Good morning and welcome to the Aberdeen Q3 AUMA and Flows Trading Update. I will now hand over to Chief Executive Officer Jason Windsor. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, everyone, and thanks very much for joining our Q3 call. With me today is our CFO, Siobhan Boylan. It's been another good quarter as we implement the plan we set out in March. Net flows and other key operational metrics improved year-on-year, and Group AUMA of GBP 542 billion is up 6% year- to- date, benefiting from positive markets. In Interactive Investor, there has been continued strong performance across the board, and the team has done a terrific job sustaining growth in customers and assets. We have a pipeline of innovative new propositions, and with increasing brand awareness, II is very well positioned to sustain this positive momentum. In Adviser, customer service has again improved, and net flows were 50% better than in Q3 last year, but we are still in outflow.
So looking ahead, we remain focused on returning to growth and achieving our 2026 net flows target of GBP 1 billion. And in investments, while equities remains and flows in equities remain challenging, we have seen encouraging net inflows in fixed income and real assets, as well as in quants and commodities. As a result, we are confident in our prospects as a Wealth and Investments Group, with the growth potential across all three of our businesses reflected in our 2026 targets. And with that, I'll hand over to Siobhan to take you through a little more detail.
Thanks, Jason, and good morning, everyone. Beginning with II, where momentum pleasingly remains strong across all key metrics. Total customers reached 492,000, including the expected circa 20,000 from Jarvis. Excluding this acquisition, organic growth was 10%. This is ahead of our 8% target. Strong momentum was also seen in higher value SIPPs, with transfers in record levels in the quarter and customers rising to 98,000, up 29% versus Q3 last year. During Q3, customers continued to increase engagement with the platform's global trading and FX capabilities. Daily average trading volumes were up 43% and hit a record of 26,600 in the quarter. Net inflows of GBP 1.9 billion were up 58% year-on-year. Combined with the completion of the Jarvis acquisition and positive markets, AUMA increased to GBP 93 billion. As we outlined at the spotlight event, building the II brand is a key lever to drive our future growth.
It is encouraging that brand awareness increased to 32% in Q3. This is up from 25% in Q4 and 18% in Q1 last year. We launched our new campaign last week to continue to raise brand awareness. In summary, II remains very well positioned to deliver against its 2026 targets, given the strong inflows, growing customer numbers, increasing customer engagement, and the new propositions that are due to go live in the near future. In Adviser, assets increased 5% to GBP 79 billion, reflecting positive markets. Net outflows in the quarter improved by 50% to GBP 0.5 billion compared to Q3 last year. This reflects our strategic repricing earlier this year and our continued progress in improving service levels. As a result, our net promoter score increased to 45 points year to date, five points ahead of our target and two points higher than at half one.
Turning now to investments, assets increased 3% to GBP 382 billion, with market performance offsetting net outflows. GBP 1.8 billion of net outflows in the quarter were almost half the level of Q3 last year. This included insurance partner outflows of GBP 1.1 billion, principally reflecting Phoenix's heritage business in runoff. Net inflows in institutional and retail wealth, excluding liquidity, improved by GBP 2.9 billion year-on-year to GBP 0.2 billion. This reflects higher gross inflows in fixed income and commodities. Redemptions in equities also improved significantly but remained elevated, with net outflows of GBP 1.6 billion. In the quarter, we launched two further active ETFs on the London Stock Exchange. Our global ETF product suite now has reached circa GBP 12 billion of assets under management. In September, Phoenix announced their intention to insource GBP 20 billion of shareholder assets. This is subject to a three-year notice period.
We are working with Phoenix to manage this transition collaboratively and continue to have a strong relationship as their key asset management strategic partner, and as Phoenix have indicated, we have the potential to attract a greater share of their policyholder business as they consolidate their asset management manager partners. Looking ahead, we are expecting a circa GBP 4.5 billion redemption from a quants mandate in Q4 as a result of a client-driven asset allocation change. Given the low margins on this business, this will have minimal revenue impact. Turning back to the outlook for the group, we remain focused on improving efficiency across the group. Our transformation program is on track, and as Jason said at the start, we are confident in the outlook for the group. We continue to see the business delivering in line with our plan and targets set for 2026.
