Thank you for standing by, and welcome to the NobleOak Life Limited FY 2023 results presentation. All participants are in listen-only mode. There will be a presentation followed by a question and answer session. If you wish to ask a question, you'll need to press the star key followed by the number one on your telephone keypad. I'd like to hand the conference over to Mr. Anthony Brown. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you, and good morning, all. Welcome to NobleOak Life's 2023 financial year results presentation. I'm Anthony Brown, the CEO of NobleOak, and I'm joined today by our CFO, Scott Pearson. Today, I'll start with an overview of the highlights from the year before handing over to Scott to cover the financials. Then I'll take you through our strategic priorities and the outlook for financial year 2024, and then open up for questions. So just moving to slide 4, I'm pleased to say that NobleOak continued to perform well in 2023. We delivered strong in-force premium growth ahead of our guidance, which we provided at half year, driven by the strength of our diversified distribution model.
While the first half sales were impacted by lower industry new business volumes, we were pleased to see the sales start to bounce back in the second half of the year as we continued to grow and gain market share. The market's still experiencing relatively modest growth, with around 5% annual growth across the life insurance industry, which is slowly recovering. Pleasingly, our claims and lapse experience also remains favorable to our long-term expectations and the wider industry. Alongside our strong financial disciplines and improving investment returns, it's enabled us to maintain stable margins while continuing to invest for long-term growth. We're pleased to have successfully implemented actions to mitigate our regulatory capital position at 30 June 2023, which gives us headroom to continue our organic growth plans, deliver good growth in premiums and profits.
In-force premium, the real value driver of our business, grew by 24% year-on-year to over AUD 315 million, reflecting continued market share growth, which increased to 2.7% of the market at December 2022. After new business sales were down around 46% on the prior year in the first half of the year, we were pleased to see sales bounce back in the second half to close the full year down around 26%. Our new business market share continues to track above our target at 13%. At 30 June 2023, we had over 120,000 active Life Insurance policies, up 16% from prior year, which is supported by our lapse rate of 8.1% across the portfolio. This remains below both our long-term expectations and the industry average.
Net insurance premium revenue was up by 22% to AUD 77.6 million, with underlying NPAT growing by around 9% to AUD 10.3 million, driven by our strong premium growth and disciplined approach to underwriting and expense management. Scott will provide some more specifics on these metrics in a few moments. Then moving to slide 6. Looking operationally, it was another productive year for the team, who did a great job to remain very focused on delivering our strategy while continuing to provide excellent products and service for our customers. This enabled us to maintain our high customer satisfaction ratings, to really crucial to managing our lapse rates and referrals, as well as status as Australia's most awarded direct life insurer.
We made further progress on our ESG commitments, including achieving carbon neutral certification for our business operations from Climate Active, in support of our commitment to net zero by 2030, as well as relocating to a new greener head office in Sydney. We've kicked off an organization-wide IT and digital transformation program, which will further enhance our market positioning, and I'll talk a little bit more about that later. In the Direct Channel, we continue to build our network of alliance partners. We've recently partnered with Costco, which is the world's third largest retailer, and it provides us with access to more than a million members in Australia. We expect to launch to their member base in around October this year, and we're hoping to announce another large partnership that month also. We're also developing a market-leading omnichannel experience for our customers.
This will further enhance our differentiation as customers are increasingly opting for self-service in Life Insurance. I'll now pass over to Scott to cover off the financials. Thanks, Scott.
Thank you, Anthony, and good morning, all. I'll begin on slide 8, and I'll talk through the group results. As Anthony said, over the last 12 months, we have increased our active policy count to over 120,000, driving strong in-force premium growth of 24%, which was ahead of our guidance from the half year. In-force premium is the key value driver for NobleOak, and our strong growth reflects that we continue to gain market share, so we are pleased with the results in a subdued market. While first half sales were down due to lower market sales activity, we were pleased to see them bounce back in the second half. We continue to outperform by taking larger share of new business sales than our current in-force market share.
