Well, good morning, everyone. The numbers are just building of participants. I'll just give it another sort of 30 seconds or so, once that number starts stops ticking up, I will get started. So... Okay, well, I think, let's get started. So good morning. Welcome to EQT Holdings' half year results to 31 December 2023. I'm Mick O'Brien, I'm the Managing Director of the company, and I'm here with Philip Gentry, our Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer. Now, before we start, I just want to recognize Philip's contribution over the last eight years. We announced late last year that he's stepping down, and he's going to try and do some other things over time.
But we're delighted that we've had him for, for this period of time, and we'll have him for a number of months yet. But this is his seventeenth set of results, all delivered incredibly professionally. So thank you, Philip, and I'll, I'll miss you on the, on the roadshow in the future. Thank you. Let's just move on to the agenda. I'm going to give you an overview of the results, and, importantly, give you an update on AET. Philip's going to go through the financials in some detail, and then I'll just update you on strategy. So let me, give you an overview of the results. So at a headline level, the funds under management, administration, and supervision are up to AUD 183.5 billion.
You can see there that we're comparing versus the first half of 2023, that's up 18%, and versus the second half of 2023, so the most recent period, up 14.6%. And we're doing that throughout the presentation because, really, a comparison to the most previous half is a like-for-like basis. When you're comparing to the first half of 2023, we've got AET in these numbers for six months on this period. It was only in for one month on that first half of 2023, so hence the double comparisons. Revenue is up 37% to AUD 84 million. Importantly, up 8.1% on the prior half. So that's if you like, a like-to-like, and that tells you, you know, the really strong revenue growth and primarily organic revenue growth rather than investment market growth.
Net profit after tax was AUD 12.6 million, so up 65% on the prior corresponding period, and 12.9% on the second half of 2023. On an underlying basis, and Philip will go through these details in a little later on, it's up 24.8% on prior corresponding period, and down 1.8% on the previous half. Now, that's reflecting revenue growth, but also expense growth of similar levels, so... We'll talk in more detail about that shortly. On the dividends, the board chose to increase the dividend AUD 0.01, the last final dividend, and that's AUD 0.02 up on the prior corresponding period. The balance sheet remains in very strong position.
So let me just look at the funds under management, administration, and supervision. This is the key driver of revenue in the business. You can see that the progression is really consistent growth. It's really been quite an extraordinary half with almost AUD 24 billion of assets being added under our supervision. The bulk of that in superannuation, which I'll show in a sec. Note there that there's AUD 5.5 billion from our UK and Ireland operations, that will we hope in the next number of months, disappear off those slides. But in any event, just making the point, AUD 24 billion of funds growth and you know, continues this consistent theme.
If I just look at each of the business lines, I'll start with Corporate and Superannuation Trustee Services, the corporate side of it. You can see it's gone from AUD 99 billion up to AUD 106 billion, so a AUD 7 billion growth. It's coming from a range of funds. I should say a good amount of that growth is coming from what I'd disclose a trustee- directed type of portfolio, so it's a lower margin type of fund. I'm really comfortable with how this business is growing in terms of number of new funds that have come on board in the last period, and what we have sitting in the pipeline, which I think is about 40 new schemes being set up.
If I move over to the right-hand side and look at superannuation, you can see it's now almost reached AUD 60 billion, so it's AUD 15 billion growth in the half. That's a result of three new funds coming on board, so the Future Group at the start of the period, and then at the end of the period, GuildSuper and ClearView Superannuation. So really, there's no revenue in the numbers for those last two new appointments, so those are three of the big changes. We also had a transfer of AUD 3 billion into one of our existing clients at the start of the period. And also, just generally, the portfolio is growing on a net funds flow basis, and quite strong. So that now puts our superannuation business in the top 10 in terms of funds under supervision.
