Welcome, everyone, to today's Annual General Meeting for Generation Development Group. My name is Rob Coombe, and I'm privileged to chair the Board of your company and this meeting today. I'd like to begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land upon which we meet today, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation, and pay my respects to elders past and present. It's great to be able to do this once again, to offer a hybrid meeting, which allows shareholders to attend either face-to-face or virtually via the Lumi platform. All right, our first order of business today is to provide instructions for online attendees. Online shareholders and proxy holders can submit questions at any time. To ask a text question, select the Messaging tab at the top of the Lumi platform. At the top of that tab, there's a section for you to type your question.
Once you've finished typing, please hit the arrow symbol to send. Online shareholders who wish to ask a verbal question should call the number on the main information page and wait until you are prompted by our question moderator to ask your question. Please note that while you can submit questions from now on, I will not address them until a relevant time in the meeting. Please also note that your questions may be moderated or amalgamated together if we receive multiple questions on the same topic. Finally, due to time constraints, we may run out of time to answer all of your questions. If this happens, and it's never happened before, I might add, but if it does happen, we will answer them in due course via email or by posting responses on our website.
Voting today will be conducted by way of a poll on all items of business. In order to provide online shareholders with enough time to vote, polling on the resolutions is open now. Online shareholders who are eligible to vote at this meeting will see a new polling icon appear. Selecting this icon will bring up a list of resolutions and present you with voting options. To cast your vote, simply select one of the options. There's no need to hit a Submit or Enter button, as the vote is automatically recorded. You do, however, have the ability to change your vote up until the time I declare voting to close at the end of the meeting. Shareholders and proxy holders present in the room who are eligible to vote at the meeting have been issued with a green voting card.
Once you've filled this in, it should be placed in one of the ballot boxes provided by our share registry. Joining me today are fellow board members Bill Bessemer, Giselle Collins, and Christine Christian, who is standing for election as director today. In addition, we have in attendance our audit partner, Dean Waters from KPMG. Also present are senior members of our management team, namely the CEO of Generation Life, Grant Hackett, our CFO, Terence Wong, and company secretary, Amanda Gawne. I'd also like to acknowledge Richard Lustig here from Baker McKenzie, who's our lawyer, company lawyer, and thank you for making the premises available for today's AGM. Much appreciated. In a moment, I will ask Grant to provide you with an overview of the company's performance over the past 12 months, covering key highlights.
There's been plenty of those and a pretty impressive year, I might say, without stealing your thunder on that, Grant. However, before doing so, I will also note that financial year 2024 has been another year of exceptional growth across the major majority of the key metrics of our business as it continues to go from strength to strength. 2024 saw record levels of activities and more financial advisors aware of Generation Life. This industry now sees us as an expert of tax-aware investing, estate planning, and retirement income. Throughout FY24, our product development has focused on continuing to innovate on our flagship products, Generation Life investment bonds and LifeIncome, and this has helped underwrite very strong net flows.
Generation Life's brand tracking survey in FY24, conducted by CoreData, recorded an increase in unprompted brand awareness from 27% to 33% over the last 12 months, making it the top brand that comes to mind when thinking about investment solutions offered by life insurance companies. This represents an impressive uplift of 22%. Throughout the year, Generation Life has won several industry awards, including Money Magazine's Best of the Best and Consumer Finance Awards for our innovation in the tax-aware category. Eight Plan For Life Awards for both our investment bond and lifetime annuity products, as well as three marketing industry awards. The market has certainly recognized the significant results, with the TSR for Generation Development Group increasing 109% year-on-year, placing it in the top 5% of companies in the All Ordinaries Index.
Financial year 2025 is off to a good start with overall inflows year to date for FY25 up 40% as at 30 September 2024, compared to the same period last year. The Stage 3 Tax Cuts and the proposed Division 296 tax on super balances above three million on realized and unrealized gains have certainly created some strong tailwinds for investment bonds. Pleasingly, as at 30 September 2024, Generation Life has recorded a year-to-date increase in funds under management of AUD 288 million, which takes us to a total of AUD 3.6 billion, representing an uplift of 9% just in that three-month period. Our total active advisor numbers continue to trend upwards in FY25 and illustrate the growing demand for alternative tax-effective solutions to superannuation. Lonsec Investment Solutions continues to achieve strong growth with AUD 11.7 billion of funds under management as at September 2024.
This included an increase of 10% in the September 2024 quarter, or 29% for the last 12 months. In FY25, Lonsec will start to execute the second phase of its accelerated growth plan. It will focus on building out new products for Lonsec Investment Solutions and increase its research capability to over 2,000 products as it maintains its focus on being Australia's number one investment product research provider. With the completion of the acquisition of 100% of Lonsec in 2024, this business will make a much more meaningful contribution to the overall profitability of the group in 2025. Given our current market capitalisation, liquidity, and free float, we would also be expected to be included in the top 300 of ASX-listed companies this financial year.
With an increase in earnings, the group is currently finalizing a new dividend policy, and we would expect to increase dividends in our dividend payout ratio in FY26. I wish to thank my fellow board members, the executive team, and the wider management team for their continued efforts in what has proved to be an outstanding year of performance delivered to shareholders. I'll now hand over to Grant for his overview of the company's performance in 2024. Thank you.
