Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the HUB24 Limited FY24 results briefing. All participants are in a listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question-and-answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you will need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Andrew Alcock, Managing Director and CEO. Please go ahead.
Good morning, everyone, and welcome to our FY 24 full year results briefing. It's great to have you all with us, and thank you for your interest. We're very, very pleased to update you on what's been a remarkable year in many respects for HUB24 in terms of our performance, our strong prospects for our ongoing future, and our strategy to continue to transform and change this great industry. We're looking forward to briefing you. And today with me, I've got Katrina Shanahan, as always, our CFO. I would like to try and maximize our time. We always say this, but trying to keep as much time as possible for questions. So we'll fly through some of the slides and pause where we need to, but absolutely keen to maximize the opportunity for those to ask questions.
In terms of our highlights and operating view, and before we turn to the financial highlights, I thought it'd be good to talk about how focused we are at HUB24 on empowering better financial futures together. It's our purpose. It underpins how we operate. It underpins how we deliver our products and our strategies. It really is about us aligning with building a better wealth system for Australians. And with our vision of leading the wealth industry as the best provider of integrated platform, tech, and data solutions, on this particular side, underpinning that vision is a summary of our current position in terms of achieving that. We are recognized as Australia's best platform. We are number one for annual and quarterly flows into retail superannuation. In fact, we're number one, platform flows and retail super within platform.
We're number two, if you like, in Australia, across all superannuation funds, including industry funds, where members choose to switch to a new fund. So we're number two behind AustralianSuper there. We obviously have our managed accounts capability, which again, has been number one across the industry. Our SMSF space, Provider of the Year for the platform and in our Class business, number two for market share and number two for corporate compliance, software as well, and we have the leading portfolio solution. When you look at those capabilities together and how we plan to integrate those with others and other manufacturers and providers and tech players across the industry, we're certainly well on the way to playing that leadership role of having the best integrated platform, data, and tech solutions.
Of course, we certainly aim to operate and grow our business with consistent and reliable shareholder outcomes. The charts on the screen now talk to our four-year compound annual growth rate for our funds under administration, and you can see that's at 57%, and our revenue and group revenue and group underlying EBITDA, four-year CAGRs of 42% and 47%, respectively. They are consistent, reliable results. We certainly try to run and operate the business to get that growth, but also to balance that with the awards we win and also balance that with the emergence of profit and revenue for shareholders, and so it's a great accolade to us to be able to do that, I think, and we hopefully aspire to that in the future as well, while balancing that customer service and execution of strategy.
Delivering reliable results is key for us as well in our business. On to our financial highlights for FY24, and Katrina will unpack some of these numbers with a bit more detail or some commentary a bit later on in the presentation. But, looking at the highlights there from a revenue point of view, for the group and the platform, up 17% for group, with $ 327 million of revenue, platform's up 21%, and tech solutions up 5%. Similarly, in our underlying EBITDA, there's a 15% growth in the group total underlying EBITDA to $ 118 million, and the platform to $ 103 million, up 21%, and tech solutions up a little bit as well, 22.1%.
On the right-hand side, absolutely delighted to talk about statutory NPAT, which is up 24% to $ 47 million, but underlying NPAT up 15% to $ 67 million. We've got a fully franked final dividend that we've determined at 19.5 cents per share, and that's up 5% as well. The underlying EPS on a diluted basis is 81 cents per share, up 14%. Taking a look at where we finished the year with platform FUA and FUA overall, we're at $ 84.4 billion at the 30th of June, but now as we speak, as of Wednesday last week, on the 14th of August, we're $ 87.1 billion. We can talk about the composition of that market movement and so forth a bit later on.
But really, that's a $ 20 billion increase or greater than a $ 20 billion increase from where we were this time last year. And our platform FUA is also up. In total, FUA up to $ 104.7 billion. As I said, Katrina will unpack some of these later in the presentation. Looking to the business highlights and some of the achievements for the year, on the left-hand side of this slide, once again, record inflows of $ 15.8 billion for the business, including some large transitions, but also if you normalize those out from the result, the organic flows or the normal net flows are also in line with our record in 2022. Number one, across major advisory and platform industry surveys. We've got a slide on that a bit later on.
We're very delighted to have completed those large migrations this year, with more to come. Sorry, last year in 2024, with more to come in 2025, and the completion of the integration program for Xplore Wealth, having delivered the synergies that we talked to the market about as well. There's been really strong growth and exciting news coming out of Class and NowInfinity. NowInfinity having really strong growth. We've got some great enhancements coming out in the Class business to help customers, accountants, and so forth with their products, and really hopefully a step change in some of the features that help the efficient administration of super funds and other products with Class. Our myprosperity offer, we've launched a national offer through licensees.
We're having, as we speak, some great workshops with lots of advisors coming to demonstrations of myprosperity and seeing some great results starting to come to pass there in terms of take up of myprosperity, and of course, we always continue to invest in our business for the future. We certainly spend some time investing on data infrastructure, security, and privacy to enable our strategy and support our customers moving ahead. On the right-hand side of the slide, some product stuff there in terms of initiatives we've done for our customers. New products to meet evolving needs with Discover, our cost-effective offer on the HUB24 platform, designed for clients with less complex needs. That's been out in the market. It's going really well in terms of flows and support.
We have a pilot out there for high-net-worth segment with integrated non-custody admin reporting attached to our platform, and we certainly intend to extend that over time as well. Our reporting feature continues to lead the market, and we've enhanced that during the year, with HUB24 Present now enabling even more personalized client reports. And of course, we added the Agile product, being the retirement product from Allianz Retire+, onto the platform as well. So some great highlights there about what we've done in our business, and some great highlights there about us continuing to innovate and meet the needs of clients, certainly as they go through their life cycle and the changing needs of Australians. Taking a look at some of the recognition here, and I didn't want to gloss over this.
It's an amazing accolade for us and something that we're very proud of, and we know that it, you know, it comes with hard work. It also comes with some humility as well, that, you know, you've got to keep working at awards and customer service. But, you know, we've pretty well had a great year in terms of being best overall platform two years running from Investment Trends, and the subcategories are there on the slide. When we look at the Technology Needs Report as well, number one, overall satisfaction for wrap platforms with some subcategories there. Adviser Ratings, we pretty much won all categories, and Wealth Insights as well, with the advisor sentiment on the platform and SMSF Platform of the Year.
These are great accolades for us, and while we don't strive to win the awards, we strive to delight our customers, and it's a testament to our strategy and our focus that we're getting the customer service right, but we're also building the right features to support the future of this industry and what our clients and advisors need. Puts us in a great position to continue our ongoing growth and to transform the industry and hopefully extend our market leadership ahead of competitors.
