Good morning and welcome to the Aberdeen Q4 AUMA and Flows trading update. I will now hand you over to Chief Executive Officer Jason Windsor. Please go ahead.
Thank you and good morning everyone, and thank you all for joining Siobhan and me for our Q4 call. Q4 last year already seemed some time ago, and we've had a very busy start to the new year, but let me just take a couple of minutes to reflect back on the last quarter, which was a good quarter for us, particularly in terms of strategic delivery. Aberdeen is in much better shape than it was a year ago, with each of our three businesses making progress as we deliver on our strategy to become the U.K.'s leading wealth and investments group. Group AUMA now stands at GBP 556 billion, which is the highest level since COVID, and it's up 9% year-on-year, supported, as you know, by positive markets.
Interactive Investor continues to perform very strongly, ending the year with 500,000 customers and another record-breaking quarter for trading on the platform. This growth, along with a number of exciting new proposition launches, mean that the business is well set up to sustain this impressive performance. Turning to Adviser. On the positive side, 2025 as a whole saw a material improvement in net sales by over 40%, but we are still in outflow. Q4 saw the important launch of our new SIP, which is seamlessly integrated on the platform. We also saw higher outflows than expected, mainly from tax-free cash. We still have further to go to return to growth as we continue to invest heavily in our platform experience for IFAs and clients. In investments, AUM increased to over GBP 390 billion, again aided by positive markets.
Flows benefited from encouraging trends in a number of asset classes, as well as the Stagecoach Pension Scheme that we announced in early December. During 2025 as a whole, gross flows were the best for many years, so we are getting a lot right. However, our focus on continuing to improve flows and financial performance remains undiminished. Taken all together, with the positive momentum at the start of this year, I'm optimistic about the outlook for the group in 2026. And with that, I'll hand over to Siobhan for a little more detail.
Thanks, Jason, and good morning everyone. Starting with Interactive Investor, momentum remains strong across key metrics. As Jason mentioned, total customers reached 500,000, up 14% year-on-year, with SIP customers rising 30% to 105,000. Daily average retail trades were at their highest ever levels at 29.2 thousand, up 40% versus Q4 last year. Net inflows of GBP 1.4 billion in the quarter brought full year flows to GBP 7.3 billion, a 28% increase year-on-year and representing 9% of opening AUMA. It's been a very busy quarter in ii, with the launch of our managed SIP, soft launch of ii Advice, and ii 360 now in advanced testing. The pricing changes we announced in December will become effective in the next two weeks, which will simplify our proposition and further enhance our competitive positioning.
Finally, the sale of the financial planning business we announced in August is due to complete imminently. In Adviser, AUMA increased to over GBP 80 billion, driven by positive markets. Outflows in the fourth quarter of GBP 0.8 billion were elevated compared to prior periods. This principally reflected the uncertainty in the market ahead of the UK budget, which resulted in an increase in tax-free cash withdrawals of around GBP 250 million in the fourth quarter. Full year net outflows improved by 44% to GBP 2.2 billion. This reflected the repricing earlier in the year and our ongoing focus on service, the latter of which has been reflected in our strong average Net Promoter Score for the year of plus 45 points. Turning to investments, assets increased by 6% during 2025 to end the year at GBP 390 billion.
Q4 net outflows of GBP 3 billion included the previously flagged low margin GBP 4.5 billion quants withdrawal, reduced net outflows in equities and insurance partners outflows of GBP 1.2 billion. Positively, institutional and retail wealth saw gross inflows in Q4 increased by 26% year-on-year, with higher gross inflows in multi-asset alternatives, fixed income and equities. Excluding liquidity flows, which are inherently volatile, and the Phoenix assets we include within this business line, net flows for I&RW for the year were positive at around GBP 5 billion. Multi-asset net inflows included the GBP 1.2 billion from the Stagecoach Pension Scheme arrangement agreement announced in December. We also saw continued good momentum in alternatives, with commodity ETFs being the principal driver behind an 85% improvement in net flows. AUM increased across our total commodity ETF range and now stands at GBP 15.8 billion.
Given the flow trends seen in the latter half of the year and the resultant change in asset mix, we now expect our full year 2025 revenue margin in investments to be around 19.2 basis points. Turning to the group as a whole, full year 2025 adjusted operating profit is expected to be in line with current market expectations, and we are confident in the outlook for the business as reflected in our full year 2026 targets of at least GBP 300 million of adjusted operating profit and circa GBP 300 million of net capital generation. In addition, we are pleased to note that with effect from year end 2025, our capital requirement will be lower and is now based on the group's internal capital assessment. We will provide a fuller update on this at our full year results in March.
