Good morning and welcome to the 2024 Annual General Meeting of Netwealth Group Ltd. My name is Tim Antonie and I'm the Chair of the company. Let me begin. As it's now 9:30 A.M. and the quorum is present, I declare the meeting open. Let me begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands that we work in. Our office here in Melbourne is on the traditional lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. We celebrate the stories, cultures, and traditions of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people of all nations and pay our respects to their elders past and present. I would now like to introduce your board of directors. On my right, our CEO and Managing Director, Matt Heine, Sally Freeman, and Sarah Brennan. And on my left, our founder, Michael Heine, Davyd Lewis, and Kate Temby.
Also joining us today are our Group CFO and Joint Company Secretary, Grant Boyle, for for the last time in an official capacity. We'll talk about that. Our Chief Risk Legal and Governance Officer, Jodie Hampson, our Chair of Netwealth Superannuation Services, Rita Harris, and Independent Director, Lewis Bearman, and our Lead Audit Partner from Deloitte, Lani Cockrem. I also welcome all Netwealth team members with us today, either in the room or online. Today we have six items of business: the receipt and consideration of the 2024 Annual Report, the adoption of the Remuneration Report, the re-election of Kate Temby as a Director, the election of Sarah Brennan as a Director, the grant of Performance Rights to our CEO and Managing Director, Matt Heine, and the increase in the non-executive directors' aggregate fee pool.
Before we turn to the formal business of the meeting, Matt and I would like to take the opportunity to discuss the 2024 financial year recent performance and outlook. We're happy to take any questions on the presentations when we consider the 2024 Annual Report. The 2024 financial year was another year of milestones and impressive performance for Netwealth. Throughout FY24, inflation steadily declined and global equity markets rebounded from their first quarter lows, and bond rates moderated. These market dynamics drove a 10.3% increase in the Australian platform market, FUA, to AUD 1.1 trillion at 30 June 2024. Net inflows for the industry were modest at AUD 10.3 billion. Netwealth further increased its market share by 0.9% to 7.9%, with solid custodial FUA net inflows of AUD 10.9 billion. Netwealth's total FUA increased by 17.7 billion, or 25.2%, to AUD 88 billion at 30 June 2024.
Funds under management increased by 28.4% to AUD 20.5 billion, with managed accounts increasing by 29.4% for the year. Total income for FY24 increased by 18.9% to AUD 255.2 million, predominantly driven by the growth in FUA from existing and new clients. EBITDA margin increased by 190 basis points to 48.8% due to strong income growth and moderate expense growth of 14.5%. This resulted in an impressive 23.8% increase in EBITDA to AUD 124.7 million. NPAT increased by 24.1% to AUD 83.4 million. The board adopted a slightly lower payout ratio, and dividends increased by 16.7% to AUD 0.28 per share. High cash conversion continued with a 19.8% increase in operating cash flow before tax of AUD 127.3 million. Return on equity post-tax further increased by 320 basis points to 62.3% for FY24. Our balance sheet is in excellent shape with a net cash balance and minimal financial liabilities. Strong governance is paramount to our success.
We continue to actively manage and enhance our risk management and corporate governance practices to meet regulatory changes and exceed the expectations of our stakeholders. We made significant progress on our sustainability objectives, with particular focus on those important to our stakeholders and where we believe we can make a real difference. I highlight some of our FY24 achievements on screen and encourage you all to read our Corporate Sustainability Report, which you will find on our website. Following four appointments to the Executive Committee in FY23, the enhanced breadth and capability of our executive team was clearly evident throughout FY24. The consistent delivery of record annual results over the past 10 years is a testament to the exceptional leadership of our executive team and the talent, agility, and dedication of our Netwealth team, now 600 plus.
Grant Boyle commenced as CFO just prior to our IPO in 2017 and has been critical to Netwealth's incredible success as a listed company. I thank him for his significant contribution and wish him all the best. I also welcome our new CFO, Hayden Stockdale, who's actually sitting next to Grant, and Hayden commences next Monday. So welcome aboard. I thank Rita Harris, Lewis Bearman, their fellow NSS directors, and the trustee team for their effective discharge of their obligations and their strategic execution. Thank you. I thank my fellow directors for their dedication, insightful advice, and governance. I take this opportunity to welcome Sarah Brennan to the board, and you'll hear from Sarah soon. Sarah brings extensive industry experience and complementary skills, and I can assure you she's immediately added significant value. Finally, I thank our clients and shareholders.
We look forward to working with you all in FY25 in what is shaping up to be another successful year. I will now hand over to Matt.
