area because the scale of business is increasing at a rapid rate, and the regulatory oversight requirements have been increasing as well. Through the course of the year, we integrated our corporate and superannuation trustee operations. That integration is complete. It's now open to us to capitalize on that integration by using the best of breed of those two businesses across the whole single business, which requires a very similar operating model in both cases. We're exiting the UK and Ireland. We are out of Ireland and at the tail end of exiting the UK, in another week's time, with our last client leaving.
In all, funds under supervision here increased by 31.6%, so AUD 41 billion, about half and half between super and corporate trustee services. Revenue was up 15.3%. Net profit before tax was AUD 21.7 million. That declined 1.4%, and John will give you some of the background to that a little later in the presentation. Now, I mentioned before that the AET integration is progressing well, so we had a very good seven-month start in FY 2023, and importantly, we repriced a number of the products at that point in time. We also implemented our investment program across the business, and that was important to get those done right at the start, so the synergies could flow through into FY 2024 as they have, and into FY 2025.
If I just look at the highlights in FY 2024, we moved to a new office in Adelaide. That's important. That's the place where we have the second largest number of our employees. On the platform side, we've transitioned the AET business across to our new iPhi system for our active philanthropists. We've transitioned across to Salesforce for estate planning and estate management. We have built the NavOne system with the HUB24 interface to it. That's been a great build with two very good vendors. And just reminding people, we are transferring all of our EQT business in TWS across to this new platform, as well as all the AET business. So, you know, those transitions have been going very well. We've transferred about 2,800 accounts out of the 5,000, so making very good progress.
We have exited the loss-making platform business that AET had. We've outsourced the administration of small APRA funds to SuperConcepts, so on the first of June, that was very important, so we didn't have to build that capability, and the revenue synergies are absolutely coming through, as we'll show you in these numbers. Our plan for FY 25, given we've exited the platform business and outsourced the SAF administration, we're releasing about 50 roles, half of those in almost next week, and the other half in November, and that's where the expense synergies will flow through that we've flagged in the past. On the products and platform side, we need to do the final transition of our health and personal injury book and our Native Title trusts across to the new NavOne platform, and final transitions out of Insignia.
We plan and are confident to be exiting the Insignia Transition Services Agreement in November, as we flagged originally with their client business. We're consolidating trustee licenses and custody licenses. We're well advanced on that, and we'll comment on that in the next slide. This slide here talks about the overall synergies, and we're on track to achieve these. At the time of acquisition, we said that we would achieve AUD 3.5 million in expense synergies, and we're forecasting to achieve that number, primarily on the back of the roles that are being released over the course of the next four months. That'll be a run rate achievement at the end of FY 2025. On the revenue front, we're looking at a AUD 5.9 million revenue synergy.
We'd originally said AUD 3.3 million, so I think we'll be basically double that number by the time this is achieved. We've achieved a good amount in FY 2024, AUD 3.6 million, and we expect to achieve the AUD 5.9 million or greater than that in FY 2025. Implementation costs. We've spent so far AUD 15 million of that AUD 22 million, and we believe we will be able to complete this integration and the build of the NavOne platform within this AUD 22 million envelope. And then finally, on the capital release, we originally weren't expecting a capital release, but we do have some dual licenses in place between the AET business and the original Equity Trustees business. And when we release those licenses, both a traditional trustee license and a custody license, each will release AUD 5 million of capital.
It's contingent on court approval in one instance and on ASIC approval in the other instance. So effectively, that brings the purchase price of this business from AUD 135 million down to AUD 125 million, is another way of thinking about that release. So in summary, it's been a really strong performance through FY 2024. The funds under management growth really has been driven primarily by new business, with a little bit of assistance from markets. Earnings and dividends have continued to grow in a good way. The AET integration is on track, and our technology builds are also on track, so it's very pleasing. Feel we're delivering for all of our stakeholders, and we're really well positioned to release the benefits of this scale and continue at the strong position we've got in our market.
So with that, I will hand over to Jo, who will take you through the financials.