Also the top 10 in terms of number of members. I think we're overseeing about 800,000 members in those 15 funds. Move down to the bottom left block and look at Trustee and Wealth Services. AUD 1 billion of growth up to AUD 17.3 billion. That is coming from all lines of business in Trustee and Wealth Services, so Health and Personal Injury, our Native Title trusts, it's coming from the philanthropy side as well, so, and also, of course, asset management, particularly on the back of some of the shift of the AET funds. And then the right-hand bottom block, I'm just showing there the asset management performance, and just showing alpha generation there. And if you look at the one-year numbers, we've got positive numbers across almost every asset class....
Really pleasingly, the two new asset classes, Eight Bays Global Equities and Spectrum Strategic Income strategy, really strong positive alpha in the last year. And if you look out over the three and five years on Australian Equities, which is the main asset class, really sound alpha generation, from the team, so which is so important for our clients. I should just say, we are going through a transformative period, and there is increased regulatory scrutiny. That's a two-edged sword, for Equity Trustees. One, it makes our services all the more valuable, but of course, it's also increased workload for us. But the reality is, the independent model for trusteeship is being sought more and more. The transformation we're going through is really twofold.
Firstly, the AET acquisition, which happened in November of 2022, is gonna take us close on two years to be fully integrated. Part of the reason for that is because we are exiting some lines of business, and we are building a new platform at the same time to take that business on board, as well as our own trustee loan services business. We're sort of two years into the three years of this technology transformation, and there's other elements to that as well. We announced six months ago that we're combining our Superannuation and Corporate Trustee Services business units. That's because they are very aligned operating models. We believe we can capitalize more on the strengths of each business by having them together under the leadership of Andrew Godfrey.
And we're starting to achieve that now, and think that this will set these businesses up for, you know, growth that can be leveraged into earnings. So, you know, really comfortable with how those two business units are coming together. We're well advanced on the exit of the business in the U.K. and Ireland. In Ireland, we are selling that business and waiting on the Central Bank of Ireland's approval to that. In the U.K., we are transferring clients to other providers, and we may also sell that entity as well. We expect to be out of that business by June. When we acquired AET, we picked up a platform administration business, and that's not the sort of business that we'd like to be in. So we're well progressing the exiting out of that by transferring clients.
We're also, AET was providing administration services to small APRA funds, and again, that's not a line of business that we'd like to be in, so we're transferring that administration, across to Super Concepts in Adelaide, and that's well, well progressed, and we hope to have that done by the end of this financial year. We continue fulfilling our purpose of trust and caring for people and engaging the broader community. Now, I just do want to focus a little on the technology, because there's a big development going on, and we're sort of, as I said, about two years into a three-year build. On the Trustee and Wealth Services side, we deploy the iPhi system, that's leading U.S. technology for active philanthropy. Should say, we now have that business, we've moved AET onto it.
We've also moved JB Were Foundations onto it, so more than 400 accounts that we have. So active philanthropists, AUD 350 million. This is a business that we really want to grow strongly, and we're putting a lot of resource into it, and, it'll be a big focus, again, over the course of the next half. The biggest development on this page is the development of the TrustQuay platform for Trustee and Wealth Services, traditional trust business, linked together with HUB24 as a custodian of those assets, and also HUB24 as a provider of our non-traditional trusts and trustee wealth services. That development's going well. We've already had one major account on the platform, from about 12 months ago, and our cash fund. We're about to put our continuing trusts onto the platform on the fourth of March.
So all the clients, about 1,500, half of them coming from AET, from the tax platform there in Insignia, and the other half coming from the Garradin platform within our environment, going onto that. And once we've done that, we'll then progress through the other lines of Trustee and Wealth Services business, and hope to have this project finished by November of this year, and be out of the Insignia platforms by that stage. Salesforce, a major client management platform that we're using, is being implemented for estate planning and for estate management in this business. On Corporate Trustee and Superannuation business, we have been deploying Salesforce as the client management platform.
We're also customizing our superannuation oversight platform, so that's a reporting and member outcome assessment platform, which is important that we can leverage our ability to do 140 member outcome assessments across our 15 or so funds. And Zeidler we use for overseeing outsourced service providers. So a big part of this business is that we outsource custodianship, administration, registry, front broking, and the like, to a range of different parties. At the moment, I think we're at 50 service providers, so we need to be super efficient at that oversight, and Zeidler as the platform is. And then from the group perspective, we've implemented Workday in the finance team. Philip and the team have done that, and we've closed the last two months under Workday, so that has gone really well for us.
