I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Matt Heine, CEO and Managing Director. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much, and good morning, and thank you everyone for joining Netwealth Group FY 2026 financial results. We have quite a lot to cover today, so we will jump straight into it. Thanks again for joining. This financial year, or last financial year I should say, was a two-speed year in many ways. As has been well covered, particularly at the half year results, on the one hand, we had the First Guardian matter, which was pleasantly resolved in last December. More importantly, on the other hand, we had a very strong and successful financial year. If we turn to page seven, you will see some key financial results, which I will walk through quickly. For the financial year, I should also mention that the numbers are adjusted for the impact of First Guardian, and that can be seen in detail throughout the deck.
From a net flow perspective, starting off with the net flow number ex pensions, it was a very strong year at AUD 15.9 billion, and including pension outflows, AUD 15.4 billion, which was marginally lower than the prior financial year, but still an incredibly strong result. We finished the year with record FUA of AUD 135.7 billion, up AUD 22.9 billion or a 20.3% increase. By way of an interim update, FUA funds under administration on the 21st of August was AUD 138.8 billion, which represents net flow of AUD 2 billion, which does exclude AUD 600 million accounting for two large institutional accounts, low margin, which were refinanced elsewhere. Again, a good start to the year and sets us up well for our forecast.
Just to reiterate, our guidance for FY 2027 is to achieve net inflows of between AUD 18 billion and AUD 20 billion, and we reaffirm that today. Total income for FY 2026 was AUD 391.1 million, an increase of AUD 66.7 million or a 20.6% change increase. Adjusted EBITDA AUD 192.9 million, a AUD 29.5 million increase, 18%. Also pleased this morning to declare a fully franked dividend of AUD 0.21 which gives a fully franked dividend for the financial year of AUD 0.42, an increase of AUD 0.035 and an increase of therefore 9.1%. Again, a good year for increasing income as well as continuing to drive stronger profits. On page 8, you will see how this converts.
Again, we have had a very successful year of not only raising funds and growing our FUA, but also increasing our total income as per our previous slide by 20.6%, and resulting in an adjusted EBITDA margin of 41.1% as guided. That does represent an increase to the underlying EBITDA, sorry, adjusted EBITDA, in absolute of 18%. On page 9, you will see how this actually played out throughout the year. These are numbers derived from Plan for Life, and do go to the end of March, but tell, again, a consistent story. The two leading platforms, ourselves and one other, accounted for about 80% of industry net flows, and this has been a number that has been very consistent now for a number of years.
Importantly, we are approximately 5 x higher from a net flow perspective than number three or four. So we have got significant market leadership. As I mentioned, us and one other have around 80% of the total net flows in the industry. Interestingly, when you look at the market share, and the market share changes in particular, there was only two platforms over the 12 months ending 31st of March that actually increased their market share. Netwealth moved to 9.7% of the platform market, and we will come back to that during the presentation, an increase of 1%, whereas other data say platform went backwards. Legacy platforms, so likely those sitting above us in the chart, collectively actually reduced market share by 2.2%.
Again, tells a very consistent story, and one that gives us great comfort in our future growth prospects, and also in our forecasts. A big part of, I guess, the ongoing success of the company, and the adoption by a very broad range of advisers across the industry, is that in FY 2026 we again executed extremely well on our strategy, which has now been in place for a number of years. On page 11, whilst I am not going to go through every single one of these items, you can see that under each of our key pillars, that is to accelerate the capacity to compete and scale, both for advisers and also internally, we have delivered on a number of very important initiatives for ourselves.
Probably the major initiative here was a significant uplift to our managed account infrastructure, which has been a major project that has been underway now for a couple of years, and gives us incredible scale moving forward, as well as a lot of additional capability which is being rolled out. Managed accounts continue to be a major driver of new business, and you will see that in the preceding slides. We also drove a lot of efficiency through things like Workflow Tracker, our digital onboarding, and document bots, which we will continue to invest into for the benefit of both clients and advisers, and also Netwealth efficiency. The two key parts of our strategy, though, and no doubt we will be very familiar with these, is that we are very focused on making sure that we leverage our core technology, our foundational technology, to accelerate our share of affluent advice.
That is typically your mum and dad's AUD 500,000- AUD 750,000, maybe up to AUD 1 million, where advisors that are servicing this very important segment are looking for ultimate efficiency. How can we help them drive better adoption of the tools that we offer, but also help them service more customers, but importantly, without degrading the quality of the advice that they provide or the service that they provide. This is really important, and we will keep referencing back to this repeatedly throughout this presentation, but also over the next couple of years as we continue to build out and roll out this strategy, which is we do see a pathway for those that are wanting to come on the journey with us, for advisors to service more than the current 123 clients that they do.
We can see that very easily going to 150, potentially even 200 or more, in the future. Again, just to reiterate, that is not the degradation of service or advice. It is actually looking at how do we improve the service they provide, how do we improve the advice they provide, and also the ability to service more customers, which is increasingly important given the supply and demand. Affluent continues to be extremely important, and we have had a very successful year in that space.
Equally, through our Private Wealth and stockbroking segment, again, leveraging our core capability and core platform technology, we have delivered on a number of major initiatives, the two big ones being the launch of our Individual HIN service, which unlocks the broking market and allows investors and advisors operating within the broking market to really benefit from all of the capabilities sitting on the Netwealth platform that we have built now over a decade and a bit, including bonds, structured products, managed accounts, Aussie equities, international equities. Combining very neatly and integrated with the Individual HIN offerings in partnership, in conjunction with FinClear, who service a very significant part of the broking market in the vicinity of around 70%. We are very excited to have launched that product, and there was a lot of really good conversations going on across the market and the industry.