Thanks, Mick. Good morning, everyone, and it's my pleasure to be with you this morning to give you an overview of the FY 2024 financial results for Equity Trustees. Turning to a summary view of our P&L, as Mick mentioned, revenue grew by 23.1% to AUD 174 million. This was driven by the annualized effect of AET, the synergies realized for revenue, a positive investment market effect, and new business, particularly in CSTS. Expenses grew by 28.3% to AUD 142 million. Growth was in part due to the annualization of AET, but there were also increases in non-operating expenses relating to our restructure programs, which I'll cover shortly, as well as BAU cost increases.
Turning to net profit after tax, it increased by 10.1% to AUD 20.7 million, and on an underlying basis, AUD 38 million, an increase of 13.8%, and we'll shortly walk you through the difference between those two measures. Mick mentioned EPS, AUD 0.7784, an increase of 5.3%, and on an underlying basis, AUD 1.4237, an increase of 9%. In recognition of the earnings growth and progressive delivery of the transformation program, we have declared a dividend of AUD 0.53, a total of AUD 1.04 for the year, a payout ratio of 133% on statutory measures or 73% on underlying profit.
Providing an overview of the key financial measures over time, you can see there's consistent growth in revenue, underlying EBITDA, underlying net profit after tax, and dividends. You can see the impact of the transformation spend, particularly in FY 2023 and 2024, where we have a gap between underlying and statutory measures. Given our plans are in place to wind down this activity during FY 2025, we see the gap between these two measures closing for the FY 2026 year. Turning to the drivers of revenue growth, and a call-out upfront, this is probably the last time we'll be able to segregate the performance of AET from the base business, as it's becoming very integrated into our financial and operating performance. Revenue grew by 23.1% to 170... Sorry.
Annualized growth of AET drove AUD 17.1 million of incremental revenue. The market impact overall on our revenue was AUD 4.5 million. We had a loss of a fund services client that impacted revenue by AUD 1.3 million. We achieved revenue synergies of AUD 3.6 million, which was incremental AUD 3.2 year over year, and organic growth was AUD 9 million, and equivalent to a growth rate of 7.7%, 70% of that being achieved in the CSTS business. Expenses grew by AUD 31.3 million, and we look at the expense movement across three buckets: non-recurring, the annualization of AET, and BAU. There was a AUD 4 million increase relating to the transformation projects, namely the AET integration, the exit and wind down of UK and Ireland, and technology projects.
The total non-operating expenses for the year was AUD 25.6 million. There was a AUD 14.3 million increase in costs relating to the annualization of AET, and that includes the corporate overheads and depreciation charges. 13 million dollar increase in BAU expenses, predominantly due to increased salaries and wages as we build the new operating model in CSTS and some salary inflation effects. We also had increased interest expense relating to our increased corporate debt. Walking you through the reconciliation for net profit after tax. The first graphic here shows the result on a statutory basis of 20.7 through to the underlying reported result of 38 million. The key differences is the 7.9 million dollar impact of the wind down and exit of UK and Ireland, 6.6 million dollars relating to integration costs for AET.
AUD 800,000 relating to the exit of the AET platform, and AUD 1.9 million relating to the transformation projects in technology. If we turn to looking at the underlying NPAT result from FY 2023 to FY 2024, it increased by AUD 4.6 million. There was a combined AUD 4 million benefit from AET of the annualization as well as revenue synergies. The investment market effect was AUD 2.9 million on an NPAT basis. Interest expense declined profit by AUD 1.2 million, and the BAU business NPAT declined by AUD 1.1 million. This is a combination of the loss of the client in CSTS and the increases in CSTS BAU costs, offsetting some of the new business revenue. Turning to the sub-segment results for revenue and FUMAS.
TWS achieved 30% growth and AUD 99 million in revenue, and to call out that 90% of the AET business revenue sits in this line of business. 80% of the growth achieved was relating to AET, AUD 15.6 million of the annualization impact, and AUD 3.2 million of revenue synergies. The investment market impact was AUD 1.7 million, and there was AUD 2.6 million of new business. TWS benefited from AUD 2.1 million of one-off style revenue relating to establishment fees and a significant estate management event. Also important to note that the platform business revenue of AUD 1.5 million is in the FY 2024 result. This line of business ceases in FY 2025. Turning to CSTS, and this is the result including the UK and Ireland.