I will now hand over to the operator, and Jason and I will be very pleased to answer your questions.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you would like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. We'll pause for a brief moment. Thank you. We will now take our first question from Hubert Lam of Bank of America. Your line is open. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I've got three of them. Firstly, on Advice, outflows seem to have gone backwards quarter on quarter. Can you talk a bit about what's going on here? Is it seasonality, or is there some uncertainty around the U.K. budget causing outflows in Advice to weaken in the quarter? Second question is on equity outflows. They still continue to be quite stark despite good markets. So do you attribute this to general industry trends or mainly also due to fund performance? And any update on fund performance also in the quarter would be appreciated. And lastly, can you just give us an update on some of these initiatives you talk about on II, including advice? Just what's the latest progress on them, and when should we expect them to start to bear fruit? Thank you.
Okay. Morning, Hubert. Thanks for the questions. I'll start with the II initiatives. We went through those with you in Manchester a couple of months ago. I think they're all proceeding to plan. We've got to cut through a little bit of final red tape, I'll put it like that, to get them actually launched into the market, but they are either in advanced beta testing or in pilot mode across each one of the three that we talked about. For those of you that can't remember, that is II Advice, the managed SIPP, and II 360, which is the advanced platform trading system. We think that's all to the good, to broaden the net into Interactive Investor and to meet the growing customer needs, so that is very much on the slate. I'll make a couple of comments on your other two questions.
I'm sure one might want to add into that. I think in Adviser, we do point to, obviously, the improvement quarter on Q3 on Q3. Clearly, we are worse than where we were in Q2. We see sort of steady improvements in inflows and in gross flows in. We've seen a little bit more outflow, perhaps, than we expected in Q3. Not really to other platforms. We're actually much better year to date in terms of transfers from our platform to other industry platforms, just under GBP 1 billion better. It is one quarter. It is better than last year. We do continue to push hard to improve it. Everybody here at Aberdeen is very much focused on getting back to that net positive flow target for 2026, but there's more to do, frankly. Yeah.
And I don't want to overstate this point, but I'll mention it, that we have seen a little bit of uncertainty and cash being taken out of pensions out of the budget. We'll see that could play out a little bit further, depending on how the Chancellor kind of manages the media to a degree, because there is uncertainty that is persisting. Equities, it was a tough quarter. I keep making this point. We are changing the shopfront, such that it's the most relevant that it can be. We've seen real uptick in market levels, particularly in Asia-Pac and emerging markets. We've not seen the flows, I think, as an industry matter. We've had a couple of reallocations away from us, so there's clearly further work to do there. I think performance is better in Q3 than we reported at the half year. We aren't giving the precise numbers.
So we've had a better quarter, which is good, but there's still further to go. So the three-year numbers obviously take a time for that to come through, but the year-to-date performance is showing signs across the board of improvement.
Yeah. I think the only thing I'd add on. It is mainly Asian equities where you're seeing the equity outflows, but we are seeing a more global reallocation, asset allocation back into Asian equities. So we may start to see some of that come through. On the Adviser flows, as Jason said, there's nothing if you look at the gross flows, inflows, they are remaining steady. You'd expect we will see some of the supercharged pricing deals that we did at the beginning of the year come through this quarter and next, and on the outflow side, there's nothing, there's a number of factors. There's nothing really to attribute those outflows to. That's 0.2 in the quarter. A little bit of seasonality, a little bit of cash out, as you would expect.
Thanks . Just a couple on II, if I may, please. So one on brokerage was clearly very, very strong over the quarter. Can you give us some color on whether you expect also the margin these volumes to be up, perhaps more FX trading or just to help us understand whether the profitability of brokerage clients has also been strong over the quarter? So that's my first question. My second question is a bit more general on competition. Can you just give us your view on how you see the competitive landscape for B2C investing in the U.K. evolving? And then finally, just your thoughts on the budget.
I know you already mentioned that you saw some impact of that in Adviser, but perhaps you think the business is positioned for some of the key changes that have been rumored, such as the removal or, well, lowering the amount that you can put in a Cash ISA or introducing a minimum level of investments, for example, in U.K. equities. So how do you plan to position the business to benefit from these?
Okay. Do we take the first one, Siobhan, on the margins?
