Good afternoon. Welcome on behalf of Montega to today's earnings call of the JDC Group [Foreign language]. Today, we delve into the Q3 figures of 2023. Warm welcome to CEO, Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier, and CFO, Ralph Konrad, who will start with the presentation shortly. After the presentation, we will have a Q&A session. With this, let's start. Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier, the stage is yours.
Thank you very much for the nice introduction, Mrs. Brandmeier. So yeah, welcome from our side to our earnings call for the figures of Q3 and nine months in 2023. So we chose double-digit growth as our header, and you will see that we think that we can be very content about the figures in this quarter. So my name is Sebastian Grabmaier. I'm the CEO, co-founder of JDC Group. We founded the company 22 years ago, together with my partner, Ralph. I'm responsible for strategy, products, investor public relations, and also human resources, and my partner, Ralph, will introduce himself.
Yeah, you already introduced me, so, nothing left to say.
Yeah. So he's responsible for IT operations, finance, and legal, which is important, right? And also M&A. So the third on the board is our co-director, Marcus Rex, that joined the board in June. Yeah, so for those of you who don't know us already, we are a typical digital platform service provider. We developed the company out of a leading marketing and product company, a product company, product platform for investment funds into what's now the leading tech stack for processing third-party insurance products in the German market. That means we take in the data of more than 220 insurance groups, all the asset management platforms, investment companies, mortgaging bank.
We digitize the data, we process it, and then we make the data visible in visualizing systems, either our own our CRM system, iCRM, for example, or our app to or also direct clients. Or we use this the visualizing systems of our partners, where we implement the data via an API structure. So currently, now we have the data sets of 4.6 million contracts on the platform, of which more than 2 million pay commissions. And yeah, we are increasing back office efficiency by digitizations. Also the first starts in AI and reading out the data.
Yeah, so we are further developing our IT stack to win all these tenders out there, all the beauty contests, especially of institutional clients such as banks, the insurance companies, and also bigger broker organizations. Yeah, we can see that we have a quite accelerating insurance business. 75% of our business almost is insurance now, and that's on a strong growth path. And you see in insurance, we're not only growing, but the growth is also growing, so that's the main part of our growth. Of this 22% growth, you can see that in Q1 was only 13%, in Q2, it was 21%, now we're up to 22%, so that's EUR 14 million of our growth.
This is a little bit compensated by the very difficult environment in the investment, and also importantly, the mortgage financing business, also real estate is down. So from EUR 115.8 million in the last nine months, 2022, we developed our turnover, so that's top line, EUR 120 million-122.9 million. And you can see most done by insurance. And if you look at the segments on the next page, same growth figures in another breakdown, you can see that the major contribution to growth is our major customers. So we have two segments. That's Advisort ech, that's the IFA business, the major customers, and also our direct customers, and then Advisory. And you can see that especially Advisort ech is developing quite nicely.
In the broad IFA business, we have a growth of almost 10% already, so that's 9.2% up, with a little bit more than Q2. And the major customers are up 17.5%, and this is the deduction. On the other side, Advisory, where we have exclusively bound IFAs, it's about 300 of them, where they're more hit by the buying reluctance and also the low consumer confidence in the investment side. There we have a minus of 10.7%. And also the direct customers, that's not much in absolute terms, it's just EUR 0.2 million, but they're on down almost 10%. You see now the split up, major customers already 25% almost, and 75% is the IFA business.
You can see now that we're doing quite okay in a very challenging environment. So turnover overall is up 6% over the last nine months, and the EBITDA is up 8%. You know, that's also due to the distribution of income during the year. Normally, we receive a lot of income in the first quarter, then we have two weak quarters. That's quarter number two and quarter number three, due to summer break, and then Q4 is the main contribution of EBITDA. So we see, we said again, so overall, I think we have quite satisfying environment with a strong outperformance on the insurance side, and especially also a good development of Advisort ech segment, also in this quite weak summer season.