Revenue grew by 15% to AUD 75 million. There was a AUD 1.5 million revenue contribution from the small APRA fund business of AET, AUD 2.7 million revenue contribution from market impact. We mentioned the loss of the mandate client in fund services impacting revenue adversely by AUD 1.3 million, an organic growth of AUD 6.9 million, or an organic growth rate of 10.5%, driven by 66 new clients in fund services and continued growth in our super business. Drilling down into the sub-segments of the CSTS business. For fund services, revenue grew by 11.2% to AUD 40.8 million. As I mentioned before, this is where we had significant new business delivered of AUD 3 million, with 66 new clients delivered in fund services.
We're seeing increasing demand from global fund managers, particularly for ETF products. New fund managers onboarded in FY 2024 include Future Group, Adams Street Partners, Ares Management, Kapstream Capital, Lombard Odier, Wilson Asset Management, and BlackRock. Turning to our custody, debt, and securitization services. They also generated revenue growth of AUD 800,000 year-over-year. To call out, the revenue of this business is around 80% based on account-based fixed fees and 20% on asset growth. Therefore, you're seeing a strong correlation between revenue growth and the number of accounts. Key mandates in this business include AEMO, Westpac and Landesbank Baden-Württemberg, and we have a strong pipeline of new transactions across direct property, infrastructure, cash, and feeder funds. And finally, to superannuation. Revenue increased by 21.3% to AUD 30.7 million.
You can see the impact of the small APRA fund revenue from the AET business of AUD 1.5 million and organic growth of AUD 3.6 million. Significant new business onboarded in FY 2024 included Future Super Fund, Guild, ClearView, the SFT of Encircle into Centric, and the strong funds under management growth or funds under supervision growth, rather, in HUB24 of AUD 10 billion. Moving now to the group cash flow result. This analysis excludes cash relating to our offer facilities. We have a strong closing cash position of AUD 113.2 million, an increase of AUD 16.7 million year over year. Net cash flow from operations was AUD 50 million, an increase of AUD 20 million year over year, driven by the AET contribution.
There was a AUD 10 million increase in corporate borrowings, which was used to fund, in part, the AET integration. Closing on the balance sheet. Two significant movements to call out between FY 2023 and 2024: an increase in our other facilities of AUD 12.5 million. That impacts our cash reserves as well as on borrowings for those discrete facilities, as well as an increase in AUD 10 million in corporate borrowings. We retain a strong borrowing capacity of AUD 33 million, and we maintain a low debt-to-equity ratio of 11.9%. As you can see, we have a strong balance sheet that is well positioned to take advantage of future growth opportunities. In conclusion, FY 2024 was a year of successful financial performance, driven by, one, protection and enhancement of AET revenue and profit.
Two, the growth and momentum in CSTS. And thirdly, the investment in technology and our operating model to enable scale and margin delivery in CSTS. On that note, I'll hand back to Mick to walk us through the strategy for EQT and our FY 2025 priorities.
Thank you, Jo. Great grasp of those results in just four weeks. Thank you. I'm gonna just give you a quick update on the strategy. I think that keeping the same, there's no change. We are focusing on trusteeship first and foremost, and our purpose of helping clients take care of their future remains the same. You know, this is a company where you should expect consistency in our results. We seek to be a leader in the market sectors that we're operating in, and our reputation is absolutely key to enabling our clients to trust in the services that we provide.
So really, the four pillars of this business growth is, first, I think we see increasing demand for our services, both in the private client side as well as the two corporate lines of business. We're subsequently, you know, dedicating significant business development resource to that. On the client service side, we've been investing in technology. We have many vulnerable clients, very dependent on our services, and the technology is going to help us in providing services to those clients. This is a people business, and we rely on very technical, strong technical expertise of our people, but also people that are able to be caring, skilled, and resilient to look after this client base.