We're about to implement Workday also for, human resources, and we've started that project, and that will be completed through the course of this year. So there's been major developments, but it really makes us fit for purpose in terms of the size and scale and complexity of this business to have those types of platforms. We introduced a new AML system, Satori, and that's going well. And we've continued upgrading our cybersecurity, and, we'll continue to do that. We feel in a comfortable position with a very, if you like, diversified digital base across the whole business, which helps us, in many respects. If I just move on, we often talk about delivering to all stakeholders. Obviously, we're talking here to shareholders, and we'll come to the shareholder, other shareholder results.
But for clients, we survey our clients each year with really positive results here on Net Promoter Score and Net Loyalty Score. We're about to go out to clients again right now, and we'll be forward to seeing how they are experiencing our services over the course of last year. On the employee front, we sit at 75% on engagement and enablement, and we are about to survey our employees again, and we're looking forward to seeing those results. But that 75 level is really a high performing level of the market data, and really goes to the testament of the culture of the organization. And on the community front, this business can impact the community probably more than most. We distributed last year a record amount of AUD 122 million to charities and other all-purpose organizations.
We're slowly building up our volunteering days after COVID sort of, you know, really made that program difficult to do. We're really keen to do that. And of course, our trust management services to Indigenous communities is now a much more significant scale across Indigenous communities, with more than 20 communities and AUD 500 million of those communities their wealth, we are protecting and growing and distributing. So, very proud of what we do there. For shareholders, so if I just look there at, earnings per share, you can see there, on an underlying basis, it's up to AUD 0.6748. On a statutory basis, AUD 0.54. So that's up 7.1% on a statutory basis. The underlying EPS, on, PCP is up 15.1%.
It's down 2.8% on the most, on the most recent... Phil will go through more of that detail. But it's a strong underlying EPS result. The dividend progression, you can see there, is very consistent, growing dividends. Chosen again-- the board has chosen again to increase the dividend to AUD 0.51, and well within that range of the underlying EPS. With AET, there's really two major initiatives to complete the integration. First is the exit of all the platform business. We're well progressed on that. That includes the outsourcing of the administration of small APRA funds to Super Concepts. We expect to have that all completed by June. We're about halfway through the client base, exiting at this point in time.
That, and then the bottom part is building of the new Trustee NavOne platform to take all of our traditional trust business, as well as our non-traditional trust business, so that's the advice and Health with Personal Injury, business. And we're well advanced on that. Fourth of March is a key date to shift across a big part of the client base, and we'll progressively roll out another four phases of that migration, between now and the end of this year, and expect to fully exit from the Insignia systems by November of 2024. And by this stage, all expense synergies should be able to be realized, in the business. Move on to the next page. It just walks through a range of different things, that we've been doing on the AET front.
Much the same as what we showed six months ago, so I'm not gonna run down through this slide, but I do just want to make a couple of points. We've been delighted with the people that have come on board. We've been able to retain all of the key talent across the country. We have had no material client losses in this business. New business generation has continued afoot. So really comfortable with how the AET business is integrating into EQT. Now, this slide just walks through the synergies and starts on the left-hand side there with net cost synergies. You can see there, AUD 2.9 million is what we are forecasting at this point. That's a little lower than what we anticipated right at the start of this integration.
On the revenue side, we're now projecting ultimate revenue synergies of AUD 5.8 million per annum, so that's a couple, 2.5 million higher than what we had originally anticipated when we acquired the business. So in all, aggregate synergies of AUD 8.7 million, so a couple of million dollars higher than originally anticipated. Implementation costs: AUD 22 million. We're on track to get this complete within that envelope, and that'll be extended by basically by the end of this calendar year. Originally, we did not expect to get any capital release from the AET business, but we now think that we can get a AUD 10 million capital release, and we have a program of work aimed at achieving that release. And again, we're targeting that for the end of the calendar year.