We also launched our Netwealth Private product. Again, this has been a really important milestone for the business as we continue to, excuse me, differentiate between the Affluent product and the Private Wealth product. As a starting point, they share very common functionality and capability, but we see that capability diverging over the next couple of years as we add more and more sophistication to the Netwealth Private product. The feedback from the market has been extremely positive, and again, lots of great conversations happening, both with existing and also new customers as we continue to expand the investment offering. Sitting above these three pillars, and these really do, I guess, underpin the whole strategy, is that we remain very focused on operational and service excellence.
That is both making sure that we deliver outstanding service, and that is everything from reducing callback times to quality of administration, through to also being able to scale efficiently internally. The other really important part is that we know and we can see and we have demonstrated that our investment into clearly differentiating our product range and our services means that we are getting access to a significantly greater and expanded number of opportunities through both our existing core market as well as the new markets, including the broking one, which I have touched on. So a great year, lots done, and the team executed flawlessly. On page 12, just a bit of an example. I know that many of you are keen to sort of see how this all actually comes to life.
One of the key points I did want to also raise is that whilst we continue to step up our investment in our product and tech teams, and we have said this is a key advantage and a key differentiator for the business, it is really important that we also take a very disciplined approach to making sure that that investment goes into scaling up our core infrastructure, our scalability, our security, but also delivering fantastic new capability at the front end and a great user experience.
The screenshot that you can see in front of you on page 12 is just an example of some of the new portfolio screens that are coming to market in the next four to six weeks, which are really not only feature-rich but provide a lot of information, both visually as well as through tables, to help advisers, again, be more efficient, to help customers really understand what is going on in their portfolio. What I like to always talk about is to help advisers and their customers actually understand the strategies that are being put in place for them. So visualizing the impact of whether it is the investment decisions or the tax structures or the contribution strategies they are putting in place.
We continue to really bring to life a lot of those strategies with the visualization, as well as making sure that it is a great user experience sitting on an incredibly stable base. Equally, we have continued to execute and to invest into diversifying our revenue streams. On the previous slide, you would have seen a number of things in addition to things like launching Individual HIN product and our Netwealth Private product. We launched a bond trading desk earlier year. We have continued to enhance our international trading solution, introducing capabilities such as VWAP, and that is all really starting to flow through on the revenue lines, which you will see on page 14.
Equally, jumping around a little bit back to page 13, you can see that the strategies that we've actually employed have also made sure that those key markets that I touched on before, being Affluent and Private Wealth, are continuing to grow. We've seen a really good diversification across all of those key client segments and good growth in the areas that we're investing. Again, very pleased with the outcomes of our investments, and also really pleased to see that our superannuation products as well as investment in Private Wealth continues to see really strong support with a total super fund balancing now at 45.2% for the year at June 30. On page 15, another slide that was very pleasing to see from the recent Investment Trends Technology Needs report is that versus market, and you can see the last couple of years detailed at the bottom.
Netwealth's share of wallet, so that is advisers using Netwealth as their primary platform, sits at 78%, which is actually above the market numbers of 73%, which have been very stable across the industry. What that really means is that the customers that use us are using us for far more of their new customer money as well as their existing customer money, and that trend is really pleasing to see and obviously one that we'll look to continue to expand and grow upon. Important to note that, whilst we'd love to say 100%, it's also, unfortunately, not a realistic number.
There is a lot of M&A activity in the market, so we're seeing diversification of platforms where they're buying legacy platforms, which then they're moving across to us. You've also got legacy issues such as tax and Centrelink issues, which mean that whilst we'll never get to 100%, we'll certainly continue to really look at growing that number of our primary platform share dollar. Moving across to slide 17. Admittedly early days, and you may not have had a chance to go through the announcement in a lot of detail. But we are pleased to launch our new strategy for FY 2027, and more importantly, for the next four years. We've previously launched the concept or our ambition, and again, just to stress, this is an ambition, not a forecast, to double our FUA by 2030.
That is what we've called our DX30 strategy, so double by 30. We have a great level of confidence in achieving that strategy and that ambition because some of the areas that I'm going to talk through. The first reason we've sought to quantify a lot of this for you is that whilst we've talked about market share of platform, they're the numbers that we looked at before. The platform market is only really one part of our total opportunity set. When you look at the total opportunity set and the areas that we're investing into and the products that we're bringing to market, it really is about expanding into many of the areas that you see on slide 17 in the dark green. So that's where we compete today, and that's the untapped or TAM that we believe is available in the future.
When you look at these various parts of the market, we actually only really have approximately 2% market share. Plenty of runway and plenty of opportunity, and gives us, again, great confidence in our DX30 strategy, and well beyond. Interestingly, if you haven't done the maths to get to double our FUA by 2030, that represents a CAGR of approximately 19%, which is a combination of net flow, if you apply 2027, our guidance of AUD 18 billion- AUD 20 billion, and also market movement. That's currently tracked at 5%. To do that, though, we do need to keep investing. Again, an area that we've talked about, and we've guided to March FY 2027. There is a range of capability that we need to keep bringing to market and working through. That is the things that we've already talked about, so workflow efficiency, AI-enabled capability.
