Good morning. Welcome to Legal & General's full year results for 2022. Indeed, our record results. This was another strong year for us across all our key financial metrics. We again delivered higher profits, better returns to shareholders, backed by even greater balance sheet strength. Another chapter in over a decade of consistent growth, irrespective of changing externalities, geopolitics, economics, and markets. I would like to thank all my colleagues for their work in delivering another strong set of results in 2022. The usual disclaimers apply. Please silence mobile phones. We will follow the usual format today. I will provide some opening remarks, Jeff will take you through the numbers in more detail, and I will round up at the end, leaving plenty of time for questions. To recap the headline numbers for 2022. We delivered record operating profit from divisions of GBP 2.9 billion.
That's up 10%. EPS of GBP 0.3833 . That's up 12%. ROE of 20.7%. Full-year dividend of GBP 0.1937 . That's up 5%. S2 surplus generation of GBP 1.8 billion, also up 10%. A solvency ratio of 236% compared to last year's 187%. The benefits of our diversified model were very clear in 2022. LGRI, our capital-light PRT business, grew operating profit to GBP 1.25 billion. That's up by 9%, with notable successes in both the U.K. and internationally. The surplus generated above the dividend and the strength of the balance sheet position LGRI strongly for the expected growth in the PRT market. LGC's operating profit at GBP 509 million was up by 10%.
LGC is a scalable and profitable alternatives business and o n track to achieve our 2025 ambitions of GBP 600 million-GBP 700 million of operating profit, whilst also attracting 25%-30% of third-party AUM. LGIM operating profit dipped in 2022 due to rising interest rates and reduced AUM. As the only U.K. investment manager in the global top dozen with GBP 1.2 trillion of AUM, 90% of it external, it plays a major role in our synergistic business model and continues to internationalize and diversify. Retail grew operating profits by 33% to GBP 825 million. Combining our retail businesses in one division has been successful. Retail is diversifying its product range for retirement and investing successfully in adjacent fintech businesses. As we start 2023, we are looking at much higher global PRT volumes, as more schemes are fully funded and can transact.
As expected, we are seeing demand for individual annuities and demand for alternative assets also increasing. U.K. markets have calmed. Positive regulatory change to Solvency II will facilitate significant new investment opportunities for Legal & General. 2022 was another consistent year in over a decade of strong performance. Since 2011, we have delivered growth in operating profit from divisions of 9%. Growth in EPS and DPS of 11% and 8% growth in book value per share. All signifies of a consistent strategy, the ability to deliver, and our tremendous resilience to external changes. Over the period, these have included Solvency II, pension freedoms, Brexit, COVID, war in Ukraine, LDI and so forth. We've navigated each piece of turbulence and come out stronger, not just in operating profit and EPS and DPS, but also significantly in book value per share and in our balance sheet.
Jeff will cover Solvency II results, which were also record. 2022 was again consistent with this pattern. Our model is conceptually simple. It brings together insurance, pension and climate liabilities, investment management and asset creation. It is one that others in the U.S., KKR and Apollo, for example, recognize and mirror. Albeit we started with the liabilities and created the assets, their start point was the assets. Wherever you start, this model generates strong compounding returns for Legal & General shareholders. At the heart of our sustainable growth is the ability to generate a growing surplus, both OSG and NSG. These were substantially in excess of the dividend, which itself is growing at 5%. The capital-light PRT business is exceptionally well-positioned for growth in the market, and the widening jaws between the capital generation and dividend provide us with strategic optionality.
Our PRT business is a capital-light model, self-sustaining for the last three years. During those three years, we have written GBP 24 billion of new U.K. PRT and retail annuity business, and another GBP 4 billion of international PRT at very low new business strain levels. At the group level, we have paid cumulative progressive dividends of GBP 3.2 billion, and also produced a net surplus of GBP 0.7 billion over those dividends. This surplus alone is equivalent to approximately two years of new business strain. L&G's balance sheet has massive strength. Our Solvency II capital ratio is lower than in 2016. Our surplus significantly larger, our Solvency II ratio, the strongest it has ever been at 236%. As of Friday, 240%. Solvency II reforms will allow us to diversify and self-manufacture the asset base.
The asset portfolio has again performed well, with no defaults. After a decade of ultra-low interest rates, normalization is accelerating the PRT market opportunity as more schemes are now able to transact. LCP forecast potential transaction volume rising to GBP 90 billion in 2025. The addressable market is immense. The U.K. and U.S. have pension liabilities of GBP 1.4 trillion and $3 trillion respectively, of which only 14% and 9% respectively have been transferred to insurers. Only a limited number of scale players are able to play in these markets, and L&G is unique in operating on a genuinely global basis. With our ability to de-risk client pension funds on the path to buyout, create new assets for these markets, manage the portfolio, and administer the large customer base.
This anticipated scaling up of the PRT market will very likely be reflected in the volumes of new business we can write. We now regard the current ambition, writing GBP 8 billion-GBP 10 billion, as a baseline. Business as usual. We have demonstrated it is self-sustaining. However, there are additional opportunities for large individual transactions. The biggest we have written to date is GBP 4.6 billion. We have the appetite for more, subject to them delivering on our business metrics. Opportunities like this, which could double business volumes from our GBP 8 billion-GBP 10 billion in a given year, would be funded from surplus solvency capital. PRT business provides highly predictable, high-quality capital generation over many years. Here you see, based on GBP 10 billion of PRT written, the payback from capital invested after just four years, and the consistent cumulative surplus generation for 30 years after that.
The cumulative OSG is in excess of GBP 1.5 billion. As volumes grow in the PRT market over the coming years, L&G is very strongly positioned to win this business. We have a superb track record and unique global capabilities in PRT. Our synergies within the group provide a natural pipeline from LGIM through to LGRI as part of our client de-risking journey. 77% of PRT transactions in the last three years were with LGIM clients. LGC's asset origination capability for real assets and alternatives gives us an edge in portfolio construction, as does the lifetime mortgage origination capability in retail. We have a unique business model for PRT. LGC has a strong record and is on track to achieve its ambitions. Since 2016, alternative AUM at LGC has grown at 24% per annum, and operating profits by 22% per annum.
We have successfully built and scaled three initial in alternative asset platforms: SME finance, housing, and SciTech, with many more in the hopper. We have successfully expanded into alternative asset adjacencies, including clean tech and data centers, with again, more to follow. We are now replicating our successful U.K. model in the U.S. and across Europe and Asia. We're on track to achieve our ambition of GBP 5 billion of alternative AUM and total operating profit of GBP 600 million-GBP 700 million by 2025. To give a little bit more detail on how LGC is successful growth engine for investee businesses, Cala Homes has achieved scale under our ownership, with revenues growing more than five times and profits more than 15 times since 2013.
Cala is on track to deliver its ambition of GBP 1.5 billion of revenues and GBP 240 billion of operating profit in 2025. Pemberton has grown committed AUM by more than 13 times, and revenues nine times since 2016. Again, on track to deliver GBP 27 billion of AUM and GBP 190 million of revenue in line with its 2025 ambition. Pemberton alone could deliver our GBP 25 billion-GBP 30 billion ambition. We have more than doubled the value of the Bruntwood SciTech property portfolio since 2018. Again, we are confident about the 2025 ambition to achieve GBP 1.5 billion of property value by 2025. These three businesses are all key building blocks for our 2025 ambition, and all three are on track to deliver. They're not the only investments in LGC.
We are seeing growth also, for example, in our climate investments and in urban regenerating, which is transforming many cities for the better. In VC, where we now have investments in over 600 startups and scale-ups. LGIM today is a scaled asset manager with GBP 1.2 trillion of AUM. The mission to internationalize is progressing well. International now accounts for 37% of AUM. Products have diversified across LDI solutions, index, active, multi-asset, and real assets. As we modernize as well as internationalize, this range is being supplemented with higher margin products, including thematic ETF, active fixed income, and multi-asset.