I will now hand over to the operator, and Jason and I will be happy to take your questions.
Thank you. If you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. If you change your mind and want to withdraw your question, please press star two. And please ensure your lines are unmuted locally, as will be prompted when to ask your question. So again, to join the queue for questions, please press star one on your keypads. Our first question of the day comes from the line of Hubert Lam from Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi, thank you. Thanks for taking my questions and good morning. Three of them for me. Firstly, in terms of the investment fee margin, you're now guiding for a lower 9.2 basis points for the year. It implies a, I guess, a bigger drop in the second half of the year. I'm just wondering what the dynamics are behind it. I know you mentioned mix, but is there any seasonality around that? And also, what is your outlook for 2026? Should we consider the H2 margin the kind of the starting point? That's the first question. A second question is on Adviser. I don't think you mentioned it in the press release, but are you still guiding for a billion of inflows in 2026? And the last question is on the capital requirement.
I know you'll give more detail of the full year results, but discuss what does it mean for excess capital and strategic flexibility? Thank you.
Okay, so if I take those questions, so the fee margin is 19.2 basis points. It is primarily driven by mix. You can see the equities in there, and there has been the mix coming through on that. In terms of if I look at the run rate for next year, I'd expect it to be around 19 basis points overall as we look into 2026. In terms of the Adviser flows of GBP 1 billion, you can see we've given you a bit more color in terms of the outflows from the tax-free cash in the quarter, and we're still guiding to GBP 1 billion for 2026. And in terms of the capital requirements, it is, as I've said, we've moved to the ICARA basis, which is the internal capital model. We will update in March.
I'd expect us to give you a bit of guidance there in terms of we gave you last year how we think about our capital allocation, and we'll expand on that in March as appropriate.
Okay, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Enrico Bolzoni from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yeah, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. So one on ii. I saw you had a nice uptick in the cash balances, which I guess is related to clearly the growth of the business and the ISA penetration. Can you just please remind us what sort of margin you expect to make on these cash deposits and whether you think this will continue in 2026? And then I had a question on Adviser. You said that the budget created a lot of uncertainty. We saw additional redemptions. But can you please remind us of the dynamic? So if a client withdraws, let's say, money from his SIP account within abrdn Adviser Vector, can this money remain on the platform or actually transfer, for example, to a bank account?
Because otherwise, I would maybe expect to see slightly higher redemption, but also perhaps higher inflows as we saw in some other players that have reported. Just a clarification would be helpful. Thank you.
Interesting. Hi, Enrico. Actually, the two questions are somewhat related. It was part of the slightly different answer. Part of the increased cash in ii was some of the wrapper, the SIP wrapper releasing tax-free cash and it remaining on the platform. So you can see some of that. Some of it is the backlog of SIPs that haven't yet fully invested. So the backdrop to the uptick in cash in ii. I think in terms of margin, I don't think for 2026 we expect materially different to what we've seen in 2025.
No, you will have the impact of the rate cut at the end of the year coming through, but it will be in the 210-220 basis points range.
We're in that sort of range. We'll sharpen up guidance on that when we get to March. I think in Adviser, people tend to use the Adviser platform more as a product than as an account for their overall savings. So we do tend to see more cash when it's redeemed leaving that platform than staying on it. ii is more of a household account. People use it for trading, ISAs, whatever, cash investing. It tends to be taken off platform on Adviser. We do have a cash product. It's got a small balance in it that people can use. We can probably do better at getting more to stay in that product on platform. And then there's further functionality that we'll be adding in terms of some of the bonds and the other investment opportunities.
There is upside potential for us to retain more of that cash, but at the moment we're seeing most of it leave platform from Adviser.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you'd like to join the queue for questions, please press star one on your telephone keypad. A question from Nicholas Herman from Citi. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. A couple of questions from my side, please, as well. Just on investments, and I guess particularly EM, we've obviously seen notably strong emerging markets last year. Could you just give us an update on the investment performance of your EM equities and fixed income funds, please? And I guess how the level of traction that you're having with your clients on improving demand for EM? And then the second question is on ii. In the spotlight on ii in the middle of last year, you disclosed the average fee per trade in the range of, I think, GBP 12-GBP 14, GBP 12- GBP 15 broadly. Obviously, that depends on various factors, including the proportion of international trades. But broadly speaking, where do you see that GBP 12- GBP 15 going as a result of the recent pricing changes, please? Thank you.
