All right, welcome everybody. Can I ask everyone to take their seats, please? It's now 11:30 A.M. I've been advised that a quorum is present. So, it's my duty to.
Jeff, I'll just.
I'm going to welcome everyone first, Daniel, if you don't mind. So I'll welcome everybody to the 2025.
No, no, sorry, Jeff. I'm just going to give the welcome to country.
Annual General Meeting, and I'm going to throw to Daniel to give us some procedural matters beforehand.
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Daniel Walker, a Member of the Legal Team here at MA. Before we commence today's AGM held here at MA's head office, we acknowledge that we meet on the traditional lands of the Gadigal people, one of 29 clan groups which together comprise the Eora Nation. I pay respect to Gadigal elders past, present, and emerging. We recognize that this has always been a place of connection for First Nations people, and we continue that tradition of connection today. I'll now hand over to the chair to commence the meeting.
Thanks, Daniel. Again, good morning, shareholders. My name is Jeffrey Browne, and I'm the Chairman of MA Financial. As I said before, the quorum is present. It's now 11:30 A.M., and I declare the meeting open. The notice for meeting has been distributed and will be taken as read. On behalf of my fellow directors, I'd like to welcome you to our 2025 Annual General Meeting. I'd also like to introduce those in attendance today. Seated before you, we have Vice Chair Andrew Pridham, Joint Chief Executive Officers Chris Wyke and Julian Biggins, Non-Executive Directors Alexandra Goodfellow, Simon Kelly, Nikki Warburton, and Cathy Yuncken, and Rebecca Ong, General Counsel and Joint Company Secretary. Also joining us via webcast are our U.S.-based directors, [Ken Molas] and Kate Pilcher Ciafone.
I'd also like to welcome Giles Boddy, our Chief Financial Officer, Yana Robinson, our Chief Operating Officer and Joint Company Secretary, Shaun Kendrigan representing KPMG, the company's auditors, and Rebecca Maslen-Stannage representing Herbert Smith Freehills, the company's lawyers. Daniel will shortly outline some further procedural matters for voting and questions at today's meeting. I'll then make a short address and invite Joint Chief Executive Officer Chris Wyke to do the same. Following this, we will proceed with the conduct of the formal business of the meeting, and I'll now hand over to Daniel to outline the question and voting procedures for today. Daniel?
Thank you, Jeff. There are several matters I need to mention in respect of the format of today's meeting. Firstly, in relation to voting procedures, as you registered today, you were issued with a purple, orange, or white-colored card. Purple cards are for shareholders who are entitled to speak and vote at this meeting. Orange cards are for shareholders who are entitled to speak but not vote, and white cards are for visitors attending the meeting today. The notice of meeting sets out information regarding the resolutions to be put to today's meeting. There are three items on the agenda this morning, two of which require a shareholder vote. Details of direct votes and proxies received on each item of business will be shown on the screen behind the table after discussion on that item of business.
The chair is holding open proxies in his capacity as chair, and it is his intention to vote all proxies in favor of each resolution. Each item of business at today's meeting will be conducted by way of a poll. The chair will ask you to cast your vote at the relevant time on each item of business, but to only hand your voting card to the boardroom representative on conclusion of the meeting. The results of the vote will be available later today on the ASX and MA Financial website. Please note that only shareholders, proxy holders, and shareholder representatives may vote. As related to shareholder questions, we ask that shareholders who wish to ask questions on the various items outlined in the notice of meeting do so when we reach the relevant agenda item later in the meeting.
We will endeavour to answer as many questions from shareholders as we can. There is a microphone at the front of the meeting area. Would shareholders wishing to address the meeting please approach the microphone once the chair invites questions? Please state your name and show either your purple or orange admission card. As a courtesy to all shareholders, please also state your affiliation if you are not here today in your personal capacity. Please note that in order to enable all shareholders a reasonable opportunity to be heard, all speakers are asked to limit their questions to no more than two questions per resolution and no more than ten questions in total. Please limit each question to no longer than two minutes. I would remind shareholders that questions must relate to the item of business under consideration. I'll now hand back over to the chair.
Thank you, Daniel. 2024 was a year of strong progress and continued momentum for our business. The strategic investments we have made over the past few years across lending, credit technology, and asset management distribution are delivering tangible returns. As we enter 2025, we do so with a strong business platform and a clear path for scalable, sustainable growth over the coming years. Record client inflows into our asset management funds, accelerating growth in MA Money's loan book, the continued growth of Finsure's mortgage aggregation platform, acquisitions in the MA Marina Fund, and the increased deal flow in our corporate advisory business highlighted the strong momentum in our business. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank all of our people for their effort and commitment in delivering these outcomes in the face of relatively volatile operating conditions. Excuse me.