If we take a look at the advisor base, and the financial advisor base supporting the platform, our access to that advisor base and the FUA growth to date on this particular slide, you can see that since FY 2020, we've had almost triple the amount or percentage of advisors in the market using HUB24 to today, so 10% to 29%. And that's a four-year CAGR of about 22%. So as we speak today, 29% of advisors use HUB24. On the right-hand side, once again, the market share of the business has grown from 2% to over three times that in a four-year period, to 7.3% in at June 2024. And we've had the number one for organic market share gains over the last twelve months as well.
So a great foundation and a great scorecard in terms of our success, what we hope to continue to do moving ahead. Taking a deeper look at that, though, and looking forward from that baseline performance and success, we can definitely see a remarkably strong pipeline to continue that growth as well. And so on the left-hand side of this slide, you can see the recurring flows or revenue we get from existing clients in the bar chart, and the FUA we get from, or flows we get from, existing licensees, but new advisors and from new licensee relationships. You'll notice in FY 2024, that there's the dark blue section is at 17% compared to 9% last year. It does move around. That's largely from the EQT transition, with those EQT licensees being new in that period of time.
It doesn't actually diminish the ongoing flows that we get from advisors, which typically come in over about six years from joining HUB24 onwards. On the right-hand side of the chart, the 15,583 licensed financial advisors in the country. As we said, we've got access, or we have 29% of the market using HUB24. However, there's an additional 47%, or add that together, 76% of the total market, that we've got access to. But 47% of advisors, they're covered by a distribution agreement we have with their licensee, and we're yet to have them use the platform, but there's an opportunity to access more advisors as we grow.
In FY twenty-fourth, I think we had 400-500 new advisors during the year, and that's been pretty well in line with our growth, our average every year, despite the market shrinking a little bit over that time. Our FUA per advisor is up to $ 19 million from $ 8 million in FY 20. So again, a large growth over a period of time, giving evidence that we're actually increasing our penetration or share of advisors book over time. The average advisor having 70 mil in the industry, but us having 10% of advisors using our platform, they're having more than $ 50 million on HUB.
So if our average is 19, and we have the potential to get to 50, hopefully, you can see there's a very strong pipeline over time, and it does take some time to get that share of book. But the market share growth we saw in the previous slide, if we execute well and we continue to deliver, there's no reason why we can't continue to have that market share growth moving forward. We're certainly focused on delivering that for shareholders and delighting our customers in that way. Quickly going to touch briefly on myprosperity. It's in the pack if you want more details, certainly covered in Q&A. But we did, during the year, launch an enterprise offer for large licensees or large national advice networks. Two of them signed up.
There's several others in the pipeline about to do that. Those two represent eighteen hundred advisors in the market, to which we can now approach and promote myprosperity as a cybersecure and great-featured portal that'll help them with their clients and help them with efficiency of delivering advice. So we're very excited about that. We're also working on the myprosperity front-end or client, it becoming the client portal for Class. The pilot was demonstrated in February, and that's certainly underway as well. Similarly, I'll just quickly touch on Class and NowInfinity, which is going really well from our perspective as well. The Class business growing at 1.5 times system market share, pretty stable.
It is a mature business, but now more than two hundred thousand total Class accounts, and the NowInfinity business growing at two times system with corporate clients, compliance tools. A great result there. Inside, Class, as I said earlier, we've got some great enhancements that will make it easier for auditors and self-managed super fund administrators and really change the feature set that the market has on hand for fulfilling that role for customers, in terms of creating more efficiency and reducing friction on how you do those year-end activities for an SMSF, that you can do it along the way and for beyond the Class Super products as well. I talked about the myprosperity interface as well, and we've had some great customer service excellence there in Class and NowInfinity as well.
As always, our people at HUB24 are fundamental, and our culture, to our success. We really have a great team of people who believe in what they're doing, who believe in our role and our purpose, and certainly how we operate. On the right-hand side, we've got refreshed our HUB values, which we during the year, which we certainly talked about at the half. But that was about us bringing together our group of businesses because we've had some acquisition over time and aligning them with, with a set of values that represent us as a group and our enterprise strategy as well. Our employee engagement went up during the year. It's now at 76% in the top quartile of Australian companies, and that's through Culture Amp.
We are in the top ten best places to work for banking and financial services, according to Financial Review survey. We've been endorsed as an employer of choice by Work180 for women, and we're certainly focused on all of the normal initiatives with development, recruitment, talent, and so forth, but also expanding our graduate and intern programs, and increasing our focus on early career professionals, to supplement our workforce and also give people opportunities to work in a great environment and make a difference in the industry in which we work. So some great results there on our people slide, and thank you to the team, as always, for your continuing passion and commitment to our customers and our business.
We also published this morning our sustainability report, and before I pass on to Katrina, I just wanted to say we've made some great progress, with our focus areas, the seven focus areas here on the slide in front of you here. Report's out with full details. If you'd like to see that, it's on the ASX portal. It'll be on our website as well. Notably, we've committed to the United Nations Global Compact, for Sustainable Development Goals. We'll talk more about that as we go ahead. We've certainly got our emissions, roadmap and targets for net zero by 2030.
We're continuing to invest in data and privacy and cyber initiatives, to build a sustainable business and absolutely, working towards and continuing to contribute to our community in the broader sense, in terms of having the right products on our platform for sustainable investing, but also contributing to worthy causes, about wealth and financial advice, and helping people empower a better financial future through philanthropy as well. So thank you very much. I'll be back a bit later on to talk about our outlook and strategy briefly, but I'll hand over to Katrina Shanahan, our CFO, to give us a breakdown of the financial performance and commentary.
Excellent. Thank you. So, thank you, Andrew. I'll run through the financial results. So if we could just roll forward to the group snapshot slide. Here we have the group, the platform, and tech solutions for the revenue mix, underlying EBITDA and customer numbers. As Andrew called out, group revenue grew to $ 327 million, an underlying EBITDA of $ 118 million. From the revenue composition, 77% of that is driven by the platform, and 22% comes from tech solutions. On the platform side, we have just under $ 253 million worth of revenue and underlying EBITDA of $ 103 million.
And again, as Andrew called out, we've got 4,525 active advisors using the platform, which is up 13% year-on-year, and as Andrew mentioned, represents 29% of the total licensed financial advisors within Australia. Tech solutions has had a good year, with revenue of just under $ 71 million and underlying EBITDA of $ 22.1 million. The customer base has grown from 6,000 in full year 2023 to around about 6,500 in full year 2024. So a good result across all the businesses and all the segments for full year 2024. So if we can just move to the next slide, we've got the group's financial results, with operating revenue up 17%, operating expenses up 18%, and underlying EBITDA up 15%.