Overall, our net margins remained relatively stable, with a lower underlying gross insurance margin, offset by lower administration expenses and higher investment returns. Underlying net profit after tax grew by 9% to AUD 10.3 million. This is a reasonable increase from the prior year, with positive impacts from strong investment returns and disciplined expense management, offset by strengthening of our claims reserves as we increased granularity in our reserving analysis and some investment in ACRC mitigation instruments. While we don't expect these adjustments again in 2024, there is always an element of uncertainty with respect to claims experience. We continue to seek the right balance, increasing our annual profits while investing in long-term growth and sustainability. I'll now turn to our operating segments, which provide a picture of the key drivers of our performance.
In the Direct Channel, our strategy continues to deliver results with our investment in digital marketing, brand, and our network of distribution partners driving momentum and growth in our market share. Our direct policy count increased to over 45,000, with in-force premium growing by 16% to AUD 80.3 million. Pleasingly, this is supported by low lapse rates that remain well below industry average at 10.6%. I know that the industry average is around 13%-15%. The underlying gross insurance margin remains strong even after the impact of normalizing lapse rates. While claims reserve strengthening reduced insurance margins by approximately 2%, overall, our claims experience remains better than the industry and better than our long-term assumptions. Our conservative reinsurance strategy helped to mitigate the impact of these changing actuarial assumptions.
Our expense ratio was stable, with operating leverage offsetting additional expenses for building capability and regulatory undertakings. So in the direct segment, our underlying NPAT increased by 3% to AUD 5.6 million. Turning now to our Strategic Partner channel on slide 10. Our Strategic Partners continued to deliver excellent growth, with in-force premium up 27% to AUD 235.6 million. Total active policies were up 18% to over 74,000, as NobleOak continues to gain share in the advised market, driven by our contemporary products and high-quality service. A combination of fewer industry advisors, less switching activity, and higher sales in the prior year impacted the new business growth rate. However, we were pleased to see market activity improve in the second half of the year.
Lapse rates continued to normalize in Strategic Partner segment, but at 7.2%, they remain well below the market averages and below long-term expectations, as referred to earlier. Our gross insurance margin was impacted again by changing mix between partners, as well as a 0.5% margin impact from strengthening claims reserves. However, our claims experience again remains better than industry averages. A stable expense ratio and higher investment returns preserve the overall margins, with our conservative reinsurance strategy continuing to reduce volatility in net profits. So in Strategic Partner segment, our underlying net NPAT increased by 23% to AUD 4 million. On slide 11, you can see the performance of our administration services business, Genus.
In-force premium under management reduced by less than expected to AUD 24.7 million, due to favorable lapse experience, which has improved materially since the conclusion of the Freedom portfolio remediation program in April 2022. Genus continues to contribute to the group's financial performance, with underlying NPAT reducing in line with in-force premium to AUD 0.8 million. Turning now to capital on slide 12. NobleOak is in a sound capital position, above its regulatory capital requirements, providing a platform for continued growth. At 30 June, our capital base was AUD 40.3 million. This represents a multiple of 191% of the regulatory requirements, with AUD 7.7 million surplus above our internal targets.
On slide 13, you can see that as disclosed in March, we were notified by APRA that our approach to calculating and reporting reinsurance asset exposures was inconsistent with APRA's interpretation of its Prudential Standards. At the time, we were already in the process of changing the way we operated our reinsurance arrangements, and we successfully implemented those actions to mitigate our reinsurance asset concentration exposures by 30 June 2023 as planned. On this slide, we have outlined the actions taken, including claims settlement arrangements, deposit back arrangements and letters of credit that all provide security over reinsurance asset exposures. The financial impact of these actions is outlined on the slide for modeling purposes, and effectively, we forego investment returns on AUD 109 million in investment assets due to fees paid to reinsurers.