All right, good stuff. Thanks very much, Rob. A big thank you to the board, obviously, with Rob, Giselle, Bill, and welcome, Christine. Great to have you on the board now. I'm looking forward to the next few years and continuing to perform really well with this asset and continue to grow GDG. Obviously, there's two key assets. Rob's touched on a fair bit of that around the results around Generation Life and Lonsec, and obviously the acquisition of the other 50% of Lonsec over the course of this calendar year. Just moving through to the first slide, this really highlights the exceptional performance of the group over the course of FY24. You can see there just on the investment bond side of the business, we're up AUD 3.3 billion, or 26% year-on-year. Underlying profitability for the group is up 55% to AUD 11.2 million.
Another great year in terms of the investment bond sales, which is up to AUD 657 million for the year, which was up 28% on FY23. So we went from AUD 515 million to AUD 657 million. It also surpassed our all-time record year, which was FY22, which was AUD 639 million for that year. Turning a little bit into Lonsec now, you can see that underlying EBITDA was up 37% and NPAT up 55% for the year. So great performance there from Mike Wright, Amanda Smerdon, and the executive team there. You can see funds under management for Lonsec Investment Solutions, which was really our underlying thesis in terms of why we bought into Lonsec originally, because we saw the significant amount of growth in the managed accounts area, which continues to gather more and more momentum. And that's up 21% to AUD 10.6 billion to finish off the year.
LifeIncome, which is a product that we got into a couple of years ago because of the changing demographics. Obviously, a lot of baby boomers entering retirement, post-retirement assets growing from around close to AUD 1 trillion today to almost AUD 2 trillion by the time we get to 2034. And the fact that this category is only 1% today, and we anticipate that'll go up to probably 5%-10% over time, particularly if the federal government put more policy settings behind it to help drive people into more longevity solutions, which I know they're very motivated to do. And you can see there funds up to AUD 33 million or up 104% for the year. Now, just deep diving a little bit more into Generation Life on the next slide, just to talk about some of the key highlights there.
First, I'll just flick through the financial summary of the group. So you can see there, for revenues up to AUD 48 million, or 21% up year-on-year. In terms of expenses, that's up 19%. That meant the underlying life company, or Generation Life as it is, was up AUD 10.3 million for the year, or 25% year-on-year. Moving down to investment and associates. So this really just discusses Lonsec, and that's our investment at 49.2% stake for the year. You can see that's up 76% to AUD 6.3 million. The underlying cost for the lifetime annuity business, which you can see there, is currently running at a loss just under AUD 4.3 million for the year. And that meant that underlying profitability for the group was at AUD 11.2 million, or up 55% year-on-year.
We can see we held dividends steady, but as Rob alluded to, there's been a fundamental shift in the group. We're spitting out a lot of cash across all of our assets because of the outstanding performance that the teams are generating at the moment, and in the medium term, we'll look to increase that. Moving on to the next slide, where I got a little bit ahead of myself, just to deep dive into Generation Life, which, of course, is a business that focuses on two core products, which is our market-leading investment bond and also our investment-linked lifetime annuity, or LifeIncome as it's known, so just on the next slide, you can see here, this is really the KPIs or the key performance measures for the group over the last 12 months that we saw.
You can see that's up 26%, which I've already touched on to AUD 3.3 billion. We'll talk about the first quarter of FY25 in a second. The sales up 657% to AUD 17 million for LifeIncome. Market share is at 48%. We take almost half of all inflows, and we've really been responsible for growing the industry in the investment bond space over the last six or seven years. You can see there an approved product list, which is obviously important because it's access to distribution. That's up 8% to 714 APLs that we're currently on to be able to access financial advisors and their underlying clients. You can see the product ratings that actually help support and drive that. Active financial advisors, which really is a key leading indicator for this performance. That's up 22% for the year to 2,271.
To give a little bit of perspective on that, back in FY 2017, that number was 451. The definition of that is if you've written one or more products on a 12-month rolling average. So as you can imagine, post the Royal Commission, we saw advisor numbers in the industry contract 40%, but we've gone up five or six times over the same period. And that number continues to trend upwards as we enter FY 2025. So a lot of great financial advisor support there. And the bigger that number is, obviously, the bigger the opportunity to be able to get a sales record year-on-year because you've got more advisors doing business with you.
And it's a matter for us and Felipe in the audience today who run sales to be able to get deeper within each of those financial practices to make sure that investment bonds are being written with more of their clients. You can see there that's resulted in bond numbers being up significantly, almost 30% to 27,230 bonds being written over the course of the year. Savings plans up 8%. So this is just a default that happens every single month around our regular savings plan, which you tick as part of your application process. And you can see that's getting very close to AUD 100 million. So it's almost plugging half of our redemptions just on that automatic savings plan that we see every month.
You can see there the investment options and product options that you have across both LifeIncome and our investment bond, and also the fact that it's very long-term money. So every dollar that comes into Generation Life sits on the platform for an average of close to 15 years. Moving into the next slide, which just touches on the long-term trend that you can see at Generation Life across some of those leading indicators that we have, annual sales and net inflows. You can see there from FY21 to FY22, which I already touched on, was a massive step change in the business for us. That was up 57% year-on-year. Came off a little bit in FY23.