I'll talk a little bit more as we get into the segment slides as to the mix of the revenue and the expenses. From a group perspective, the underlying EBITDA margin was down year-on-year, 0.5%, down to 36.1%, largely driven by things like changes in the ADI, deposit spreads, and the inclusion of the myprosperity as expected in the forecast, but not of $ 1.5 million myprosperity incorporated into the platform segment this year. Underlying NPAT was up 15% to just under 68 mil, $ 67.8 million, and statutory NPAT was up 24% to $ 47.2 million.
Full-year dividend for the year was $ 0.38, up 17%, in line with the growth metrics for revenue and underlying NPAT, and underlying diluted earnings per share was up 14% to just over $ 0.81 per share this year. The graphs on the right-hand chart side show the operating revenue and underlying EBITDA growth by the various segments. Platform revenue delivered $ 44 million of the uplift, and 17, just under 18 million, $ 17.9 million of the growth in the underlying EBITDA, and tech solutions revenue up $ 3.2 million year-on-year, and underlying EBITDA 0.3 million year-on-year. Turning to the next slide, we have the platform segment.
We have total FUA growth of 30% year-on-year to just under $ 105 billion, $ 104.7 billion at the 30th of June, with very strong record net flows for the year of $ 15.8 billion, up 62% year-on-year. Included in that is $ 4.4 billion from large migrations and $ 11.4 billion from the underlying business momentum. The platform revenue was up 21%, operating expenses up 21%, and underlying EBITDA up 21%. So all the key growth metrics, 21% there. Underlying EBITDA margin was broadly stable year-on-year, just under 41%, 40.7% for full year 2024. I'll talk more about the drivers of the underlying EBITDA margin movement year-on-year as we get to those slides.
On the right-hand side, you can see custody FUA included 5.9 billion in the year for positive market movements and the 15.8 billion from the net inflows, and the PARS was up. The PARS FUA was up 2.7 billion year-on-year. Moving to the next slide, we have the platform custody revenue and revenue margins. On the right-hand side, we've given you a graph of the momentum for the platform FUA, the custody FUA, and the custody revenue. Five-year trend for this shows the FUA, the custody FUA, growing from 17.2 billion back in full year 2020 to the 84.4 billion at 30 June 2024, and the revenue of it has grown from 74 million back in full year 2020 to the 253 million in full year 2024.
This graph demonstrates the continued momentum and growth within the platform business. The graph on the bottom right-hand side has the platform revenue margin at 36 basis points in full year 2023, coming down to 35 basis points in first half 2024 and 34 basis points in full year 2024. With the $ 5.9 billion growth in the positive market, we've seen [people risk] our average balance is increasing, which has impacted the tiering and capping and had a 1.5 basis points margin compression year-on-year. And then also within our analyst and investor pack, we've provided the average cash as a percentage of custody FUA, half on half and year-on-year.
Over the year, the average was 7.4%, with the reduction largely in the second half, down to 7% over the second half, and that's what's driving that one bit on the right-hand side graph in cash and, cash and other. The number of accounts on the platform for full year 2024 was up 30% year-on-year, which is driven by the new advisors that you can see 13% up year-on-year, and a higher penetration for the existing advisors on the platform. Moving to the next part, slide, we have the composition of the platform FUA, the custody FUA, and the custody revenue. So you can see the donuts on the right-hand side shows that institutional, as a percentage of custody FUA, has increased from 14% in full year 2023 to 16% in full year 2024.
This has been driven by the large migrations that were actually tilted largely to the second half of the year. So you can actually see when you look at the revenue composition, the retail revenue has grown from 93% - 94%, with solid and very strong retail flows throughout the whole of the year, which is why the composition of those donuts might look a little unusual until you think about the timing of those flows. And then on the bottom right-hand side of that graph, you can actually see the custody revenue margin by retail and institutional, with the tiering and the capping impacting both retail and institutional. If we move to the next slide, we have the platform underlying EBITDA and the margins. Again, we've provided a five-year trend to show the momentum within the revenue and the expenses and the underlying EBITDA margin.
So you can see that the revenue has grown from $74 million back in full year 2020 to $253 million in full year 2024, which is a CAGR over that period of close to 36%. And the underlying EBITDA has grown from $28.7 million back in full year 2020 to just under $103 million in full year 2024, which is a CAGR that's close to 38%. And the underlying EBITDA margin for the platform business has trended up from circa about 38.5% to close to 41% in full year 2024. If we then, the graph on the bottom right-hand side actually shows the growth and the operating leverage coming through the platform business, which is the bar of 2.2%.
And that's been offset by the change in the ADI and the alignment to where the industry deposit spreads are at, which is the 1.1% drag on the underlying EBITDA margin. That change in the ADI provider happened for HUB24 back in December 2022. So it had a negative impact from the second half of 2023 onwards, and then the inclusion of the myprosperity $ 1.5 million underlying EBITDA losses, we focus on growing that part of the business, had an impact of 1.2% on the margin. So we're really pleased with the way the platform margin's trajecting and the 2.2% operating leverage and growth is what we're focused on and will continue to build on going forwards.
Okay, so moving to the next slide, we have the tech solutions result, which includes Class and HUBconnect. Class has been delivering consistent growth in all metrics. So you can see the Class accounts are up 3% to just over 207,000. [audio distortion] is up 7% to 191,000, and companies using Corporate Messenger is up 23% to just under 800,000. There's 792,922 companies using NowInfinity for corporate compliance. This has driven revenue to be up 5%- 70.7% , and underlying EBITDA margin has contracted 1%- 31.3%.
On the graph on the right-hand side, actually calls out there's a $ 1.9 million investment in technology, data, infrastructure, HUBconnect capabilities to help advisors with compliance and industry productivity. So again, very pleased with the tech solutions, the growth in the Class business, and the investment that will continue to drive growth going forward. If we can move to the next slide. Here, we have the group expenses, which are up 19% year-on-year. Investment in our people is the largest driver of this increase, and you can see in the graph on the right-hand side, employee-related expenses are up just over $ 19 million year- on- year. This is largely driven by the increase in our people and headcount. So headcount is 893 at the 18th of June, so just under 900.
The hiring was tilted to the first half of 2024. So if you roll back to the thirtieth of June 2023, the headcount was 838, and that grew to 883 at the 31st December, so in the first half, and then we added a net 10 extra people in the second half. The second half, from a headcount perspective and from our operating expenses, is more indicative of what we're expecting to come in full year 2023. That obviously is subject to business conditions and some of the growth that we're seeing come through, but that's certainly where we're thinking at the moment. If we roll forward to the next slide, we have the walk from the underlying EBITDA to the underlying NPAT and the stat NPAT.