Yeah. So thank you for your question. We have seen strong FX trading, and that is coming through in the income. So it is primarily due to international trading, so international equities. So we've seen a spike in volatility, mainly in the back half of Q3 and coming into Q4, start of Q4.
I think in the competitive part of the market, you've got sort of two forces at work. The actual long-term savings part of the platform is dominated by four players. I think we were number one in terms of net flows last year and again in the first half. Now, net flows is not necessarily how we always measure our success because customer growth is fundamental, but if you look at the top four, I won't name-check them, but it's pretty obvious. I don't know the number, but that's well over 90% of the market. There's a real consolidation that has played out in that part of the longer-term savings part of the market, SIPPs and ISAs, and on the brokerage side, there are more neo-brokers and competitors with different business models.
Some of them that don't really work in the U.K., some of them that have had some success, some that work with CFDs and crypto and a bit more esoteric type products that we're not in. So we're faithful to our customer propositions, doing the right thing for long-term savings. We've really got a strong reputation, and we're not going to put that at risk the way that we trade. And we feel that the brand awareness is largely coming through better customer recommendations. And actually, it's the day-to-day service that is really benefiting in creating the growth step up. So it is competitive, but we're fighting hard and we're winning. I think on the budget, we can speculate all day long. The kite-flying exercise is kind of painful.
What I want is stability and confidence and a chance for making the right steps for the U.K. Inc., which will allow confidence in U.K. consumers to invest for the long term, either in the U.K. or internationally. We've never been supportive of trying to direct the traffic. With the operation, that would be quite difficult, and I'm not sure it's the right thing. But with a better U.K. economy, there will be more direct investment from U.K. retail in particular, where II is the number one provider of trading in U.K. retail into U.K. equities. And we've seen some of that in the last quarter. We've also seen quite a lot of activity in the U.S., but we want to stay investment agnostic and customer-focused.
Thank you, and our next question comes from Nicholas Herman of Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes. Good morning. Thanks for the call and for taking my questions. A couple for me, please. Markets have clearly been very supportive since early April. You said that you are confident on your targets, and I can understand that. If the markets remain supportive, it seems possible that you could quickly get to a position of exceeding your targets. So in that context, how should we as investors think about the marginal cost income for your business over and above your targets? I mean, clearly, there is variable compensation, but presumably, you'd also increase growth investments too. So could you provide some broad quantitative guidance on marginal cost income, either at group level or segment level? That would be helpful. And then on II, for the marketing campaign, I guess, will marketing incentives be similar to that in prior campaigns?
Can you please quantify customer acquisition from recent marketing campaigns or II? And is it fair to say that as brand recognition has improved over time, your marketing campaigns have also become more effective over time? Thanks.
Okay. Well, on the targets, I think it's the first time I've been asked, are we going to exceed them, which is a new one? We are continuing to work toward them. They are our targets for the group, profit and capital generation. There was always some ambition in them, and we continue to see better performance in II. And we're taking more time and investments in Adviser to come through. I think that's pretty evident in Q3 and the year-to-date trends. So there might be a slight mixed change, but that is the numbers, and we're certainly not signaling higher targets. The cost-income ratio is very. I've shied away from trying to generalize at the group level because I don't think you can. I think II's efficiency remains very strong, and it's a key part of their success.
And you can see we have a clear cost-of-asset target as part of that. With the sale of FPAL, that actually makes it even slightly more efficient in terms of cost-to-asset. So you can do those numbers, but I can't and we'll restate that once the FPAL deal closes in Q1. Adviser, you can see those trends come through in the half year. I think we flagged a revenue margin of 27-ish basis points. Through that, that is going to continue under pressure, and we're going to continue to push on the cost side to maintain the level of profitability. The harder one to manage, of course, is investments, where we've taken out a considerable amount of cost, but we've also seen considerable revenue pressure, mainly through mixed change.
Product-to-product is actually reasonably consistent, but we've seen growth in the low margin side, growth in fixed income, growth in quant and liquidity, so we're continuing to push the growth strategy through in investments because fundamental to us being more profitable in our investment business is achieving better net flows, frankly, across the board, but I deliberately not set cost-income targets just because it's quite hard to manage. On the II marketing.
Thanks.