We know that the, I guess, macroeconomic sort of headwinds that we're entering with inflation, not just here, but obviously globally having an impact, interest rates going up very, very quickly. And obviously, that impacting confidence and investor sentiment. That's come roaring back in FY24 with another all-time record result of AUD 657 million that you can see for the year there. And I'll touch on the first quarter in a second, but Rob's already alluded to, we're up 40% in the first quarter of this year. So the teams had an outstanding start. And that came off the back of an all-time record Q4, might I add. So that was two all-time record quarters in a row. You can see there number of applications, a four-year CAGR number of 30%, fund 26% CAGR to AUD 3.3 billion to close out the end of the financial year.
Active financial advisors, like I said, an industry that was contracting, it's flatlined now, which is great to see, and hopefully, the Quality of Advice Review legislation coming through in its various phases will help support advisor numbers coming back into the industry. That's got a CAGR number of 17% and also underlying NPAT up 38% or CAGR of 38% over the four-year period. Just touching on the first quarter of this year, and it's been an absolutely outstanding start. Just on the next slide, if we can just flick that through, thanks. You can see here just on annual gross sales and net sales, AUD 209 million. So it's the first time that we've actually cracked AUD 200 million in investment bond sales over a quarterly period.
Again, just to give a little bit of perspective on this number, back in FY17, when we first came into the group, we were doing just over AUD 100 million in total sales for the year. We're now doing that in six and a half weeks. So you can see there's been a fundamental step change in the business, and we're still yet to receive our biggest tailwind. And it's really once in a lifetime opportunity that we want to make sure that we capitalize on. Again, Rob, in his opening remarks, touched on that, which is Division 296, which is the double taxation for balances above AUD 3 million inside superannuation. And of course, being taxed on the unrealized component and that AUD 3 million under the proposed changes not to be indexed as well.
You can see there over the four-year period, the CAGR number of 27%, which means we've closed out the first quarter of this year with total funds under management of AUD 3.6 billion in the investment bond space. Moving through to the next slide, and it's been a great year in terms of executing the transaction around Lonsec. Like I've already stated, we own 49.2% of that business. Originally, we bought 37% back in September 2020. We increased that to 49.2% through a couple of selective buybacks. We saw an opportunity to be able to acquire the other half of the asset through a very long and protracted negotiation. We got there eventually.
As you can imagine, all these sorts of deals, particularly of this size and nature, are full of plenty of ups and downs, but we were really, really pleased to be able to capture the other side of this asset. So in the numbers, of course, the financial numbers, you don't see that in FY24, but FY25, you're going to see these numbers flowing through for Generation Development Group. Look at the last three years. Again, like Generation Life, it's been a phenomenal amount of growth and a great executive team and a great business there in this asset. Revenue up over the three years of 24% CAGR. EBITDA up an incredible 38% for three years. Gross profit 23% CAGR. FY23 looks a little bit funny just because we had a different cost attribution across some of the shared services there.
You can see NPAT up a startling 46% over a three-year CAGR. So great numbers there that have been delivered by Mike Wright, who's the CEO of that business and his executive team. And of course, just moving through to the next slide, you can see the breakdown across the two core assets in the business. So obviously, Lonsec as a brand and financial service is very much known as a research business, but it was really the Lonsec Investment Solutions, given the access that they have through their data of researching over 2,000 different investment products. You can see the revenue and gross profit split in FY23, 38% on the Lonsec Investment Solutions side or the managed account side of the business compared to the research and rating side of the business, which was 62%. Gross profit, that's 32% and 68% respectively.
But moving through into FY24, you can see that balance has shifted a little bit to 40% of revenue from Lonsec Investment Solutions and 60% in the research business. Now, that doesn't mean the research business isn't growing. It's growing and growing at a very decent rate, but it's just that we've had incredible growth across our managed account space. What we like about this is that there's probably a higher valuation that is subscribed to the Lonsec Investment Solutions business than what there is the research business. And we do expect that over the medium term to be more than 50% of the revenue in terms of the managed account side of that. And you can see in terms of the gross profit split, that's obviously reflected 35% on LIS and 65% on the research and ratings business.
Moving through to the next slide, which really demonstrates why we've seen that shift, is this phenomenal growth rate, 97% CAGR from June 2020 through to September 2024. You can see that every single quarter, we've had quite a significant amount of growth, but you can see that Q1 of FY25, we saw a jump of almost AUD 1.1 billion of funds under management through both net inflows and obviously investment growth over that three months, so it's been an incredible journey so far, and you can see now in terms of the teams, both on Generation Life as well as Lonsec, are really focused on execution and really excited post the transaction of acquiring the other half of Lonsec, just getting on and doing the job and obviously delivering some great numbers for our shareholders.
Moving to the last slide in terms of the outlook for Generation Development Group moving forward, it's a really exciting time for a group, like I said. We're very confident in terms of the current sales momentum. Of course, all things being equal, I never like to get ahead of myself, to be totally honest. So I don't like to put it out there too much. But that momentum that we've seen in Q1 has certainly continued into Q2 of this financial year. And obviously, there's a lot of stuff that we can capitalize on. There's a big structural shift of people going into managed accounts. So we'll see that on the Lonsec side as we continue to capitalize on that. And obviously, there's two aspects in terms of the tax effectiveness of our investment bond.