Whilst group earnings per share in 2024 was up only slightly on the previous year, earnings increased 35% in the second half of 2024 compared to the first half, reflecting the accelerating momentum within the business. This has delivered good earnings momentum into the current year, 2025. The quality and consistency of our earnings has also improved as we have grown our asset management and lending businesses. In 2024, 62% of the group's revenue was derived from sources that we consider to be recurring, and that compares to 48% in 2022. This allows us to have increased confidence in the outlook for the business, with less volatile and increasingly diversified earnings moving forward. This confidence, combined with the group's strong financial position, allowed the board to declare a AUD 0.20 fully franked dividend distribution in 2024 in line with the prior year.
Joint CEO Chris Wyke will highlight in greater detail the financial performance of our business divisions shortly. The growth of MA Financial has been the result of many years of ongoing investment in our platform and our capability. The group's long-term strategy has been to build highly scalable businesses in deep markets. In 2024, the group made strategic investments that negatively impacted underlying EBITDA by approximately AUD 13 million, or equivalent to AUD 0.06 per share of earnings. Our track record demonstrates our ability to deliver on such strategic investments. Much of this investment in 2024 was into building our residential mortgage lending business, MA Money. Creating a valuable opportunity to scale into Australia's AUD 2 trillion residential mortgage market by leveraging the pre-existing strategic strengths of the MA Platform has been a truly valuable initiative.
This investment is already producing tangible results, with the business delivering a small profit in the second half of 2024 ahead of expectations after growing its loan book by 155% across that year. It is well on track to meet its targeted AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million NPAT contribution in 2026, a highly significant contribution considering total group underlying NPAT delivered in 2024 was AUD 42 million. This is what is possible with longer-term strategic decision-making and shrewd investment in highly scalable business segments. In the past, we have deployed similar longer-term strategic decisioning into investments in building our highly successful private credit platform, as well as our strong asset management distribution platforms for both international high-net-worth and domestic clients.
Other strategic investment initiatives during 2024 included initial investment in building MA Financial's brand profile, expanding our distribution capabilities internationally, and establishing our brand and new private credit fund structure in the lucrative U.S. market. In 2025, the focus of our strategic investment will be to grow the U.S. private credit investment business by marketing our funds directly to investors in the U.S. This represents an enormous opportunity in the world's largest specialty credit market, estimated to be worth around $9 trillion . In late 2024, our new U.S. fund received approval from the regulator, and we have recently commenced our marketing efforts on the ground in the U.S. During 2024, the group also broadened its distribution presence in the institutional funds channel with the establishment of an Australian real estate credit vehicle in partnership with highly respected global growth investor Warburg Pincus.
The strength of our alternative real estate management capabilities was also highlighted with the strong performance of the MA Marina Fund, which grew its assets under management to over AUD 320 million by year-end. The fund's defensive revenue profile, driven by strong supply-demand dynamics, has proved attractive to investors looking for consistent yield-based returns uncorrelated to economic cycles. In hospitality, MA Redcape Hotel Fund has successfully navigated a challenging operating environment and has been increasing its quarterly distributions to unit holders backed by the strong performance of the hotel venues. The fund completed the successful divestment of eight hotels at attractive prices during the year and redeployed the proceeds into four new high-quality acquisitions, with a further seven new venues acquired thus far in 2025. This highlights the continued demand for hospitality assets and our strong operating capability in that sector.
After a difficult few years for the commercial real estate sector, we were also excited about the growth prospects for our core real estate business following the recently announced acquisition of IP Generation, a specialist real estate investment manager. This is a highly complementary acquisition for our existing business that delivers an additional AUD 2 billion of retail real estate assets under management, along with significant real estate investment expertise and distribution capability. In 2024, we continue to strengthen our talent, governance, and sustainability frameworks. The quality of our people is core to the group's ongoing success, and we've continued to invest in the retention and development of our key personnel and talent during the year. We are a people business, and attracting, developing, and retaining the best people is essential to MA Financial's long-term success.