So we've been really comfortable with the talent that we've been able to attract, and increasingly, we're now able to enable them with better technology to deliver to our clients. And finally, on the community front, we have a unique position because of the generosity of past clients as well as current clients in their efforts in philanthropy. And we want to capitalize on that footprint that we have, and certainly the capability that we have in the philanthropic area of our business, as well as our First Nations business as well. Just in terms of market leadership in the market, we're well positioned in all the markets we're competing in. We're the clear leader in the provision of responsible entity services and superannuation trustee services.
Also, in the health and personal injury sector, given the AT acquisition, in estate planning, we are. We've got an Equal leadership position in many of the other areas of Trustee Wealth Services as well. And we've got building businesses in the custody and related side and the DCM and securitization part of the market. And importantly, geographically, AT gave us leadership in South Australia and Western Australia, and strengthened our position in New South Wales and Queensland. But just focus on the business initiatives for FY 25. In Trustee Wealth Services, we're going to expand, or add to the capability of our new iPhi system for active philanthropy, to allow straight-through application processing and put more effort into the business development and marketing of active philanthropy through the course of FY 25.
We're determined to complete the AET integration on time, and the divestment on the platform, which is all but complete, and achieve the synergies that we set ourselves, and finish this third year of the technology build to set the Trustee and Wealth Services business up with a brand-new platform that will service our clients well, and a consolidated single operating model between our two main operating areas in Melbourne and in Adelaide. So we're in good position to do that. We want to continue to develop and leverage the responsible investing capability and realize, as I said before, the expense synergies through FY 2025.
On the asset management side, we want to capitalize on the top rating, the ratings and the top performance that we have in a number of our funds, particularly in the new strategies that we introduced 12 and 18 months ago in global equities and the Spectrum Strategic Income Fund. The corporate administration trustee services on the corporate side, our RE position's in good shape. We see increasing demand from global fund managers entering the Australian market, and we want to achieve a really high proportion of those as wins. We're increasingly picking up superannuation funds and larger scale opportunities for diversified financial services organizations, and there's a big focus on that. The demand to list managed investment schemes, either on the ASX or on Cboe, continues to increase.
We currently, I think, have 14 schemes listed, and we see that as a key way of expanding funds managers' distribution, as managers see as well, and we're well set to be able to do that. We'll continue building our debt offers as well as our bespoke custody and MIT offers for real estate. I guess one key change here in this market, we've embarked on a range of technology developments here to streamline workflows, and so that we can handle the increasing scale of this whole business and also the, I guess, more diverse nature of the fund services business. On the superannuation side, we want to build the markets in the retail sector and the small APRA fund segment.
So in the retail sector, our opportunities really are larger scale opportunities that are longer-term prospects in many cases, but the pipeline remains strong today. We took on the small APRA fund portfolio from AT just on eighteen months ago. We see big opportunities for that market, particularly coming from the self-managed super fund market. As people transition at their later years to not wanting to have the responsibility of a self-managed super fund, small APRA fund solution is an ideal solution in that market. We think it's been under-marketed in the past, and we see a great opportunity in partnering with our administrator, SuperConcepts, in that area. There is a raft of APRA regulatory changes coming over the course of the last eighteen months. We're well set to handle that.
In some respects, you know, that put some pressure on the business and there has been some increasing expense to manage that. But it is, on the upside, an opportunity for us, because if these things are difficult for us to implement, they're more difficult for those providers that aren't specialists in this area. And finally, a focus on operational excellence and business transformation, in respect to this business, given the size and scale of the business. I just want to touch a little bit further on the technology modernization program. We've got planned a AUD 5 million technology spend for FY 2025. 2 million of that is in the platform modernization, and 3 million, including the AET integration, which includes the delivery of the NavOne system for Trustee Wealth Services.