We're really pleased to launch our first generative AI, chatbot Nova, throughout the course of the year, and also a lot of self-service capabilities. So helping advisors find information quicker and easier, enhanced workflow tools, et cetera. Clearly, we need to be able to keep investing into and bringing broader products to those key market segments that we've touched on. One of the other key areas of our strategy, which again, differentiates us and we believe is really important, you can see on slide 19. We've deliberately tried not to delve into too much detail around individual product features. What you can see here and hopefully start to make a lot more sense is, the ecosystem plays that we've been investing into now for a number of years, and that ecosystem play really sitting on and being grounded on our unified data management platform.
Unified is a business that we bought two to three years ago. It was called Xeppo. We've rebranded that and really sort of stripped it back to its core capability, which is an intelligent data management platform that connects to 32 enterprise solutions and aggregates, matches, and organizes information across the ecosystem. Why is this important? We know that advisors in the industry, particularly where they're multidisciplinary, so operating across wealth, accounting, and debt, that there are multiple systems sitting in their tech stack. Many of them don't talk. There's disparate data silos within their businesses. So being able to bring together and connect all of those different data points, and consolidate them into a clean data lake or data warehouse to then push up into the various things that we're doing and other systems that they use is incredibly important.
We're seeing great responses from those using the system, and we continue to evolve and also invest into the reporting and the insights that practices and multidisciplinary firms, as well as licensees, are able to get from that unified data set. As mentioned, that sits at the foundation or the core of a lot of our other product development. Clearly, the advisor platform is our core business and continues to be the key financial driver of everything that we do. But we're also investing into and bringing more product features into our client portal. Again, the stats are very strong. Circa 65% of the industry is looking for a portal or using a portal.
That is really driven, in many cases, not only by a great customer experience, so looking to deliver a digital experience to their customers in a branded environment, but also solving for probably the industry's biggest risk, which is cybersecurity. Through the client portal with new capability being brought to market in the next four to six weeks, advisors will be able to connect into their Microsoft Teams instance. They will be able to share documents securely. They will be able to chat live with their customers, all in a secure, branded environment that is connected into the Netwealth ecosystem. Naturally works extremely well with the advisor platform for things like digital consent, portfolio, online portfolio updates, as well as news, and other services. Advisor tools will continue to evolve, and we offer a range of advisor tools already on the platform.
We are actively investigating and looking at a whole range of ways in which we can help enhance the overall advisor experience. Again, generative AI, from what we are seeing, is really changing the game when it comes to things that maybe even 12 or 24 months ago we may have not considered being part of the broader platform set. ROAs, file note tools, all of those things we are actively investigating and looking to invest into as part of the broader ecosystem.
Licensee solutions just make it really easy for them to work with us and to understand what is going on in their client bases and give them better access to not only what is happening across the platform, but also more broadly across our whole licensee, leveraging that unified data. So we think this is a really exciting strategy. We are getting great feedback on it from the market.
More importantly, it really does differentiate what we are doing against our competitors, particularly the legacy platforms who are still staying very narrow in their focus on just the platform piece. We believe the platform can and should do a lot more when looking at all the different jobs that need to be done across an advice firm. That is where we will keep investigating and investing. Coming to AI. It wouldn't be a full year result presentation without talking about AI. We are also conscious that there is a lot of discussion about AI, so we are very keen to actually give some very tangible outcomes and areas that we are seeing the benefits. On page 20, we are basically detailing what our strategy is for AI. Not surprisingly, it is around growth, it is around productivity, and it is around scale.
Again, I am not going to go through all of these individual dot points, but looking at the dark blue boxes, you can see some of the actual outcomes that we are seeing and what we have been able to deliver as a result of generative AI and AI more generally. Nova, I talked about. Nova went live about two months ago. That generative AI chatbot to help self-service for advisors. In the first month, it was already answering between 15% and 19% of all incoming inquiries, basically just sitting on top of our knowledge base and some other government websites. We will continue to connect that to more and more data sources in a safe and secure way, and allow advisors to find out and then recover more about their customers and client base through that channel.
We are also seeing large scale benefits just internally, as we sort of automate and use data extraction and data management tools that can be automatically processed. We are seeing very significant, like all companies, productivity gains from the introduction of CoWork and Copilot across all staff, and something that I am using actively on a daily basis with many of our team. We have also recently, in the last month, appointed our first ever General Manager of Data and AI, who comes from very significant Australian companies with a fantastic skill set and capability across very large data sets and is now bringing that into a whole range of different opportunities and projects. So an exciting time. Again, we are seeing tangible outcomes from AI. We are investing heavily in AI, and we are using AI where it makes sense.
Also making sure that we manage any cost associated with AI very carefully. Corporate sustainability is very important to Netwealth, and a key part of our culture and our values. Again, it has been a very busy year and a very productive year for our sustainability team, and also from a giving and community perspective. There is a lot of information there, which I will not go through now. We continue to be extremely proud of our partnerships with the companies that we have got listed there. Banqer's Financial Literacy program continues to grow rapidly across the country. I have always been aware recently we have put through more than 160,000 children in that program, which is outstanding. Bridge It, the Centre for Women's Economic Safety, all fantastic charities and ones we are very proud to support.
On that, I am going to stop talking, and I am going to hand over to Hayden Stockdale, our CFO, who is going to give you some more color and detail around the financials. Hayden.
Wonderful. Thanks, Matt. Thanks, and a warm welcome everyone as well. To start off, I just want to reiterate what Matt said earlier, and that is this has been a very positive year for us from an operational and financial perspective. I think also a year where we have taken important steps to resolve that First Guardian matter, and how it affected members. To that end, while the account had been impacted by First Guardian, we have actually covered that in some detail six months or so ago. Given its unusual nature, we have excluded it from all of the underlying financials that are presented today. I will not really be covering it in any further detail. So let us start off with the financials on slide 24.