Yeah, Ralph, now I think because the question you ask yourself is, you know, the guidance needs us to grow quite significantly in Q4 with way more than EUR 50 million in top line turnover, and also in a significant growth in EBITDA. This is now to show you that we are quite confident that this guidance we gave you at the beginning of the year is still in a good reach, Ralph.
Yes. Before we go into nine-month figures, let's have a look at the quarterly development. As Sebastian said, a few minutes ago, we have a strong Q1 in turnover, a weak Q2, even weaker Q3 because of summer season, and then we have a year-end business in Q4. First quarter is strong because of the P&C business, where we have all the renewal dates in January and February, and the fourth quarter normally is good because of the UN business. And you can see this cyclicality in 2020, also in 2021. And you don't see it in 2022 because the third quarter was weaker than expected because of the Ukraine energy interest crisis. And we only had a plus of 15% in turnover to Q4.
What you can see in 2020 and 2021 is the normal development is turnover is around about 30% above the third quarter. So that's what you can expect, a turnover which is 30% more than—at least 30% more than the third quarter of 2023. We have done the same calculations with the EBITDA. If you here look at the developments of the last years, then you can always see at least you have a plus of 150% from third to the fourth quarter, which means at least 2.5x EBITDA. In 2021, it was 3x EBITDA. 2022, it was even 3.4x EBITDA, which means a plus of 240%.
And that's the reason, as Sebastian said, why we still believe in our guidance despite the weak first quarter, because if you look at a normal year with a normal year-end business, then the logic tells us that we will be within the guidance at the lower end as we published this morning. But that's normal because we had a weak first quarter, and we still are not shareholder of Top Ten because the regulatory application that we made 12 months ago is still in progress.
We expect, hopefully, to be done within the next two or three weeks, so that we will see the first consolidation of Top Ten in December, but we're still on the way there. Okay, now let's look at the nine-month figures in a little bit more detail. Revenues were up by 10%, which leads to a total growth of 6.1%, driven by the Advisort ech segment. Advisory is still suffering from the economic environment. And we had a lower holding and intercompany contribution with minus EUR 2.4 million, compared to minus EUR 2.9 million, sorry, compared to minus EUR 4 million.
The reason is that if Advisory business is shrinking, then of course, the intercompanies are going down as well because Advisory is using the Advisort ech platform. So less turnover leads to less consolidation there. And the good news is that we saw an improvement in EBITDA of 100%, I think this is a very satisfying number, leading to a +8.2% in EBITDA for the first nine months. Please keep in mind that we started with a relevant minus in the first quarter. We had, let's say, break-even in the second quarter compared to 2002.
Now we are plus, see a plus of 8.2%, which will definitely accelerate in the fourth quarter. Advisort ech is still doing very well. Revenues grew by 10% in the third quarter, which is more or less the growth of the full nine months. There we saw EUR 108.4 million in turnover. The gross profit went up by 6% to EUR 28.5 million. Depreciation is coming down a little bit.
We have an increase in personal expenses by 4.6% to EUR 14.6 million, and we are, you know, very keen on keeping our cost basis stable, so we—as you can see that the operating expenses are only increasing by 200,000 euros, leading to an EBITDA of EUR 7.5 million in the first nine months, or EUR 2 million in the third quarter, which is a plus of 10% in the full fiscal year, a plus of 20% in EBITDA, and a plus of 30% in EBIT. And if you look at the third quarter standalone, then we see a plus in EBITDA of approximately 40%, which I think is also a very satisfying number.
The advisory segment, as I mentioned, is still suffering from the economic environment. And the reason is that, especially there, we are doing investment fund business, mortgage business, and real estate business, and these are the three areas that are affected the most. Please keep in mind what Sebastian said, plus an insurance business of 22%, which is a very good number. But we have a minus in our investment and mortgage business of 17%. So the difference is again the growth, and we see this development especially here in the advisory business. So revenue was down in the third quarter by 7.3%. Gross profit is going up a little bit.