We have refined our remuneration structures to provide appropriate incentivization for senior staff that aligns with positive shareholder outcomes. We've also improved our disclosures so investors can better understand how senior management, including our Joint CEOs, are rewarded and incentivized. More broadly, we are very proud of the owner mindset that permeates our workplace and establishes our winning culture. In 2024, acting on the previous year's climate change action plan, we achieved significant reductions in emissions from improving our arrangements for office energy supply. We will maintain our focus on our environmental footprint and how we report on it, and we'll continue to invest appropriately in cybersecurity and other risk controls, corporate governance, and training. Reflecting on our long desire to increase the board's independence and diversity, we were delighted to appoint Cathy Yuncken as an independent Non-Executive Director in March this year.
Cathy brings exceptional experience to the group with over 30 years' commercial and executive experience in the financial services industry. This includes corporate finance and investment banking roles at Bank of America and Barclays Capital, and executive leadership roles at GE Capital, Commonwealth Bank's Institutional Bank, and the multi-brand business banking and private wealth business of the Westpac Group. I believe we are now very well positioned as a board to oversee the continued growth of the business, and the results and strategic investments we have made in 2024 will prove up our determination to deliver sustainable growth for our shareholders. I extend my gratitude to our board, senior executives, and all employees for their continued hard work and dedication to the growth and achievements of MA Financial in 2024, and I would like to thank all of our shareholders for your loyalty and ongoing support of MA Financial Group.
I'll now hand over to our Joint CEO, Mr. Chris Wyke.
Thanks, Jeff. I would like to extend my welcome to you all to our annual general meeting, and thank you for your attendance today. My name is Chris Wyke, and together with Julian Biggins, I am Joint Chief Executive Officer at MA Financial Group. It is my pleasure to address MA Financial's 2024 performance today and share some commentary on the first quarter of 2025. I will share Jeff has already highlighted that 2024 was a year of strong momentum right across our business platform. Some of the key highlights and some numbers around those highlights are as follows. We had record growth inflows of AUD 2.2 billion into our asset management funds, 12% growth in assets under management to AUD 10.3 billion. Finsure's loan book grew 26% to AUD 139 billion, and during the year of 2024, it added over 600 net new mortgage brokers to its mortgage aggregation and technology platform.
MA Money, as Jeff mentioned, grew its loan book by 155%, AUD 2.1 billion from what was really a virtual standing start back in January of 2023. In corporate advisory, the fees were up 16% from 2023- 2024 at AUD 50 million. That all contributed to the group delivering an underlying net profit of AUD 42.1 million, equivalent to AUD 26.01 per share. As Jeff mentioned, this was up 1% on the 2023 result, as good underlying revenue growth was partly offset by that planned strategic investment in our medium-term growth initiatives. However, from the day we founded MA Financial in 2009, we have believed that investing today for the benefit of tomorrow.
All our strategic initiatives are anticipated to help drive the future earnings growth of the business, and our earnings momentum is already strong, with earnings per share up 35% in the second half of 2024 relative to the first half. This momentum over the course of 2024 was primarily driven by strong inflows to our asset management funds over the year and improved transaction-based income for the second half of the year. Also driven by the growth of MA Money over the year, which moved from a AUD 4.6 million EBITDA loss in the first half to a small profit contribution in the second half as it strongly grew its loan book and expanded its net interest margin over the course of the year. Now, this business momentum has moved into early 2025 and bodes well for material earnings growth across the group in 2025.
We are aiming to deliver on a set of medium-term strategic targets at the end of 2026, and we believe we are demonstrating positive progress on the way to achieving these. In particular, with our various business divisions, our asset management division is the major contributor to group earnings, delivering 74% of the group's underlying EBITDA in 2024. Record growth inflows driven by strong investor interest in the group's private credit funds and the consistent yield-based returns that they have provided. This demand has carried into 2025 with a successful raising of AUD 330 million for our first listed private credit trust, the MA Credit Income Trust, which trades under the ASX: MA1.
The funds successfully listed on the ASX on the 5th of March, representing an exciting milestone for our group, further broadening our distribution capability in the Australian market and extending the group's reputation as a leading private credit asset manager. The elevated interest rate environment led to a quieter period for our traditional core real estate businesses, with limited transaction activity over the 24 year. However, we remained active in our alternative real estate portfolios, expanding the MA Marina Fund, returning the MA Redcape Hotel Fund to a solid growth footing, and launching the MA Hotel Accommodation Fund with the acquisition of Four Points by Sheraton Hotel in Melbourne's Docklands in April 2024. Turning to our lending and technology division, the development of our residential lending marketplace within the lending and technology division continued at pace in 2024.
