I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Anthony Brown, CEO. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning all, welcome to NobleOak Life's financial results presentation for the first half of financial year 2026. I'm Anthony Brown, 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 half, and then I'll hand over to Scott to cover the financials in a bit more detail. I'll take you through an update on our strategy execution and the outlook for the rest of financial year 2026. Finally, we'll open up for some questions. Before I get into the results, I'd just like to remind you about what sets NobleOak apart. We remain Australia's most awarded direct life insurer, and with a business model built on predictable annuity trail revenue from in-force premiums.
Our customer-first culture, high-value products, combined with modern systems and a strong focus on AI-led transformation, continues to support both growth and efficiency. Importantly, our tradition towards an APRA-aligned life company structure will further enhance capital efficiency and flexibility, providing a strong platform for long-term growth. All of this underpins strong and increasing cash flows, disciplined capital management, and meaningful optionality as we scale. Slide five summarizes the key operational highlights for the half. We're really pleased to see continued strong sales and lapse outperformance drive in-force growth across both our direct and our advised channels. We further gained market share in both segments, supported by product quality, great service, and disciplined insurance management. We executed well against our growth strategy with new products and partnerships, including the launch of a major new direct alliance partner with one of Australia's largest health insurers, nib, which has subsequently launched.
A new strategic partner product launch, Futura, with our NEOS partners. Capital remains sound and within our target range, and we continue to embed AI across the business in a prudent way to drive efficiency and improve customer experience. All in all, it's been a very productive half for NobleOak. Just turning to slide six, with some of the financial highlights. The half year 26 marks a major milestone to NobleOak as we pass the halfway point on our journey to our long-term target of AUD 1 billion of in-force premiums. In-force premiums at NobleOak increased to AUD 505 million, which is up 19% over the last 12 months, driven by strong sales and better-than-industry lapse rates. Underlying NPAT also increased by 11% to AUD 9.6 million, reflecting stable margins, operating leverage, and good cost management.
Our new business market share and in-force premium market share both continued to grow, reinforcing our position as a leading challenger in the market. Capital remains well within our target range, with a regulatory capital multiple of 174%, supporting both growth and ongoing investment in the business. I'll now hand over to Scott to cover some of the financials in a bit more detail. Thanks, Scott.
Thanks, Anthony, and good morning, everyone. I'll start on slide eight with an overview of the group's financial performance. As Anthony mentioned, in-force premium at December 25 has grown to AUD 504.8 million, a 19% growth over the last 12 months or a 9% increase in the six months since June, reflecting strong sales and retention.
New business grew by 11% to AUD 33.8 million in the six months as we continue to take over 10% of market sales. Lapse rates increased as the portfolio matures, but remained below industry average at 12.4%. Underlying NPAT grew in line with guidance by 11% to AUD 9.6 million. Statutory NPAT of AUD 6.3 million was impacted by the increase in our provision for potential Victorian stamp duty exposure to AUD 6.5 million. Importantly, though, total exposure is now capped at approximately AUD 8.5 million. Importantly, underlying performance remains strong. The ongoing margin stability, supported by improved operating leverage and insurance margins that continue to benefit from our customer, our conservative risk retention, sees our results remain strong. Turning to slide nine and the direct segment.
Direct in-force premiums increased to over AUD 100 million for the first time to AUD 103.5 million, supported by continued market share gains. In the first half, we made changes to our direct sales function to improve performance, scalability, and accelerate AI adoption. These structural changes impacted new business performance in the short term, are designed to build momentum in the second half and beyond to be supported by our new nib partnership. Pleasingly, lapse rates reduced to 13.5%, around 2% below the total industry average. Repurchase of the RevTech Trail Commission in December 2024 reduced commissions paid by approximately AUD 2.5 million over the first 12 months and contributing strongly to margin expansion. As a result, underlying NPAT in the direct channel grew by 49%, which was a very strong result. Moving to slide 10.
In the strategic partner channel, in-force premiums group grew by 23% to AUD 401.3 million. Growth that's been driven by our strong partnerships with NEOS and PPS, with the launch of the new Futura product in October already building market awareness. Underwriting margins were impacted during the half by higher TPD claims experience. It's important to note that this increased TPD claims experience is a market-wide phenomenon, and importantly, NobleOak's conservative risk retention strategy continues to significantly mitigate the impact of claims volatility that we've seen during the period. Going into capital on slide 11. We remain well-capitalized, with capital adequacy ratio of 174%, which remains in the top half of our target range.
The net capital movement in the half reflects the benefit of the RevTech Trail Commission repurchase, the utilization of our tax losses, and offset by the Victorian stamp duty provision increases. Overall, our capital position continues to provide flexibility to fund growth, invest in the business, and progress with the life company transition. In summary, these are healthy results as we continue our growth trajectory and manage industry-wide claims experience, our Victorian stamp duty changes, our transition to the life company, and we continue to invest in the business. With that, I'll hand back to Anthony.
Thank you, Scott. Just turning to slide 13. We'll cover some of the financial year 26 strategic priorities in the first half. As mentioned, we launched the new nib product range, we'll now be providing access to more than 1 million nib members with a fully digital nib-branded life insurance product set. We're very excited about the potential for this partner, and given the natural adjacency of purchasing health and life insurance together, we do expect it to be a big success for NobleOak in the coming years. We're also really pleased to have launched the Futura product on the NEOS platform. It's a new product with NEOS that targets a different market segment and complements our existing advised products. Futura has delivered good early growth since December, and we again, do expect to see some benefits from that product in the coming periods.