On the corporate and superannuation side, we're looking to automate many of our processes, given the scale that we have, centralizing the client management operational platform. We're partway through that, but there's a lot more to do. Implementing a data warehouse that runs across the whole business, that will enable us to interrogate and manage schemes and superannuation funds more efficiently. The Trustee Wealth Services, we need to finish the build of the NavOne system with HUB24, the HUB24 interface. I mentioned there that build is being done by Quantios, they previously called TrustQuay , and I would have referred to them as TrustQuay in the past. They've changed their name to Quantios. We want to roll out more digital client solutions on the active philanthropy side, capitalize on some of the technology we are shifting across from AET.
So there's two particular payment systems that AET utilized to go to the health and personal injury sector, as well as to go to our Native Title clients. And we'll be able to increasingly utilize that across our TWS client base, where we haven't been those automated payment systems. In terms of the infrastructure and just generally across the business and technology, we'll continue to invest on the cyber side. We are also looking to shift our infrastructure to our infrastructure as a service capability. So we're well set in terms of managing the technology stack at the moment. And on the finance and people side, we implemented Workday just on six months ago in finances. This is the first stage.
We're going through a second stage relating to procurement and expense management, and we're also putting our human capital management and payroll onto the Workday platform. So we will have finance and payroll and the HR side combined and integrated for the first time, which will be great. So finally, the investment in technology and the AET business is paying off. We're determined to complete the AET integration as we planned and achieve the synergy benefits from that. The expanded scale provides us with the ability to achieve leverage and new service offerings in CSTS. The technology modernization program, we're two years into the three-year build of that, and effectively we'll complete that through the course of this year and then be able to utilize that technology more effectively, leverage, and also delivering better to our clients.
We have been investing in ensuring that we can meet the increasingly complex regulatory obligations, and I think we are well set for the future challenges in that area. We're seeking to achieve improvements in client experience through the use of these platforms, and then unlock the benefits of this new technology and the scale of the business as we move forward. So on that note, I'm happy to stop and we will take questions. So there's a facility there. We have some questions already, so I will work these through. So have there been any cost pressures in the TWS business? Seems second half costs stepped up.
Perhaps I'll take that. I'll, I guess I wouldn't highlight the cost pressures just to the TWS business.
I mean, there we've experienced some higher replacement costs as people have left. I'd also make the point that we have the lowest vacancy levels in the business we've ever had. I think our vacancy level is 1.8% at the moment, and turnover has been 10% over the course of the 12 months. So normally, the business wouldn't be operating as fully resourced as it is. But of course, TWS is the place where we're doing all the AET integration work and all the build on the NavOne, of the NavOne platform.
The next question is, STS revenue margins were squeezed lower. Should we expect the second half run rate revenue margin to maintain or shift lower?
Now, I might hand that to Jo, if she can make a comment on that.
Sure, Travis, please go with anything.
Yeah. Thank you.
We're seeing CSTS margins were squeezed during FY 2024. We do see in FY 2025 a more of a maintenance posture as we annualize the effect of the various resources that have been added into that business. And then we're well placed to deliver a margin improvement journey.
I agree with that, Jo. Nothing to add.
Thank you, Jo. Thanks, Travis.
Next question is, what is the incremental revenue for full year for the new super and CTS clients, and what have they contributed in FY 2025? I don't think I really. I'll make a couple of comments, and then maybe Jo and Travis will add to it. Firstly, on the superannuation front, our new clients primarily came in near the start of the year, most of them. So Future Group, start of the year, and ClearView, halfway through the year.
ClearView was closer to the second half.
The second half of the year, yeah, on our, And the other one was Guild, which was mid-year. So that puts some perspective on some of those new clients in superannuation. On the CTS front, I think you can think about it as those schemes that the new schemes being established, progressively being established through the course of the year. And I guess think about new schemes coming in generally with low levels of funds. So typically on our more, you know, close to our minimum fees, you know, say about AUD 50,000 per scheme to give some sort of quantum to that. So that's progressive, and you know, we start FY 2025 with that, those, that business in place, FUM level where it is, so that's a good start to the FY 2025 year.
The next question is: There seems to have been some additional costs at the unallocated level, excluding explicit non-recurring items. What were these investments? Not 100% sure.