With fees paid on letters of credit, we'll also incrementally add to our net reinsurance commission costs. Importantly, the net impact of these arrangements is not material. APRA has confirmed that our arrangements meet its Prudential Standards, and we will continue to explore more efficient long-term options as we grow as a business. On slide 14, the other major regulatory implementation we are preparing for at the moment is the new insurance accounting standard, AASB 17, which took effect from 1 July 2023. The new accounting standard will fundamentally change the way we account for our business, with the aim of increasing comparability between insurers in Australia and worldwide. From a financial perspective, the impact of the changes in the presentation of the financial statements is sorry.
But from a financial perspective, apart from the changes to the presentation of the financial statements, the main differences in the accounting treatments is that you're required for policy liabilities to include an explicit risk margin. Insurance contracts and reinsurance contracts are required to be accounted for independently, and the timing of recognition of profit over time will change, and the portfolio profitability required to be assessed at a more granular level. Importantly, though, from a commercial perspective, there is no material impact on the underlying economics of the business or our strategy.
From these things, in terms of impact on the balance sheet, we expect to write down part or all of our Deferred Acquisition Cost transition, which will likely provide us with a material capital benefit due to carried forward tax losses from that date, as we can realize those tax losses over the years to come. In terms of impact on the profit and loss, while total profitability over time will not change, the timing of profit release from year to year will vary from the existing pattern. We plan to host an information session for investors and analysts ahead of our half-year results in February, which will be the first time that we're required to report under the new accounting standard.
With all that said, in summary, while it's been a very busy year from a regulatory perspective, we are pleased with the ongoing growth of the business and continue to focus on our financial disciplines. With that, I'll hand back to Anthony.
Thanks, Scott. On slide 16, a little bit more on our Direct Channel. In the Direct Channel, our unique brand and diversified distribution continues to drive growth. As I mentioned, our team really did an excellent job over the last 12 months to provide outstanding customer service. That actually resulted in us remaining as Australia's most awarded direct life insurer, and our direct contact center being named number one in Australia overall, and that's compared to a number of other industries as well. It's a great achievement for the team. This year, we designed and commenced a two-year project roadmap to enhance our direct customer experience, and that includes our omnichannel platform upgrade, which will enable us to increase the efficiency of our sales and underwriting process and our online servicing. There are three main benefits to this initiative.
We will get a modernized IT platform that's more scalable, more flexible, and allowing customers to access data, a new data warehouse, and a redesigned front end with a more simplified product for new channels. Our white label partnerships with RAC WA and Budget Direct have had really strong momentum, and they're really good partners for us. They're delivering strong lead volumes, and actually, we just clocked over AUD 2 million of sales from the Budget Direct channel, which both Budget Direct and NobleOak are very pleased about. We now have partnerships with 17 professional associations, which provide access to over 400,000 target customers, and our network of alliance partners that promote our direct product continue to grow. We now have over 40, including Costco, as I mentioned earlier, and we continue to develop and convert our pipeline of potential distribution partners.
Our diversified distribution model and strong brand really continues to deliver market share. On the next slide, turning to our Strategic Partner channel, our partners also continue to outperform in the advised market. Industry new business activity does remain subdued, and it was quite flat in the first half, but as the market continued to settle post the introduction of the new IDII products, which you may remember were launched in October 2021, compounded by a reduction of advisors in the market. But we have seen this improve in the second half, with new business sales recovering and NobleOak's partners continuing to gain market share with their own new products and pricing, which resulted in multiple award wins for both PPS and NEOS.
Overall, our claims and lapse experience in the Strategic Partner channel remains positive to industry as well, and we're entering the final stage of our reinsurance tender with PPS, which will support the ongoing growth of that portfolio, with PPS having recently expanded its addressable market by adding further eligible professions to its target customer base. Our Strategic Partner products continue to deliver good market share growth, with a 13% share of new business driving our in-force share up to 2.2% of the advised market. Our IT transformation program that I briefly mentioned will materially improve the way our customers interact with our products and services, and it will enhance the scalability of our business to support the next stage of growth.