Now I think the headline story for the year here is actually very similar to that of previous years, which is that our broad-based momentum continues to just roll on across all of our business. As you will see here, we delivered 20% growth in total income to over AUD 391 million. That was driven by growth in all four of our major revenue streams. Total FUA, which drives our admin fees, was up 20%. Funds under management, which drive our management fees, was up 28%. Cash, which drives our ancillary fees, was up 14% year-on-year. Trading volumes, which drive our transaction fees, were up 21% too. We are also driving greater productivity and efficiency for our customers, with account growth outpacing advisor growth by 12%- 6%, meaning our advisors are getting more efficient as we deliver them more functionality.
It is also worth noting here too that every single one of the metrics on this slide is actually at a record level. If we turn to slide 25, you will see we also delivered record gross FUA flows for the year of over AUD 32 billion, with gross flows remaining actually quite solid into the fourth quarter too. As we reported six weeks or so ago, net flows did actually soften slightly following the federal budget. We do believe that is temporary, that financial assets remain advantaged compared to property as an investment class. Certainly, the AUD 2 billion of flows that we have experienced in the quarter space, I think, give us cause for continued optimism.
On the right-hand side of this slide, you will see that net flows from new financial intermediaries grew from 6% to 10% of total net flows, which in dollar terms for FY 2026 were up over 70% to more than AUD 1.5 billion, compared to less than AUD 900 million the previous year. That is actually really encouraging because flows from new intermediaries are typically a key driver of ongoing flows for several years to come. The other point to note here too is that most of those new intermediary net flows actually did come in the third and fourth quarter of the year, including post-budget. So they are not really fully run rate in that number. If we turn now to slide 26. Here we show platform revenue for FY 2026 was up 21% year-on-year. As I noted earlier, all major revenue streams were at record levels.
Statistically, our revenue base is also now more diversified. Within our revenue mix, we have seen it has benefited from a full year of higher cash margin, while organic growth in our management fees was a standout again for the year. In fact, at the end of the year, funds under management represented over 25%, about 25.5% of total AUM, compared to less than 24% a year earlier. That trend continues to be very strong for us. Okay, let us flip to slide 27. As I said earlier, one of our key growth drivers has been our number of accounts and how these have outpaced growth in our advisor base, meaning advisors are becoming more efficient.
But not only are our number of advisers and accounts growing, the AUM and the revenue we are generating on each account is also growing, and now actually stand at record levels as you can see. So average AUM per account is now over AUD 700,000, with average revenue per account over AUD 2,000, with this last metric being a real key bellwether for growth hygiene for us. As accounts grow in size and as we add a larger proportion of high balance accounts, the combined effect with fee tiers and caps means that AUM growth is actually slightly outpacing revenue, with the resulting revenue margin that you see here of 30.7 basis points, which we see as very healthy. I will turn to slide 28 now, and a little bit about our operating leverage and investment.
I think we have proven in the past that we can grow well, and as we do grow, we are getting the benefits of scale efficiencies. To put some numbers to this, you will see on the chart here on the left-hand side that over the last two years, we have generated 135 basis points of operating leverage from our delivery, sales, and G&A functions. Then we have invested the bulk of this into our RISE projects as well as products and tech to drive long-term growth, leaving us with a net 45 basis point of EBITDA margin improvement. Also noting that we are quite conservative in fully expensing the vast bulk of our products and tech investment. If we want to isolate just the numbers for FY 2026, I have included those in the narrative on the right, and the pattern there is actually very similar.
Our incremental investment in products and tech was around 100 basis points of margin, and sales and marketing was around 10 basis points as we added half a dozen plus new BDMs, while we actually got just over 50, about 55 basis points of efficiencies across our delivery and G&A functions. So I can tell you there, we are actually getting operational leverage in all the areas you would expect, while we are limiting investment to only those areas that are either generating long-term growth or that are required for regulatory governance purposes. The net impact of this is that we are delivering strong returns to our shareholders, as you will see on slide 29. Adjusted EBITDA is up 18% to almost AUD 193 million, with an EBITDA margin of 49.1%, which is square in line with our guidance.
I just want to note here too that the transparency of our accounts is really highlighted in the conversion of EBITDA to pre-tax operating cash, which again, similar to last year, is greater than 100%. Our earnings per share rose 16%, so AUD 0.55 a share, with dividends of AUD 0.42 a share for the year, including a final dividend, as Matt noted earlier, of AUD 0.21 that the board declared today. Then finally, I am told we have the second highest ROA in the ASX at almost 17%, which is a really strong testament to our growth and our margins. I will not propose to go through slides 30 or 31. But I will close up on slide 32, if that is okay. It is about summary. So bringing it all together. We are scaling, we are diversifying, investing, and we are earning.
We've got strong growth and momentum, sorry, strong growth and momentum, achieving record levels across all our key business driver metrics. We're leveraging adviser and account numbers into outsized FUM and revenue growth, with an investment program that's driving adviser productivity and also assisted by structural tailwinds. We're adding new adviser relationships at a pace, and we expect to underpin FUM flows for several years to come. We have a 2% market share of our TAM, as Matt noted, with plenty of growth opportunity ahead. We've outlined an ambition to double our FUM over the next four years. We have the confidence to support our guidance that we've given for strong FUM growth in FY 2027. We've delivered on a set of results, which are in line with our guidance.