Personal expenses, other expenses, and depreciation are very stable, so EBITDA was up by 60%, with a little EUR 200,000 to EUR 0.5 million. And at the end, we are more or less at the same profitability, EUR 1.7 million, compared to EUR 1.8 million in the previous year. But the revenue is down by 10%. And yeah, we expected the recovery of the advisory business a little bit earlier, but a little bit faster. Yeah, but still working on this. Cash flow statements here. We had a little error on our publication this morning. Thanks, Ben, our analyst from Stifel, for the hint.
We reported a cash flow from operating activities of EUR 7 million. The real number is EUR 7.8 million, which you see here. We started at a cash at the beginning of the period with EUR 16.6 million. A very satisfying cash flow from investment from operating activities of EUR 8 million. We started or increased our our investment activities driven by the last payment in Morgen & Morgen. So company is now totally paid but also our investments in in Summitas, where we invested in some capital calls. We had a very strong cash flow from financing activities.
The biggest part of this is the sale of our treasury shares to Provinzial, with EUR 13.1 million, leading to a cash on hand of EUR 34 million by the end of the third quarter. Yeah, then happened after the third quarter, but only some days ago, we terminated our existing bonds from 2019 to 2024. We will pay the bond back within the next days. Next days is at the beginning of December, and we issued a new bond, where we lowered the capacity from EUR 25 million to EUR 20 million because of our good cash position on hand. We don't need the EUR 25 million, 20 is enough.
Interest rate is increasing a little bit, of course, from 5.5% to 7%. But if you compare the 7% to the bonds of other medium-sized companies, then the 7% is a very good figure. We see some other bonds paying 8% or 9%, and so we feel very good with the 7% that we yeah, could achieve here. In total, interest rates, interest paid will be more or less the same, because 5.5% to EUR 25 million is more or less the same than 7% to EUR 20 million.
Okay, shareholder structure, it didn't change within the last quarter, beside the situation that Provinzial took a stake. Sebastian will give you some words on this in a few minutes. Yesterday, we saw market capitalization of EUR 250 million. Unfortunately, the share price was not so nice today. And this is also the reason why we wanted to show you this slide. We see the share price development of the last, let's say, twelve months, beginning with the Ukraine war, with a change on average with a -30% is totally contrary to our operational development.
Yes, we have a situation in the investment and mutual fund business, in the investment and mortgage business, sorry, that's not that easy. But if you look at the insurance business, all our KPIs are in a very good shape. We have reached EUR 1 billion in insurance assets, which is a plus of 16% within one year. The numbers of insurance contracts that are paying commission increased by 20% in only one year. The number of contract transfers increased by 150% within this one year, and the number of contracts sold increased by 30%. And just to show you that the operational performance of the company is not reflected in the share price.
Yes, thank you, Ralph. So far, we have some more spotlights to communicate. One is a recap on the sale of treasury shares that we did, the like major financial transactions. So as we are co-shareholders with all of you, we do not like dilution, obviously, but on this case, yeah, we had to do the transaction with Provinzial because, after Provinzial found out that, the cooperation works, in a very fine manner, we show you some figures, in a minute. And all the, yeah, the savings banks that are onboarded on the platforms, that's more than 17.5 now, they're very content with the SparkassenVersicherungsmanager .
That's the Savings Banks Insurance Manager app, where a lot of business now should come from third-party contracts, and also some more strategic plans of Provinzial, yeah, are developing around this product. We decided to yield to the wish of Provinzial and then sell the shares that we accumulated in the two successful share buyback programs. You can see them here. Overall in total we bought 687,000 shares for EUR 6.2 million at an average price a little bit of more than EUR 9, and we sold them now to Provinzial for EUR 19. So that's the EUR 13 million in a cash inflow that Ralph mentioned.
So we made an internal, we call it profit. It's almost EUR 7 million. You don't see it in the P&L, obviously, as you are professionals. It increases the equity by EUR 7 million and enhances our capital ratio. So, I think a very good thing to do, to buy back shares at a cheaper price and sell them later to more. But in the end, the reason for this was strategic, and we'll show this on the next slide, that we're very happy in Q3, for the first time, the savings banks contributed to the revenues and also a little bit to the earnings already, because the SVM, so the savings banks app, started successfully.