We're upgrading our core policy admin system to a new secure cloud-based platform, and building in a self-service portal that will enable customers to modify and update their policies. This will deliver material efficiency benefits as well over time. We're investing in a new data warehouse, which will provide us with far more powerful analytics capability, which will support sales, service, and reporting functions, and we're building a modernized front end to our direct product. Our aim is to enhance the market-leading omnichannel experience we already have for our customers, and we think this will be a real differentiator for us as customers are increasingly opting for self-service in Life Insurance. It'll also result in some economies of scale, as more customers will be able to access cover without any human interaction, all while building better automation to generate some economies of scale.
Ultimately, we do expect these deliverables to provide us with a better view of our customers, and enable us to automate processes and enhance our data analytics to enable us to deliver tailored products and pricing for customers. The project's been very tightly scoped and managed. We're currently about a third of the way through the project, and we remain confident in achieving the original budget and the objectives. Slide 19, sustainable growth is a big priority for NobleOak, and following the introduction of our ESG framework in 2022, we've made further progress this year. In the first half, we relocated our new office in Sydney, which has the highest 5-star NABERS rating, enabling us to more accurately measure our carbon emissions.
We also achieved carbon neutral certification for our business operations from Climate Active after measuring and reducing our carbon emissions and purchasing 100% Australian Carbon Credit Units. You can see in the right-hand column that we're on track to meet our core sustainability targets with a highly diverse workforce, strong culture, and governance, all features of our business. I'm very proud of the progress that we've made, but there's still much more to come. Briefly talk through some of our strategic priorities and the key focus areas for the year. Our key priority is really to build on our position as Australia's leading direct life insurer. We think there's plenty of opportunity in the market. The Direct Channel is our core long-term growth engine, and we're committed to continuing to invest in our brand, technology, and diversified network of distribution partners.
Secondly, we will build and support our network of advisor partners, particularly NEOS and PPS, in the Strategic Partner channel. The adviser market remains an important growth opportunity for us, and we're committing to work closely with our partners and continue to grow their share. And thirdly, we will focus on optimizing the business to achieve more economies of scale, in the next couple of years. This will be driven by our growth and further assisted by our ongoing investment in technology that I mentioned. These strategic priorities are underpinned by our eight key focus areas and supported by our ongoing investment in people, who are really at the heart of our business.
Slide 22, you can see key initiatives that really underpin those priorities, and I won't go through each of these, but overall, it's shaping up to be another really productive year for us, and I've great confidence in the team's ability to deliver while keeping their eye on the ball and our customers at the heart of everything we do. Slide 23, just turning to the outlook for 2024. It's pleasing that market conditions are seeming to improve, and while the in-industry new business volumes are below historical levels, they appear to continue to recover. In fact, we've just experienced a really positive July, like, one of our strongest, July's, to date. And against this backdrop, we do expect to achieve above-market growth, supported by lapse rates, that we also expect to remain favorable to the market despite the economic outlook remaining cautious.
Rising interest rates have been a tailwind for NobleOak, with significantly improved investment returns and inflation-linked premiums combining to offset some of the inflationary impacts on our cost base and help protect margins. We will retain our strong financial disciplines while investing for growth and capability, particularly as we implement the next phase of our IT transformation. While the industry continues to be impacted by regulatory change, we do expect the Quality of Advice Review, or QAR, to also be a bit of a tailwind for us because it appears to support the direct model and provides options for moving into adjacent areas of direct advise. We remain well capitalized to continue our organic growth trajectory, and we'll continue to selectively evaluate inorganic opportunities in line with our established growth strategy.