We've got our Tax Optimised Series, which for 27 out of our 68 options actually pay an effective tax rate, an average effective tax rate of 10%-15%. So they're incredibly attractive. And we always used to state that we were the most attractive option from an after-tax point of view outside of super. But really now, if Division 296 goes through as the proposed legislation is stated today, we're going to be more tax effective across a lot of asset classes compared to those large balances inside super. So we want to make sure that we really drive the opportunity around that.
Obviously, the change, the 11th hour change that we saw at Stage 3 tax cuts where they bought that 37% plus the Medicare levy, so obviously 39% change back in, and also the threshold change to the highest marginal tax rate going from 200,000 under the proposed changes back down to 190,000. That means that we're actually going to see by 2030 over one million Australians on the highest marginal tax rate. Again, just a huge amount of growth compared to the 700, I think 65,000 that we see today for us as a business in terms of being the most tax effective solution outside of super for balances under three million, that is, if those changes do go through moving forward. There's plenty to get excited as a business moving forward and plenty of opportunity for us to be able to capitalize on.
We'll continue to innovate, like I said, across those tax-optimized options, so we'll be bringing more of those to the market over the course of FY25, and we're going to be focusing a lot of the strategic relationships with super funds because they obviously have to comply with the Retirement Income Covenant around their longevity solutions, and we've got a great product in LifeIncome, and also, we've set up our technology and the way that we've designed the business around that to be able to plug into the super funds to be able to support that proposition for their members. Lonsec Research continues to deliver strong results. One of the aspects that I love about this part of the business is that the out-of-cycle research is quite a bit more costly.
And if people want to get a research rating quick, so they do have access to approved product lists, they pay a 40 or 50% premium on what they would normally do if they fell within the cycle of, say, Aus equities that might be done in a certain period of the year and global equities over here. If they want that done quickly to be able to access distribution, they have to pay an increase in that fee. And that's actually been a lot more than I've ever seen in the business this financial year compared to previous years. We're also very excited about Lonsec Investment Solutions. We've got the most diversified in terms of options across both SMA and MDAs and having everything from ready-made all the way down tailored to the individual client in terms of those options there.
But we're going to be increasing the product opportunity or product set within that to be able to drive more around the alt space there as well. So again, a lot of exciting innovations that we're bringing to market to help continue to drive these great numbers that you see. We obviously lost our Pooled Development Fund license as part of the other buying the other half of Lonsec. We did that with a new cost base of AUD 2.25, which I think was an exceptional job that the team delivered on there. But that really does open up the opportunities from an M&A point of view for us as a group, which the hurdle rate given that license and how good it was in terms of its tax concessions was quite high before.
So we did very well in buying Lonsec, but when you look back on it, it would have been nice to buy the whole thing given the amount of growth that we've seen over the past few years. But obviously, we're going to capture that moving forward now. In saying that, we're going to be very prudent in terms of the opportunities that we look at, whether that's complementary to some of the existing business units that we have or if it's a future growth in financial services like we identified, obviously, with the investment bond, like we have with managed accounts. If it's another vertical within the business that we'll consider that we can see those long-term growth rates of 20%-30% that we've seen in our other assets, that's something that we'll certainly look at moving forward.
A big thank you, obviously, to the board, my fellow executives, all of the teams at Generation Life and Lonsec. It's been a great 12 months, but I feel like we're honestly just getting started. You can see from Q1 how good the performance has been, and we're all very much focused on execution and delivering some great numbers in FY25 as well. So thanks very much, and I'll now pass it back to Rob. Cheers.
Thanks, Grant. I'm now going to open to questions. But before moving to the floor here, we have received two questions from shareholders in advance of the meeting, which I'll address now. So the first question was from a shareholder querying why shareholders were being asked to approve an increase in non-executive directors' remuneration pool when dividends have not increased from 2% per share per annum for many years.
Firstly, as you probably heard from both Grant and myself a bit earlier on, we are proposing to increase both the size of the dividend and the dividend payout ratio. We're just formulating a dividend policy at the moment, but we would expect that to increase in FY26. The other thing I'll say is that as a board, we're responsible for overseeing the performance of the business, which translates into total shareholder returns. So obviously, a dividend is a component of total shareholder return. I think you'll agree with a TSR of 109% over the past 12 months. Total shareholder returns have been exceptional as they have been for a number of years now.
What many shareholders like us to do, and we'll continue to focus on this as well in conjunction with forming a dividend policy, is to make sure we're making the appropriate reinvestment back in the business in order to drive the growth and underlying earnings, which if we do that successfully translates into superior capital gains for shareholders. So as a board, it's a mixture of managing what the right dividend payout ratio is to what the business needs to drive growth, which in turn is reflected in total shareholder returns. Just on the I thought it's a good question in relation to increasing the non-executive directors' remuneration pool as well. So we're looking to increase that. There is a resolution on this later on. So I'll kind of address this issue now just in case it's on the mind of any other shareholders as well.
We're looking to increase that pool from 500,000 to 900,000. One of the biggest drivers of that is that we only had for the financial year three directors on the main board for Generation Development Group. And for a company of our size, we're over a billion dollar market cap, and we're looking to go into the ASX 300, as I mentioned before. It's too few directors given the size of the company and the complexity of it. And while all directors, Bill and Giselle and myself, we all lifted throughout the course of the year, when you're also running M&A activity as well as your normal governance, it can be quite a stretching period for a board with only three directors on it. So we made a resolution to increase the director size from three to five.