L&G's history since 1836 is deeply rooted in the U.K. protection market, where we are still the largest player with 23% market share. Alongside this, we have got leading market positions in group protection, workplace savings, retirement income, and individual annuities, lifetime mortgages, and other mortgage and surveying services. We have complemented the strengths of our products and distribution with investments in fintech businesses, including Salary Finance, Onto, Moneyhub, and Smartr365. In the U.S., we've grown our life insurance business, which now has a 5% market share, introduced modern digital distribution channel, and again, investing in a fintech. We have now started to replicate in the U.S. this synergistic model that has served us so well in the U.K. The key elements all now exist. It's a life business with a 5% market share providing captive assets to surplus capital.
LGIM, a management business with over $230 billion of LGRI, which last year wrote $2.1 billion of PRT business. Now LGC in the U.S., which with our partner Ancora, now starting to generate high-yielding DI assets for the U.S. PRT business and eventually also other parties. We will see growth in this space. First, class infrastructure, as we're doing with Bruntwood in the U.K., other forms of real assets and housing. We know this model works. The U.S. can also work over time and at scale. To sum up, we have delivered another strong set of results in 2022, consistent with a decade of growth across all our financial metrics. The balance sheet is stronger than it has ever been. Solvency is at a record level.
The annuity book has experienced zero defaults, and we once again received all cash flows due from our direct investments. We are very strongly positioned for the PRT market expansion with a capital-light model that has been self-sustaining for the last three years. LGC is on track to achieve its 2025 ambitions and is expanding internationally. LGIM has achieved scale and continues to diversify across geographies, products, and channels. Retail has been augmented by fintech to provide enhanced distribution and service to our millions of protection and pension customers. After more than a decade as CEO and having been CFO before that, I would simply add that my colleagues have done an outstanding job to deliver these results, not just this year, but in every year. L&G is in great shape. I'll now hand over to Jeff to take you through the numbers in more depth.
Thank you.
Thank you, Nigel. Good morning, everyone. Great to see you here. Hope you're all keeping well. Legal & General delivered another strong set of financial results in 2022. Operating profit was up 12% to GBP 2.5 billion. Earnings per share was GBP 0.3833, up 12%, and ROE was 20.7%. Operational surplus generation grew by 10% to GBP 1.8 billion, and we reported a record Solvency II coverage ratio of 236%. These results demonstrate the resilience and strength of our diversified business. We continue to generate surplus capital well in excess of our dividend, providing significant optionality for both U.K. opportunities and to expand internationally, replicating our successful model.
The board's recommending a growth rate in the full-year dividend of 5%, a rate which we aim to maintain to full year 2024. Turning to our divisions. In 2022, LGRI delivered operating profit of nearly GBP 1.3 billion. This strong performance was driven by new business surplus generated from increasing sales, up 33% in the year, the growing scale of our back book, which delivers predictable prudential margin releases, and a profitable asset strategy, which increases the total yield on our A- r ated asset portfolio, and is geographically diverse, with 54% invested internationally. LGRI's investment variance was broadly neutral, reflecting a well-executed investment strategy, limiting the impact of higher interest rates on our well-matched, defensively positioned and diversified asset portfolio. In 2022, LGRI wrote nearly GBP 10 billion of global PRT across 61 transactions.
These volumes were written at attractive margins with capital strain levels below 4%, reflecting good asset and reinsurance origination. In the U.K., we were pleased to announce two follow-on transactions executed for over GBP 4 billion with a British Steel Pension Scheme under an umbrella agreement. In the U.S., we wrote $2.1 billion of PRT, almost double the 2021 volume. In Canada, we wrote $700 million of business across two deals, building on our strategic partnerships in the region. Business was written at good margins in line with the long-term average. As Nigel noted, we increasingly regard our ambition of writing GBP 8 billion-GBP 10 billion of U.K. PRT per annum as business as usual. We have demonstrated, at these levels, our business is self-financing, with back book releases more than offset in dividend contributions and new business capital strain.
However, our expectation is that there will be opportunities to bid on additional large or very large PRT transactions over the coming years. We are well-positioned and have appetite to write this additional business, subject to it delivering on our key new business metrics. We will consider any larger incremental transaction as M&A type activity, funding it from our strong stock of solvency capital as required. Moving on to LGC. Operating profit was up 10% at GBP 509 million, driven by growing profits from our alternative asset portfolio. In 2022, we show continued growth across the portfolio, with notable contributions from Cala, Pemberton, and from investments in our specialist commercial real estate projects such as Sky Studios. We are also pleased to announce our first LGC investment in the U.S. with Ancora L&G, further developing our international expansion.
As Nigel mentioned, this is a significant first step towards replicating our synergistic business model overseas. Closer to home, we were also pleased to announce a GBP 4 billion partnership with the West Midlands Combined Authority to invest in regeneration, net zero neighborhoods and housing. This adds to our profitable urban regeneration portfolio and complements similar arrangements in Oxford, Manchester and Cardiff, amongst others. Profit before tax of GBP 101 million predominantly reflects the impact of market volatility on our equity portfolio and more minor revaluations on some land assets and development projects due to higher interest rates. Moving on to our investment management division. Operating profit was down to GBP 340 million, reflecting impacts from external market conditions. With equities and fixed income assets down, total AUM reduced 16% to GBP 1.2 trillion.
As a result, a cost income ratio of 65% reflects lower revenues balanced against ongoing investment in the business. As always, we carefully monitor and control costs as we look to maintain a competitive cost income ratio. We continue to make progress in modernizing, diversifying, and internationalizing the business. We are transforming our strategic operating model to build a globally scalable platform to deliver best in class client service. We are expanding our investment offering with a focus on higher margin product areas such as real assets, ETFs, multi-asset and fixed income. We remain a market leader in the U.K. DC space, where we now have 4.9 million workplace members and GBP 135 billion of AUM. Internationally, we are continuing to expand our distribution footprint in Europe and Asia.
International assets account for approximately 37% of our GBP 441 billion , with ambitions to continue to increase this. Despite market volatility, we delivered significant external net flows of almost GBP 50 billion . The flows were diversified across the business, and international net flows represented 43% of LGIM's total, reflecting our deepening global client relationships and broadening geographic reach. We also continue to see strong flows in DC with 43 scheme wins in 2022. The default strategy for the majority of these schemes is higher margin, multi-asset or target date funds. As previously disclosed, there was a reduction in DB flow related revenue. This was offset by the positive net new revenue of GBP 22 million , driven by inflows across these higher margin areas.
Moving on to our retail division. Operating profit increased 33% to GBP 825 million. This was driven firstly by the return to profit of the U.S. insurance business due to strong new business volumes and the release of excess prudence following the reinsurance of our universal life block. Secondly, by longevity assumptions in the retirement business, which were updated as usual based on experience and market data. Finally, by the markup of two of our fintech businesses following successful funding rounds in 2022, illustrating the value we are creating for shareholders through investments in fintech businesses to meet changing consumer demands. In line with the wider market, after significant adverse claims experience over Q1, we continued to see elevated U.S. mortality over the remainder of 2022. This led to claims exceeding the provision set up in 2021.
To be prudent, we've established a $40 million provision to allow for the uncertainty of COVID and flu over the remainder of this winter. Solvency II new business values were lower, mainly due to the impact of higher interest rates. Protection grew in 2022 with gross written premium of GBP 3.1 billion, up 8%. Individual annuity volumes were in line with last year at GBP 954 million, we started to see increased demand at the end of the year, given the higher rates on offer. This has continued into 2023. Moving on to capital. Our balance sheet remains well capitalized, with the Solvency II surplus at nearly GBP 10 billion. At year-end, the coverage ratio was 236% as a result of strong capital generation and positive market movements, mostly driven by higher interest rates.