Here you see a snapshot of one of the first conferences. You see that it's a huge sales power behind the savings banks. Obviously, you know, the business plan is 1 million clients that should be coming to the platform in the next five years. We started the first quarter with 100,000 clients now that are new to the platform. It's more than 120,000 contracts that are transferred. There's new business coming to the platform, so we're quite happy that this is really now taking off.
So, as we said in earlier meetings, it needs patience, but good thing is now, when it comes, it does come, and we're very happy with this development, and as Provinzial is also happy now, we underpinned it with this strategic shareholding in the JDC Group. And maybe some more words to Summitas. There was some critique, obviously, because it took a little bit longer to set it up, but now it's in full run. Obviously, as a recap, it's a joint venture of Bain Capital that holds 65%, Great-West Life with 25%, and us, who hold 10%. But that's not why we do it. We do it because we have an exclusive service contract with Summitas.
So the idea is that Summitas, with a money pot of EUR 150 million equity and debt on top, buys brokers that now then transact their business over our platform. So you can see that the first transaction was done end of June, and there was Münchener Versicherungsmakler , small mid-cap marker with 2.4 million euros in turnover and EBITDA of EUR 580,000. And then there came EASiE, and the third transaction was signed just two weeks ago, will be published a week now, out of now, and there is a full pipeline, so we can expect 2 more of these small transactions. So we have now EUR 3.5 million in turnover.
That definitely comes to the platform next year, and also EUR 1.2 million in EBITDA to Summitas, and this translates into earnings of JDC of more than EUR 500,000 earnings for next year only. So this is starting off, and we're happy that also we could identify a new CEO that will be signed this month. So he will be starting the first of January at the latest, so then we have a full management team on board. So also there, green light for the development of Summitas. Yeah, for the guidance, I think that's the interesting part. We are comfortable to stick with our guidance. You see that we are almost EUR 123 million in turnover.
We know that, what Ralph mentioned, that Top Ten might only contribute one or, with some luck, two months, when this is now going fast, with the Austrian authorities. So, we have, if we have just a normal year-end business with a 30% growth out of the third quarter, which is quite likely as the sentiment for the important part in the year-end business, that's both life insurance business and health insurance business, is quite positive in the market. Of the ones of you who have contacts to insurance industry, all the, well, insurance carriers are quite positive on, on the development of this year. We are now guiding to the lower end of this turnover.
So we will add another, whatever, EUR 53 million-55 million to our turnover in Q4. And then from the EBITDA side, I think we're quite okay with reaching EUR 11.5 million-12 million of the guidance. So we stick with our guidance that we gave you beginning of the year and yeah, feel comfortable to reach these goals. So also, the other goals that we set up here, you can see that the bank insurance business is developing fine. You read the news on the contracts with both VKB, [Foreign language] , who's also a shareholder, and SV SparkassenVersicherung who is the public insurer for the savings banks of the southwest of Germany. So that's another 100 savings banks joining the platforms starting next year.
Yeah, there's another green dot now because Summitas is performing. We'll have these five acquisitions in this year. Also, the corporate benefit platform, Plug-InSurance, launched successfully, will contribute mostly next year. Top Ten, as we said, approval of BaFin, the German institution, and regulatory authorities is there. But then, as we both have activities in Austria, which is quite small, but also equally important. So FMA, the Austrian authorities, they said when there is if these police records missing of the management of all the parent companies, especially Great-West Life, has to provide all these documentation of all of their offices up to Canada.
So you can imagine that's quite a red tape there, but we are quite positive that this can be delivered in November. IT platform is developing, and also we can lift economies of scale. We give you some figures there end of the year. So because we can see that the first AI project will be starting, and so we can read out the data of our contracts faster, and then we need less you know personnel to digitize our data or contracts. So yes, as always, the development of the markets is something we have not in our realm. As you know, it's very volatile. Well, you can see this in our share price as well. It's a yeah multi-crisis environment.