The growth of MA Money continues to accelerate, reaching profitability ahead of expectations in September 2024 and remains well on track to deliver on its FY26 target of AUD 15 million-AUD 20 million of net profit after tax. Finsure continues to grow its share of mortgage broker market and its book of managed loans. The final piece of our mortgage marketplace is Middle, a proprietary technology platform that is gaining significant traction by materially improving the digital data collection process for both mortgage brokers and borrowers. It is now processing over AUD 100 million of loan applications per day on its platform, and it is also undertaking integration with its first bank partner, and the business is aiming to initiate further direct partnership bank integrations over the course of 2025.
Finally, with respect to corporate advisory and equities, the division demonstrated resilience in the face of challenging market conditions for much of the year in 2024, which impacted transaction timelines and equity capital market activity levels. Corporate advisory fees were up 16% when compared to 2023, with transaction activity levels beginning to improve later in the year, and this improvement has continued in early 2025. However, as always, we remain cautious with transaction timeframes, which are uncertain and potentially elongated. In 2025, we see potential opportunity to strategically add to the capability of our corporate advisory team. We have started the year by adding a new Managing Director to cover the power and utility sector, reflecting our ongoing confidence in the corporate advisory and equities business. I'll now turn to some commentary for the first quarter of 2025.
In late April, we updated the market on what was a positive start to the year. In the first quarter of 2025, we continue to experience positive underlying momentum in the business, including record asset management fund inflows, strong growth in MA Money's loan book, and Finsure brokers on platform and strong activity levels in corporate advisory. We've continued to invest in future growth initiatives consistent with what was outlined at our 2024 result announcement back in February this year. The impact of this investment spend on earnings will be weighted to the first half of 2025 as we invest in building our U.S.-based distribution capability. Combined with other seasonal factors, which are largely transaction-related, FY25 earnings are likely to be skewed towards the second half of the year, broadly in line with historical trends. The key highlights during the quarter were gross fund inflows of AUD 776 million.
That's up 52% compared with the same period in 2024, and that was supported by the successful raising for MA1. Assets under management of AUD 10.3 billion, up 7% on a year earlier. Finsure continued to strongly grow the number of brokers using its platform, increasing to just under 4,000 after the addition of 194 net new brokers during the quarter. MA Money grew its loan book to AUD 2.6 billion from AUD 1.1 billion a year earlier. It continues to accelerate its growth and has just recently surpassed over AUD 3 billion in total loans just this week. In fact, the business has already posted its highest ever month for gross loan settlements in May and successfully completed a AUD 1 billion residential mortgage-backed securities public term issuance, highlighting investor confidence in the MA Money platform.
Finally, the transaction pipeline in the corporate advisory business remains strong, with good activity levels in the business. As the Chair has already mentioned, in the second quarter of 2025, we announced the strategic acquisition of IP Generation. This enhances our real estate investment capability and capital raising platform further. It increases the group's assets under management to over AUD 12 billion and positions us well to take advantage of an attractive point in the real estate investment cycle as interest rates start to decline. In summary, stepping back, we can see that the group has made excellent progress in navigating a more challenging set of operating conditions over the past two years, whilst investing in new business platforms and scaling existing ones. This has transitioned the business to a more consistent, less cyclically dependent earnings base off which to grow in the years ahead.
We will continue to strategically invest in growth platforms where significant opportunity exists, such as our focus on growing our U.S. private credit platform in 2025. However, we anticipate the earnings headwind from such investment is now declining as revenue scales in our growth businesses such as MA Money, and we're all very excited for what the future holds for our business. I want to echo the Chair's appreciation for our people. Their commitment and hard work are behind every metric and milestone that we have delivered over the past years. We thank our clients for their ongoing support and the trust that they place in MA Financial Group, and we extend our sincere appreciation to our shareholders for your continued belief in our long-term vision and faith in the board and management team. We look forward to keeping you informed of our progress throughout 2025.
Thanks, Chris, and some further detail in relation to some of the matters I briefly alluded to. Now, for the formal items of business of the meeting, I turn to the first item of business on today's agenda, which is to receive and consider the financial report of the company, its controlled entities, and reports of the directors in order to. The year ended 31st December 2024. These reports were released on the ASX as part of the annual report on February 20, 2025. They are also published on the company's website. The text of the first item of business is shown on the screen. Neither the Corporations Act nor the company's constitution requires a vote of shareholders on these reports, but it is an opportunity for shareholders to ask questions relating to the reports.