Okay, so on investment performance, we've not given the full update. We haven't got the full analysis of December data against benchmarks. But broadly, investment performance as a group has improved sharply year to date. And we've done much better across all asset classes. So at a, this is an estimate, but at a one-year basis, we are 84% of funds outperforming three years, 80%. So that's ticked up nicely. And Peter and all of the investments team have really lent in to improve. And that's across, as I just said, all asset classes, with equities making quite a significant improvement in particular. We'll go through that in a bit more detail. Particularly, I would call out within that emerging market income, where we've done particularly well. We've continued to see real growth in that fund, US small cap, Tekla. They've had really strong performance.
On the fixed income side, again, it's improved pretty much across the board. So performance is one part of the solution to achieving sales, but signs are better this year than they've been for quite some time. Do you want to do the ii commission question?
Yes, I think you quoted GBP 15. I think that number we would expect to be around the same, and it will come down, but we'll see an offset with activity as it comes through during 2026.
I think we're pretty excited about the price reset that we've done through ii. It's actually fueled some pretty significant growth already this year. We think in advance that obviously the prices take hold, but everyone is now trading off basically the new price. That's obviously the fees, the commissions, and the FX. That all goes live in February. We really are at the vanguard of keeping, I shouldn't use that word, should I, but we're at the leading edge of keeping customer value absolutely at the heart of what we do, service and value. And that's why the platform has been so successful. We'll tell you more about how the implementation of that has gone in March. But there will be, we do expect, and this is the opportunity for us, further activity based on a lower price point.
Thanks very much. Touching back on the investment demand and fee margin piece, I guess, just circling back there, are you expecting an uptick in demand for your EM offerings across equities and fixed income? And would you therefore expect that to provide some support to your fee margin this year, 2026?
Yeah, if we look into the pipeline and where we see asset allocation rotation and demand, we have seen that tick up, and clearly, with the strong investment performance that we'll give you more color on in March, those two things together, we can see some small benefits coming through there.
Helpful, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Yeah, morning, thanks for this call. Free on my end. Firstly, just a quick follow-up on the fee change again. Was it calibrated to be fairly neutral to the revenue base or positive or negative in simple terms? Subscription fees went up, FX fees went down. Just wanted to double-check on the net outcome. Second question is on Adviser. I hear what you say about the budget, but even if you had the GBP 250 million of tax-free cash withdrawals, you still would be negative in the quarter. So what do you think is still missing in terms of turning that around and getting back into inflows? And then thirdly, this Stagecoach pension transaction seemed quite interesting in terms of an asset manager doing that kind of transaction. Is there a pipeline for more transactions like that? Thank you.
Okay, I'll have a go at these. That's all right. So look, the fee changes, I just said, are NPV positive. And there's a whole heap of scenarios, but somewhat market condition related. We want to attract more customers. We want to retain more customers. It's not been an issue, but it's a competitive world, and we want to be out there. We do expect higher volume on the back of the changes that we've made. That may or may not come through, but the way that we set this up is to grow the business, grow the customer numbers, grow the revenues, and grow the activity. And we look forward to reporting more on that. And we're incredibly focused on maintaining that service proposition, but that has to be accompanied by the best value in the market. Look, you're right on Adviser. I said that clearly.
We've got further to do. Gross flows have been pretty consistent through the year. Q4 was about GBP 1.8 billion. So we aren't quite yet where we need to be in terms of gross flows, but the support is increasing in the platform. We have seen some challenges on outflows. We call out the specific. We don't want to over-focus on that, but it's in the numbers, so we need to mention it. There is further work to do to close the jaws to get us back to that positive figure that we're aspiring to be at. It is, as I said in my remarks, we continue to invest heavily in the platform. We've launched the new SIP now, which is a seamless experience. I think we've added approximately 1,000 SIP accounts since the beginning of December.
So we're starting to see growth on the platform that is necessary to get back to that. But the only thing I can say is we're laser-focused on this and there is a lot of work to do. Now, Stagecoach, look, that was an interesting transaction. They were looking for a solution. We've been talking to them about a number of different things. We were pleased to do it. It made a lot of sense for us to offer that solution. They've got a very forward-thinking set of trustees and a corporate sponsor that did see real value in working with us, particularly for their members. At the heart of this, this is about offering the members of Stagecoach some opportunity to participate in the upside. There was an increment that was offered immediately, which is great.