Strong operational surplus generation and efficient new business drain levels under 4% delivered net surplus generation of GBP 1.4 billion against a dividend of GBP 1.1 billion. We continue to generate surplus capital well in excess of our dividend, providing optionality to invest and grow. We remain confident in delivering a strong and progressive dividend to our shareholders. In closing, we have delivered yet another strong set of financial results, with operating profit up 12%, capital generation up 10%, and an ROE of 21%. Our diversified business model continues to deliver predictable levels of cash and capital to fund our progressive dividend. Our solvency capital position is stronger than ever, providing a substantial capital base and enabling us to pursue the many growth opportunities across our businesses.
Demand for PRT is high. We will consider deploying capital above our GBP 8 billion-GBP 10 billion ambition. We are successfully replicating and growing our business model internationally. We are continuing to invest in the real economy, creating value for shareholders and making a positive and lasting impact on society. Thank you.
Thank you, Jeff. Now to round up. To summarize our investment case, L&G strategy and execution is consistent and compelling. We have demonstrated over and over that aligning our business to strategic growth drivers helps immunize us from negative externalities. Our business is both diversified and synergistic. This has delivered strong results for over a decade, and again in 2022, with double digit growth, as Jeff said, in operating profit, cash, capital generation, ROE over 20%, and a 5% increase to our progressive dividend. This is underpinned by a strengthening balance sheet. Solvency is strong. No defaults again in 2022. PRT is set for substantial growth. Our U.K. annuity business was self-financing for the third consecutive year in 2022. We see GBP 8 billion-10 billion as a BAU level of business with upside from there, and we are uniquely a global player.
LGC has performed strongly and on track to achieve operating profit of GBP 600 million-GBP 700 million, and fee generating third-party capital of GBP 25 billion-GBP 30 billion by 2025. I'd like to thank you, my colleagues, for all that they've achieved in 2022, and Jeff and I are both happy to take your questions. There's a lot of hands up. What we're gonna do this year slightly different, is the mic's gonna be given to one person, they just pass it around 'cause I think that's the most effective way. Andy, if you wanna go first. If each of you state your name and the organization you're from, it'll help everybody else.
Thank you. Andrew Sinclair from Bank of America. A couple on LGC and one on LGIM, please. Firstly on LGC, just wondering if you can give us cash generation amount within LGC and ideally components, if at all possible for 2022, and how you're thinking about 2023 cash generation, which I guess may be a slightly tougher year for disposals. Correct me if I'm wrong. Secondly was on Cala. GBP 170 million for the year, I think, but I think it was about GBP 98 million in H1. You've said you're beating your targets for 2023, but haven't told us what those targets are.
Just wonder if you can give us an idea of what sort of level of profitability is feasible for 2023 for Cala and what that assumes for the U.K. housing market. Finally on LGIM, just really wondered how do you balance investing in growth versus a cost income ratio challenge, I guess from softer market levels? How should we think about that cost income ratio challenge over the next few years if markets don't bounce back?
Yeah. Thank you, Andy. Jeff, do you wanna take the first one? Cala question, for you, Laura, and LGIM, Michelle.
Sure, yeah. Cash generation, I mean, we constantly say, you know, it moves around depending on what we're doing. Clearly, Cala is a strong generator of cash. You get cash when you sell a house. You know, against the profit of around GBP 500 million, you're looking at cash generation GBP 400 million-GBP 450 million this year again in LGC. A lot of that comes from Cala. A lot of the operating businesses with both cash yield and disposals in some of those businesses, like some of the VC businesses, and obviously dividends on the equity portfolio as well. You know, we invest a lot of that. It's not there today to be substantially contributing towards the dividend at group level. We see lots of opportunities to continue to invest in that business.
2023, it's not that reliant on disposals, but actually, and we'll come back to this I'm sure, you know, we've seen strong demand for some of the specialist commercial real estate that we're doing. We haven't seen the writedowns of other people in those assets. Where we think there are good disposals, there will be for good quality businesses, but equally there'll be opportunity to invest in the coming year.
Thank you. On Cala, probably the best way to think about that, the housing market has had two bumper years as we well recognize. We have been very thoughtful about how the budget setting for Cala this year. As we said in our trading statement, we are performing very close to that budget, which is a little bit less than the budget we set for 2022. To put a bit of context around that, we have assumed, and that this is playing out, that sales rates will go back to the sort of pre-pandemic norm. We've had sort of very we were able to predict quite well the types of pricing that we would achieve for Cala housing, and as we've said in the trading statement, that is what's panning out so far.
Michelle.
Okay. It's a great question. It's the balance, right? Definitely thinking about the long-term future of this business and the present, and the reality is, given what's happened to markets, it's tougher. However, we're confident in strategy. We are continuing to invest selectively in the strategy. You'll see us continue to do that. We are confident in the areas we are selectively investing in, and we've touched on some of those. Really, really keen to see our business become more internationally diversified. Really confident in what we're doing across the businesses, be partnering with Laura, with Bernie, with Andrew. Actually thinking about this as a client business. It's a long-term client business, and retention is also very important. That investment in the platform that we have to support our business, part of that modernize is also really important.
Of course, we have to take a balanced view of cost. That means that we are thinking very, very carefully about where we maybe pause and slow down, and also where we continue to invest. I would just say the cost income ratio is one metric. It's a reasonable tool. The other things that I look at to determine the health of the business, I definitely look at what's going on with flows. So that opening flows number, 4% of opening AUM is a good number. I look at client retention. I look at what's happening across the business in terms of delivery around product. I'm also really keen to make sure that from a client standpoint, that we're there for our clients.
I think what you can see here is also that we have to be there for our clients, particularly in volatile conditions. Happy to take further questions on that as we go through. Thanks.
Thank you very much. Keep passing it around, and then we'll switch over to the other side. Okay.
Thanks. It's Gordon Aitken from RBC. Three questions, please. First one on managing assets that back annuity liabilities. You're a wee bit different to peers in this respect. I mean, you own your own asset manager, you front deals, they use external fund managers. They say you don't have any advantage. Maybe you can highlight what advantage this does actually bring you, and maybe if you can say sort of basis points of yield pickup. I mean, even this morning, I mean, we're speaking to clients, I guess this is where Andy's questions come from as well, 'cause he's probably speaking to the same people, you get concerns over LGC. How do you reassure people that your way is the right way? Second question.
That was two questions there.
Yeah. Second question is on.
I'm gonna treat them as two questions, and Andrew will answer one and Laura the next one. I'll do some waffle on.
Yeah. Jeff mentioned very large bulks, and I mean, you'll know there's a couple of GBP 20 billion bulks out there in the market. I mean, you could do that with your solvency ratio as it is. Would you want to do the entire GBP 20 billion, or is it more likely that would be broken up and shared between different insurers? The final question is on longevity. You're using 2020 CMI. We know the 2021 model 'cause it's been published already. The 2022, they're consulting, but it's gonna have a 25% weight on the COVID deaths. You know it's not gonna be until CMI 25 until they move to a 100% of COVID deaths. To me, that looks like five years of longevity releases. Would you agree with that? Five more years.
Yeah. I think the last one's the easiest to answer, so I'll answer that one. No, that's true. That, you know. January, as we know from our own data, was the highest deaths we've ever experienced in January, including the COVID period. That was particularly unhappy in many ways, a reflection of what's going on as a consequence of various things, changes to health systems, people's lifestyles, and the aftermath of COVID. Andrew, do you wanna talk about some of the issues? There was several questions in there. You can take your pick which order you answer them in. Laura, can you talk about LGC?