Everybody's looking to Israel or Gaza, and also the consumer confidence is at a historic low. And as we mentioned now a couple of times, it's very surprising that the insurance sector is up so much against the backdrop of these worldwide developments. Yeah, so yeah, I think that was the last slide. We're happy to take any questions you might have, and I saw that there are the first in the chat, Mrs. Brandmaier.
Yes, thank you so much. We're now transitioning to the Q&A session. We kindly ask you to pose your question via the audio line. To do so, please use the Raise Your Hand button. If you're dialed in by a phone, you can use the key combination star nine followed by star six. If speaking freely today is not possible for you, you can, of course, use the chat. We have a first question from Benjamin Kohnke. Thank you so much, Mr. Kohnke, for your question. You can speak now.
I'm on unmute. Good afternoon, everybody. Can you hear me all right?
Yes.
Yes, great.
Super. So thank you for the presentation, and thanks for taking my question. The first one would be actually two around Advisort ech, Sebastian. The first one, if I look at the performance of the major customers, I think you indicated 17 something percent growth in nine months. If I do the math correctly, that's around about 10% or so for Q3, which is probably somewhat disappointing. And I was just gonna ask if you can say a little bit more around this performance in Q3, and what makes you confident that this can accelerate again, and so significantly in Q4? And the second question around Advisort ech would be around the IFA business, essentially.
Do you see any adverse effects from, I guess, you know, the aggressive price competition that you also alluded to in the Q1, Q2 call that we've seen in the market? D oes that have a negative impact on your business there? And then the third question, if I may, would just be around the use of cash, and I think I raised that question in the Q2 call already. But still, I mean, even if I deduct the upcoming outflow for the acquisition of Top Ten, seems like you're round about debt, net debt neutral at the end of the year.
If I look into 2024, if the ramp-up of the platform business goes according to plan, and free cash flow generation should accelerate, and you know, you also just mentioned the share price itself. Given the last sort of share buyback went quite successfully, are you evaluating any such yeah, any such step again or to repeat in the course of the next couple of quarters? Thank you.
So thank you, Ben, for your question. Also, again, thank you for finding the little bug. Yeah, we misrepresented our cash flow, but to our favor, so it was even better now, or it's now better after you found it than it was before. Yeah, so the development of the reason why the major customers developed a little bit different over the year than the IFA business is that the business composition is a little bit different. So there's a lot of P&C contracts that we accumulate on this, at these big clients, especially the corporate clients.
So in the P&C contracts contribute mostly in Q1, and then not in Q2 and Q3, and then there is some life and health business in Q4. So the figures are a little bit distorted, as we have now three out of these three quarters, there are two quarters that are not the stronghold of these major clients, let's put this. And also the savings banks just started basically in Q3. There was a little bit of turnover in the first quarter and only now is starting. And also when, for example, we now have the first 120,000 contracts with the savings banks, obviously the cash flows of these contracts follow in the next average six months.
So we will see a lot of this turnover just coming next year. So we think it's just as to plan how these major customers develop, and we see more growth coming in Q4. Yes, you mentioned there's an aggressive price competition in the market. That's true. Well, what we predicted was that there is consolidation. The first effect is that basically there's only three platforms left in the insurance tech side. That's our competitors, blau direkt and Fonds Finanz.
So we are now number two in the market, and obviously there is yeah, some hard price competition also with the major customers. It's not a secret that our competitors went up to our. As soon as it's published that contracts are renewed, they walk up to a major customer and said, "I do this for you half price or even for free," just to have this image factor to steal a client from our platform. But obviously, we could defend this, and not only could we keep the contract, but also for same or better conditions as it was before.
So, yes, we feel the competition, and they are aggressive, but up to now, we could not only defend the clients that we had, but also when we go out and are in tenders with new clients, and you could see this, both VKB and SV and OTA, and there's some more to come, that in the end, we're still winning the tenders, although we ask for a price for our services. And in the individual IFA business, if there is, there is a lot of talk about, yeah, one of, yeah, the like a starting fee for IFAs.