In financial year 2024, we'd expect to continue to perform well and punch above our weight, with continued in-force premium market share growth and a disciplined approach to enhanced profitability. So before I close, I just wanted to reflect on why we feel really confident in the long-term opportunity ahead for NobleOak. We are Australia's fastest growing direct life insurer, and we're continuing to capture market share from the incumbents, as I've mentioned. And we operate in a market that has over AUD 11 billion of annual premiums, reflecting a huge opportunity, and we are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the structural market tailwinds, including increasing preferences for buying insurance directly and online. We want to be at the forefront of this behavioral change.
Our direct distribution model and diversified growth strategy provides us with options, and our unique brand and highly customer-focused value proposition continues to win new customers. Finally, our strong financial discipline and high quality, fully underwritten products with minimal legacy enables us to deliver relatively stable margins. 2024 will be another exciting year for us as we launch our newly designed products and access more growth channels. So in closing, I would like to thank the passionate NobleOak team for their amazing efforts for another huge year. They're a small team. They continue to work diligently to deliver our strategy while providing wonderful service to our customers.
One small development that we found out about this morning is we actually won Employer of Choice Award, as part of the Australian Business Awards, and it's a great endorsement for the how engaged and productive our team is. So it's a, it's a really pleasing credit for the business and for our team. Also, thank you very much to the shareholders who have continued to support us in our journey. It's greatly appreciated. Thank you very much, and I'll now open up 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. If you're on a speakerphone, please pick up your handset to ask your question. Your first question comes from Philip Pepe of Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Congratulations on the good result, and thanks for taking the question. Just got a question around operating leverage. So, I mean, as you said, in-force premium growth up over 20%, which is solid. Looks like the NPAT growth of 9% was pulled down a little by the underlying insurance margin movement, sort of 3 percentage points, and that kind of looks like, it's the Direct Channel that didn't show the operating leverage that one would expect. Can you just talk us through, perhaps in greater detail, slide 9, and more importantly, what happens going forward? Because 16% in-force premium growth with only 3% NPAT growth seems like an anomaly. So what, what happens in a normal year? And, in terms of claim ratios, are we, are we normalized now?
What's FY 2024 look like for the Direct Channel, please?
Thanks, Philip. It's Scott. I'll come at that with 2 points, if I can, 2 angles. The first one is that the group result impact ratio or gross insurance margin did drop by 300 points in the year. At a group level, it's important to recognize that probably 200 of those points was just a change in mix between the segments, right? So, with the Strategic Partners with lower margins growing a little bit faster than the direct business. So that was probably two-thirds of the group's gross insurance margin. But you're right, when it comes to looking at the direct business, it's actually had its own 300 basis points drop in margin and gross insurance margin also.
That was materially impacted by that claims reserve strengthening we referred to earlier, where we saw an improvement in our reserving processes on IP claims during the year, which will have seen a 200 basis point impact to the gross insurance margin in FY 2023, which we wouldn't expect to continue to happen in the future.
Gotcha. Understood. I guess if I can squeeze in a second one. In terms of current trading conditions, I guess you, you've mentioned July was strong. We'll get the output data when it comes out, but are you continuing to grow at sort of 20% pro forma strong? Or, you know, at which point, there's still a long way to go, but at which point do you, you know, close in on the industry growth of 5% pro forma?
Hi, Phil, it's Anthony here. So thanks for, thanks for the questions. Just to—I guess, just touching on the growth rate. So you're probably aware, just from previous presentations, that retail sales across the industry, and retail, including both advisor and direct sales, are down probably 40% from five years ago. And that's been driven through lower advisors and the new IDII products that came out in October of 2021. It has been slowly recovering from there. It has been quite a slow recovery, but as we mentioned, we did see it increase a bit in the second half.
... Of last financial year, the one we're reporting on, and that has continued to increase. So we're not giving any guidance, obviously, about the year, but we certainly are optimistic that we'll continue to grow at market share in excess, you know, of our in-force premium market share, and quite sizable differences. At the moment, we're growing at around four times our actual in-force market share. We don't see any real reasons why that would change a lot, you know, over the coming year.
Excellent. Thank you.
No problem.