Sure, I'll have a look at that. We might have to take that one and come back to you then.
Yeah, I think-
Yeah, sure. We can perhaps come back to that. I mean, the majority of the unallocated costs in the financial report relate to those underlying adjustments made between statutory and underlying, which is set out in the directors' report.
Right.
Financial performance summary.
And was called out in the bridge from underlying to reported net.
Thank you, Travis, and thanks, Jo. Okay, when was it firmed up that an additional AUD 5 million of tech spend would be required in FY 2025 beyond the spend that has occurred in recent years? Perhaps I'll take that one. So a good component of that is in the AET integration. So that is in the envelope of the AUD 22 million that we've always flagged, so there's nothing, no change in our expectation on that. And the other component, the AUD 3 million, is the completion of all of the other technology projects I have listed there, and again, there's no change on that, with most of the spend of that coming in the first half of FY 2025, maybe leaning on a little bit past that. Yeah. All right. Have we seen any margin benefit from the tech spend to date?
How can we think about the medium-term margin benefit from all of this tech spend? Okay, well, perhaps I'll take that. The answer to the first question is no, we haven't seen a margin benefit from this tech spend, so bear in mind, we haven't shifted the whole TWS client base across yet. But when we do get it across, then, effectively, day one, I don't think there'll be any change, but we will be able to utilize that technology across the whole of the TWS client base, and I do expect that we will get leverage and margin benefit from that over the longer term, possibly in the being able to scale the business without putting on more resources, more so than taking expense out straight away. How can we think about medium-term margin benefit from all this tech spend?
I think I would think about it that we'd be expecting our margins to improve and return to some of the levels that they were at. I should make the point, in the CSTS business, the one-off client loss of AUD 1.3 million is effectively all margin, right, and so was our largest client in that business. Actually, part of it, it was a part of their business and our largest client, so you know, we don't expect that to be recurring on a regular basis, so just in terms of, you know, thinking about this tech spend, I would think about it this way: We're getting ourselves set up to handle a much more larger scale business in CTS and superannuation.
So, you know, the total we're seeing at AUD 180 billion, you know, it's a very diverse business. The regulatory change has been fairly intense in the course of the last twelve months, and we can see it going out in super for the next twelve months, as well, and we're well set up for that. And we may need to implement some pricing change to recognize some of that regulatory change that's going on, in the future, because it's certainly not what could be anticipated when you think of some of the pricing that's been put in place in recent years. The next question is CSTS's profit before tax margins fell from 40% in the second half of 2023 to 32% in the second half of 2024. Can you talk through these pressures?
I might stop talking for a second.
Yeah.
See if Travis can handle that.
Again, the thematic of investing in the CSTS business for the new operating model, increasing our resourcing behind regulatory oversight and design, has been a key part of the cost there. There's also been some mixed movements in the product level, and we are reviewing our pricing and segmentation, to make sure that that's aligned.
Yeah. Thank you, Jo. Has the cost of the 50 redundancies in the platform business been provided for, and is AUD 4-5 million a fair assumption of the saving? So, I might hand that over to you, Travis.
Sure.
Yeah.
No problem. So in summary, yes, our estimate of the cost of those redundancies for the year ahead has been provided for at 30 June 2024. In terms of the AUD 4-AUD 5 million, I think that's a broadly reasonable assumption. On page 11 of the investor presentation, we do talk about the net cost synergies. So that AUD 3.5 million that we quote there is net of the platform revenue that offsets, that is, that is being lost in FY 2025. So the AUD 4-AUD 5 is about right.
Thank you. I think that's, I think that is about right. Thank you, Travis.
Yeah.
Thank you. So it is all provided for. You know, half these people are leaving in another week's time, and then the remainder will go. That brings us to the end of the questions. It brings us almost to the end of the forty-five minutes, so really appreciate everyone's attendance this morning. Looking forward to the next four or five days, getting out to see investors and brokers directly, and enjoy the rest of the day, and thank you, Jo, and thank you, Travis. Thank you. All right. Thank you.