With Christine coming on, that's the first move we'll be making there. So that's obviously going from three to five is going to increase the total pool size. That was the first driver of that. When we looked to bring on Christine, we also did an independent review of what directors are paid for similar-sized companies. And that showed to me very clearly that the current directors were underpaid and significantly underpaid given the size of the company and the complexity of it. So there's an increase in compensation for existing directors as well, which is reflected in that request for an increase in the pool size. I will add a couple of other points just on this, that if we don't add another director this year just based on current compensation levels, the forecast directors' pool, remuneration pool will be AUD 537,500 for the year.
Short of that kind of cap of 900 that we've put in there. But as I said before, we certainly are looking to add another director through the course of the year. I'll also add that the pool of 500,000 has been the same since 2007, which is when we originally listed the company. And I think everyone will agree that the other businesses are profoundly changed in size and complexity since that date in 2007. The second question was from a shareholder asking whether GDG is developing a version of LifeIncome for super funds to provide a pension solution for their members. To date, LifeIncome. We've been primarily focused on distributing it through financial advisors to help their clients make sensible retirement solutions.
But we also know that there is an appetite or an increasing appetite for the large super funds to provide those solutions to their members as well. It's a difficult solution for super funds to do themselves because just given the nature of the guarantees that are implicit in the product, there's a requirement to have a life insurance license. And super funds can't hold or generally don't have life insurance licenses. So there's an opportunity for us clearly to partner with those large funds, particularly driven by them having a strong desire to meet members' needs, but also as a result of the retirement income covenant to provide a solution like LifeIncome to their members. So we will be increasingly looking at partnering opportunities with those large super funds.
We built the product originally with that in mind, so we don't really need to do many modifications to the product, and we certainly don't need to invest in any new technology per se to administer an offering like that with a large super fund. We may have to invest in building connectivity with the super funds, but not in the underlying system. We built the underlying system and product in mind to sell through financial advisors, but also large super funds, so it will be very, very much a big area that we'll focus on over the next 12 months, 24 months, three years, however long it takes to roll that out there. They were the two questions that were provided in advance of the meeting. I'll now ask if there's any questions from shareholders in the room.
Please raise your hand and wait for a microphone to be brought to you if you do have a question, James.
Thanks, guys. James Polyzoidis from Polygon Aegis. We've been shareholders for about eight years now and just want to thank everyone for such a great effort over the last year and all the years that we've been here as shareholders. Most of my questions have been answered, but where I want to focus on is the lifetime annuities business. And it appears now we have a cash burn of currently about AUD 4 million a year. I just want to get a better idea of how the trajectory is running towards breakeven and how long you think that might take. And also just an idea of what the competitive landscape is for this product, who are the main competitors. And I've got another question related to this, but maybe those.
I'll kick that off and maybe hand over to Grant, who talks to a lot of people about the offering in this space and particularly the competitors as well. So James, you're right, it's about a AUD 4 million cash burn on that. We're increasing sales volumes. So every quarter, we're looking at a lift in advisors interested in writing that product and also sales. We are just over AUD 40 million. I think you're going to give me the exact number, aren't you, Grant? He doesn't like me rounding it out. He likes the exact decimal number, but just to assume for the purposes of your question, we're at AUD 40 million in that at the moment. We need it to get to between AUD 600 to AUD 700 million for it to break even. And our current forecast is about five years to get there.
Now, that could change very quickly depending on how hard the government starts to put its foot down on the Retirement Income Covenant in particular, where the view generally is that a lot of the big super funds are paying lip service to that at the moment, and they're going to have to get more serious, particularly as we're seeing the big trend, big macro trend in our industry for the next decade is not accumulation, but de-accumulation. Grant mentioned before that the size of that market is going from 1 trillion to 2 trillion over that period of time, and annuities only represent 1% of that. They should be between that 5%-10% area. We're not exactly sure when that's going to pop, but we have strong conviction that it's the right place to be.
Given the work that we've put in this area, we'll benefit from significant tailwinds in demand when that starts to come through. Maybe, Grant, you can comment on the competitive landscape out there as well, maybe just a couple of key features that makes our product attractive as well.
Yeah, sure. So there's really only five people in market with the product at the moment. So there's obviously us, there's Allianz Retire+, there's Challenger, AMP have got their product. And then you've got QSuper, which is obviously now ART. So they've got their own product. Now, in terms of ARP or AMP, sorry, and the QSuper or ART product, that's just really for their members. So you have to have your super there to be able to access the product. So that's a big point of difference because not only do we take money from any super fund, we can also take non-super money for our product. Challenger have been focused mainly on their traditional lifetime annuity. And obviously, that's been a significant increase in sales because interest rates have gone through the roof over the past few years.
And really, it was a difficult product to launch into that market because interest rates were going up and markets were a little bit shaky. And we're an investment-linked lifetime annuity, which means over time, you should generate a significant amount more income. And we've backtested all of this over, through many, many different periods. We do have defensive options. We do have a cash option on there if that's what you want for our lifetime annuity. And basically, your income is linked to the unit price of your underlying investment. So ours is quite different from a lot of the competitors. And to Rob's point, we actually built it with all of this in mind in terms of being able to plug into the large super funds. There's a lot of smart money going into this space.