Thank you. The next question will be from Nicholas McGarrigle, Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just to clarify on that gross insurance margin question, you mentioned a 200 basis point impact. Is that expected to reverse, or it's more a step down by 200 basis points, and the gross insurance margin on the direct side stays at that level permanently?
Yeah, from a margin perspective, it should reverse. Obviously, there was a one-off step change in reserves.
Yeah.
In FY 2023, which we would not expect to occur in 2024, in 2024, which therefore, the ratio should revert.
It's more of a change to reflect sort of everything that's happened to date, and it's not necessarily the claims experience, the claims expenses-
Yeah.
You expect in your P&L on a recurring basis?
Yes, good, good point, Nick. It wasn't driven by experience or incidents in the year. It was reassessment of prior reserve estimates, so it was a restatement. But importantly, Nick, make sure that everyone understands that our claims experience continues to be below market average and our long-term expectations. It's just a little bit reserved a little bit higher than we previously expected them-
Yeah
To need to be.
I mean, 'cause if I look at your insurance costs in the direct side, they went from kind of AUD 9 million in the first half to AUD 12 million in the second. And I guess, is the implication that 200 or 2% of your gross premium in that segment, so of the AUD 38 million of gross premium, 2%, 2% of that is sort of a one-off cost in the, in the insurance cost line?
Yeah, that's right.
Yeah. Okay. I mean, 'cause I guess if we look at the underlying NPAT margin, excluding investment income, it went backwards in FY 2023 by about 1.5 percentage points. So-
Yeah
... Does, to your mind, is that mostly explained by that one-off reserve adjustment?
That's correct. So the 2%'s obviously pre-tax. You take the net of that, the net of that, you get back to your, your, your closer to the 1.4, which will be similar to the 1.5% delta you were just describing.
Yep. Okay, so we should see a direct NPAT direct margin improvement, you know, reasonably considerable, on that normalizing into next year?
That's correct. From that, under the current accounting standards, that's correct.
Yeah. Okay. That's, that's useful to clarify. And then just in terms of the admin expenses, the, was there any one-off expense there, or that was normalized in that underlying impact number? You've sort of stripped out some, some of those regulatory costs that had to be, in terms of things you had to deal with in FY 2023.
We have split out the most material items. We don't like to normalize things too much, but there were the two significant activities happening during the period, which was the commencement of that of our IT projects, but also the accounting standard implementation, both were material events occurring. The other things happened during the period, which we referred to about our regulatory matters, but those weren't material. And so there's nothing else we would suggest you normalize at this point.
Okay, great. I mean, 'cause I guess in terms of sales and in-force, they were all very strong. It was more just the underlying NPAT result was diminished by that reserves adjustment.
Yeah.
Can you just talk through the reason for that change as well?
Sure, Nick. What we've done during the period in the last few months of the year, we're lifting our reserving practices, particularly in the IP space, where we've moved from more of a portfolio assessment of claims reserves, to a more granular analysis of claims estimates at a claim level, in line with an industry expectations around claims that are for those levels. That did change, have a step change in the reserves, where we found for more longer duration claims. We were being more precise. Importantly, I guess it showed the value of our reinsurance arrangements, conservative reinsurance arrangements, where our margins are being made...
It's been held or stable by the reinsurers participating in much of those reserve strip changes.
Yeah, thanks for that. And then just in terms of,
Yeah
... That Budget Direct comment that you made, AUD 2 million in sales, is that... And that really has only been reflected really in that FY 2023 year. Is that right? So it sort of accounted to circa 20% of your business were written in the direct line in 2023?
It's actually since the start of the Budget Direct relationship, which was, from memory, around October 2021.
... Up until now, Nick. So it's, so not all of that is reflected in the 23 number. But, but what we're finding is, like, like all these partnerships, they generally take a little bit of time to get traction, and we're finding both of these partners, the traction is improving on them as we sort of learn how to target their membership and customer bases more effectively.