Again, underlying EBITDA of $ 118 million, up 15% year-on-year. We then recognize $ 13.5 million of share-based payments, just under $ 14 million for depreciation, and amortization, more interest expense, income tax takes the underlying NPAT of $ 27.8 million, up 15% year-on-year. Then we have the strategic transactions and project costs of $ 9.5 million, which relates to the Xplore integration program. We've closed that program of work, and the large migrations that we had during the year. When we roll forward to full year 2025, Xplore will just be part of the normal platform business, and any expenses related to large migrations will be reflected in underlying EBITDA, so you won't see strategic transactions and project costs going forward.
Acquisition amort of $ 22.9 million, which includes a year-to-date catch-up of circa $ 7 million, which related to us aligning the acquired software through the Class and Xplore and myprosperity acquisitions to the useful life that we used for internally generated software as well. There's also a gain on the sale [audio distortion] during the year, and as part of that transaction, HUB24 recognized a $ 3 million gain on sale that's been recognized in notable items. That takes after tax, that takes us to 47.2 million statutory NPAT, up 24% year-on-year. If we just move to the last slide for the financials. Just reiterating again, the strong financial performance and the strong capital management.
We had a final dividend of $ 0.195, up 5% year-on-year, taking the full year twenty-four total dividend to $ 0.38 per share, up 17%. You can see the graph on the right-hand side with the dividends and the underlying diluted EPS, with a CAGR of 15% over the five years, four-year CAGR 53%, and underlying EPS of 52% CAGR over the five years of four-year CAGR in there. Group operating cash flows are very strong, with a cash balance of $ 88 million and operating cash flows of $ 109 million for the year, with a CAGR of 43% over that four, five-year period for operating cash flows there.
This time last year, we announced a share buyback to broadly remove some of the dilution from the shares issued as part of the myprosperity acquisition. Over the last sort of nine months, we've bought back 360,000 shares at a cost of $ 12.5 million, and we've also purchased $ 10 million of treasury shares, or share buybacks that we put into a trust to service the employee share schemes. Okay, and with that, I will hand back to Andrew for the strategy and outlook.
Thank you. Before we open up the line for Q&A, a brief update on our strategy, some of the market trends influencing our industry, our focus on delivery, and our outlook moving forward. We will, of course, be hosting an Investor Strategy Day in November, so we'll brief the market on details of that coming up in terms of when that is. But the opportunity for us in HUB24, in this particular industry, is remaining unchanged, or in fact, it's far more favorable, perhaps arguably than you could have said twelve months ago. If I go straight to the bottom right side of this slide, look, we're not seeing compelling advances in institutional platform competition. There's still issues with strategy and ownership, delivery and investment, and so forth.
And so specialist platforms are continuing to dominate net inflows as a result of our focus and innovation. And in fact, there's only two or three platforms in positive inflow or platform providers in the market. So the opportunity is there for us to continue to grow and continue to take advantage of the dynamics that are changing for the industry. The industry does continue to evolve. The demands are changing. There's even more important reasons for to be responsive as a platform provider or participant in this industry to respond to clients' needs. The demand for advice is increasing. There's 2.33 million Australians with unmet advice needs, and of course, HUB and Class and Now Infinity work through professional intermediaries and accounts and advisors. It's our core marketplace.
The cost of advice and the price of advice has continued to increase. It speaks to how can we make that more efficient, and the demand for those professionals is there. So, the trend is also towards high-net-worth clients, as well. So we think about that in terms of how we build our products and our services and making sure we've got solutions for all phases in a client life cycle. SMSFs, in the client needs column, are continuing... The startups are continuing to grow. There's demand from younger generations. That plays well with us having our class business and the integrated products we're launching. The aging population needs retirement products.
It also speaks to the nearly $ 5 trillion intergenerational wealth transfer that's looking for solutions, and we, as a business, think about that in terms of how we can help customers and advisors take their clients on that journey with the intergenerational wealth transfer and have the right solutions to do that, and certainly, cybersecurity is also top of mind in terms of how we provide information interface to clients, and we protect them and their data and their assets. Absolutely a focus and a demand in the industry. Our professional, financial professionals need productivity. Our industry has not been great at providing advisors and clients with a complete view of wealth, something we certainly aspire to, it's key to our strategy.
It's been very product-centric over the last few decades and certainly shifting towards how do you get a complete view of wealth for clients that makes the advice process more efficient, increases engagement. There is the adoption of managed portfolio solutions. We lead in that in the marketplace. That is a trend that's continuing, and compliance and cost and complexity is still there, and we certainly are investing in that space to mitigate that and help with that. The regulatory landscape continues to evolve. The Quality of Advice Review, tranche two has not been legislated. It does have the potential to improve advice accessibility, and we're certainly watching with that and influencing that across the industry and working with government and regulators to have a voice in that space. As I said, the summary of it is that the dynamics are changing.
Specialist platforms are very, very well positioned to continue to grow because we are being responsive, and we are responding to those demands and drivers with our product development and our strategy and our customer service. So in terms of our strategy, how are we at HUB24 responding to those industry demands? Well, our four pillars of our strategy and our focus, we've talked about this before, is about leading today in our chosen markets and continuing to deliver customer value and growth. Creating tomorrow, not settling for today's solutions, but continuing to transform and shift and create integrated wealth tech and platform solutions that will drive... Will speak to those demands for clients. It's certainly about not doing it alone. It's about, as we said earlier, empowering better financial futures together.
How can we work and collaborate across our industry with government, with regulators, with financial product manufacturers, asset managers, insurers, and technology providers to reshape and build the best outcomes for our clients in this industry? So we are certainly working together with our industry to do that. It's also about being future-ready, being able to have the scalability in our business to continue to grow, being ready to have the capabilities and infrastructure to support and think about the future ahead. So how do we do that? At HUB24, we want to be the best provider of integrated platform, tech, and data solutions. In the middle of the slide, you can see four quadrants there. We have the HUB24 platform, which is a leader.
We have data and infrastructure leadership in terms of our HUBconnect products and the infrastructure that supports that with the permissioning and sharing of data and the data feeds we have in the platform, and certainly the data feeds we have in our Class business as well. myprosperity is about a great client experience sitting on the front end of our business over time, and also being a portal that aggregates services and data from across the industry, not just from within our own stable. And now, NowInfinity, Class being software applications that certainly drive to wealth and wealth accounting. So we're well positioned to have the right market-leading businesses to deliver on those pillars on the left-hand side.
What we're aiming to deliver on the right-hand side of the slide for our customers is one way of doing business across market-leading solutions, getting that single view of wealth, really working well for clients and professionals, so they can see where they stand in an easy, efficient way. Efficient access to ecosystem partners, whether that be third-party product manufacturers or technology providers, to be able to create an ecosystem or a tech spine, if you like, that brings about efficiency, lowers the cost of advice, and increases access, flexibility and reporting and insights. A snapshot of our strategy and how we're working towards that, specifically, if we look at some of the strategic objectives we're working on, and I'll just touch on a few of those that we haven't talked about already in the presentation.