So in summary, it's been a very big half in terms of growing the size of the business and our footprint to AUD 183 billion. Statutory EPS is well up on the peak PCP, and in the last six months prior, reflects on the investment that we've been making in AET and the technology transformation. The AET integration is proceeding well. You know, we're firmly and we are very confident about the synergies. The technology build is a big build for us, but it will create a great foundation for this business. We continue deepening our community impact and look forward to continue delivering for all of our stakeholders. So I'll stop there and hand over to Phil.
Many thanks, mate. Let me now just turn to the financials in a bit more detail. I'll take you through the income statement. We'll look at the key businesses and their drivers of performance, and then touch on the balance sheet, cash flow, and liquidity, so you've got a reasonably full picture. Firstly, just looking at the overall income statement, perhaps the first point to make is that we have classified the U.K. and the Irish businesses as discontinued. And in this particular slide here, the top five lines are all effectively from the continuing businesses. You'll see the split in the detail in the financial statements around how we dealt with the discontinued businesses in more detail. But from a top-line standpoint, you can see the revenue, pretty strong growth, half-on-half. That's one of the stronger half-on growths we've managed to achieve.
Again, I'll break that down in a bit more detail for you shortly. Expense growth reflects the one-off integration costs, the AET contribution, and high levels of resourcing and technology investment. Expenses up 12.9% on the prior half, and 65% on the PCP, reflecting the, particularly the addition of AET. Underlying expenses, just down slightly on the second half of 2023, reflecting that higher investment in people costs in particular, and historically, very low vacancies. Again, I'll talk a bit more about that shortly. Statutory EPS, AUD 0.475, well up on the prior half of the PCP, and underlying EPS of AUD 0.675, 15% up on the PCP, and slightly down in the prior period. Now, let's look at the revenue breakdown in a bit more detail. Here, you can see the bridge.
If you just move from left to right there, you can see the contribution of AET, the equity market impact on FUMAS, the large mandate loss in CSTS, which we previously flagged, AUD 1.7 million of AET synergy starting to come through, and that will grow significantly over the next period. Quite strong organic growth with a certain amount of repricing, particularly with our SAF products, that have contributed to a pretty strong revenue number for the first half for continuing businesses. Now, let's turn to the expense analysis. Again, a bridge here. You can see the breakdown of non-recurring AET uplift and OpEx expenses.
I won't go through each line item there, but if we look at the underlying increase in expenses, excluding the non-recurring and the AET, it's up about 12%, primarily driven by the increase in salaries and related costs, particularly the significant reduction in vacancy levels to really historic lows. We're talking sort of low single digits compared to, you know, low double digits, more typically in years gone by. Obviously, the inflationary pressures have played a role as well, and typically, replacement staff have been brought on at higher salary levels than previously the incumbents occupied. Let's now turn to the BUs in a bit more detail. Sorry, just before we do that, the key financial measures, just showing some sort of trend analysis here. You can see that on the revenue is very strong, half-on-half-on-half.
EBITDA, it generally got positive traction on all of these measures. Dividends, particularly, consistent over the halves. Now to the business units, and looking first at TWS. You can see here a simple revenue bridge for the TWS business, the AET contribution, a relatively modest impact from the equity markets, the AET synergies coming through, and good organic growth for TWS. And on the right-hand side, you can see the increase in sums compared with the PCP. The asset management, in particular, growing quite strongly from nearly AUD 5 billion to just over AUD 6 billion. And the largest chunk of that growth is represented by the take on of asset management of a significant portfolio of Health and Personal Injury clients. Let's look at the sub-BUs and TWS in a bit more detail now.