We will not do this or play this game because we know who comes for money, goes for money, and that's just a short-term effect, and that's not the quality IFAs that we want. So we want people that have a client focus and not like are driven by commissions or fees that platforms pay to them. And the third question is, it's also a good question, the use of our cash. Yes, we were happy about the cash flow development, and also when we paid all the dues out of M&A transactions in the past, there will be, yeah, on the conservative side, net, in the end, there will be net cash. So there's, before we pay dividends, I think there's two better ways to use it.
One is the M&A side. We'll see that, Summitas will deduct some of the, or will do some of the capital calls, and then. But that's also what we want. We want them to buy brokers, and we want them to contribute the turnover to the platform. And, the other one, obviously, is to buy back shares. We did this successfully two times in the past, and obviously, if we think that you can see that us, as directors, we are buying at these prices, and, if the share price is not going through the roof, it's very reasonable to think about this as well.
Ben, I would like to add one comment to the third quarter because there was a very similar question in the chat of Mark. Hi, Mark. We had a very strong July. If you look a little bit deeper into this third quarter, really very strong July, the best July we ever saw, especially in the Advisort ech business. And then in August, all of a sudden, all of the brokers were, I don't know, on vacation, and all of the customers were with them as well. So we had a very weak August, and there's no reason for this. Yeah. Sometimes you have months where because of weekends, of holidays, of other effects, you have a weaker turnover, and we had such in August, so there's no structural reason for that.
That's great. Thank you very much.
Thank you so much. And then we have another question in this chat from Sebastian Weitzner. Thank you so much, Sebastian, for asking the question. He would like to know: How many third-party insurance contracts have already been concluded as part of the Provinzial deal? Yeah.
Yeah. I don't know if I understood the question correctly. We have now, as Sebastian said, more than 100,000 customers, and he said more than 100,000 - 120,000 contracts. Let's say, let's divide this business into two types. The first is the bulk translation, the bulk transfer at the beginning of the cooperation, especially Kreissparkasse Köln. There we are talking about 50, 60, 65,000 third-party contracts. And now operationally, month by month, we're adding around about 5,000 new contracts, but monthly increasing. Now, these are the transfers, and new business is more or less 500 new contracts a month, also increasing month by month. So that's the run rate we're talking about.
Thank you so much. We have another question regarding Summitas. They have now made three acquisitions, and do the brokers employed there have now to switch to your software, and what happens if they don't want to?
Oh, yeah. That's. Thank you for the question. It's so we make it very transparent, or Summitas does make it very transparent when they buy that we don't follow the model where just buy brokers and just let them be there. So but we make it clear that we want to integrate the tech and also the data provision for the brokers, so that it is—when they sign, there is a cooperation part where they also sign the service contract with the platform, so they know what they're doing. And normally, a broker today has two pain points. One is they don't like all the tech developments and this data procurement. That's a hassle for them because they like to be with the clients.
The second is also the HR part, because obviously there's full employment in Germany, and it's very hard to find people to work for you as a broker. We can help with these two pain points. Normally, they like the fact that they can get rid of IT processing and data procurement, so it's not a big threat to them. But the answer is yes, they will. We now know out of the first three transactions, there will be EUR 3.5 million more in commission as soon as they're onboarded. We expect the first to onboard January 1st, so we will have a full year of the first target and maybe three quarters of a year or half a year of the two next targets.
So we have a little bit of delay of maybe a half a year or nine months, but then all of these turnover will go to platform, and with a normal platform margin, we expect a 10% growth margin out of this business. So it's a very satisfying situation there. So we hope that Summitas does needs a lot of money and buys a lot of brokers, so we have a lot of additional revenue on the platform.
Thank you so much.
Yeah, but there could. But Sebastian, there could also be the situation that the broker nevertheless doesn't want to use our software platform. That's n o problem, because in this case, we connect the existing brokers here and to our platform via our JDC API. And the broker can work with his existing tool, as he wants, and we provide contracts and data and new business. So that's also possible.