But in terms of leading today, we're certainly adding additional investment options for individual client targets and enhanced our FX capability, building products and features for the future. And there's more on the slide that feel free to read subsequently. In creating tomorrow, we're actually working very hard to get more data sources and have them trusted, so we actually can work on how do you create that ecosystem and that single view of wealth. We've expanded HUBconnect with insights, and we're continuing to expand it and benchmarking for advisors and practices beyond its original purpose at HUBconnect licensee being a compliance and efficiency tool for licensees or advice networks, getting into practices and advisors.
We've got a digital mail house using AI that's actually creating better outcomes for customers with their contract notes and so forth, being able to automatically parse and sort information and create a better proposition there. We're working with industry to build together with industry bodies and regulators and collaborating with think tanks, as we have done for many years. That's evolved in us having an enterprise version of myprosperity rollout across large networks, who really are saying: Here is a solution for record keeping, here is a solution for client engagement, and here is a solution for securely storing client information and helping to protect from fraud and hacking and bad actors intercepting communication between advisors and clients.
On the right-hand side, we're certainly continuing to focus on making sure, as we always have, we have the scale for our business to continue to grow, but we're also delivering the profitability for shareholders along the way, and continuing to focus clearly on risk management, cyber resilience and privacy. It's core to what we've done to date. It's core to what we'll continue to do. Our business is sustainable in terms of thinking ahead, but also thinking about how we operate today. Touching on, before we move to Q&A, our last slide here, and really quickly, they're similar statements. We do have a strong business. We intend to grow it with reliable growth from both new and existing client relationships. We're certainly going to leverage the industry dynamics to maximize opportunities for growth.
We're being very disciplined in how we manage the business in terms of expense management and emerging profit, while we still invest in extending our market leadership. And we intend to capitalize on our unique group capabilities, as I said on a couple of slides ago, to unlock value for customers and shareholders, to reinvent the way an ecosystem of wealth management can work, provide more information, and get the outcomes that clients are seeking. In terms of outlook, we traditionally have an outlook statement for our custodial or platform super target, which excludes our non-custodial platform super. And the statement we've got there, moving ahead for FY 2026, is a target range of $ 115 billion-$ 123 billion. That's up from the 84.4 at thirtieth of June this year.
So for FY26, in two years' time, or just under two years' time, that's the target range we're publishing today. It obviously comprises, as we normally say, net flows of, in our estimates, greater than $11 billion per annum, excluding large migrations. You'd be aware we still have some migrations to do for EQT, and that's well been talked about before, and a range of market growth assumptions in terms of, average rates return in the market. So we build the range to give you some guidance on how we think we're going to track in that time period, and, we're delighted to be talking about those sort of numbers, given our history not so long ago and having tripled our market share over the last, three or four years.
We hope to continue to grow remarkably, and we hope to continue to deliver for shareholders and our customers. So thank you very much for tuning in. We'll now hand back to our facilitator for Q&A.
Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press star two, and if you're on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Cameron Halkett from Wilsons Advisory. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andrew. Hi, Kit. Just two quick questions to begin. If I start with the outlook, last year was an incredible year, as you highlighted, whereas the kind of next couple of years outlook calls for net flows above that $ 11 billion level, it seems you're no longer entertaining a level of $ 10 billion-$ 12 billion. So just wondering what's giving you that confidence at the margin there to sort of upgrade it, Andrew?
Look, we certainly had a very strong start to the year, and it's always difficult to provide guidance. We don't want to be providing guidance and restating it. We aim to give a range, and it is a range deliberately. Our goal is to head towards the top of that range or in some cases, even overshoot it. So, we've had a very strong start to the year. We're not seeing any resurgence from traditional platform players or participants in the marketplace. And so we decided to say greater than $ 11 billion. We didn't want to cap it. We certainly know that we've got $ 2 billion-$ 2.5 billion on our plans still, as we previously disclosed, for EQT. So, the 11 billion plus that gets us into the range.
I think that the advisor sentiment is there. We're winning the awards, the accolades, from a service point of view and a product point of view. And so, the beauty in our business is you continue to win flows from existing clients and continue to win new clients. We still had 500 new advisors last year. We still signed 141 distribution agreements. I think all those things add up to us being very confident in the growth prospects and leading to those, that statement.
Yeah, makes sense. Just turning back to your comments around hiring, you mentioned in the second half, there was about ten new heads joining the business. The audio was a little bit mixed at the time, but can I just get you to reiterate the expectations there for hiring looking ahead? Thank you.
Yeah, so what I was saying there, Cameron, is that the first half 2024 was really where we did quite the bulk of the hiring, and then it slowed in 2024—in the second half of 2024, and that's the second half is more indicative of what we're expecting each half over 2025.
Okay. Now, that's a bit lower than, I suppose, your usual run rate of net out. So what's changed, I suppose? Are you just a little there in terms of headcount, where it's much more stable relative to your size or just some color there, please?
... Yeah, I think there's a number of factors to call out. We have, so absolutely, the scale and the operating leverage that has been talked about for a long time, and we always knew would come through. But in addition to that, we have been investing in robotics, automation, across, particularly across our operations, and the processing space, but also the technology scalability as well. So in addition to the scale coming from the net flows and the growth of the FUA, we've also got automation that's supporting the operating leverage come through as well.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Nicholas McGarrigle, from Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
G'day, thank you. Just a question around the run rate impact of lower proportions of cash and the mix of institutional FUA on the revenue margin as we head into first half 2025.
Yeah. So the cash is obviously subject to customer preferences. The whole of the second half 2024, we saw the. You would have seen, we provided the average in the analyst investor pack, and that was around 7% for the whole of second half 2024. We have seen a slight uptick in that over the last six weeks, but that's not to say that that will hold for the whole year. But it's certainly not at the 8%-10% that we've historically spoken about, so it's still at that lower end, the lower end of the range that we've spoken about before.
Okay, maybe just two more questions. So the OpEx, you kind of guided to not a whole lot of headcount additions. Does that mean potentially overall group OpEx is only up in the kind of low- to mid-teens % year-on-year?
I think where we are today, I think that's a reasonable assumption. As Andrew's called out, and as you guys have noted, we've had a really strong start to the year. That may well... We'll see how the rest of the year goes, and we'll see if that changes plans, but certainly where we are today, I think that's a reasonable assumption.
Great. And then I think the, obviously, the $ 2.7 billion of FUA added in the first six and a half weeks, is it fair to say the market was a small positive, only? So maybe there's a circa $ 2 billion dollar flow embedded in that number.