Here, you can see that AET is certainly assisting momentum across the various component pieces of TWS. Estate management, on the face of it, looks down. But remember, the value of these estates is quite volatile, and it will bounce around from time to time. We're quite satisfied with our ability to win business in this space, and it's going well. Perhaps worth calling out the active philanthropy increase, Mick touched on the iPhi platform that's been launched, and that's certainly paying dividends, and also in the community and Native Title trust space, where particularly good momentum following the acquisition of AET. Now turning to CSTS, the combination of our Corporate Trustee and our Superannuation businesses. Again, the revenue bridge showing the AET SAF, the contribution they're making. A more material impact from equity markets, the large mandate loss I've touched on before.
Again, pretty strong revenue growth, and you've also reflected in the funds under supervision, which you can see on the right. And Mick also touched, you can see on that bottom bullet point, we had end-of-period appointments for both GuildSuper and ClearView Super, which really haven't contributed during the half, but will be very helpful in the half to come. Now turning to superannuation, a bit more detail. Here, you can see the pretty significant increase in funds under supervision. The key drivers on the bottom left-hand side there, Future Super growth, Enc ircle Superannuation Fund transferred to Centric. T he SAFs a nd Guild and ClearView, which came in during the December month. All leading to a 30% increase in members to around 800,000, and a, as Mick said, a top 10 superannuation business in Australia now. Turning to the CSTS corporate piece.
So this is our professional Corporate Trustee Services business. Again, good underlying growth, equity market impact contributing as well. Funds under supervision are up. Quite a few new clients here, and some of the key ones we've called out. And momentum continues at a higher than usual rate. If I look back over the years, currently establishing over 40 funds, with 30 expected to be launched before the 30th of June. So continuing high levels of activity here. The increase in global asset managers continues to be evident, and a pretty strong pipeline across all of the sub-businesses within this business unit. Quick breakdown of some of the funds that have been opened and closed. You can see it's generally net positive, new funds, 31 over the period, 19 closed, and a little closer on the fund manager movements.
From a fund manager location standpoint, you can see Australia still dominates, but a pretty substantial global footprint as well. Looking at the custody debt securitization business, growth has eased a little, particularly in the debt capital markets, reflecting the higher interest rates. But in recent months, we've seen momentum starting to rebuild as sentiment improves, and we're expecting a solid performance in the second half in this particular business unit. Finally, turning to U.K., Ireland, the exit is well underway. The Irish business has been sold subject to certain approvals, particularly the Central Bank of Ireland approval. We're still waiting on that, but we're hopeful that that will occur shortly. The U.K. business remains in a sale process, although managed wind down is also being considered. We do expect to be substantially out of these businesses by 30 June 2024.
It may be that some residual activity is still to close out, but I don't expect them to be significant. On the technology front, just providing a bit of an update on the outlook for the spend there, in particular, mix. Highlight, I think, most of the key projects that are underway, the largest being the trustee implementation for the TWS business. So the OpEx and CapEx slightly changed from the, what you would've seen at the full year, but not dramatically. The projects are all largely on track, and we're very pleased with how they're going. Now, turning to the balance sheet. Continues to be very strong. Debt equity, 11.5% is quite conservative. I'll talk about the cash and liquidity position shortly. We've got substantial headroom in our covenants and plenty of flexibility to take advantage of future opportunities.
On the cash flow front, operating cash flow improved from the previous half. You can see the cash flow generation's looking pretty healthy. That's been utilized to pay dividends and tax in the main. There has been some borrowings, particularly to help fund the integration costs that we've been undertaking, and I do expect the working capital to improve further in the second half. From a liquidity standpoint, also very strong. On the left-hand side here, you can see our liquid assets held, which includes cash plus a percentage of accruals and debtors. Regulatory capital of AUD 91.7 million, which combines the traditional regulatory capital as well as the RFR-related capital, leaving net available liquidity of AUD 49 million, and committed undrawn facilities of AUD 34 million. So circa AUD 83 million of financial flexibility should it be required.
In summary, very strong organic revenue growth, higher expenses due to the one-off integration transformation costs, and higher people costs to support growth and transformation. Statutory impact, impacted by these one-offs, but the underlying performance is pretty solid. AET is going well, cash generation is improving. We've got a sound capital position. Back to you to take us through the strategy.