Thank you, Tim, and good morning, everyone. My name is Matt Heine, and I'm the CEO and Managing Director of Netwealth. As you've just heard from Tim, we've had another fantastic year in the last financial year, and pleasingly, this financial year has got off to a great start in terms of FUA growth. As of the 18th of November, FUA is now AUD 98.6 billion, a 12% increase in FUA from the 30th of June 2024. As you can see from the charts here, we've consistently delivered FUA, FUM, and account growth. FUA increased to AUD 95.4 billion at 30th of September, a four-year compound annual growth rate in excess of 29%. For this September quarter, we've had a record level of FUA net inflows of AUD 4 billion, a 93.5% higher than September quarter last year.
A key takeaway from these charts is our successful expansion into key market segments: the emerging affluent, the mass affluent, and the established affluent. All of these segments continue to grow as we build out features that appeal to the relevant market segments and the advisors that service them. The platform composition is now very evenly spread between our client segments, but also our product segments, including retail, wholesale, and super accounts. From a product perspective, of the AUD 95 billion in FUA that we recorded at the 30th of September and following a very successful launch of the updated product, we saw an increase in Accelerator Core to 4.5%. This was a result of a AUD 655 million net inflow for the 12-month period to 30th of September, an increase in flows of 319% compared to the prior 12-month period.
This next slide is an important slide and really highlights the success of the Netwealth strategy and also the rotation from legacy platforms. As a result of this ongoing trend, our market share at the end of June has grown to 7.9%. And you can see in the chart the dominance of the specialist platforms, including Netwealth, compared to the legacy platforms, which, despite significant market share, have experienced negative net flows. We believe this trend, which started some time ago, will continue for many years to come. Moving on to our strategy. As the platform and industry, next slide, please, as the platform and the industry continues to evolve, it's been really important for us to make sure that we've got a very clear focus on what it is that we're delivering to our customers.
And in addition to adding a significant number of new features, the recent acquisition of Flux and Xeppo are an important part of our strategy and future by providing access to new data sources and also clients. To further ensure we capitalize on the opportunity in front of us, we've also evolved our offering across four key domains, which all work synergistically with each other and collectively enhance the value that we can offer to our customers. The domains that we're focused on are wealth solutions, which consist of our financial products that we offer, including our flagship Super and Wealth Accelerator products, our managed account, and also our global specialist funds. The WealthTech platform includes our web-based and mobile native client and partner portals, as well as our underlying and customer-facing technology, which provides our people, investors, and wealth professionals with client and data management, transactional, and administrative capability.
Insights and analytics, which includes practice and business dashboards from Xeppo, as well as market-leading client reporting, can be heavily customized to meet the varied and bespoke needs of our investors and wealth professionals. And finally, partners and integrations, which are accessed primarily through our Wealth Exchange product, provide access to a wide range of data and software integrations, as well as access to new partnerships, including iCapital that was announced last year and is now live. We believe our ongoing investment into these domains is a powerful differentiator in the market, and looking forward, we will continue to develop and invest into our core capabilities and systems, including in some areas which were previously outsourced, to ensure we maintain our market leadership and can scale in line with our ambitious growth plans.
From a broader technology perspective, it would come as no surprise that the environment is changing extremely fast, and innovations in artificial intelligence, especially with the rise of GenAI, offer some incredible opportunities to improve efficiency, productivity, client engagement, and service. We are leveraging the capabilities of AI to create innovative solutions and optimize processes across the following key areas: back office, customer service, client products and service, engineering and developer efficiency, and cybersecurity. As Tim discussed earlier, we're in fantastic financial shape with growing revenue and profits, no debt, and strong thematic tailwinds driving our current and future growth. We have a very high level of confidence in our net outflow outlook for 2025, which is supported by our new business and transition pipeline, and importantly, our conversion rate on new opportunities across all geographies and market segments is very high.
We plan to continue our significant investment in our people, product, security, and technology capabilities to ensure that we capture the substantial number of existing and emerging opportunities in the market. As already noted in our financial year results, this ongoing investment will result in a small percentage increase in the rate of expense growth in FY25 compared to FY24. Thank you very much for your attendance today, and thank you to the fantastic Netwealth team, executive and board for your commitment and hard work, and to our clients for your ongoing support. I'd also like to take this opportunity to thank Grant Boyle, our outgoing CFO. He's been an incredible part of our success, and I've enjoyed working closely with him over the last seven-plus years. He will be missed, so thank you again, Grant. I will now hand back to our Chair, Tim Antonie, for formal proceedings.