We've proven our operating leverage over many years now and have delivered that again this year with deliberate and well-planned investments and growth. We convert every AUD of EBITDA to cash. We've increased our total dividends for the year. All up, we score extremely highly on that Balance Scorecard of growth and margins, which is the overall scoring metric. On that note, I'll pause and hand back to Matt.
Thanks, Hayden. To avoid reiterating or going over what Hayden so succinctly just went over then, from an outlook perspective, I would just reiterate, though, that we remain extremely excited about the opportunity ahead of us, and also, more importantly, the structural growth tailwinds that sit behind us. There is a huge opportunity in the market, and I believe we've done a great job executing on the strategy to make sure that we maximize our growth in those areas. There's numerous proof points now that we can point to around where the investments that we've been made is actually delivering results. We're also continuing to invest into the growth, and we believe there's many opportunities to not only drive significant efficiency for ourselves and for our advisers, but also to bring exciting new products which will differentiate us in the market to our peer group.
Finally, on page 35, we reiterate our FY 2027 guidance, that is net flows or FUM net flows of AUD 18 billion-AUD 20 billion. EBITDA margin excluding any First Guardian and large expenses of approximately 47%, and capitalized software investment of approximately AUD 17 million. Our FY 2030 DX30 strategy continues to excite us and the team. Just to finish on that, we do believe we can double the FUM on the platform in the coming four years, and over those four years, return operating EBITDA margins towards 50%. On that, we will stop and take any questions from those listening. Thanks very much for listening.
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 2. If you are on a speakerphone, please pick up the handset to ask your question. Our first question comes from Elizabeth Miliatis with Macquarie. Please proceed.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. The first one is just on flows. Obviously, you included the flows year to date, in the last six weeks or so. They do seem a little weaker than where we were last year. Obviously, the budget is still impacting things. Do you have any strong view as to when this weakness will subside? Are there any green shoots? What is your view longer term? Obviously, you have those FY 2030 targets, so hopefully a decent amount of conviction that things will come back pretty strongly.
Yes. I think, the first thing to comment on is that it is only six weeks into the year. I think that is important to note, excluding the large two institutional accounts, AUD 2 billion is actually not a bad start. I am just going to point again, just to reiterate our FY guidance for AUD 18 billion- AUD 20 billion. Timing is something that is unfortunately a little bit out of our control. But certainly we have got good line of sight of what is coming through. We feel confident in that guidance. There is always going to be things going on in the market. But I think it was Warren Buffett that once upon a time said, "It is important to look at the climate, not the weather." From time to time, you will get accelerated transitions and some that are delayed as well as new business.
We are very confident in the flow outlook.
Yeah. To add to that, Liz, I am not overly disappointed by the number at all. Halfway through the quarter, you double two and make it four. You think of the guidance, the guidance is averaging AUD 4.5 billion - AUD 5 billion a quarter. You would not expect us going from 15.5 to 18 to 20 to doing five from the get-go. The number that we have achieved here, I think, is actually quite reasonable and fits in line with the guidance we have got for the full year.
Okay, got it. Thank you. Maybe second one from me. Obviously, you gave us an update about a month or so ago on Morgan Stanley and signing that contract. Just curious as to how that is progressing. Are we starting to see any flow benefit from that? Also maybe with regards to the longer-term targets for store and flows, how much of that captures Morgan Stanley, roughly? Thank you.
Yeah, thanks. I am not going to get in the habit of commenting necessarily on individual customers, but certainly we have called this one out. I would say in the first six weeks of the year, there would be probably a handful of accounts that have come across. We obviously expect that to ramp up as we work with them and look at which clients will move across. Equally, moving forward, it is a lot of belief we have got a lot of very significant accounts across all of the segments. We are working really well with the aggregators, as well as now the broking community, and the pipeline remains very full.
Okay, thank you.
Our next question is from Blake Dowsett with Jarden . Please proceed.
Hi, guys. Thanks for taking my call. I just had a couple of questions on the Morgan Stanley flows. I know it is a little bit out of your hands, but just trying to understand how the cadence can look throughout the year. I appreciate that you gave us a little color on that beforehand. Just helping from a forecasting point of view, do we expect this to be back-loaded or front-loaded in terms of how the MS is going to drop through?
Yeah. Again, probably won't comment longer term on individual customer flows, but we expect to see that coming through this quarter.
Starting.
Yeah. There is ramp-ups with all these things.
Exactly.
I would say they're usable to date.
Correct.
Yeah.
Just thinking about that client or more generally just on the broker-dealer channel, if you don't want to talk specifically about an individual client. I'm just trying to understand the revenue margin of that broker-dealer channel in relation to the revenue margin of the existing custody book of business, whether we should be expecting any impact to that as it flows through the year.
Yeah. So existing broker opportunities, it's exactly the same margins as our broader book. Moving forward, there's a range of different business models that will have different margins attached to them. I know that doesn't necessarily answer your question, but there'll be some groups where they will be looking for a reporting-only service. There'll be some groups where they're looking for a fully integrated trading solution. Each of those different models will have slightly different sort of revenue model sessions. What I would say, if you're not looking at trading, reporting only. Any sort of broker opportunity will be standard margins plus the incremental benefit of any individual HIN reporting that we provide them. It should be an incremental play in the majority of cases.
Yeah. What I'd say too there, Blake, is I'd just be cautious around the revenue margin as a metric. It is an output metric. It's not an input metric. Directionally, whether it goes up or down is not necessarily a positive or negative sign. As I said, the bellwether for us is more revenue per account. We are expecting that revenue per account number to continue its trend, which is upwards.