I mean, a lot of these brands have been in this space over the past few years. De-accumulation is growing relative to any other space more. And you've got to be in the game to be able to capture this opportunity or otherwise it could run off without you. So we feel confident that we're going to get to scale in this part of the business, but it's going to take a little bit of time. We're very focused on the costs and the expenses around that and not over-investing until we see that opportunity really pick up. But at the same time, we're still very high conviction on annuities. Yeah.
Just on that smart money, if I can just elaborate on that as well. We speak to a lot of players internationally in this space as well. And in fact, our product design, we were inspired by a big segment of the market in the U.S. in this area, which is the investment-linked lifetime annuities. But the big players out there, like the KKR, the Blackstones of the world, they're all super interested in this big thematic, which is going the developed countries of the world going from accumulation to de-accumulation. And they're certainly investing a lot of money in this area as well. So it does give us confidence that we're laying our bets in the right place. James, you had a follow-up question, didn't you?
Yeah, no, thanks. That's good. The other one, you mentioned something about the super funds not being that attracted to this product because of some sort of implicit guarantee for the performance of the product, and I was reading the latest PDS, and it was almost an addendum to the PDS, which said GDG is not a guarantor of this product. It was kind of like a footnote, but I think just to make it safer, we should just put in bold print at the front. I just think there may well be arguments that it may still be implicitly guaranteed. I don't know, but I think we should kind of disclaim that a bit stronger.
I think the point I was trying to make is not that the super funds aren't attracted to it because of the guarantee, but the nature of these types of products is you need a life insurance license to offer it. And the super funds don't have that license because there's two components of it. One is longevity risk, which we offload that risk at the moment to global reinsurers. So we're not kind of carrying that risk on our balance sheet. And then investment risk, which the way we structure the product is basically the end investor has that investment risk. But it is still around an insurance wrapper. And the super funds actually do need to partner with a life insurer in order to offer these types of products.
For many of the big industry funds in particular, given the average size of their members, so let's say the average super funds can have clients between AUD 150,000-AUD 200,000 leading into retirement, it's almost essential that they have one of these offerings that Grant mentioned as part of their overall mix going into retirement because these offerings also help people in that category optimize their Age Pension as well. And at the end of the day, without an Age Pension, AUD 150,000 or AUD 200,000 is not going to be enough to retire on. So there's a very, very strong underlying demand. That's why we'd be confident that over time, we can get some really solid partnerships in this area.
And just to add to that, there's also been a lot of education out in the industry because, I mean, these products have had quite a bit of legacy attached to them. So there's been a bit of a misunderstanding, one, how they operate, but two, a lot of the innovations that we've done, everyone was just used to lifetime annuities being linked to a fixed interest return, and that was it. And in a low interest rate environment, that's not a very attractive product. So to actually educate all the financial advisors, educating the super funds as well, how these products can work now and the innovations around them, just takes a little bit of time. And for some advisors who get it, they absolutely love it. So we've just got to continue to invest time and wear out the shoe leather to do that. Yeah.
All right. Any other questions from the floor? All right, Amanda, any online questions?
Yes, Rob, we've received six questions.
I saw you looking a bit anxious there. I kind of get on with it.
The first question is, "Congratulations on recently joining the Billion Dollar Club in terms of market capitalization. None of the big three global index funds, BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street, are currently above the 5% disclosure threshold on our register. What has our journey been so far through the ASX indices as the higher you go, the more these big three index players tend to buy? Are we confident of another jump on the index ranks before next year's AGM? And how high would the shares need to get to achieve that?
Okay. So in the lead-up to being part of the index, there will be a requirement for the index funds to be positioned on the stock. I'm not exactly sure how that plays out, to be honest, unless Grant or Terence knows what that would result in. I think it's just, you know, I'll just kind of leave it at there. They'll need to be positioned on the register. And I think we're looking around that March to May period for that to happen. So that will just happen in due course. The next jump for us, which is firmly in our sights, but I won't make any forecast on when we're going to get there. But obviously, as you can imagine, working with someone like Grant, once one goal's achieved, he's kind of thinking about the next one. The next one's the ASX 200.
I'm sure you're going to know off the top of your head, Grant, roughly what the market cap would be that's going to get us into that.
1.3 billion is a minimum. Yeah.
1.3.
You've got to hit the free float liquidity.
There's liquidity and free float as well. So it's obviously something we'd be aspiring to. I won't make any comment on whether we can get there before the next AGM, but obviously, it's a target for us to continue to drive shareholder value.
Okay. The next question is, "We are quite a tax-driven business. What are the biggest risks in terms of potential changes to the tax system emanating from the upcoming federal election? Have both sides committed not to change the most important parts of the tax rules for our business?
Yeah, I might just before handing to Grant, because I know you get asked this question a lot, particularly on bonds. The tax trends so far have been substantially in our favor. And the tax trends have been making it either more difficult or the tax going up in super, which has meant that people are looking for alternatives to super. And us being the most tax-effective option after super is generating a lot of interest in investment bonds. And obviously, the change on balances or the proposed change on balances for AUD 3 million and above is another example of that. So far, the trends have been favorable. I'll hand to you as to the tax risk that we've got on bonds going forward.