Thank you so much. Sorry, Ralph Konrad, for interrupting you. We have another question by Mr. Edwin Devong. Thank you so much for the question. He would like to know, now that we're nearing the end of 2023, how is your assessment so far in general for the business year 2024?
Yeah, we think that we see that sometimes we have to have patience, and I made the joke last time, I think, that patience is my second name. But in the end, you can see that 100% of all these projects we predicted were also coming into execution, right? Sometimes it takes a little bit longer, but all of these very big customers, these public insurers, came to the platform, and the savings banks will come to the platform. So we will see all the proceeds and the returns of what we planted this year. Top Ten will contribute another EUR 22 million next year to our platform. Then the savings banks systems will grow a bit, but at least EUR 10 million plus.
So, the other major customers that are now starting, they will contribute. And also the broad IFA market will contribute as one. There is inflation in insurance premium, as you might see yourself, as your client of insurance, for your building insurance goes up 15%, your car insurance goes up 15%. So that immediately pays into the growth of next year. And obviously, we have a certain percentage or a fixed percentage of premium is our commission. So the commission follows with a little bit delay this inflation processes or, you know, or developments. So we will see that we will definitely grow more than 20% next year.
Thank you so much. We received another question in the chat. Thank you so much. Why is the Advisort ech decelerated from Q2?
We already answered this question, Mark and Ben, if you have further questions on this, then please ask in more detail, but I think that is already answered. I think there's one.
Well, we can wrap it up, Ralph, and we can say this again, so to make it clear.
Okay
We can hide, you know. So, and first, Ralph answered and said, you know, the Advisory part, it transacts the insurance on the Advisor tech platform. So if Advisory goes down, and insurance debt goes back to the platform, the second part was the distribution of business over the years.
Thank you so much. We have another question from the chat. Thank you so much. How is the business going on the first months of Q4, and how much visibility you have on Q4 as of today?
I'm not really sure if we are allowed to talk about Q4, because we issue the new figures at the beginning of next year. But let's maybe say it this way, if we would have seen that the numbers are not as expected, we would have to reduce our guidance. So we didn't, and maybe this is the answer.
And last year, when you remember, we took some critique that we reduced the guidance basically out of a gut feeling. In the end, yes, we ended on the uppermost rim of the revised guidance, because then it was not that bad as we thought. But this year we see completely different signs in the market. Instead of a big depression we just had the biggest trade fair in Germany for the insurance industry. Last year there was a huge depression, and nobody believed in year-end business, and this is how it came.
This year everybody's really positive on the new business figures. And the indication we could give you was the figures Ralph gave you. So the new business is up, up almost 30%, which gives you an indication that this is what new business is, and this happens mostly, you know, in Q4. So, the first KPIs that we have and, you know, to report and that we always give you, they make us look very positive into the Q4.
Thank you so much. We now have another question from the chat, from Mr. Glatzer. He says, "As we have seen that the contracts on the platform increase, also to the speed of new contracts increase, will this translate to turnover growth? Or more specific, what is the delay on the turnover?
Ralph, you want to answer or?
Yes. With contract transfers, the commission is paid after the first renewal date, after the contract is transferred onto our platform. So we can roughly say, for all the contracts transferred to JDC platform, let's say 30%-40% are paid this year, and the rest are paid for the first time next year. Up to now, we had approximately 400,000 new contracts via contract transfers. And this will lead to a significant increase in turnover next year. And led to an increase in turnover that we saw this year.
And in the new business, we normally have a delay of, let's say, on average, three months in the life insurance or health insurance business, because normally insurance companies pay the commission after the beginning of the contract and the first payment of the customer. If you look at your own insurance book, maybe you started a new life insurance policy and signed it, but not beginning today, but beginning next month or beginning in eight weeks. And then the company receives the first premium, the insurance company, and then does the billing to JDC, and then the turnover is in our books. So, again, new business, like three months, and contract transfers, 30% 40% this year and the rest next year.
To give you some more precise figures on the transfer contract, it's also a number we gave you in the past. Now, our average contract pays EUR 35.4 this year. So, and about 2/3 of the contracts we receive a commission for. So 400,000 times 2/3, times 35, you can reckon with some churn that there's EUR 8 million-10 million more on the platform next year from these transfer contracts.