That would be pretty close. There is market movement in ours. Another company said they didn't have, we certainly had correlation largely to the market or just under market correlation. So that, that's there about, Nick.
All right, thanks.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Olivia Cullen, from E&P Financial Group. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my questions. Just on that flow number, so around 2 billion ex market movement, is there anything from the EQT transition embedded in that?
No, Oli, there's not EQT money in there. There is a client that moved about $ 300 million rapidly in that, but that happens from time to time.
Yeah.
It's an educational institution that was able to move money quickly with a custodial. It's a retail rate card, so those things happen, but there is one, you know, small, lumpy client in there as well.
Yeah. Okay, I appreciate that.
Thanks for the color.
Just the thinking on the tax rate going forward, one for Katrina.
Yes. So, the tax rate, we're benefiting from two things at the moment. One is we've got R&D, so we're always innovating, and we've got myprosperity, Class, and HUB24, that are all innovating on the solution. So there's a benefit in there for R&D. We've also got, you've seen the long-term incentive plans and the employee share schemes that we've got in place. Over the last, I think it's circa three years, we've been, rather than issuing shares on market, we've been purchasing shares, and, in the last financial slide, you would have seen that we purchased $ 10 million worth of shares, put in trust to service the employee share schemes. As we utilize those shares in the employee share trust, we get a tax deduction for those.
So they're the two things that's driving it down to the 20% at the moment. R&D is expected to continue as we continue to innovate. The treasury shares and the benefit that we'll get on that, once we're 100% hedged in there, that's more likely to normalize. So you can expect the tax rate to move up from the 20% and, you know, without a crystal ball, but it could go, you know, somewhere in the mid-20s%, I would say.
Okay. No, that's appreciated. Thanks. And sorry, just on follow-up on that OpEx growth expectation, was that commentary around platforms or, I guess as a business as a whole, including the tech solutions business?
That's more as a business as a whole. So you can see even this year, the platform operating leverage is absolutely coming through. You can see that on the waterfalls that we've provided. But the sort of information I was providing to you guys is more at a group level.
Yeah. Okay. And then, I presume that also captures kind of the interplay of not taking any further kind of transition, one-off charges below the line?
Yep. As we've called out, you won't see noticeable items for large migrations going forward.
Yeah. Okay. But, but effectively, the OpEx growth is potentially gonna be somewhere, some of those employees who might have been doing that work are effectively recaptured into the underlying cost base?
... Absolutely. So,
Yeah.
There was a number of contractors we called out before. There was a number of contractors helping us with the large migrations and some of the Xplore integration. But absolutely, where we've got skilled employees, we've moved those above the line, and they're again called out in the numbers that we've been talking about.
Okay, perfect. And so just one last, if I could, just on Class, the price increases that you took, the thinking on the flow through of that into twenty-five?
Sorry, can you say that-
The Class price increases key flow through. Yeah.
Yeah, so there was a customer reprice that went through this year. There wasn't one in 2024, but there is a customer reprice, similar to other software businesses, you know, keeping up with CPI and inflation, et cetera, and you'll see that coming in the 2025 revenue numbers.
Okay, perfect. Thanks. Appreciate it.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Bob Chen from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hey, morning, guys. Just a couple from me. Just in terms of investment in tangibles, it's obviously stepped up a little bit. Can you give a sense of how we should be thinking about that number going forward?
Yep, so I think you would have seen the platform was circa $ 13-$ 13.5 million, something like that, and the tech solutions was just under $ 8 million. Certainly from a platform perspective, I would say that that's more of a normal run rate now. It was for the last couple of years, you know, looking at 2022, 2023, it was probably a bit lower. It was down at the $ 8 million-$ 9 million mark, and that's because we did have quite a large integration with Xplore, and a large number of our tech team were also supporting that integration.
Now that we're coming to end of that, that tech team's, again, refocusing back onto the platform, or the whole team, I should say, is refocusing back onto the platform, as it were. Then on the Class and the tech solution side, look, we've called out before that we are looking at extra ways to scale that business and make it more efficient. You may well see that trend down over time, but it's certainly not going to be a massive step change. It will be a trending down over time.
Okay, great. Thank you. And then just on the average cash balances again, you know, at 7% in the second half, I mean, is that a good base to forecast into the next few periods?
Look, it really does depend on macro cycles. It's not actually something we control or can forecast. It depends on how people are thinking about equity markets versus cash markets. And so right now, you've got markets at historical highs. People have put their money into the market. If that changes, the cash rates arguably would go up, and then interest rate cycles. So you know, not something we can comment on. It has gone up in the last few months, but that might be as a result of the large flows we get. So it depends on behavior, it depends on how assets join the platform. It's very difficult to forecast.
Okay, thanks, guys.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Siraj Ahmed from Citigroup. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andrew. Hi, Katrina. Just three questions. The first one, on that flow, the strong start, Andrew, of two billion, or one point seven, or whatever the large transition number is, just what's changed here, Andrew? It seems like you and even networks are speaking to pretty strong flows. Is it from one platform provider, or is it just broad-based? Just keen to understand. And do you think this continues for the rest of the year?
It's broad-based, and in actual fact, our last quarter, the results we reported for last quarter were impacted by the exit of a large client, or not a large client, but exit of a few hundred million dollars, where we terminated a relationship. We actually felt what we wanted someone to leave us. Our last quarter of flows were actually down, if you like, because of that. If you normalize that back in, it's consistent with quarter four in terms of... If I sit back and go for the last four or five months, there's been more stability in the market. There's been better consumer sentiment. Advisors are getting on with it. The impulse about fee consent seems to have changed a bit in terms of slowing down June.
So, as we always say, look, it's the long-term trend is your friend. We don't really get excited about, is it sustainable? There's a whole lot of macro stuff going around the world, but the accolades and the sentiment I get when I talk to advisors and licensees are about our value proposition. It's about competitors not quite getting it right. It's about our attitude and our customer service and our footprints increasing. And so, you know, I think it's just the result of us executing well on strategy, and we need to keep doing that, and we need to keep delivering customer service excellence. It's ours to grow or ours to lose. I hope it is a trend, but hard to say, Siraj, given the macro stuff.
Got it. So yeah, just because I was trying to clarify, if you're doing this sort of flows, I mean, you could get to 15-16 billion, right, for the full year, if this continues. So that eleven billion-
You could straight line that. Sorry.
Yeah.
You can.
Yeah, so yeah, so just the 11 billion is just uncertainty, but current trends are quite positive. That's the way to think through it.
The 11 billion is there. We know that we've got transitions. So if you add the EQT money, that'll be $ 13.5 billion-$ 14 billion. But you're right, it could be higher if you do straight mathematics, but we know that November, December, January, February can be muted. So we don't know what's going to happen, and we'd rather be giving a sensible range and aiming for the mid to the top of that in terms of the two-year statement. So, yeah, don't read a lack of confidence in our business in that $11 billion. Know that we're always as aspirational as we can be, and we're always trying to do as well as we can. It's just about balancing, getting distracted by guidance versus delivery.