Yeah, we see it as low legislative risk right now. There's no discussion in terms of changes around investment bonds. The reality is we're only a AUD 14-15 billion size industry. When you look at super, obviously around AUD 4 trillion now. You look at the other areas that the federal government discusses in terms of tax reform, and that could be halving the CGT discount down to 25%. Obviously, negative gearing always seems to circle back around. So there's a lot of other areas in terms of tax and legislation change that would be in line first that would be much more attractive to the federal government to make. Where if there was a change in ours, it's not going to really drive the two things they're looking for is revenue and obviously support from their constituents. So we see it as low risk.
The good news about our business now is we're not a monoline product anymore. We're quite a diversified financial services asset. We've got lifetime annuities. We've obviously got the research and ratings business, and we've got a great business in managed accounts as well. So we're much more diversified around that risk now moving forward. And if there was going to be a change, because we don't have that crystal ball, we would most likely think it'd be Grant Hackett as well, but certainly nothing on the radar at the moment.
All right. Next question, Amanda.
Next question is, "Frank Zullo appears in our top 20 with a holding of around 4 million shares. As a still unhappy former shareholder in ABC Learning, I'm keen to understand his history with our company. Also, could Bill Bessemer, a former director of ABC Learning, explain his history with Mr. Zullo?
I mean, I think that's a very personal question for one shareholder to another, and this is not the appropriate forum for us to be answering that question. Amanda, I don't know, Bill, if you wanted to make any comment, but yeah, I think we'll move on to the next question. Thank you.
Okay. Next question. "Which of the five main proxy advisors, ACSI, Ownership Matters, Glass Lewis, ISS, and ASA issued a report ahead of today's AGM? Did any recommend against any resolutions? Also, thank you for disclosing the proxies with the formal addresses and well done for receiving strong support from investors.
Yes. So one of those has, which is ISS. They supported two resolutions, which was Christine's appointment. And also, just remind me the second one.
Christine. Sorry, Christine's appointment. So they recommended in favor of Christine's appointment and in favor of the Remuneration Report.
That's right. So the two that they recommended against was the appointment of Giselle Collins or the renewal of Giselle's directorship. And the reason for that was like their concerns over on overboarding. So Giselle sits on four listed company boards, of which two of those she chairs. And you get like double points for boards that you chair. So it's kind of quite a technical reason for it. It's certainly not as a result of competency or ability or suitability to be on the board of our company. We reject that recommendation. Obviously, we work very closely with Giselle. As you can see from the Annual Report, Giselle attended every board meeting. There are innumerable meetings outside of that as well. We never had any issues with scheduling Giselle, nor Giselle's contribution or participation in the meeting. So that one we reject.
And I think I've already given clarity on the director's remuneration pool as well. So their view was that it was too large an increase. And perhaps we could have provided better context on that or provided that context a bit earlier on. So we think it's an appropriate increase, albeit that we won't be utilizing that whole cap within the course of the next financial year.
I saw there was a question down the back, but I'll pick. Is it relevant to that?
I'm sitting right under a micro speaker here. I didn't hear a word. All right. Would you like to move forward? That might help. Yeah. Maybe if you could move forward, would that be? All right. We'll keep going.
The next question is in relation to the REM report.
Yeah.
At most AGMs, there is an LTI grant proposal for the CEO. Why isn't that happening here today? Also, could CEO Grant Hackett summarize any past incentive grants he has received as to whether they have vested or lapsed? Also, has he ever sold any ordinary shares in the company or bought any on market without relying on an incentive scheme to build his equity position in the company? Please don't say, "Look it up in the annual report and through ASX announcements." It's complicated, and the CEO could factually summarize the situation in 60 seconds.
I am going to say, "Look it up in the annual report," because all the detail, exact detail on that question is very simply disclosed in my view. So I think it can be picked up there. It covers current grants, previous grants, what's vested. I think it also discloses disposals as well. So I really don't understand why that can't be gleaned from the annual report. So I am going to refer it to that. I think, Grant, you've also invested your own money in the company as well. I know that way back from the beginning when you joined, you invested in the business and obviously have since.
And we've also elected, and so has Terence and other executives, to put some of our STI into the LTI plan, which means there's no guarantee that we're going to receive that because we have to hit the vesting conditions, which are, again, in the annual report as well.
Yeah. All right. Next question.
The final question we've received is in relation to Christine's appointment. "Christine Christian is a good addition to the board. Could she please clarify her history with Lonsec and also her business history with Mark Carnegie, who is one of our largest shareholders and at one point partly owned Dun & Bradstreet when Christine was the CEO? In other words, how independent is Christine from our various high-net-worth individual shareholders?
Happy to pick that up, Christine.
I would just say very simply that I.
You might have to hit the green on the speaker there.
Sorry, I would just say very simply that I am independent, and in my capacity as an independent company director, it just so happens that I have co-invested with and worked with Mark Carnegie in the past, but there's nothing adverse about that. In fact, it's been a very, very positive working relationship, and he has very much supported the growth and performance of both Lonsec and continues to invest in the group, so I don't see it as an issue at all.
Yeah. I might add that I had the opportunity to see Christine's performance on the Lonsec board as well. So I saw her outstanding contribution there. And given that it makes such a significant component of our overall group, I feel very privileged that we've got the opportunity to bring on a director with some continuity and also knowledge of that business, as does the executives in the Lonsec team. I would also add that I know Mark very well, as well as you would expect, him being one of our largest shareholders. And he didn't lobby. He didn't argue for nor did we seek approval for Mark for Christine's appointment. So the whole approach has been completely independent of any prior business history there.