Yeah. Really, basically, we are just getting the greater revenue number per account.
Yeah. That is the input metric.
Understood. I think I will take it offline to get a little bit more color. Thank you. I appreciate your time.
Thanks.
Thanks, Blake.
As a reminder, just star one on your telephone keypad if you would like to ask a question, and please limit to two questions. Our next question is from Nick McGarrigle with Barrenjoey. Please proceed.
Hi, team. Just another one on the flows. Can you talk through what you are seeing on the ground in terms of the gross flows? Are gross flows still running at a decent pace compared to last year? We are seeing some of the IDPS larger accounts parking money off-platform as they await more clarity around tax and investment strategy.
Yeah, I think that is a fair characterization, Nick. There is still a little bit of choppiness around some of the outflows. We do believe there is a range of positioning that sort of sits behind that. Sometimes these are seasonal. So pre-30 June, you get a little bit of tax positioning and the like. We have, in the fourth quarter as well as continuing to see, we called it out with a couple of large institutional outflows in the quarter, a little bit of that choppiness. We are, I think, also expecting the ball has bounced our way a little bit more so than it has bounced against our way over the last six weeks or quarter or so. I think, yeah, that is a fair characterization.
Yeah. I think if using gross flows as a, I guess, an indicator of growing support, then yes, gross flows continue to grow.
Okay. I assume, just to dig into the guidance for AUD 18 billion- AUD 20 billion. The current annualization, and it is always dangerous annualizing seven weeks, but that gets you to AUD 14 billion. Is it fair to say that you are assuming something in the range of AUD 5 billion from Morgan Stanley over the year that bridges that difference between the annualization of where we are now and the AUD 18 billion -AUD 20 billion guidance?
I know everyone is desperate for the answer to that, but I will not answer that today, Nick.
Okay. Does that count as my question? Because it was a brief.
You can have another one. I think you knew what the answer to that was going to be.
Okay. All right, good. Yeah, in turn, maybe just to dive into the EBITDA margins then. Can you just detail maybe some of the deliverables that you're expecting to get with the incremental EBITDA margin investment that you've made in the business over the last two years? What do you think coming into 2028 and 2029 you'll have to show for that, and then how that then delivers a trajectory back to 50%?
Yeah, absolutely. Look, there's a big revenue effect here, right? We have circa 2% market share, circa 50% margins, and circa 20% growth. When you look at that, we should absolutely be optimizing for growth. That's what we're doing within reason. Hence the strategy of putting some more funds into products and tech, and also sales and marketing to drive that. But we are expecting very strong returns on that investment. In the world of software, it can be very hard to attribute revenue to particular investments. But when we can do that, and we actually circle up what the ROIs are, they're extremely attractive. You're talking typically north of 100%. The beauty is that the payback period is typically two to three years, right? Which means, you do get a little bit of compression, in particular in year one.
But then, fairly quickly, the revenue starts to land, and then dilutes the impact of the expenses on the product and tech. So look, we're not giving a trajectory as to what those margins will look like, other than to say what we've reiterated in the guidance, which is trending back towards 50% over that four-year time frame.
Yeah. We've given a lot of data points there as far as what we're looking to achieve. There's a whole range of things that we're investing into. I've touched on a lot of them, but reporting, continuing to enhance that Netwealth specification, mobile and mobile connectivity, the ecosystem, Teams and Private. There's plenty of things that we're investing into that we know are going to keep driving adoption and growth.
Cool. Thank you.
Our next question is from Simon Fitzgerald with Jefferies. Please proceed.
Hi there, Matt, Hayden. Thank you very much for taking my questions. My first question relates a little bit more to the guidance around net inflows. I would have thought that the number of agreements or new financial intermediaries that you signed up in the fourth quarter of the year, I think it was 75 from memory, was the number. That must be giving you a fair bit of confidence in meeting that AUD 18 billion-AUD 20 billion. I just wanted to know how many advisers that would cover.
The 75 is advisers, so that is individual reps.
Okay. Yep. Okay. All right. That's fair. Then just a second question relates a little bit-
Yeah, I was going to say, Simon, just to answer the first of that question. Yes, absolutely, it does give us confidence. As I said a little, I think, in my narrative too, the fact that they came in in the third and fourth quarter means that they're not fully ramped, I guess, in terms of their flow.
It's also a big number, isn't it, 75 compared to prior history? For a quarter only.
It's a decent number, isn't it? Yeah.
Yeah.
And also, one advisor is not the same as another advisor necessarily, too, right? So it is actually the capability of the individuals. And we are encouraged by the level of flow that we got from new intermediaries in the fourth quarter.
Just to reiterate, as you would probably expect, looking at providers in the market, we do build that up and look at it from many different dimensions to make sure that it is an accurate reflection of what we are going to achieve. So we build up from opportunities, pipelines, new advisors, organic flows, and install base. So it is absolutely one of the metrics that we look at and which gives us confidence.
Very good. Then just another question following on from the previous ones in terms of returns and things like that on the various projects that you have in the development phase. I am curious in terms of how you pick these projects. I imagine there is a number of them that compete, and given that I think they are more so designed or aimed at winning, where do a lot of these ideas come up from? Is it from the existing base or is it when you missed out on a new mandate or something like that you get the idea that we need to do this or do that? I am just curious to know in terms of how they come up and how you also filter in terms of which ones you give the nod to and which ones you might reject.