... That makes sense. Second thing, Andrew, or Kit, it seems like there's a shift towards now driving operating leverage, right? Is it? What has changed here? I mean, I guess the question that will come is, is it a one-year thing where your headcounts, you know, you're only adding twenty people, let's say, and then it rebounds again? Just keen to hear if something's changed-
Yeah.
Now that it's scale. Yeah, thanks.
A couple of things, and then if Kit wants to add, jump on in. Look, we certainly are a larger business. We certainly did have expenses further ahead than we would have liked in the first half because of changes in the labor market, and normally we carry vacancy rates, and we didn't carry those vacancy rates in the first half. So you saw a step up, and that's impacted the full year results. If you look at normalizing our margins, there's growth there if you take out the cash impact and the myprosperity impact, and possibly even if we'd not had the vacancy rate issue. So we're also very much investing in automation using AI and robotics and process automation to make customer service better and also lower costs. So the scalability in our ops team is changing remarkably.
We're not putting on the normal amount of heads we would for our growth because we've invested in that automation. And so there is a deliberate focus on that in terms of operations. And we've got a larger fixed cost base that we can leverage across a bigger business, and that's the nature of building a business. You build that fixed cost base, and hopefully you manage your variable costs moving ahead. So it's about us trying to get productivity out of the cost base, as well as some of those blips with the vacancy rate. But we always try and balance with the accelerator and the brake, the investment and change in the business. We try to not have step change in expenses. We try to have it incremental. It could change, Suraj, if we shoot the lights out with fuel growth.
It could change if we decide to invest in or dial up the speed of strategy execution, but we'd let you know in advance of that. But you know, we certainly are focused on getting the leverage out for shareholders, and the market's been asking us to do that. The fact is we're balancing it with delivery as well.
Pretty clear. And this last one, for Kit. In terms of revenue margin, Kit, looking ahead, can I just confirm that it seems like the custodial fee paying FUA has gone up in the second half. So does that actually help admin fees into FY 25? I know cash is a negative, but just wondering why that spot custodial fee paying FUA has gone up.
Yeah.
Especially if it's still to be higher. Yep. Thanks.
Yeah. I mean, that's the mix of the portfolio that's impacting the percentage of cash paying for. The positive markets obviously does drive higher average balances and tiering and capping, and as you know, we've mentioned and talked about on the call, the percentage of cash flow also has an impact on that revenue margin. If we're expecting...
If we, you know, if in 2025 you do end up with more normal market growth and the cash as a percentage of FUA stabilizes, and, you know, just for argument's sake, let's say it stabilizes somewhere between 7% and 8% or, you know, somewhere between 7%-8.5%, it could be anywhere around that range, then you would expect, you know, maybe up to a bit of revenue margin compression coming out of that, just as average balances, et cetera, go up and tiering and capping is in there. But it does all depend on that mix of the portfolio.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Nick Burgess, from Ord Minnett. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good afternoon, guys. I think most of my questions have been answered. Just a couple of quick questions on myprosperity. So, you mentioned, Andrew, a couple of times that revenue momentum is perhaps a little bit less than what you initially anticipated. Are these network sales or the network sale likely to get myprosperity back on track on the short term from a revenue perspective? And do you think myprosperity overall will hit that sort of break-even mark that you initially flagged when you made the deal?
I'll start, and Kit, you might finish.
Certainly, the revenue was slower than we'd anticipated, and we qualify that with we published the earn out, the revenue, and we budgeted as if per the earn out for the shareholder, the vendors of the business, which was very aspirational. The licensing piece is actually gaining traction. We had 150 buyers in a demo the other day. We had people signing up. So we certainly think that it will speed up adoption of myprosperity licensing. And yet it's happening as we speak. So the 1,800 is access to, not sales to, but the sales to are increasing every day, and we're certainly mobilizing to support with onboarding. And those licensees actually help with the onboarding. And in some cases, there's one licensee who anecdotally has said, "I'm going to mandate this.
Not all are mandating, but I'm going to mandate it for cybersecurity." So yes, it should accelerate that. Whether it actually catches up, Kit, I haven't done the math on that in terms of break-even point, or where it replaces or speeds up. But have you got a comment on that?
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think when we first did the transaction, I think like Andrew said, we're probably anywhere between 12 and 24 months later than we were expecting when we first did the deal and did the announcement. But like Andrew said, when we put those revenue targets out there, we were very aspirational and you know, driving for growth. And I would say that we're probably anywhere between twelve and twenty-four months behind those original targets that we set for being break even. So rather than it being 25, 26, it's more likely to be 26, 27 before we are break even.
Yeah. And just going back to sort of EBITDA margin or operating leverage implications, there should be still incremental improvement over that time period, or do you envisage more of a single sort of step up at a point in time?
So at the group level, so when we, you know, roll in myprosperity into the platform, and then you look at the platform, we're still expecting operating leverage and growth within the platform, subject to normal business conditions. And then that will roll through to the group as well. So absolutely, taking into account that well, 24 months later for myprosperity, still expecting to see the operating leverage come through.
Okay, thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Simon Fitzgerald from Jefferies. Please go ahead.
Just a couple of questions here. Look, I might start with the amortization of intangibles. The $ 21.4 million dollars that was capitalized, I appreciate that you're allowed to do that given the accounting standard suits it, but HUB certainly has grown a lot over the years, $ 100 million dollars worth of gross operating cash flow. I was just interested to know whether you've had any sort of thought about whether you might change that over time in terms of expensing those internally generated intangibles.
We're not expecting. I wouldn't be expecting to see something come through in full year 25. Certainly, you never know what the future holds, but there's certainly no plans at the moment to change that approach. And like I said, 25 is expected to be reasonably consistent compared to 24.
Okay. And what about the amortization for next year? If you could help us with that, just for the internally generated intangibles.
So the depreciation and amort should be reasonably similar year-on-year. And I think when you roll forward to that slide that I was talking about, you've got depreciation and amort of roughly about $ 14 million, excluding the acquisition amortization. So I would say that you're looking you know around that number, maybe another million or so addition, but it's going to be around that number.
Perfect. Then just a final question on the latent opportunity. The FUA per advisor, FY24, $ 19 million, you know, up well. Is that just simply the amount of advisors that are on platform and the effect of, or, you know, your FUA as well? Because, like, if you win an institutional mandate, that could look a little bit lower. And, you know, there might not be any sort of advisors attached to some of those institutional mandates. I'm just interested to know how you sort of think about that.