Hey, good morning, everyone. Thanks for the questions. I might do the bulks, the large bulks question first if that's easiest, because I think fair to say there are, as you referenced, some large schemes that are in the marketplace in terms of conversations. We are actively working with those organizations and their advisors to understand the best structure to transact those when they come to market. There's a variety of ways that that could happen. It could all be in one go. What we've seen so far historically have been in a phased way and a structured way. We're working through that. As Jeff said, we look at this as an M&A transaction. We have a great solvency balance sheet to transact large volumes. Michelle referenced something.
This is a client-led business, and first and foremost, it's about supporting the clients and how they want to transact and how they want to move forward. In terms of I understand your question on the asset side, I do think we have a unique advantage. We have LGIM, we have LGC originating assets working as part of the business model. Bernie's here as well. Retail provide a large amount of assets to my balance sheet to write PRTs. We also, and if you look at our U.S. business, we use external managers where they can supplement that as well.
I, you know, we have, we have the facility to go externally if we need to, if they can provide assets, but also we have the internal capabilities that provides the advantage and provide a joined up business model. As we've seen, if 77% of our PRT business comes from LGIM clients, I think that integrated model is definitely something I see as a competitive advantage.
I guess linking that to the assets that we create for PRT from LGC, I think they have a few sort of qualities that we look for. Asset backed, cash flow generating, Solvency II to insist upon that. I think we would be looking for that whatever the Solvency II reform say. As we've covered, you know, we've got some really good sources of those assets now, our affordable housing business, BTR business, Oxford, and looking to expand that into climate transition assets.
Yeah. I think on the last point there is, you know, we definitely see the PRA working constructively with us at the moment on which asset classes we could get into. One of the positive things of Solvency II reform is not just the capital relief we get, it's the diversification opportunities. Actually, all the skills we have in transition to net zero should translate into us having the capability to develop assets at a premium. As you know, we self-manufacture assets, which again, is a huge point of differentiation and leads to, you know, you saw on the slide we have in terms of profitability. You know, when people look at our PRT business, they only consider the PRT business.
On that slide, you'll see quite a lot of extra profits flowing into LGIM and LGC, which improves our IRR and our ROE to, you know, well above our industry peers. We're gonna work around that side and then come back down this side just to keep the logistics easy.
Hi. Thanks very much. It's Farooq Hanif from JPMorgan. Just going back to your M&A style PRT deals, are you agnostic between the U.S. and U.K.? I mean, what are the opportunities in the U.S. that you could highlight, and kind of the impression I've always got is the kind of economics and the hurdles there are easier. I don't know if that's true. That's question number one. Question number two is, I mean, in LGC, the one bit that kind of isn't directly linked to manufacturing for other parts of the business, I guess, is Cala. You know, given its strong performance and maybe stable performance to date, would you ever consider exiting that and, you know, realizing value from it given that it doesn't have necessarily that synergy with the rest of the group?
I guess, my last question is on LDI. Obviously we had a big, I don't know what to call it, you know, crisis, whatever you wanna call it, last year, and a big shift into collateral in your solutions business. What happens now from that? I mean, does that kind of now naturally flow back into your index business, or does it now flow into your PRT business? Can you just talk about, you know, the AUM mix of LGIM and how that could sort of go back to a more profitable mix going forward? Thank you.
Yeah. Just on the LDI thing, I highly recommend that you watch John Kingman and I's presentation to the House of Lords to get some further background information on what we said there. You know, it's financial impact on us was relatively modest compared to the noise that there was in the market. I think, you know, it's not quite normal business, but, you know, we're looking very much at, you know, LDI's always been a vehicle for transition to PRT and, you know, you've heard the statistic about 77%. That's the strategic link that we want to get.
You know, clearly we modified our LDI model, and there's a somewhere between GBP 10 billion and GBP 20 billion revenue loss for LGIM last year, but that was much more significant from the movement in markets. Jeff, do you wanna take the capital allocation decision around U.S., U.K. are large deals? Do you wanna take that question, and then Laura, can you answer the Cala question?
Sure. I mean, to some extent it answers itself because clearly we're still growing the balance sheet in the U.S., so we couldn't write $10 billion in the U.S. in one go. Whereas we absolutely could and would write GBP 20 billion in one go if that's what the client wants in the U.K. Because the consultants over there look at the size of the local balance sheet, which is why, you know, we've moved upwards. We've got to $500 million. We're now quoting on bigger schemes, $600 million, $700 million, $800 million. We want to get to a $1 billion scheme, you know, in the U.S. And e qually, you know, we need that asset manufacture, which has improved very rapidly over there, which is allowing us to compete on the $500 million.
To some extent we don't need to do that. At the margin in the BAU level, we absolutely do. For that M&A style, then it's much more about those really large ones coming to market in the U.K. because that's where we can execute on those. We would like to do $1 billion in the U.S. in one go, then we'll move on from there.
On Cala, as you've recognized, we've grown and created a really very attractive and successful asset there. Although we don't have any immediate plans to sell it, you know, we're open-minded in the future. I do think there's a couple of things worth noting on the synergies we do get from Cala. They obviously do create a lot of affordable housing. We're starting to build suburban build to rent houses on those sites, which can be, you know, asset creation for long-term investors. There are definitely some synergies there for us, as well as it being a very attractive asset.
Okay.
Hi. Thank you very much. I'm William Hawkins from KBW. Sticking with the PRT theme first of all, please, just the graphic on Slide 11, if you could help me understand. You're talking a lot about the upside, but there's nothing shown in 2023. I don't know if that's just expectation management or something fundamental. Equally the BAU, you're showing that kind of flat at 8-10 rather than what you might think is growing. Again, I don't know if that's just simplification or something fundamental. If you could help me with that, please.
Simplification. Okay.
Then, yeah, U.K. solvency. Now that we know a lot more, can you give us a hint, I mean, what would the solvency ratio be on the new regime, and can you be a bit more precise about where you would see the opportunities to lever that into doing future transactions?
Okay. Jeff, do you wanna answer that? On the first one, we may or may not do these large transactions this year, and we didn't want to create an expectation for many of the sales team who are here today. I can see Chris and John looking at their shoes right now as I overpromise for them and the rest of the team who are around. Clearly there is a lot of volume there. You know, at the moment we've just put BAU into our forecast. Clearly there is upside if those transactions move forward. We don't want to pressurize ourselves into saying people will commit in 2023. It may, it may happen in 2024, and that's why we moved the slide out.
In due course, we're gonna get a lot of, a lot more information from the market as to what is the size of the market in 2023. It's looking as though it will be a reasonably good year in 2023. Jeff?
Just to build on. You think, you know, this has moved really rapidly for some of these schemes. You know, talking to those customers, getting them over the line, getting the trustees, the consultants, everyone comfortable takes time. It's not that we're holding back, we're just trying to be realistic about when they may or may not execute, and not build the expectation too quickly on this. It's definitely coming, is the message. It's just a case of when. The U.K. subsidy, we've talked before, it's not really about the ratio. The risk margin gives us whether it depends where rates are, you know, 5%, 6%, 7% improvement in the overall ratio. It's all about the investment flexibility that gives us. It's more about long-term value creation.
You know, we've talked about 50- 150 basis points yield uplifts, you know. It just allows us to self-manufacture, going back to Gordon's question. You know, if we are creating those assets ourselves rather than bidding with everyone else on assets in the market, we are going to have an advantage. It's, it's obvious. You know, you don't have to go that last 2 basis points, 10 basis points that you lose in the bidding process. We also get to optimize the structure of those assets as we create them. It just opens a lot more of those, especially some of the clean energy, some of the ones where the features have been such that they suited banking's lending rather than insurance. It wasn't worth people restructuring those to make them matching adjustment friendly.