Thanks, Matt. Before proceeding further, I would like to discuss the procedures I will follow today. I propose calling a poll on each resolution to be put to this meeting. The final results of the poll will be released to the ASX and will be displayed on the company's website as soon as they are available after the close of the meeting. A representative of our share registry Link will act as returning officer for the purpose of conducting and determining the results of the poll. Shareholders and proxy holders who are eligible to vote at this meeting have received a yellow voting card. During the meeting, I'll advise you when it's time for you to fill in your voting cards. If you need assistance filling in your voting card, please see Link staff at the registration desk outside of this room.
Link staff will collect voting cards at the end of the meeting. Shareholders who have a blue card are eligible to speak but are ineligible to vote at this meeting. Guests holding a red card are ineligible to vote or speak at this meeting. If you believe that you've not received the correct card, please see Link staff at the registration desk outside of this room. After each item of business has been put to the meeting, I will ask for questions. If you would like to address the meeting on the item of business, please raise your attendance card and I will call on you. Please then identify yourself by name and state whether you're a shareholder or a proxy holder. Does anybody need any more time to register?
Shareholders were sent a copy of the Notice of Meeting and the annual report, which details how to access these documents on 17 October 2024. Unless there are any objections, I will take the Notice of Meeting as read. Shareholders unable to attend the meeting have the option of appointing a proxy. Before a vote is taken on each resolution, I will display on screen the total number of valid proxies cast for that resolution and the manner in which they have been directed. These figures have been determined as at closing time for the receipt of proxies, which was at 9:30 A.M. Australian Eastern Daylight Time on Monday, 18 November 2024. I would like to advise the meeting that all eligible undirected proxies given to the chair will be voted in favor of those resolutions, and this number will also be displayed on the screen.
I now turn to the first item of business, which is to receive and consider the 2024 annual report. It's not a requirement that the annual financial report and the reports of the directors and auditor for the year ended 30 June 2024 be formally adopted. However, all shareholders have had the opportunity to receive and consider them. We will now take questions on the 2024 annual report and on the earlier presentations from Matt and I. Our auditors are also available to answer any questions on the conduct of the audit and the content of their auditor's report. Are there any questions? Thank you. I will now move to item two, the resolution for the adoption of the remuneration report. The remuneration report has been made available or provided to shareholders together with the annual report.
I would remind shareholders that the vote on this resolution is advisory only and is not binding on the company. Please note that voting exclusions apply to this resolution as set out in the Notice of Meeting. Proxies have been lodged in respect of the resolution as displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? As there are no questions, I now direct that the poll for adoption of the Remuneration report be taken. Please fill in your yellow voting card in respect of this resolution. I now move to item three, the resolution for the reelection of Ms. Kate Temby as a director. I will now invite Kate to address the room and make some brief comments on her reelection.
Thanks, Tim. And good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for those who are in the room and those that are online. I'm Kate Temby, and I'm very pleased to offer myself for reelection today. I was appointed to the Netwealth Board three years ago, and it has gone quickly. I was Chair of the Investment Committee, of which I transferred that to Sarah Brennan as of July 2024, and I now serve as Chair of the People and Corporate Sustainability Committee. I currently hold an executive role as well with MetLife Investment Management. Many of you know MetLife as a global insurer. I lead their Global Sustainable Strategy Group across all of their assets, not only in Australia, in the U.S., and in Europe. I'm also on the board of Conscious Investment Management, which is an Australian impact investment manager.
My experience spans investment management, sustainable investment, client engagement, governance, and people leadership. I am very honored to be put forward to be part of and continue my role to serve on the Netwealth Board. And I really have enjoyed overseeing the executive who have worked very hard to build this business into what I think we'd all agree is one of Australia's leading platforms that really does does deliver solutions that are in line with the business values which we've set out in our annual report. It's a privilege for me to offer myself for reelection today, and I'm confident I've got the skills and experience to make a really valuable contribution not only at a board level, but also at a subcommittee level, and also, with your support, I look forward to continuing my involvement in the organization. Thank you, Tim.
Thank you, Kate. The board, excluding Kate Temby, unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Proxies have been lodged in respect of this resolution as displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? As there are no questions, I now direct that the poll for the reelection of Kate Temby be taken. Please fill in your yellow voting card in respect of this resolution. I now move to item four, the resolution for the election of Ms. Sarah Brennan as a director. I will now invite Sarah to address the room and make some brief comments on her election.