Yeah. That is a pretty big question that could take a long time to answer, but something I learned many years ago was that our business, like many businesses, our ambition is always bigger than our budget. So there is never a shortage of items to debate and argue about when it comes to prioritization. It is, I think, like every business, one of the hardest parts of business is making sure that you are working on the right things at the right time. We, a number of years ago, which we have already talked about, moved to what they call a product operating model. And that was a very deliberate move to make sure that our team, particularly the product and tech team, get much closer to all of our customers.
The way that we've organized around feature sets means that they're adapting dialogue with a very broad set of customers, digging deep into what the problems are that we're trying to solve and how we're going to best solve them. Sometimes it's an efficiency item. One of the areas that we're working on, for example, is our fees. Not to go into too much detail, but just the way that advisers generate fee renewals and fee consent forms. We're building a new solution which will be incredibly efficient and effective for the adviser, and at the same time, will drive very significant efficiency for our back office. Clearly that's going to be important as we scale and move forward our DX30 strategy. Often it's around existing capability. What we're hearing from the market is always an element of are our competitors doing something interesting.
Then your strategic bets and Individual HINs is one of those strategic bets where we just see a huge opportunity. We've always got capability in that area and now it's now a good time to invest into it. It's no different to 10 years ago when we started to make a bet on the high net worth wealth part of the market, invested heavily into the off-platform capability and reporting. As a result, that was extremely successful. So it is actually a great process. Not everyone's always happy, but I think we've got a pretty solid list of things that we're working on as a very big team to execute on.
Yeah, good. Thank you, Matt.
Our next question is from Tharan Jeyathasan with JP Morgan. You may begin.
Morning. Morning, gentlemen. Thank you for taking my questions. Perhaps the first question, just back again on flows. I am just interested on how we should be thinking about the AUD 18 billion -AUD 20 billion range you have provided. I think even at the lower end, there is quite a lot of growth there. Is it fair to say that you are assuming a hockey stick style recovery from the post-budget slowdown? I think it is important to understand given that there is a lot of growth there and near-term trends have been quite weak and also different to your peers, guide. If there is any color you could provide on your assumptions would be helpful. Thank you.
Again, I do not think it is a hockey stick recovery. We are only six weeks into the year. We have clearly had some very successful large wins of late and a great pipeline with a very broad investor base. Yeah, I think clearly things are going to have to increase from here to hit the guidance number. But yeah, certainly do not think it is going to be sort of a total backend hockey stick play.
Is it the post-budget kind of recovery that you are kind of banking on? Or would you say even at the or perhaps just talking to the midpoint, I know you are not speaking to any specific clients, but just want to understand the assumptions, in terms of contribution from Morgan Stanley Wealth Management at the lower end of guidance versus recovery from the current environment and just any comment you can provide.
Probably the reason for putting a range of 18-20 is that we are still, call it, 11 months away from the end of the year. To be able to pinpoint exactly where we are going to land with as much science as we have put into it is difficult. So we just wanted to make sure that we were giving the market a sensible range that we think is achievable. Anything can happen between now and then, but there is a lot of very strong support from our existing base as well as new opportunities and recent wins.
Yeah, I think from your perspective, it's probably easy to see this from top-down. The way that we actually pull this together is more bottom-up.
Yeah.
When we look across the relationships we have, the relationships that we're seeking to build, it gives us confidence around that number.
Okay. No, that's clear. Thank you. Just maybe a follow-up on the Morgan Stanley Wealth Management partnership. Just interested in the process there. I think you had mentioned before there would need to be new SOAs signed and things like that. Just what else is required there and how you're thinking about the timing? Is it fair to say that early flows would be non-custody fee-based as opposed to custody, with the custody being the opportunity to follow? Is that the right way to think about it?
I think it's probably getting into a little bit too much detail. It is for all intents and purposes a transition of a client and all of the opportunities apply.
Okay. I understand. Maybe just a last question around how you're thinking about your margin guidance for FY 2027. There is obviously a level of expense growth assumed within that. So, interested to get your thoughts on how much flex you have in that expense growth assumption, particularly if FUA were to come in below expectations given the uncertainty that we are seeing. Basically, are you managing to your margin guidance or is it the other way around?
We are targeting margin, and we have a lot of flex in our ability to manage to that. The vast bulk of the investment is in product and tech. We use a range of internal and external spend for that, and we cadence it through the year. Ultimately, it is discretionary. This is not of a fixed or variable nature, where we have to spend it. But we do want to spend it because we see benefit in doing so.
Okay. That is clear. Thank you.
Our next question is from Lafitani Sotiriou with MST Financial. Please proceed.
Good morning, and thank you for the opportunity to ask a couple questions. I would not mind digging into two buckets, areas you are moving into. It is interesting to see industry super high balances on the mapping and some targeting of it. Can you give us some specifics as to how you are actually going about that? Typically, where the platform space has been, you are competing with other platforms and share of wallet from advisers. Can you talk to any specific strategies or approach on how you think you can better break into the high balances in industry super?
Yeah, absolutely. It is a great question. We are certainly seeing good flows from industry funds at the moment. I often say, and I will just repeat again, this is not us entering into a super war, despite what the press would like to run as headlines. The reality is that there is a very large cohort of Australians in small industry fund balances. While we have certainly got products, including our core product, that could be head-to-head from a pricing perspective with industry funds for those smaller balances, our real focus is that affluent advice and that is clients that have got more than AUD 500,000 in their super balances, where we believe that they need more than just guided advice or advice from a new class of adviser, as an example.