Now we can work with those and open up a much bigger universe of assets that we're able to invest in. That's where the real benefit comes from. You know, that's a message that Nigel's clearly been giving into the government and vocally on that.
Okay.
Thank you. good afternoon. Thomas Bateman.
Will you pick it up next, and then we can go around this side.
Okay. Thomas Bateman from Berenberg. Just two questions on PRT, please. Clearly, those higher volumes become more credit exposure. Is that something you're happy to take on or would you consider using reinsurance or any other actions to help reduce that? Secondly, just on the capital strain, I think you talked about it being under 4%. Has that come down at all or will it continue to go down if you do larger volumes? Will it stay relatively flat at that level?
Yeah, the 4%'s an average number across. Clearly the U.K. is actually significantly lower than that. If you look at that. That includes individual annuities as well, which have a much higher strain. Going forward, that should be a lower number. Not to put any pressure on Andrew, who's now gonna answer this particular question.
I mean, yes, it adds credit, but obviously we're showing we're diversifying that credit. You know, we've had no defaults for many years. We continue to grow the other businesses to offset that. Specifically around the reinsurance, it is clearly part of the tools that we would use, both to be able to use those third parties to effectively be sourcing assets for you as well, and they have their own skills for doing that. It reduces some of the capital requirement on day one. You know, and if you're executing a GBP 20 billion, you'll use that as part of it.
We will be open to that, but we will optimize around things like strain, long-term value, where's the pricing coming in from reinsurance, versus our asset sourcing, how much we manufacture and how much we'll be able to create ourselves. Some of that will depend how quickly the larger scale comes, and then you'll be deciding how quickly you want to do the asset reinsurance around that. You know, we're really confident I'll be able to manufacture and source a lot of these assets that we need. It's then a case of how quickly can we source those if really large deals come one after the other.
Andrew, do you wanna add some of your own thoughts please?
Yeah, just to build on what Jeff said, we definitely see the reinsurance market as a tool to help us write these deals. Obviously, longevity insurance, reinsurance means something we've done for a number of years, but we are seeing the asset reinsurance side of the PRT market now develop. A number of players, we talk to reinsurers, our panel regularly. They're also obviously watching what's happening with the PRT market and expecting to ramp up their own sort of capacity and operations, and we'll use that selectively as Jeff said, they're a great source of assets. We've seen some sort of very good pricing on the reinsurance side of particular deals we've done in 2022.
It's definitely a, you know, part of our toolkit as we look to sort of, you know, put it together our propositions for deals we've talked about.
Yeah. I think the big trend we've had is clearly diversification, both, you know, internationally by year, by sector. When you go back to what the portfolio looked like in 2010, 2011, it's so massively different. The resilience of it. I mean, I think the thing, you know, Jeff and I had a, d oing a show and tell with another institution about the performance of our portfolios during COVID, and when we did our show, they refused to tell because ours was so much better than theirs. They just didn't wanna go through it. You know, yet again, we've had a, you know, 100% cash conversion, no defaults. You know, it's a very well diversified portfolio.
The Solvency II gateway, in effect, is quite a difficult one to get through to get matching adjustments, anyway. You know, investment grade credit, as you know, very rarely defaults, as well.
Thank you. Steven Haywood from HSBC. Three questions on the PRT really. Can you just quantify what you consider to be a very large PRT? Is it above the GBP 5 billion level or is there any? What is the top of the range potentially on that as well? Secondly, you talk about using your surplus Solvency II position to do the M&A PRT business. What is the surplus Solvency II position that you have to deploy potentially? I know you've been down at a much lower Solvency II ratio in the past. Are you comfortable going down to the 180s or 170s in the current interest rate environment? Finally, on the pipeline for. Sorry. On the pipeline for PRT. Can you quantify what you see as your pipeline for U.K. and U.S. PRT for 2023?
Okay.
Thank you.
Andrew, do the third. Jeff, if you do the second, I'll just talk. Why don't you do the first as well then, Jeff?
Yeah, I mean, very large. You can pick a number of people. Jumbo used to be GBP 1 billion. I remember when the board would really wring their hands about GBP 1 billion, you know. Now we talked on about GBP 2 billion, GBP 3 billion, GBP 4 billion, GBP 5 billion. They know how to execute. We know how to do it. I think it's. We're looking now well beyond that, you know. With very large, 10 or 20. You know, we've said if a customer wants to execute GBP 20 billion, we'll do it. That will definitely count as very large. But if they want to split it up into four lots of five, that will suit us very nicely as well, you know? You know, we just work with them to see what is the best way to get this done.
Give them the certainty versus the balance of our pricing, asset sourcing, reinsurance, et cetera. In terms of surplus capital, it's sort of a moot point. I mean, we could write GBP 20 billion and still be well over 200% solvency. You know, the logic is more about rates aren't going back to half a percent in the next couple of years, we think. You never know. Clearly, when we're looking to write these, thinking about them as M&A and using capital, we will look at downside stresses. What does it look like? The important bit is the speed of payback. You know, if you're getting paid back three, four years, the theory that we're following is you create real economic surplus. Those own funds are higher when your Solvency Capital Requirement is higher in the future.
We won't be back at 170, 180 when rates are half a percent. We'll actually be at a higher number by investing now with being good economically rational business that makes money for us. That, that's the theory behind it. It drives that. We're comfortable to use some of that surplus.
Just to pick up your question on U.K. and U.S. pipeline. I do think we have to be careful when we're talking about quantifications of pipelines. We have a very large U.K. pipeline, as we've mentioned already. They're all at various stages. There are those deals that we are talking actively pricing, quoting on now, which are very near term. There are deals at each stage of progression, particularly the very large ones we've talked about, where discussions are at an early stage. Tens of billions is the pipeline, but I think you have to be very careful how you interpolate that as to when it emerges through into transactions. In the U.S., I do think it's slightly different.
The U.S. market's even larger than the U.K. You heard Jeff say earlier, where we participate in that market, we typically focus on transactions that are around $500 million, and we have a particular liking for plan terminations. Less competition and better pricing. Therefore, that whilst the overall pipeline is very large, our deal selectivity and our decision making is much more focused in the U.S. around really focusing on those transactions where we think we've got the best client proposition and also the highest chance of winning at commercial metrics that are attractive to us.
It's interesting, we redefined what is large under various CEOs. I'm just looking at Simon at the back. We used to think GBP 200 million was a large deal. You know, we did GBP 800 million-900 million of PRT business per annum, about the same as individually annuities until 2010. It became GBP 500 million, then it was GBP 1 billion, GBP 2 billion, GBP 4 billion, GBP 5 billion. What's happened with the clients up so far is they've wanted to do the deal over a period of time in tranches. ICI, we've done nine tranches with them. You know, British Steel, we were talking about, we did two last year. That was GBP 4 billion. The uniqueness of the size of the pipeline is very difficult to actually quantify.
It may be that somebody who says they want to do GBP 20 billion, does it in, you know, a GBP 10 billion, a GBP 5 billion, a GBP 5 billion, and some follow on. Over time, we're going to capture a lot of this volume. It's just a natural transition between, you know, LGIM's position in the DB and LDI markets, and moving it into the PRT markets. That transition is a good one for LGIM and LGC, as well as LGRI, which we try to capture on the slide. The famous Slide 11. We definitely have to swap sides now. It's a game of two halves.