Thank you, Phil. Yeah, so, let me just give you an update on the strategy. So, the reality is our strategy hasn't changed. It's holding us in good stead. Our purpose, to help people take care of the future, really is resonating with clients, but also resonating with employees. So we've been, you know, very successful at securing the talent that we've needed to secure. All underpinned by our three core values, which is so important to trusteeship. If I just flesh out the strategy a little more, but again, without going through the detail, 'cause this slide hasn't changed, we're aiming for consistent growth in shareholder value and returns. So, you know, this is not a company that's gonna be flying out the water one period and not the other, right? Consistent growth in shareholder value and returns.
Market leadership in our specialty areas, so that's quite important. And the AET acquisition was really critical in achieving that for us. And reputation is everything to this organization. It's a stable, 140-year enduring organization that can be trusted. So just look at our market position and just staying on Trustee and Wealth Services. So one of the key objectives of acquiring the AET business was to build our position in the health and personal injury sector, where we are now clearly the leader. We were already the leader in philanthropy, we're the leader in estate management in Australia, the leader in estate planning amongst trustee companies, and also the leading business on continuing trust. So AET has given us that position across all of those sectors. Dropping down to the right-hand box, expanded geographic capability.
We obviously had a strong position here in Melbourne. AET was the clear leader, the only player really in South Australia, and the clear leader in Western Australia as well. We've strengthened our positions in the other two states, in New South Wales and Queensland. On the Corporate Trustee Services side, responsible entity services to fund managers of asset owners. We've continued to build a really strong position there and clearly lead that market. We are trying to build our businesses in custody and real assets, the DCM and securitization markets, and in superannuation, the leading independent provider of trustee services there. So it's a really strong market position across the board, and our asset management capability is absolutely designed to be fit for purpose for the needs of our trustee clients.
Our initiatives in FY 2024, just staying on Trustee and Wealth Services. So firstly, continuing and finishing what we're doing on AET integration and the platform divestment, capitalizing on what I just described there, the market-leading position we've got, so capitalizing on business development across all the states and all the sectors. We'll be putting a lot more effort into the public launch of our leading philanthropy platform, iPhi. We've got the team in place, we've got the technology in place. We would have done this earlier, but we had to shift resources to bring on the JB Were Foundation, and also the NAB Foundation onto this platform. Finish off the two-year build on the technology. We want to continue developing our responsible investing capability.
There's significant demand for that, and so we can do that, and capitalizing on, on the high-rated, top-performing investment funds. The Superannuation and the Corporate Trustee Business, it's, it's quite similar. On superannuation, it's really about focusing in on the retail segment of the market, where we get new startups coming, as well as, funds that are transitioning, their trusteeship. We wanna build operational excellence now we've got the scale in that business. On the corporate side, again, we want to streamline and digitize a lot of our workflows. It's, it's a portfolio now of over AUD 100 billion, something like 400 schemes and, you know, 130 clients. So we need to keep, building our, the efficiency of our operations.
We want to accelerate the growth in those new markets I mentioned here. I should also say, just continue building our capability in the listed scheme space. We, I think, have now about a dozen schemes that are listed, another five in the pipeline. The portfolio is up at AUD 3 billion, and we see that as a material growth driver over the next number of years. I can't give this presentation without talking about risk, regulatory management, and governance. It's fundamental to our business. We maintain very close relationships with the key regulators. You know, we seek to be a model regulated entity, and I think we are achieving that. Risk culture is fundamental.
Our last survey, just in the last couple of months on risk culture, had an 84% positive response rate around the understanding of risk by our employees. So that's a really high rate. And I'm you know pleased to say that AET is at the same level, the employees in AET. So it's been an extensive program of work folding AET into our governance processes, and that's now all complete and gone very smoothly. We are handling the regulatory change. Some of the key things, design and distribution obligations. We've worked with the FSC. I think we have hundreds of target market determinations in the market, and we're well set to be updating those. Extended our member outcome assessments as required by APRA. We're in a good position on that front.