Sorry, there was a second question that I was just unpicking my scrawled notes. We've reset the brand with a new campaign, which is to try and, again, broaden the name recognition. For a business that was number one in net flows, we're miles behind on the equivalent brand recognition. So as I said in Manchester, and I can repeat now, that's frankly, I'd rather be that way around because that shows that we've got more growth potential within II as the brand recognition improves. I just said customer recommendations are really important. II Community was a great addition to the platform. That's helpful. It allows people to, A, be engaged and, B, talk about the experience that they're having. It's early days. I think we launched it 10 days ago.
So we're not sort of flagging yet any progress on it, but what you should see is a sign that we continue to really believe in the brand, and we're really going to back it and make the investment necessary for us to drive the growth into 2026 and beyond.
And you can see, obviously, the growth in the organic growth. Our target was 8%, and it's coming through at 10%, so that's before the brand campaign, so you'll see that growth come through as a result of that increased brand awareness.
But is it fair to say that the efficiency of marketing campaigns has been improving in time as that brand has been picking up?
I think the way I would look at it is if you think about our cost per AUA, it's that metric, which obviously includes the marketing campaign, is the one we focus on. When you take out FPAL, that falls below 20 basis points. So that's the key metric we look at.
Yeah. There's two parts to marketing, of course. There's the so-called above-the-line brand investment, which is this kind of, and then there's the more product incentives. We are getting better at product incentives, and you can see that in the transfer numbers. We're not the only people to work this out, but you start to tailor that. Your personalization, your targeting does become more efficient, and the cost per account therefore benefits from that.
Got it. Thank you.
Thank you. And we'll move on to our next question from David McCann of Deutsche Numis. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Morning, everyone. Just one question from me, please. Can you give us an update on where you are with the timeline for the new chairman? Thank you.
Unfortunately, no. There is no update that we are able to provide today, David. I'm sorry about that, but that's where we are. It's a process that's being managed by the board, and we're not providing any update today.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. And we'll take our next question from Gregory Simpson of BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, there. Good morning. Just on Phoenix, does the three-year notice period mean the GBP 20 billion comes out all at once in three years' time? Can you give us a sense of the market share or opportunity in their policyholder business? That's the first question. Second one is just on financial planning. I think the CMD for II showed a minus GBP 8 million operating profit last year. Is that kind of the right magnitude for thinking about the financial impact from the sale? And then thirdly, on the Jarvis deal, is there kind of more like that you can do in terms of the tail of U.K. DTC platforms that could be kind of acquired or picked up? Thank you.
Yeah. If I take the Phoenix one, yes, it is subject to a three-year notice period. So clearly, with all those sorts of things, you do work through it. But it is the three years you should use as a guide. In terms of FPAL, I think from an operating profit perspective, I think it was about GBP 12 million of revenue in the first half, but the operating profit is zero. So that kind of gives you an idea of the size of the impact for FPAL going forward.
I think you have two other points. On the Phoenix inflows, I think there are some. It's a big complex account. We remain very supportive. We've won some. We lose some. There's reallocations. There's all sorts of things going on. They are trying to consolidate their asset management providers, and we are well placed within that. There's so much ins and outs, but we've got like I can't remember the number now, somewhere between 12 and 14 billion of inflows this year and obviously more outflows, there's a lot going on, but we are continuing to be well placed to win that, but their asset management model is evolving, and you've seen that as they've announced, and so on the policyholder side, though, we do expect to win more assets over time. That's a sort of two to three-year view. Jarvis is a more well, we'd like to think so.
There's nothing that we're sitting on, though, so we did see something similar that allowed a very clear acquisition approach, so what Jarvis, just to be crystal clear, we didn't buy a platform. We bought a customer book, and they all transitioned to II accounts, so there's a real simplicity benefit there. They become II customers. We will lose a few of the Jarvis customers part of that, and they got a six-month subscription-free period to allow them to make the decision whether II is the right place for them or they might choose to go elsewhere.
Thank you. There are no further questions in queue. I will now hand it back to Jason for closing remarks.
Okay. Well, thank you all very much for joining. As we've said, it's been an encouraging quarter. We are, particularly in II, where we've seen real growth in customer numbers and assets. We continue to work very much toward the strategy, the plan that we set out in March, and we are pleased to announce where we've got to today, and we'll continue to engage with you all. Any further questions, please do not hesitate to call Duncan and his team in IR. Thank you very much.