Yeah.
Thank you so much. We've received another question by Mr. Edwin De Jong, regarding the general uncertainty in the market. Are multiples paid for brokers coming down?
That's a wise statement, because obviously you should expect when interest rates rise and also there is. Yeah, the market environment does not look that good. This should be the case, but it's not there yet. So there's still yeah, the image or the facts follow the image. So the very high valuation of the past drive also the valuations of the buying prices and there is sometimes a very absurd price competition for the targets driven by the even more absurd multiples of the sales prices of the aggregators. If you look at one transaction, that's MRH T, the first aggregator in the market that sold shares, then they sold it at a 20x multiple, 25, right? So forward looking, so it's almost a 40x multiple last year. This drives basically the prices. So, unfortunately, Edwin, the prices did not go down yet.
Thank you so much. We received another question by Roland Müller. Thank you so much, Mr. Müller. He would like to know if you have a pipeline for acquisition for new customers.
Yes, sure. And it's long. So, yeah, if you know, we had this slide in our normal presentations of our J-curve when we acquire projects. So if there's tenders of very good or very big customers, it takes up to two years until these contracts are signed. So, everything you see now is the reaping of the work from two years ago. So, that means that if we sign. Well, VKB is obvious, right? So because they bought the shares two years ago. So that's even more, three years out when we started to put them out in the pipeline. So yes, there's a huge pipeline.
To explain this a little bit more, we have this very strong position now in the bank insurance market, where we are the platform now for the savings banks and cooperative bank sectors that are almost two-thirds of the German banking business. There is other banks interested because they see that this works there now. The other part of the market that's interesting, next to the broker business, where we also have 16,000 of almost 40,000 brokers in the market already have a contract with us, so we have a strong position there. Half of the market again is the insurance companies themselves, and this is why we want to emphasize the importance of this Gothaer project.
For the first time, the platform is invented and rolled out to agent networks of 2,400 Gothaer agents. You read that they will go into a merger with Barmenia, so there is one in the pipeline that's obvious, and it's public. But there is a whole number of insurance agent networks that are very interesting targets for us. So in short, there's a very long pipeline, yes.
Thank you so much. We have one last question, and this is a reminder for you. If you have a question, please, use the Raise Your Hand button, or ask in the chat, or use the key combination star nine followed by star six. Thank you for the question. The question is: how do you access the planned stronger push by Netfonds in the insurance sector, and what are the implications for you?
Well, we like Netfonds as a, as a competitor over all the years, and, and we, we have a lot of respect what they do in the investment, especially in the liability umbrella side. To be honest, on the insurance side, we don't meet them much, put it this way. So I think it's obvious that you push in this, in this market, and that's also what Hypoport did for a while, until they, they now, decided to save some money to push the platform. Obviously, we, we wish them luck, but we haven't seen them, as far as I remember, Ralph, in no, in not one tender. So we, we cannot really answer this question more precise.
Thank you so much. As no further questions have come in, we now end this earnings call. Thank you so much, Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier and Ralph Konrad, for your time and the presentation. And also thank you for you for keeping this conversation so engaging. Should you have further questions in the future, you can, of course, contact the investor relations team or us, Montega. And on behalf of Montega, I thank you so much for being here, and I wish you a great rest of the day. Some final remarks now by Dr. Sebastian Grabmaier, and stay safe.
Yeah. Thank you, Ms. Brandmeier. That was a very nice introduction moderation. Yeah, we think that we are on a very good course. You could also see that everything we told you in the past is now coming true, step by step. And also, well, what can we say? You saw all of us buying shares in the past, and maybe there will be some more publications because we think it's. As Ralph showed this slide, we're very content how we proceed operationally, and we're okay with the figures, and you will see that we also can reap the rewards in the near future. Yeah, some people sell at good news, and this is what we have to get used to. Thank you for your attention, and yeah, thank you for your trust.
Bye-bye.