We have something like 70 schemes that have some type of ESG overlay or orientation to them. So we're very aware of the issues of greenwashing and ensuring that our disclosure is absolutely accurate and with fidelity in relation to the ESG orientation. Then finally, we continue putting platforms in place to handle our governance. So Camms is our risk platform. We've got a purpose-built member outcome assessment platform. Zeidler, as I mentioned before, the service provider oversight. ArcPro, you know, putting out something, is our platform for PDS disclosure production. I don't know, we must have, what, a 1,000 PDSs and information memorandums and accompanying reference documents out on the market at any point in time. And Satori for AML monitoring. So in summary, I think this strategy is on track. It's delivering great organic growth.
The business is going through a major transformation at the moment. The revenue and funds continue to rise. The net profit reflects the investment that we've been putting in, in the last, year or two. We're delighted with the AET acquisition and the market leadership position that gives us, and confident about the synergies coming forward. Technology development's going according to plan, and it will improve, improve client experience for our clients. We want to continue building our newer businesses. As Philip said, the balance sheet's in very, good position and gives us flexibility for growth, and we see that we've got positive momentum moving into FY 2024 and beyond. So, and I will also just, mention one other thing that's just in finishing.
We will run a shareholder strategic briefing in April, and that'll be confirmed to the market very shortly. And the point of that will be just to do a deeper dive into some of these businesses, which can be a little complex to people not in the trustee space. And also to, you know, introduce more of the broader leadership team to the market. So I look forward to doing that. So, I think that brings us to questions. And we had a number of questions alluded to us earlier, so I'll start with those in fairness, and then move to the ones that are, that have been saying come in. So the first one is: When will we finally be out of the U.K. and Ireland? How much more is there to cost in doing that?
Sure. Thanks. I'm happy to talk to that. As I mentioned, we should be substantially out by 30 June. There will be some additional costs. Particularly in relation to the Irish business, we're likely to write down the value of the minimum regulatory capital in that business, because that will go to the purchaser in due course, which will be about AUD 1.1 million. In relation to the U.K., you know, we're still to finalize the exact mechanism of exit there, but there'll probably be a smaller sum associated with the exit, mainly advisory and legal fees, but potentially in sort of the order of AUD 0.5 million or thereabout. Might be some break costs for a few things as well, but not too significant.
Thanks, Phil. The next question was: Financial advisors are increasingly becoming asset managers via SMAs and similar. Is this a threat or an opportunity to EQT? Look, we're not overly concerned by that. There is a trend of that happening, but still the mainstream large-scale advisory groups are still using platforms underneath that manage investment schemes. So we can provide services to SMAs, and we do that to some extent. I'll also point out that if you look at our CTS business, it's about three-quarters institutional flow and fund, and about a quarter retail advisory flow and fund. So not a major issue for us. The next question is: Would the ACCC allow you to buy Perpetual Trustees? Well, I'm not gonna speculate on that.
We're focused on growing this business, and particularly following our acquisition of AET, following our strategy. So that's what we're doing. The next question is a little complicated about insurance and deceased estates, and I'm gonna take that one offline with the gentleman who raised it. So it'll take a bit of time. The next question is: What is the annualized revenue run rate benefit on recent CTS and superannuation wins? I might hand that one to you.
Sure. I think perhaps the best way to answer this question is to confirm that the run rate is in the same sort of ballpark as what we've had in the last six months. So the relatively higher than perhaps historical level of activity in both CTS and the sup business is likely to continue at those rates without being specific around quantifying it. It's looking pretty healthy.
Thank you, Phil. The next one I think is also for you, Phil. Can you tell us what the non-cash amortization was for the first half?
Yeah, for the first half, depreciation and amortization number was about AUD 3.6 million, and about half of that, or just a little less than half, was associated with the management rights amortization from AET.
Thank you. We'll keep running through these. Can you talk about revenue impact from the 40 funds being established and the run rate benefit from those established over the first half of 2024? I think the best way to think about that is when funds start, there's not a lot of funds in them, unless their purpose built to take in a large mandate at the start. So typically, you could think about it as, AUD 45,000-AUD 50,000, as, as an annual fee on those funds. So, you can probably do the math on that. Next question: Any further superannuation wins in the pipeline, as alluded to at the AGM? Well, I guess what we alluded to at the AGM was there are some wins in the pipeline.