Cool. Thanks. Alan Devlin from Goldman Sachs. Three questions. First of all, you mentioned the, you know, the large deals over the BAU or M&A type transactions. Does that change the way you kind of look at them and price them? Would you price a GBP 10 billion deal any different from a GBP 1 billion deal? You know, given you're using your excess capital, if you make an attractive double-digit return on that capital, does it matter what the other metrics are? Secondly, on the investment side. You know, given the, you know, the liquid credit you use, you can get now particularly in the U.S., does that take the pressure off finding real assets to source these transactions, particularly if you do well above GBP 10 billion?
Then thirdly, on your, you know, your solvency ratio. How do you view, like, the solvency ratio, particularly the interest rate driven bits? As you say, we aren't going back to 50 basis points anytime soon. Can you hedge any of that interest rate risk to kind of lock some of that benefit in, or is that just too expensive?
I think in big picture terms, we've always prided ourselves on financial discipline at all times, and never chased volume at the end of a quarter or end of a given year. Therefore, we have, you know, quite strict criteria. I think your insight. It was the two insights. We have reinsurance and a very highly liquid U.S. credit market that allows us to, you know, be competitive in winning deals, but actually with the knowledge that we can optimize the back book by using some better DI assets and improve the profitability of the business going forward. That's an option that we have. Just to echo one of the points that Laura made about, you know, affordable and build to rent. We have a lot of large sites.
We have a huge land bank across the group. On those large sites, what differentiates us from other people is we're happy to build the infrastructure, put in build to rent, affordable social housing, as well as our other types of housing. Again, that's a unique asset skill that sits here with the L&G. Jeff, do you wanna?
I mean, it's just, I mean, we won't be sort of dramatically changing our targets on that. We will have to be able to point at those. They will be lumpy, there'll be disclosures required around them, and we'll have to say why they make good economic sense. So we won't be particularly looking at them differently, in any way and before the team get too hopeful. You know, in terms of rates hedging, we've talked about a bit before the dreaded IFRS 17 coming. We're looking to give ourselves more optionality around the hedging. We're looking to neutralize as much as possible the accounting side for rates, which will allow us to look at the Solvency II. Equally, we always said, you know, that the length of that requirement is really non-economic.
It's all about the ratio. We might do a little bit to try and, you know, reduce some of the sensitivity. To fully hedge that just doesn't make economic sense to us. It could be very costly in other rates movements, and you've seen that with some of our peers. That just doesn't make sense for us, we think. We may try and reduce it a little, but we're continuing to work on that as we understand more of the possibilities around the IFRS side of things.
Hi, Andrew Baker, Citi. I'll stick with the three, if that's okay. First is on the outlook for Solvency II operational surplus generation. Obviously grew in 10% or so in 2022. Should we expect similar levels in 2023? You mentioned on the PRT side about the Netherlands and the opportunity from the pension reforms over there. Can you just help us scale this potential opportunity in terms of the amount that you could see coming to market there? Finally, just on LGIM and back to the costs. It was GBP 630 million in absolute terms full year 2022. Is this an appropriate base for 2023, or should we be thinking it should be higher or lower for any reason? Thank you.
Jeff on one, Andrew do two, and Michelle, you're happy to do three.
Sure. Yeah. I mean, obviously some of the OSG growth is what's the LGIM outturn, what's the LGC outturn? I don't have a crystal ball on markets, et cetera, yet around that. You will have seen clearly that the total SCR is down. Some of the OSG is the unwind of that SCR. You know, it's not as simple as saying we'll divide that over periods in the future. You know, you'll get less contribution from that. We have a lot more excess assets with a better return on them, which offsets that. We lose some from the reduction in the Solvency Capital Requirement, which is still some of the growth.
Outside that, you know, the rest is still to be determined with the performance of the underlying businesses and what we achieve on it.
Andrew, do you wanna talk about the Netherlands?
Just a quick word on the Netherlands. Obviously, there are four very large PRT markets in the world, and the Netherlands is one of them, so we're watching it very closely. Those of you who've been following the marketplace there will see that through some DNB- related legislation that's working its way through the statute book, it's opening up an opportunity that the way of guaranteeing income in retirement for your employees is a PRT scheme. PRT's always been a marketplace in the Netherlands, but very small DNB legislation looks like it's going to grow that very significantly. You know, we're watching that market closely. Market commentators over and above us have quoted numbers of PRT volumes over the next few years of somewhere between around EUR 100 billion, EUR 100 billion.
Obviously that's of interest to us. We're monitoring it very carefully.
Michelle.
Thanks. Look, it is definitely a balance. Do I expect our cost income ratio to be in this place for a period of time? Our cost income ratio is better than the median asset manager. We expected it to rise because we're investing. What I would say is that we are gonna continue to invest, and we're gonna do that selectively. It really has to be selective, but it doesn't mean that we're gonna stop investing. We are also thinking proactively about how we take sensible decisions around the cost base, as you would expect, and that will need to continue as it would in all asset managers. As I said at the beginning, we're confident the strategy, modernize, diversify, internationalize isn't a one-year program.
It is a multi-year program, and we are seeing through 2023 to beyond because we are confident that that is what is the right thing to do to the business. That is continuing to invest in internationalization, it's continuing to invest in product. That diversification is not just around product, it's around channel as well. Sort of how do we get to different kinds of clients, well, today we're predominantly institutional manager, and we are really confident that we can get to wholesale, and that's something that we're actively planning. Thank you.
Morning. It's Andrew Green. A couple of questions, please. Firstly, with the Solvency II reforms, you can expand the horizon of illiquids. What proportion of your annuity book would you like to have in illiquids with 50-150 basis points more yield compared to where you are now? It's the first question. Second question on, again, going back to Slide 11. I think there's about GBP 49 billion of excess or M&A style BPAs down there. 6% funding rate, that's about GBP 2.9 billion. You're about GBP 3.6 billion north of 190% solvency at the moment. One might argue that you could even fund that now from excess.
Alternatively, if you are gonna write all this excess new business, could you give us some indication as to when the dividend will grow faster than 5%? There's really no point doing it unless shareholders are gonna see a faster rate of growth.
Very good questions, those ones, Andrew. We're working on the answers is the truth for those particular questions because they're relatively new to be, to be frank about it is we do have the headroom to do it. What's nice about the group at the moment is we have four areas competing for capital. It isn't just the PRT business. We want to expand LGC, we want to expand LGIM. Retail is doing very well. We are building adjacencies everywhere. We will, I think, continue to make some bolt-on acquisitions as part of the use of some of that capital. I think you and others can do the math pretty straightforward that we have a lot of headroom. There's a huge amount of capital in there. Jeff was very clear on the dividend.
The dividend is set to 2024, which is the next phase of our financial plan. Undoubtedly it will be reviewed by the board, you know, to what. The strategic plan in 2024 as to whether we continue with 5% or some other level. Part of that will depend on how successfully we execute in 2023 and 2024 to continue to generate a lot of surplus in excess of the dividend. There isn't precise answers for you right now, but the math is reasonably clear. We have a lot of headroom.
We've, I've got four chief executives sitting down there, all demanding more capital to help grow their business and, you know, there is certainty of the dividend for this year and for next year, and then after that, it will be reviewed by the board during the strategic planning process in 2024. Yes. Want to go?
Thank you. Ashik Musaddi from Morgan Stanley. Just a couple of questions I have is, first of all, I mean, thanks for giving that color about 50-150 basis point yield pickup if you go into private assets. Can we get some color as to how much you think you'll be able to retain and how much of that might need to be passed on to the pension funds? Because I guess if everyone is trying to do the same thing, then probably pension funds would demand a bit out of that return as well. How much is it possible to just keep it? Second question is, I mean, clearly, want to get a bit more color about private market, asset, origination side.