And I mean, the Costco relationship looks really interesting. It's obviously a very large member base. Can you just talk through how you're looking to activate that base?
Yeah, look, obviously, it's really early days 'cause we haven't actually launched officially yet, but we have, we've signed the arrangement with them. But they, they're really strong on membership marketing, Costco, so they've got their outlets in Australia, which they're planning to double in the next couple of years. But they, the way they operate is you pay a membership fee, and, you then get the discounted, or very well-priced products. And they do heavily email and promote their products through monthly newsletters and those types of tools. So we do expect that we would just form a part of that marketing, the membership marketing program that they already have. It's likely to also include some sort of in-store display, but we think the greater benefit is through their direct membership marketing.
But we're the only life insurer, you know, partnering with Costco. So again, we think it will take a little while to sort of kick in, into gear and learn, you know, how to best market to their members, but they do have these relationships overseas as well with life insurers. So they're quite, you know, they're quite bullish about the opportunity in the medium to long term.
The way to think about that, it's within the envelope of your normal kind of-
Right
... Sub 200% of year-one premiums, but you're giving up some margin to Costco, but you're also giving a bit of a discount to their members. Is that sort of the inducement?
Yeah. Yeah, it's sort of a similar type of arrangement to our other partners, where it's our direct product, so, as opposed to our advised product. So we're, we have our direct product margin, and, whether we pay commission or fee or whatever it is, we always make sure our cost of acquisition is under a target level that we have, and, this certainly sits within our target cost of acquisition.
Okay, thanks for that. Just in terms of the capital position, I think you've given some indications on what that looks like post some of the accounting standards and other changes, but just a comment on your capital base and excess.
So, the presentation included that we at 30 June have assets above our internal targets of AUD 7.7 mil. So, that gives us some runway for growth into the future.
And there, there's still a Pillar 2 adjustment number in, in the target capital?
Regulatory standards preclude us from talking about those numbers, Nick, so but the answer would be yes.
Okay. And then just you haven't provided really an embedded value update since the prospectus, so I'm just curious if you've undertaken that work and if it's something that you can talk to?
We have commenced a project to begin building out that capability on a more regular basis within the business, but we haven't chosen to start using it from a public perspective yet, Nick.
All right, great. Maybe just on the tech investments that you've made, I get that there's a member engagement benefit. I mean, if you think about the investment, can you just quantify it for us? Is it gonna be largely through OpEx, or is there gonna be some capital? You know, is it gonna run through the P&L, and then what kind of ROI do you think you'll generate on that from a financial perspective?
Yeah, from a... I think Anthony talked about the strategic objective achieved that come from it. I think we in the accounts, we provide a reference to that we'd spent about AUD 500,000 so far in FY 2023, with the overall projected cost for the project to be about AUD 2 million, for which we're gonna manage tightly through the period. We aren't proposing to be expensing that, sorry, so we are proposing to capitalizing that. We expect to be expensing it, but given its significant nature and long-term benefit, we'll probably put through an underlying adjustment.
Okay, understood. There was a comment in the outlook around increased profit volatility on the back of AASB 17. As an insurance layman, can you just explain to us what we should think about going forward? And we kind of provide some adjustment or underlying representation of profit versus that new standard.
Yeah, Nick, actually trying to describe AASB 17 in layman terms is actually probably an oxymoron. But what I will just say is that we're obviously well progressed with the project. What we've said to the market to date is that from a balance sheet perspective, we are expecting to see a material reduction in the assets of transition, primarily driven by, we're expecting to write down in part or in total, our deferred acquisition cost at transition, the transition date being 30 June 2022. And that material reduction in our assets would actually-
... Drive a carry forward tax loss, which will have some sort of value going forward. From a P&L perspective, we haven't actually, we're still working through that, working through that closely and haven't prepared information that we're ready to describe to the market. It's quite clear, though, that the standard will change the timing of profit over time. Whilst the profit is not expected, whilst the underlying economics for our business is not gonna change, it's expected to change the timing on which that profit is recognized from year to year. But we will be planning, Nick, information sessions ahead of our half year results to help people understand those, that, how that will play out.