Thank you, Chair, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen. My name is Sarah Brennan, and I'm pleased to offer myself for election to the Netwealth Board today. As you may have seen from my brief resume in the Notice of Meeting and in the annual report, I have an over 30-year career in wealth management, investment, insurance, superannuation, and investment banking. During this time, I've had three stages of my career, all of which I believe contribute to the knowledge and experience I bring to the Netwealth Board. These are initially working for small, large, domestic, and international financial services company, companies, commencing as a customer service operator on the phone and moving through to being the COO and CEO of large institutions, including investment and platform businesses. Following this, I moved into the more entrepreneurial activities, which involved conceiving, developing, managing, and divesting financial services boutique operations in Australia.
And one notable activity involved the benchmarking, benchmarking of investment platforms and superannuation sector, which included Netwealth for many years. And most recently, as a Non-Executive Director of industry bodies, superannuation funds, private companies, and listed entities. In addition to wealth management, investments, platform, and superannuation, my career has covered a range of different elements across the financial services sector, including financial planning, investment banking, retail and institutional funds management, financial market trading, and insurance. I've worked primarily in Australia, but I've also had responsibility and overseen operations in Asia, as well as working on the ground in the U.S., the U.K., Asia, and Europe. As a Non-Executive Director, I joined my first board way back in 2001, and I've been an active board member since that time. I'm an experienced director of companies large and small, listed and unlisted, parent companies and subsidiaries, and for-profit and not-for-profit organizations.
In addition, I have been a member of and chaired many board committees, including audit, risk, and investment. Most of my board experience in one way or another has been related to the financial services sector. And while I'm currently on the board of a number of other companies, including Netwealth, I can assure shareholders I have sufficient time to dedicate to my duties on the Netwealth Board and to properly carry out all of my responsibilities to the absolute best of my ability. I also do not believe I have any conflicts of interest which would impair my ability to fulfill my role on the Netwealth Board properly. I've had the privilege of being involved in the platform and superannuation sector for many years, and from this external perspective, have been an ardent follower and admirer of Netwealth, of its founders and its management for many years.
Since joining the Netwealth Board almost nine months ago, I've been impressed by the way that the board of management approached the task of managing Netwealth to consistently deliver on the clearly articulated aims of the business while ensuring that the company's key values are lived across the organization. I feel privileged to be part of what I truly believe is one of Australia's great companies: strong growth orientation, disciplined strategy, excellent leadership and management team, and a genuine focus on doing good for its people, the community, and its investors. I'm pleased to put myself forward for your consideration, and I'm confident that I have the skills and experience to continue to make a valuable contribution to your board, and with your support, I look forward to continuing to work in your interests. Thank you so much. Thanks, Tim.
Thank you, Sarah. The board, excluding Sarah Brennan, unanimously recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution. Proxies have been lodged in respect of this resolution as displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? As there are no questions, I now direct that the poll for the election of Sarah Brennan be taken. Please fill in your yellow voting card in respect of this resolution. Although we don't have the votes of the room, I can confidently say welcome aboard.
Thank you, Tim.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Okay. The next item of business is item five, the resolution for the grant of the performance rights to our CEO and Managing Director, Matt Heine. As part of Mr. Heine's annual remuneration package, it is proposed that he be granted a long-term incentive of 47,968 performance rights with a three-year performance period. The number of performance rights that will ultimately vest will depend upon the extent to which certain gateway and performance conditions are satisfied over the relevant, performance, and deferral periods. Full details of the terms of the grant are contained in the Notice of Meeting. If resolution five is passed, the company intends to grant the performance rights to Mr. Matt Heine soon after the AGM. The board, excluding Mr. Heine, recommends that shareholders vote in favor of this resolution.
Please note that voting exclusions are part of this resolution as set out in the Notice of Meeting. Proxies have been lodged in respect of this resolution as displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution? As there are no questions, I now direct that the poll for the grant of the Performance Rights to our CEO and Managing Director be taken. Please fill in your yellow voting card in respect of this resolution. The next item of business is item six, the resolution to increase the Non-Executive Director's aggregate fee pool from AUD 1.3 million per annum to AUD 1.5 million per annum. Please note that the voting exclusions apply to this resolution as set out in the Notice of Meeting. Proxies have been lodged in respect of this resolution as displayed on the screen. Are there any questions on this resolution?
As there are no questions, I now direct that the poll for the increase in the non-executive director's aggregate fee pool be taken. Please fill in your yellow voting card in respect of this resolution. Before I close today's AGM, I ask everyone to complete their yellow cards and hand them to a Link staff member who will collect the cards now.