If I look at the current situation, we have about GBP 30 billion of PRT, which is written in U.K. Say 30%-35% is private assets, so that's about GBP 10 billion. Whereas if we look two years down the line, I mean, the expectation is GBP 60 billion, and half of that would be private assets, so GBP 30 billion. We need GBP 20 billion extra private assets. Where do you think that this is coming from? Is it like taking market share from other originators, or is it new assets you reckon that will come? Just linked to that, you reckon it is mainly in U.K. because I guess the Treasury's agenda is that this asset needs to be invested in U.K. This is the reason, this is the whole point behind Solvency II reform.
Can we get some color about geographical diversification on this as well? Thank you.
I'll take the second question, while Laura thinks of a better answer than the answer that I'm gonna give on that. Even if you just look at the existing portfolio that we have, we pretty much have the land to scale up massively. You know, we're busy writing letters to the Treasury, et cetera, about how much is stuck in planning and how much capacity we have. Oxford is a GBP 4 billion program. We've got three projects at the moment. We've got six more in the hopper. West Midlands is a GBP 4 billion program, which Andy Street personally walked us around all of the cities saying, "I want this, I want that, I want the other." Manchester is an enormous project, GBP 1.5 billion project.
There's a huge amount, even within the existing business. We get onto all the asset classes we want to get in, and we've been developing transition to net zero capability for a very long period of time. We have an onshore wind and offshore wind, a solar business. We want to do retrofitting at scale. We have a ground source heating business. Lots of different businesses we think will generate assets which will become MA eligible under the new regime going forward, and that's one of the points that we've made to the government. You know, who thinks the government won't introduce something along the IRA lines that we've seen already in the United States? They have to. They have to compete to do that.
We think, you know, science and technology, we've got 2.5 million sq ft already in the U.K. We've got another 2.5 million sq ft in the hopper. The U.K. has huge potential to invest in these assets. We have the land, we have the opportunity, we have the relationship with the, you know, respective industries or respective towns or cities across the U.K. We're hoping for some planning reform. If it doesn't come under the Conservative leadership right now, it'll definitely come under the Labour leadership because they'll need something to really boost growth, and they will be much more pro social housing, affordable housing, and build to rent housing than the current government's been over the last 10 years. Jeff and Laura, do you want to add something to that?
I think you covered all the asset classes. No, really, no. I mean, in terms of pricing, you can't say how much you give away. I mean, the key is this gives us a competitive edge. You know, how often can you win? How often can you get them over the line? The trustees, the consultants are smart people. They know where the clearing price is. It's a case of how easy can you get to that clearing price. You have to source the assets appropriately. Sometimes you can use more traded liquid assets. You know, it's a case of how much are you doing to give you that uplift, and then helps you keep delivering consistent profits.
Thank you. Very clear.
Yeah.
I mean, the only thing I think I would add is that when we set L&G Capital up, we very deliberately chose to invest in sectors where we saw huge need for capital. I don't think we're worried about the. Really, it's about some of the Solvency II reforms, but in terms of the potential, in terms of housing, climate transition, these are trillions of pounds asset classes.
The nice thing we have is the optionality. The other thing about clients is they often set a target price.
Right.
They'll have a target price in mind, and then we, well, we're in constant negotiation with them, and that price may move up or down on a bi-weekly or monthly basis. We'll look at, you know, what's our asset portfolio at the moment? What else do we think we can slot into that portfolio going forward? Given we have this massive pipeline, we, you know, we can't say that we will build, you know, six buildings in Oxford in the next two years, but we know we're gonna build them because actually, then the variable is not our capability or capacity, it's the planning process. If there's some reform of planning, we'll be able to do things much quicker and, in a sense, accelerate the PRT transition.
Thank you. Larissa van Deventer from Barclays. Three questions, please. The first one on, you've termed a lot of the bigger DB deals as acquisitive M&A, but would you consider bolt-on M&A? If so, any particular area where you think there's a skill set you may wanna add? The second one is that, a lot of LGC's talk has been around Cala, but how do you see the relationship between Cala and Build to Rent evolve over the next few years? The last one is on hurdle rates and IFRS 17, which is looming at the half year. Is there anything we can do now and to change our thinking around hurdle rates? How should we approach that transition?
Jeff, do you wanna answer the third one? Andrew, do you wanna go the first one and Laura, the second?
Sorry, I'm surprised Andrew is commenting on inorganic outside, PRT, but.
Yes.
I thought I'd misunderstood the question, yeah. Just on hurdle rates, I mean, it doesn't affect anything. It is just accounting. Clearly we will look at the amount of CSM added and what are we doing from that, and that will be a different constraint to what do we look at under IFRS 4 where you have a new business value. We have at least six different metrics that we wrestle with when we're doing a PRT deal. For example, there are then different deals when we're doing term pricing, you know, it's just something else in the mix. It'll be, most of the focus will be what's the value you're getting in CSM, 'cause that will be what's most evident to you when we write new business.
On Cala and BTR, I mean, as you say, the relationship is getting closer. The teams are able to work very closely to source sites that can effectively be used both for private for sale housing, affordable housing, and Build to Rent. We can use the expertise in both sets of teams to be able to do things that players that don't have BTR and private for sale capability to effectively get sites that those who just have the individual components wouldn't be able to purchase and plan for.
Don't worry, Jeff, I'm not gonna talk about our M&A strategy across the group. Just in terms of, in the context of the PRT business and inorganic, we're not looking at active bolt-on acquisitions as an LGRI division. What I would say though is we are thinking about partnerships, as particularly as we try and move forward in the marketplace. We've done some in the U.S., we're also looking in the U.K. as to what skills and solutions we need. Some of the very large schemes we see, they are currently, because their funding levels having accelerated much faster than they expected, are holding large amounts of illiquids on their pension scheme balance sheets that will need transitioning into a PRT deal.
That it, if in the context of that maybe being private equity, that's quite a, that's a specialized skill. Of course, as we've talked about, we have phenomenal business model here with huge amounts of capability. If we need to augment that capability through a partnership to help us solve a particular problem for a client and provide the best solution, then of course we'd be open to looking at that.
I think I'll just echo. I'll just give some color on the way we think about M&A. I mean, there are lots of opportunities for accelerating the growth of the business. We've got lots of example of them. We've done lift outs of people from organizations, and that helped us grow our multi-asset business. ETF business, we started an acquisition to get that up and running. Pemberton, we got a team, we took a 40% interest in the business and allowed them to develop, you know, what is a hugely successful business. We made acquisitions in Inspired Villages to actually get the business up and running, and we can add scale to the business. The chart we showed earlier showed just how quickly we can scale up businesses. The world's awash with startup businesses.
We have 600 in our portfolio. What we try and figure out is which of the ones will benefit from three things that we can bring to them. The first of all is our customer reach. We've got over 10 million customers here in the U.K., and pretty much every institution deals with us. A lot of businesses that require scale up or scaling up need access to customers. We can provide that in a heartbeat. You know, people might not take a call from company X, Y, Z, but they'll certainly take a call from Legal & General for lots of things. Kensa, our ground source heating business, is a great example of that.
We bought it in the middle of the, of COVID, and we know ground source heating is gonna be a great business. We might bring in other partners to help accelerate the growth of some of these businesses with a view to, you know, potentially listing those businesses in five or 10 years' time when, you know, we've sort of built very successful businesses and not sold out to foreigners or not actually, or tried to list them elsewhere, and that's part of our long-term, our long-term goal. I think, you know, I think there's great opportunities for L&G to add bolt-on acquisitions for its business and help growth, but it's all within this, you know, we're gonna be very financially disciplined about it. It, you know, it won't be, you know, this sort of unquantifiable strategic benefits from putting this together.