Please note any questions on the remuneration report will be dealt with when we reach the relevant agenda item later in the meeting. I now invite any questions you may have on this item of business or general questions about the management of the company. As mentioned by Daniel, in order to enable all shareholders a reasonable opportunity to be heard, all speakers are asked to please limit themselves to no more than two questions at a time at the microphone. Do we have any questions? We have no questions? Thank you. As there are no questions, we now move to the next item of business, item 2A. Item 2A on today's agenda is the reelection of Andrew Pridham as a Director of the company. The text of the resolution is shown on the screen together with the details of the voting already received on this item.
Andrew Pridham is offering himself for reelection at this meeting. Andrew was appointed to the board of the company on 25th May 2010. Andrew has served as a director since the formation of MA Financial Group Limited. He was Chief Executive Officer from 2009- 2020 and has 30 years' experience in investment banking. Andrew was one of the founders of the company in 2009. Andrew is not considered an independent director as he is employed by the company in an executive capacity. The board recommends, with Andrew abstaining, that shareholders vote in favor of item 2A. I now invite any questions you may have on this item of business. Are there any questions? As there are no questions, please complete your voting cards for item 2A. Item 2B on today's agenda is the reelection of Julian Biggins as director of the company.
The text of the resolution is shown on the screen together with the details of the voting already received on this item. Julian is offering himself for reelection at this meeting. Julian Biggins was one of the Founders of the company in 2009. He was appointed to the Board of the company on 2nd February 2017 and then as Joint Chief Executive Officer in February 2020. Julian has over 20 years' experience in Investment Banking and Asset Management Leadership and holds a Bachelor of Business Real Estate and a Bachelor of Business Banking and Finance from the University of South Australia. The board, with Julian abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of item 2B. Are there any questions in relation to this item of business? Thank you. As there are no questions, please complete your voting cards for item 2B.
Item 2C on today's agenda is the election of Cathy Yuncken as the Director of the company. The text of the resolution is shown on the screen together with the details of the voting already received on this item. Cathy is offering herself for election at this meeting. As I alluded to previously, Cathy has over 30 years' experience in the Financial Services industry as a Senior Banker and Executive Leader at Major Global and Australian Financial Institutions, including Bank of America, Barclays Capital, Commonwealth Bank, and Westpac Group. She holds Commerce and Law degrees from the University of New South Wales. She's a member of Chief Executive Women, a graduate member of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and a mentor with the Minerva Network. Cathy is currently a Non-Executive Director of State Super and Fleet Partners Group. Her past directorships include Chair of the St.
George & Sutherland Medical Research Foundation, Chair of BT Private Nominees, Executive Director of the Advisory Boards of Bank SA and Bank of Melbourne, and Non-Executive Director of Fitted for Work. The board considers that Cathy brings exceptional experience to the board through the role she has held as both a director and executive across a broad range of financial services. The board considers Cathy to be independent and free from any business or other relationship that could materially interfere with or could reasonably be perceived to materially interfere with the independent exercise of a judgment. The board, with Cathy abstaining, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of item 2C. Are there any questions in relation to this item of business? Thank you. As there are no questions, please complete your voting cards for item 2C.
Item 3 on today's agenda relates to the adoption of the company's remuneration report for the year ended 31st December 2024. The text of the resolution is shown on the screen together with the details of the voting already received on this item. The remuneration report sets out the remuneration policies of the company and reports on the remuneration arrangements in place for the company's key management personnel during the year. As prescribed by the Corporations Act, the vote on the adoption of the remuneration policy is advisory only and does not bind the directors or the company. However, the board will take the outcome of the vote and discussion at this meeting into account in setting remuneration policy for future years. The board unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of item 3. I now invite any questions you may have on this item of business.
As there are no questions, I now move to conclude this annual general meeting. Could you please ensure that you place your completed voting card and ballot boxes near the exit to the room? The results of the poll will be announced later today on the ASX and will be published on the company's website. Thank you very much for your attention and for your continued support of the company. Before I declare the meeting closed, I hope that shareholders leave today's meeting with a genuine sense of fulfillment and excitement at the company's future as outlined today in the few notes I made and the commentary from Chris. This business has gone through an incredible transformation since its public listing in 2017, and it's a company and a group of executives and people that I'm immensely proud to be associated with. Thank you, everyone.
I now declare the meeting closed. Please join us for light refreshments, which will be served on the terrace. Thank you.