They will typically have debt, insurance needs, they may have assets outside of their super, and are looking for holistic wealth solutions. The numbers are pretty remarkable, as you would have seen on that chart. Accounts sitting over AUD 500,000 accounts for about AUD 600 billion currently within industry funds. Our understanding is over the next four years, that AUD 600 billion actually grows to AUD 1 trillion. So, a very significant volume and a tailwind in that respect. The strategy really is around advice, though. We are there to support advisers. A lot of the capability and sort of work that we are doing is around that efficiency basis I touched on at the start, which is how do we help advisers service more than their current customer base, and based on their unified data, actually. The average number of customers per adviser is currently sitting at 123.
There is circa 3.5 million- 5 million Australians that will be retiring over the next 5- 10 years, and only circa 10,000- 12,000 advisers to service them. This efficiency piece and this road to 200 or this road to 300 is really important. We are not the only ones investing in trying to solve this problem, but it is about helping advisers service more customers if they want to, which many do. But without segregating the quality of advice and without segregating the quality of service. So, it is things like self-service, it is about automation of advice, it is about easier access to information. There is a whole range of areas across an advice firm, which is what we call jobs to be done, where we think we can actually add value and help drive that efficiency to get our share of those complex advice clients.
Yeah, got it. Just moving on to that servicing more underlying clients and if you are to move towards 200, and you flagged some stuff on slide 19 and beyond around building more advice tools. Can you talk us through how we should think about how far you are looking to expand into features to gain those efficiencies? So, for example, whether it is Xplan or Xero or other feature sets that may be done externally. Are you looking at creating an Xplan Lite, for example, so that your advisers don't need to move as much off-platform? How many of these tools that you are looking to build will there be revenue associated?
Yeah. Again, it is a fairly large question. So the advice ecosystem is pretty big. I think the average number of software solutions in an advice firm is 14. It continues to increase. So we are being very disciplined in looking at all of those jobs that need to be done across an advice firm, and being quite deliberate where we think it makes sense for us to play. So as an example, a Record of Advice solution, which we are uplifting. It makes sense because often it is investment related or it might be withdrawal related. So to have that integrated into an adviser's workflow at the point that they are doing a transaction makes good sense. With Unified, we look to continue to integrate that through into the reporting.
It also allows you to expand the range of solutions that we can offer through the client portal, for example. So, do we want to go into full-blown Xplan territory, which is a huge product? No. Are there parts of it, like file noting and other areas that we think probably do make a lot of sense? Yes. Then there is other areas which generative AI are making possible, such as with SOAs, et cetera, that whilst we are not committing to it, we are certainly quite interested in understanding, exploring further. Your last question, does it have revenue attached to it? I was going to say, does it have revenue attached to it? Look, I think ideally things that we do, we try and attach revenue to. We are big believers in user pay. Sometimes that works, sometimes it does not.
But yeah, certainly, if we think that we are delivering enough value that it should be revenue accretive, we will. Is it going to massively move the needle? Probably not.
Let me answer that slightly differently. Whether it is direct or indirect revenue, the answer is yes.
Yeah. I think what Hayden meant is that we have got a vested interest in making this work because if we can help our advisers double the number of clients, our business doubles as well.
Yeah.
That might be the indirect route.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Our next question is from Anthony Hoo from Ord Minnett. Please proceed.
Good morning. Thank you. Just a couple of questions. First one, just on costs, picking up on the earlier question. As you look into FY 2027, you said there's quite a bit of discretion around how much you spend, but interested in the profile of that spend. Are there large, significant projects involved in that where there's an extended timeline or a profile of that beyond FY 2027 that might extend into 2028 and 2029? Just interested in what the profile looks like, not just 2027, but also 2028, 2029.
Look, Anthony, we haven't given specific guidance out into 2028 and 2029, and I'd hesitate to even comment on it because we haven't gone through a board approval process to even contemplate what our budget spend might be for those years. Other than having an idea of what our product roadmap looks like over a multi-year timeframe, and the type of investment that we as a management team would like to undertake. As with anything product and tech, it is discretionary. If you ever see a software company turn off its investment in product and tech and go for higher margins over high growth, that's a warning sign, right? I think we're effectively the opposite of that. We have a very healthy pipeline of opportunities with very attractive returns inside the outcome. It is multi-year.
We are also very respectful of delivering to the market what is acceptable. We believe the margin profile of about 47% this year, trending towards 50% over time, is a bit of a balance.
Yeah. Okay, great. Thank you. Second question, just on your FY 2029 ambition to double, or sorry, FY 2030 ambition to double FUA. Can you talk a little bit around the revenue margin that you're contemplating in that? There's been a bit of talk, a bit of discussion around impact of your growth in the high-net-worth segment and ultra-high-net-worth segment. Just some broad thoughts around the revenue margin basically for over the next four years.
Yeah, look, that's a hard one too, Anthony. The guidance we have is for doubling FUA. Obviously, that does not imply doubling of revenue. We haven't put out any guidance as to what that revenue growth might be. So I can't really comment further on that. In relation to margin, we've also said that we'll move back towards 50%, so we probably won't provide any more than that.
Okay. All right. Thank you.
We have reached the end of our question and answer session. I will now hand the call back over to Mr. Heine for closing remarks.
Great. Thanks, everyone. Fantastic questions following the presentation, and look forward to discussing further with you in the coming weeks or months. Appreciate your dialing in.
Thanks all.
Thank you. That does conclude our conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.