There are no further questions at this point.
Okay. No further questions. I will now move to the formal items outlined in the notice of meeting. So we'll go to the financial reports. The first item of business relates to the FY24 financial reports. Is there any discussion or questions on these reports? This does not require a formal motion to be put, but I'm happy to receive any questions or discussion or any comments. Are there any questions from the shareholders in the room? Okay. Any questions from online shareholders? Amanda?
I don't know further questions at this point.
Okay. Great. All right. We'll now move to the resolutions then. So the first is the remuneration report. So I will move on to resolution one on the agenda, which is to consider the remuneration report. I put forward the following motion that for the purposes of Section 250R(2) of the Corporations Act 2001, the remuneration report of the company for the financial year ended 30 June 2024, as disclosed in the Directors' Report, be adopted. A total of 133,863,315 valid proxy votes have been received on this motion as follows: 120,104,274, which is 89.72%, against 1,594,862, which is 1.19% against; proxies' direction 12,164,183, 9.09%; and abstained or excluded 12,609,639. So please cast your vote if you've not already done so. Are there any questions from shareholders in the room?
Please raise your hand and wait for the microphone to be brought to you if you have a question. All right. Are there any questions from online shareholders, Amanda?
No questions.
Okay. All right. We'll move then to the reelection of Giselle Collins as director. This is resolution two on the agenda, which is to consider the reelection of Giselle Collins as director. I put forward the following motion that Ms. Giselle Marie Collins, who retires by rotation in accordance with Rule 11.1(d) of the company's constitution and being eligible, offers herself for reelection, be reelected as the director of the company. A total of 146,472,954 valid proxy votes have been received on this motion as follows: 430,176,554, or 88.88% for; against 4,132,217, or 2.82% against; proxies' direction 12,164,183, or 8.3% at proxies' discretion; and zero abstained or excluded. Please cast your vote if you've not already done so. Are there any questions from shareholders in the room? Any from online shareholders, Amanda?
There are no questions regarding this resolution.
Okay. All right. We'll move on to resolution three on the agenda, which is the election of Christine Christian as non-executive director. I put forward the following motion that Ms. Christine Christian, who ceases to hold office in accordance with Rule 11.1(c) of the company's constitution at the conclusion of this meeting and being eligible, offers herself for election, be elected as a director of the company. A total of 146,472,954 valid proxy votes have been received on this motion as follows: for 129,394,096 or 88.34%; against 51; proxies discretion 17,078,807 or 11.66%; zero abstained or excluded. Please cast your vote if you haven't already done so. Are there any questions from the floor? Any online?
Yes. A question has come in. Could Ms. Christian speak to her nomination, including background and experience?
Okay.
In terms of my nomination, I expect that it was supported by the fact that I've got a lot of experience, or 40 years' experience in financial services in varying capacities, including as the former CEO of Dun & Bradstreet, Australia & New Zealand. I've worked in financial services in the U.S., in New York, in India. I have also been a board member and chair in numerous companies within financial services, including as a director of ME Bank, chair of the Risk and Audit Committee there, FlexiGroup, chair and head of the Audit and Risk Committee, and various other companies within financial services. It's an area that I feel like I have deep expertise and a very strong interest.
Yeah.
Very happy to be nominated.
Yeah. Thanks. And great to have you on board as well, Christine. It's obviously only early days, but I mentioned before that I had the privilege of seeing you in action during the Lonsec board meetings, but also the couple of board meetings that we've had since you've joined the board. You've made a great contribution. So thank you. All right. Any other questions there, Amanda? Online?
No further questions.
All right. We'll move into the increase in remuneration pool for non-executive directors, which is resolution four on the agenda. I put forward the following motion that for the purposes of ASX Listing Rule 10.17 and Rule 11.3(a) of the company's constitution, the aggregate maximum amount of remuneration that may be paid to the company's non-executive directors in any financial year commencing on and from 1 July 2024 be increased by AUD 500,000 to AUD 900,000. A total of 134,042,653 valid proxy votes have been received on this motion as follows: 112,459,521, or 83.9%; against 4,503,735, or 3.36%; proxies discretion 17,079,307, 12.74%; abstained or excluded 12,430,391. Please cast your vote if you have not already done so. Any questions from shareholders in the room? Any questions online?
There are no questions online regarding this resolution, but I have one further one.
Yeah. No problems. Okay. Well, let's move to the other question online.
So it was more a comment from a shareholder. A shareholder online is stating that the voting system on Lumi is not providing them to vote on the four resolutions. I'm just checking that with BoardRoom now. I believe it's set up correctly, but BoardRoom are looking into it, and it will be on the system if it's not there already. Please wait, and we won't close the voting until all resolutions are there.
All right. Okay. So we'll leave that in your hands, and we'll close the meeting at the appropriate time.
Yes. Thank you.
That confirmed. All right. So we will keep the meeting open. Any estimate of how long?
No. What I think we can do, I'll get the ballot box, and we'll.
Collect the ballots, you're right.
Ask shareholders to vote.
Please bear with us. We're just going to collect the green proxy voting cards or green voting cards to be put in the ballot box.
Is it on?
And we'll just get a confirmation of that technical issue. Just bear with us. Thank you.