All right, thanks a lot for taking those questions.
No problem.
Thank you. Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and then one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. Our next question will be from Matt Harper. Taylor Collison, please go ahead.
Hi, Anthony and Scott. Firstly, congratulations on another strong result. Just wanted to ask, you know, how's the pipeline for further alliance partnerships looking at this point in time?
Hi, Matt. Thanks for, thanks for the question. Look, it remains strong. We have an active pipeline of partners that we're always working through, and we have a target number for each stage of the pipeline, whether they're very early, you know, mid-stage or towards development. And that number is pretty consistent from year to year, so it remains strong. The timing is never known for partners, so you can work, you know, hard and you get one, you know, one year and then the next year, three come in. There's always a bit of uncertainty around that. But as long as we're working through it, we're really confident that more will definitely grow, you know, in the future for us. And as I mentioned, we're really close to another one, we're just waiting to sign the agreement.
We're hoping that that will come through in the next two months.
Great. Sounds good. I just saw in the annual report there was a comment that, you know, since the new IDII, products were launched, there's been sort of less changing activity, which is helping lapse rates, but making it harder to get new business. So the question is: do you expect that to change at any point, or is that sort of the new normal?
Well, it's actually a mix, to be honest. I think, 'cause there's two factors that have resulted in the reduced sales volumes. Well, one of it is the reduction in advisors, that the advisor market has been heavily impacted by the Royal Commission in particular. And the other one is the new IDII products, which were launched in October 2021, which were more expensive and less featured than the income protection products. So that second one will remain, 'cause those products aren't changing. They're gonna remain very different to the previous ones. But we are finding that now that we're, you know, close to two years after the launch of those IDII products, people are now starting to, the purchase activity is increasing of those products.
We think that will slowly build, but it won't get to the same level as the previous products were, 'cause they were lower cost and more, featured. And the second one, the advisor impact. The advisor numbers are still very low, but with the quality, Quality of Advice Review, which was launched a couple of months ago, there's strong changes afoot to stimulate advisor growth and their ability to provide lower cost advice in the future. So we think that trend will also improve. Both of them will improve, both of them will be relatively slow, but we, we do think it, you know, there's built up demand. And with those two changes, you know, we do see really good medium to long-term prospects in the industry.
Okay, great. Thanks for that. Just the last one from me.
Yes.
I guess, we've seen across sort of every industry that it's become more costly to acquire customers through Google or Meta, sort of, you know, digital acquisition. But in the last few months, I suppose we've heard that for some players, you know, costs are beginning to ease, in some industries. So any comments on that?
I guess the only... It's, it's a fair point. I think, it has, as you try and grow volume, you know, the way that Google algorithms work, the more volume you want, the higher the cost goes. So you have to manage that really tightly. We probably have seen an increase in search, natural search traffic over the last few months, but we know from experience that goes up and down, so we don't get too, too excited, you know, about it. We're not seeing any material change in the cost, you know, the SEM or the search engine marketing costs. But there is no doubt that with the change in the dynamics of ChatGPT and Bing, et cetera, that the likelihood is that the cost of Google will go down is much, is much greater likelihood than it going up.
So we do think that there may be some positive experiences in the future as far as Google Search terms go.
Okay, great. That's all from me for now. Thanks, guys.
Thanks, Matt.
There are no further questions at this time. I'll hand back to Mr. Brown for closing remarks. Please go ahead.
I'll just thank you very much for your engagement. I hope you're pleased with the results. It's been a really productive year, and again, I just wanted to thank the team for another, you know, really productive and event for 2023. We're really excited about 2024. We've got a lot of exciting and new initiatives, and we really hope that the shareholders are happy with the results so far. So thank you very much for dialing in.
That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.