And then there's effectively a profit share between ourselves and the Stagecoach members as we go further forward. That is supported for us with an asset management agreement, which is our core business, and we're delighted to do that. And then there's a block of capital in that fund that supports the investment mix and the opportunity for extra member benefits and for surplus to come to us. So in and of itself, we think it's a great transaction. We've got a limited appetite, but I'm not ruled in or ruled out more. We're not sitting on the edge of about to announce more of these. But if the circumstances are right, and there's a number of things have to be right, we would look openly at this, but it's about being an asset manager that is focused on delivering for its customers.
I mean, that's at the heart of what we're about.
Thank you.
Next in the queue is Ben Bathurst from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead.
Good morning. I've got two questions on Interactive Investor, if I may. Starting with one on the cash balances. Obviously, you've referenced that step up quarter on quarter. In light of the factors that you've mentioned that have been driving that in Q4, how are you expecting the cash balances to move in the early part of 2026? And is it reasonable to expect potentially to fall away slightly in absolute pounds, billions terms in Q1? And then just on the SIP management portfolio, early days, I know, but have you managed to gain any traction with that proposition in the first few months? And are there any views yet as to which companies, which customers that proposition is appealing to most? Thank you.
Hi, Ben. So just to come back on the ii cash, so we've given you it's about GBP 8 billion. We'd expect it to stay at the same percentage of the overall AUA. So that's about 8%-10%, and I wouldn't expect that to change as we look forward into the future. In terms of the SIP, the managed SIP, it's early days. We have had about 1,000 customers come through that. So we're pleased with the traction, and we will continue to monitor and report progress on that.
And the managed ISA has been open for longer in the same, obviously, a smaller product, but that's also I think we're doing about 50 a day, and it's ticking over quite nicely. So we are seeing this pick up, and we expect further interest in it. I think by the time we get to March, we'll have enough data to be able to answer your second part of your question about the customers. But clearly, the whole thesis around the work that I have been doing is to widen the appeal of the platform to customers who aren't purely self-investing. And this is part of the puzzle in broadening the net there.
Great, thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Jacques-Henri Gaulard from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. I have one question left, which is about the capital. You already had quite a bit of excess capital. You're going to have clearly even more excess capital on the basis of your capital requirement. Would you consider amending your distribution policy? Thank you.
You're right. We've got a strong balance sheet. We've got lots of options. We're certainly not flagging any change to that. I talked, as Siobhan mentioned, about capital allocation. I think with the new CFOs now armed with a more, I would say, modern approach to capital management, which is to use economic capital modeling. We'll talk further about this. One of our objectives is to lower our gross debt. And so bear that in mind as we think about this. We will come back to that. And it will be a bit more expansive on both the numbers and the outlook for capital in March.
Thank you.
We'll now take the last question from the line of Mike Werner from UBS. Please go ahead, Mike.
Thank you very much for the presentation, guys. Just two questions from me, please. One, just to dive a little bit deeper into kind of the fee margin. I think you got it on the investment side. 19.2 for the full year. You're at 19.9 in the first half, I believe. Should we think about this as kind of mid-18s, mid-high 18s fee margin in the second half, and ultimately potentially lower run rate as we go into 2026 in terms of the exit rate from 2025? So that's the first question. And the second question, if you could just better explain, this is something I've been quite confused about, in terms of the Stagecoach transaction, if there's any balance sheet impact on Aberdeen. It's a really interesting transaction, but just wanted to better understand what if there is a balance sheet impact for Aberdeen. Thanks.
On the fee margin, you're right, it was 19.9, and we are guiding to 19.2 for the year. As I look forward into 2026, I'd expect it to be around 19 for the full year. The second half has got some mixed effect, but as I look forward with markets, with the market movement improvement, that's what will support the revenue margin going forward as the mix changes back.
On the Stagecoach, no significant impact, very marginal impact. We do think about the risks, but there was no cash consideration. So we assumed the sponsorship onto the balance sheet. We thought very hard about what is the level of investment and other types of risk. I've got that sort of insurance background myself. And within our framework, it's certainly not zero risk, but the risk of us having to contribute extra cash is very remote indeed. But in a 1 in 200 approach, of course, that's not zero.
Thank you both. Thank you.
There are no further questions. So handing back over to Jason Windsor for closing remarks.
Okay, well, look, thank you all very much for hopping on the call this morning. We do like to get out and talk to you all about how we're doing. Duncan and I are available for any follow-ups that you wanted to pick up that you didn't get a chance to answer. But as I've said a couple of times, we are very much looking forward to the March presentation where we'll be able to expand on a number of these points, and look forward to seeing you in the office for that. Have a good day.