As we announced at our financial year 2025 results, we continue to embed AI across the business in a very practical and disciplined way, focusing on delivering tangible business outcomes. We've deployed an AI underwriting tool that automates data analysis and triage, freeing up our underwriters to focus on more complex risks and higher-value judgment calls. This is improving speed, consistency, and quality of underwriting decisions. Over 90% of our staff now use AI tools in their daily activities, which does support greater efficiency, scalable productivity growth, and eventually a structurally leaner operating model. By improving underwriting turnaround times and lifting conversion rates, we're driving stronger growth while lowering our cost to serve. Importantly, we're leveraging our data. As our models improve with scale, they strengthen our competitive advantage by giving us a structural advantage in cost, speed, and customer experience.
We've delivered strong progress in the first half. There's naturally more to do, but the direction is clear. Invest where AI improves efficiency, growth, and long-term competitiveness. Finally, just turning to the outlook for financial year 26 on slide 14. After a strong first half, we are reaffirming our financial year 26 guidance. We expect in-force premium growth to be more than 15% and underlying NPAT growth of more than 10% for the full year. This outlook reflects continued sales momentum, disciplined underwriting, and further benefits from scale and automation. I'm really excited about the outlook for financial year 26 and look forward to updating you further on our progress through the year. That concludes the formal presentation. Before I open for questions, I just wanna thank you all for your time and continued interest in NobleOak. It's greatly appreciated. I'll now open up for Q&A. Thank you.
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 are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Today's first question comes from Philip Pepe with Shaw and Partners. Please go ahead.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking the question and, yeah, congratulations on another good result at the in-force premium level. Just on the strategic partners, just on the TPD claims going up, is there a particular segment and has that continued into the second half where that's occurred?
Custom-custom base you say?
Customer base industry.
You Phil, your questions about TPD experience, and you indicated whether it was a specific segment. It is an industry-wide development which is primarily driven by mental health claims experiences across the industry. We are seeing it in each of the channels. The strategic partners have a higher proportion of TPD than our direct book. That's where actually where we're seeing the experience come through. We are, I guess as you know, Phil, it's actually not had a significant impact on the aggregate result, albeit depressing those results due to our risk retention being lower in those segments.
Excellent. Thank you. Just second question. How has the relationship with nib started? Typically, that's a younger than average customer base, so it'd be great to get some of their clients on board to your book early. How has that relationship started in terms of them converting, health insurance customers into both health and life insurance customers?
Yeah, thanks. Thanks, Philip. It's Anthony here. Look, we're only literally a few weeks since the launch, but it's a, it's a very engaged partner, so we're really pleased with the cultural alignment, the alignment in targets between us and nib and their desire to really make it work. We saw a sale on the first day, and we are seeing some traction already, with their membership base. The active marketing won't really start until the next couple of months, so we'll get a really good idea in the second half of this calendar financial year.
If I can squeeze in a third one. Looks like you'll now be the last remaining independent life insurer in the country.
Yeah.
The change in ownership of ClearView make any difference to you at all? Is it an additional selling point to your customers saying, "Well, you know, the last Australian-owned company out there"?
Good question, Phil. We didn't see that. Did that news come out? It's obviously been a big talking point within NobleOak. Look, I think you're right. Our perspective is net it's a positive for NobleOak. There's one less competitor. ClearView will soon, if it goes through, which we do believe is likely, ClearView will no longer obviously be listed on the Australian ASX, we'll be the only purest life insurer listed, which again, we do think is a positive as well. Zurich is a good competitor. They're well capitalized. They'll obviously integrate ClearView in the next couple of years. They will be slightly distracted no doubt doing that, but they'll still be strong at the end. We don't think it's gonna have a massive change in competition going forward.
We certainly think in the short term there may be opportunity, you know, for us when there's a little bit of integration work happening between the two businesses.
Excellent. Excellent. Thanks again, and well done.
No problems.
Thank you. Our next question comes from Nick McGerrigle with Barrenjoey. Please go ahead.
Thanks. Just wondering when the direct business, underlying NPAT second half 2025 through to first half 2026 was down a reasonable amount. Just the drivers there, it seems like it was insurance margin related. Just trying to get a sense on, you know, where the leverage was lacking in direct given the in-force is obviously growing but profit went backwards half to half.
Phil, could you just repeat the question please, Phil? Apologies. Sorry. Nick, can you just repeat the question, please?
Looking at the direct underlying NPAT in the first half of FY 2026 versus the second half of FY 2025, it went backwards. I'm just trying to understand what costs or margin there was half to half to drive profit to decline when inforce is up. Just curious on that.
I'd have to take with that one. Nick, you're talking about in both periods, we had the first half. Second half last year, we saw a significant increase as we saw the RevTech Trail commissions come in the second half last year when we had some favorable claims experience as well, I think, in the second half of last year, which, in the results in direct in the first half this year, the claims experience are more closer to your normal expectations. I think you'll find that's the main drivers. Nick, I think, the expense ratio has actually come down a bit, so we should be seeing margin expansion in that segment as the product grows.
All right. Thanks.
Thank you. That does conclude our question and answer session. I'll now hand back to Mr. Brown for closing remarks.
Yes, thank you all. Thanks very much for attending. I just wanted to say thank you all to the NobleOak team for the strong six months. I hope we have a wonderful year. Thanks for dialing in. See you later.