It's a straight calculation. The institutional mandates are not large enough at all to really change that number at that level, given there's four and a half thousand advisors, but it's a straight calculation of FUA divided by number of advisors, and it has been publishing it. Yeah.
Perfect. And just then finally, how do you sort of see, to try and really take advantage of that latent opportunity, Andrew?
Look, as we always do, we look at how we market and go to market with products and services across different segments and channels. We've got our key accounts team working at a national level. In fact, to be honest, back to, I think, someone else's question, myprosperity in itself is, and Siraj's question about the confidence in flows, the strategy with myprosperity Class and Now Infinity is actually driving flows into the platform from an adjacency perspective because people see what we're doing. So, and they can see that the ecosystem, the build-out of the integration is there. So we focus on it from a marketing perspective and activation. We run academies, we do targeted marketing to advisors, we help with transition support.
It's the same stuff we've done since inception, and we have the BDMs around the country working through it, and we've got a strategic sales team as well as the key accounts team working at a national level. And I think that the nature of these businesses are that when you are the primary or chosen platform for advisors, unless you have operational issues or errors or you go off the boil, it will just continue to happen. So it's, as I said earlier, it's for us to lose as opposed to we'll keep that momentum if we keep delivering, and the resurgence of competitors isn't occurring. Same as.
Very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from Hayden Nicholson, from Bell Potter. Please go ahead.
Hey, thanks, guys, for taking my questions. Most have been asked. I guess, building on the last question about the opportunity for flows, looking at the proportion you got there by the advisor relationships, and I think you called it out, Kit. What does it look like if we normalize for EQT, like, in terms of the percentages coming from the new licensees and new advisor relationships? Is there still growth or is that just sort of a movement through EQT integration?
I'm not sure I understand the question, Kit.
Yeah. So I think just going back to the latent opportunity slide, and I think Andrew called out that it, coming from the new licensees, it was impacted by the addition of, EQT coming in. Look, it's difficult for us to tell and, you know, forecast out, but there is no reason, once you get, once you roll forward, there's no reason why it won't go back to more of the normal trends that you see in-
In fact, we haven't done the math. If you normalize out EQT, I imagine that those trends exist. It's just that we had the fifteen point eight. So the trend exists underlying. If you normalize out EQT, there's no reason to suggest that that wouldn't continue. Yeah.
Right. That's right.
Yeah.
Sure. And then just secondly, you know, you touched on focus on high net worth and some of those directly held assets. Can you just unpack the demand that you're seeing there and the investments that were made throughout the year?
... Look, the demand is, I mean, advisors in some cases are migrating up the curve to having high-net-worth clients for a number of reasons: fees, costs, affordability, but also wholesale compliance regimes versus retail compliance regimes. We've always got a lot of high-net-worth product there. Evans and Westpac Private Bank, who are two marquee clients of ours, are in that space. We've got bonds on the platform, we've got foreign currency. We certainly do unlisted or, sorry, unregistered managed schemes and international unregistered managed schemes and so forth in that capability. So we're continuing to enhance that. The foreign exchange capability on the HUB24 platform will be even greater in the next couple of months in terms of the ability to settle into foreign currency, whereas currently there's some hiccups there when you're buying and selling international assets. So we're enhancing those features.
It's something. It's about the how and the process and the settlement and payments, as well as the accessibility of products. And we're certainly working with other providers on providing access to alternatives as part of strategic asset allocation and how do you get access to those illiquid investments in our context. And working through just the investments on the platform and so forth. So from a range of investment options to new asset classes through to the processes, there's a lot going on there.
In terms of the admin piece, with having a non-custody admin and reporting capability hitched to the platform, so custodial assets from the platform, structured call products, all sorts of stuff, bonds, you know, pretty much whatever you wanna have, we'll do the administration, the reporting on, attached to it. But we're in pilot mode only, to be clear on that. We're in pilot mode. We've got more development to do. Is there demand? Well, there's certainly demand that people wanna know that you've got that feature set. They might not use it today, but down the track, they will. So advisors and customers are looking for, are you building for the future? That's where the demand is.
I don't know if the take-up is earth-shattering in the short term, but I think that's the trend that we're heading towards, given what's happening in markets, and private markets versus public markets.
Sure. Thanks, guys. I'll leave it there.
Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from James Bissonella from Unified Capital Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, Andrew. Hi, Katrina. Congrats on the result. Just a couple from me. Firstly, I mean, just around the strong growth coming through in organic flows in the quarter to date period, you obviously got the rest of EQT coming this half as well. So I guess, just keen to understand the environment or the pipeline for potentially further large transitions, in the pipeline looking forward. Thank you.
As always, we're actively in conversations, and they're the things we try to say that typically you'll see them come through every couple of years. There are some active conversations underway. They're not of the size of EQT, which could amount to $ 5 billion or higher, but there are conversations underway. And so it's quite possible we'll secure others or other, but you know, it's never known until the ink's dry, and these things require, in some cases, regulatory approval and consumer approval. So it's not gone quiet. Let's just put it that way, James.
Certainly. Thanks, Andrew, and just last one from me, just on the significant cash balance, I guess strategically, how are you thinking about potentially deploying that? And are there any key focus areas for the business on that front moving forward? Thanks.
Yeah, that's a very good question. As you would have seen, we're relatively regulatory capital light. We do have AFSL, so obviously have regulatory capital and also the superannuation fund, and we don't have a loan at the moment for the support of the operational risk financial reserve, the OFR within the super fund, but that's not to say if we continue to grow, that that wouldn't be required. So just calling out a couple of things there, just from the, you know, what might be needed from a regulatory capital perspective. But absolutely, every single year, because we are relatively capital light, the operating cash flows continue to grow, where we do look at investment, so we will continue to invest. We've got the Create Tomorrow and the Building for Tomorrow strategies that we've got there.
But we've also got an underlying NPAT dividend payout ratio range of 40%-60%. And as HUB24 continues to grow and we move into a yield stock, absolutely, those cash flows will, you know, it's potentially likely that the payout ratios will increase.
Fantastic. Thanks for taking my questions.
Thank you. That does conclude our time for questions. I'll now hand back to Mr. Alcock for closing remarks.
Thank you, everyone, for taking the time to join us today and for some excellent questions. We are very, very excited about our growth prospects moving ahead and certainly focused on continuing to work on those. So, hopefully, you agree it's been a remarkable year in many senses, with the balancing of strategy, customer service awards, and record-breaking flows. That are records for us and arguably for the industry as well. We're certainly gonna continue to work hard for our customers and shareholders moving ahead. Look forward to seeing you out on the rounds if you've got a meeting booked with us, and certainly stay tuned for us providing details of our investor strategy day in November. We'll be letting you know when that date is once we've locked that in. Thanks very much. Goodbye.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.