They have come through, so the GuildSuper and the ClearView Superannuation Fund, and so there's still a solid pipeline there, but I don't have as prospective just right at this point. Next one: Is there any incremental cost to the revenue synergies being generated from AET? I'll quickly take that one. The answer to that is no. There isn't any cost to those revenue synergies. The next one, corporate: Was the number of funds closed and the managers exiting for the half what you're expecting? Reason for fund manager exits. Good question. Well, the portfolio is large now, as I said, we're 400 schemes, so there's often schemes that just don't become successful for funds flow purposes. You know, the distribution isn't successful, or the performance isn't, or the case, whatever the case may be.
So we're always gonna have a little bit of that churn in the portfolio. I think, you know, is it any different in this period? No, not really. I mean, we commented last period that there was a lot of outflow in four funds, something of the order of AUD 9 billion, which was pretty much a one-off and indicated portfolio doesn't have any concentrated exposure that would produce that type of result again. I think that's where we are. The reason for fund manager exits, we very rarely lose a fund manager to an alternative provider, but it can happen from time to time. Generally, it's because the fund manager may be closing down, or being bought out by another player, and that might be another reason, but there's nothing particularly to comment there.
Next question: Is the first half cost base indicative of the level going forward into the second half and beyond? Are there any one-off costs that won't appear in this half? Hand that over to you.
Sure. Perhaps just dealing with the second part of the question first. There will certainly be some one-off costs that continue in the second half of 2024, as expected. There will be. The integration is obviously not complete, so there'll be some ongoing costs associated with that. The technology transformation, isn't that—well, the biggest part of that is in relation to trustee, and that is not scheduled to finish till November, so obviously there'll be some costs associated with that as well. The UKI, we should be largely out of that by June, so I'm not really expecting any material costs in the half beyond that in relation to that. The first part of your question: Yes, the first half cost base is probably somewhat indicative, given that we have pretty much filled almost all of our vacancies.
You know, I'm not really expecting them to increase in terms of headcount materially in the second half.... And so that delta that was perhaps more evident in the first half, shouldn't be quite as significant in the second.
Thank you, Philip. I think the last question will be also for you. Can you remind us of the expected benefit of the transformation program, and is there any cost to carrying through into FY 2025?
Yes, as I mentioned before, there will be some costs going into FY 2025, particularly the first half, as we complete the trustee in particular. Also, the Workday implementation is not expected to complete until around September. So there'll be a few months of spend in the first half 2025. Second half 2025 should be pretty clean. In terms of benefits, there's quite a number of them, but essentially, we're taking Equity Trustees to become a much more contemporary trustee company. We're modernizing our platforms. We'll have customer portals to allow self-service, they'll allow scalability. We're automating processes and platforms and workflows, which will allow scalability and an ability to win clients that perhaps we've just not been able to historically. So we're expecting pretty significant benefits from this program of activity.
And perhaps it's also worth commenting that, you know, staff are very excited about what we're going to be able to offer our clients, and indeed, they've been asking for it for some time. Look, I don't know if you might wanna add any comments in relation to that.
I think that's an excellent summary. Yeah. Thank you, Philip. Yeah. You've answered your last question very well. So thank you. So we've got no more questions. I think we're on time, and I just wanna thank everyone for their attendance this morning. And thank you for your support of the company. You know, I feel we're in an excellent position, you know, going forward. We've had a very good half. We've got a lot of work to do coming up, but we're well positioned to do it. So, again, thank you so much for your support. Look forward to seeing many of you as we get out on the roadshow over the coming days. And I just wanna thank again, Philip, for his contribution over eight years to the company.
Also sitting beside me for 17. Well, I've done 16, he's done 17. That first one wasn't so good for memory. So see, I've really appreciated it, and I know that our shareholders really value your ability to communicate these results in a way that's understandable. So thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, everyone.