It's, you know, the four CEOs competing for capital. And so far it's been pretty successful for us doing that, and I think it's a model that works. And increasingly, we're finding the people who work for us are very excited about translating the skills that they've had in building things for Legal & General to some of these smaller companies which can increase their revenue, you know, 25%, 30%, 40%, 50% per annum for a few years. And that's been one of the hidden secrets, if you like, about what we've done over the last five to 10 years, because they're just starting to emerge now. You know, when they're very small businesses, if you say they've grown, you know, 100% in the last two years, but they're still irrelevant.
Some of them are now becoming very relevant, and in the next five to 10 years will become incredibly relevant to us. I think we've got time for two more questions.
Rhea Shah, Deutsche Bank.
Hi, Rhea.
Two questions from me. There's a lot of focus in the statement around your international businesses or percentages in international. Do you have any aims of where you want this to grow over the medium term or long term, either just strategically or whether there's any numbers you can give in terms of cash gen, cap gen, or profits? Secondly, around PRT, are there any synergies between the U.S. and U.K. PRT businesses? Are there deals you could do that include a company on both sides of the ocean or any other capital synergies that you could talk about?
Yes, certainly on the second one, there's huge synergies. Jeff, do you wanna say whether we have specific targets internationally or?
Yeah, I mean, we don't have specific target. We put some out there, you know, GBP 10 billion for writing international PRT, for example. You know, we absolutely want to drive LGC, but, you know, to have a target from one business could be, you know, aspirational, if you like, and the scale of what's possible under, for example, Laura's fed up me saying it, the Inflation Reduction Act in America, you know, just huge opportunity there. You know, the world outside the U.K. is much bigger than the U.K., but we're dominant in the U.K., so it takes time to balance that out. Clearly you could see enormous asset flows into LGIM from the rest of the world, and that there's a lot of money out there compared to what you've got in DB and DC.
At the same time, we wanna grow DC pensions in the U.K. to be highly successful. There isn't a let's make international that big. It's let's make international as big as possible whilst growing the U.K., 'cause if we're suddenly writing billions of PRT, you know, we want to balance that with growth elsewhere. I think today there isn't. I think when we've got more concrete businesses there at scale in the LGC, in USP to PRT with a bigger balance sheet. The next round of ambitions will certainly probably.
Mm.
More concrete numbers on the scale of international growth.
Yeah, there's definitely some synergies. I'll let Andrew fill this in. Sometimes we get to course, and uniquely course on a international PRT deal, and we've won a couple of them, and we're actually probably the only person coursing on them 'cause they actually just trust that we'll deal with them so we can do a U.K. PRT and a U.S. one at the same time. There's a bunch of other synergies as well which Andrew can talk about.
Yeah, just to do that, quickly. I know we're pushed on time. I think there's two groups of synergies I'd talk about. One is operational. Our very large operational team sits here in the U.K. The amount of leverage we provide each and every day to the U.S. team to support them, whether it's on pricing assets, sourcing, et cetera. Saying that, some of the assets we're now using for U.K. PRT are being sourced from our U.S. business. It's a much bigger, more developed capital market. We see that as a real advantage of the two businesses operating really synergistically together. The second type of synergy I'd talk about is relationship.
You know, we are the only global provider, and through LGIM in particular, we have fantastic international relationships, and I can think of two transactions this year we've done where the connectivity between the U.K. and the U.S. from a client side was really helpful to us in negotiations, particularly around what we do around customer. We keep all of our customer servicing, client servicing in-house. That's a real strategic advantage for us, particularly trustee sponsors like to know their employees are being cared for in the right way, and being able to show that we do that on an international basis plays really well to our clients.
There is definitely two last questions there, but.
Thanks. Dominic, BNP Paribas Exane. Two really specific questions and a sort of a strategy question. Can you just give a sense of what mark to market effect you took on real estate in the period? I think going through the LGIM flows template, it looks like it's sort of a mid-single digits, but maybe you could give us a breakdown of commercial real estate versus residential. Second is, could you give us a sense of how much management action there was in OSG in 2022? Then I guess the bigger picture question, the U.S. is clearly a really exciting opportunity for you folks. In the past, you've talked about Asia as also having some quite interesting potential developments. I know Japan has been a source of flows.
Chinese pillar three, I think, was something that you folks were talking about as well. Wondering if there's anything new there to update us on, any particular developments you'd like to.
Sure.
To highlight. Thank you.
Yeah. Jeff, do you wanna take the first question? I'll do the second.
Sure, yeah. I mean, in terms of mark to market, well, I mean, you saw the result. Our total investment variance is still, you know, + GBP 160 or so. Everything's absorbed within there. You know, the ones you mentioned, we don't have huge property exposure as such. Where we've got undeveloped land, quite clearly, if you get a third-party view on that, they'd factor in the new interest rates, build costs, et cetera. Those have come down a little bit. We talked about that in the investment variance for LGC in the direct investments. Again, that was dwarfed by the equity side of things. Some of the ongoing investments, but you know, you're talking GBP 100 million total across the whole of that book, you know, is not very much. You can see that in the analysis.
In the LGR book, I mean, it really is just the residual properties. I mean, we've said before, the main property exposure is the vacant possession value on the long sale and lease back, et cetera, the things with Amazon, with HMRC, et cetera. Because these are 20 years away, we have prudent dilapidation within that. You only get a part of that coming through. We don't say our properties defy gravity, but, you know, they absolutely are part of a prudent balance sheet. Some of those come through more mark to market in the Solvency II, but we clearly set up the rates and everything else to try and immunize as much as possible around those. You know, we're not seeing huge write-downs around these, because of both the quality of them and what we have.
We've seen that in some of the specialized commercial real estate where actually it's going in the other direction. We don't fully reflect all of that.
Yeah, I think we very much see ourselves as a global business. I think America is a priority because we've got the full business up, on the, on the ground and up and running and actually all performing well, you know, which is unusual for any British company to be able to say that. In Europe, Pemberton already has a European business. LGIM has got a European business. NTR has got a European business. Somewhat ironically, we've done better in Europe post-Brexit than we did pre-Brexit. We've been sort of forced to, in a sense, put offices there and put people on the ground. It's not been fly in, fly out so much as actually having people, local people, and local people who want to join us. We've got a really high quality team in Germany, for instance.
In respect of Asia, I think Chris is going at the weekend. You're going shortly, and I'm going shortly. There's lots of interest in the model that we do in Asia. You know, we've been very successful in Japan in getting AUM in through the door reasonably quickly from zero to $70 billion in a very, very short time period. Okay, we've got a presence in Hong Kong and China that we've been very measured in how we expand into those areas. They're all intrigued about our inclusive capitalism model, you know, and the fact that all these businesses work together in a very synergistic way, and we deliver great outcomes from a societal point of view. We're being welcomed everywhere we go.
This goal that we have to be a globally trusted brand is felt very evident in the welcoming we get from, you know, the regulators and the institutions across the world.
Thanks. Nasib Ahmed from UBS. First question, I've got similar thoughts to Andrew on the dividend. If you do a large M&A like PRT, if you look at the future cash flow that you show on the slide, that's gonna be significant. If you did it this year, could you go to the board for an ad hoc increase in the dividend? Is that reserved for the full year? Is that decision reserved for the full year? Second question, how high do interest rates need to go for you to retain more longevity risk? Also keeping in mind the Solvency II reform. Third question, a softer one. Tier 2 on funds fell by about GBP 500 million. Is that just mark to market, or are there any ineligibility restrictions there? Thanks.
Thank you. I think they're all yours, Jeff.
I mean, the dividend, you obviously need all of the metrics. We saw the payback's not three or four years, it'll be back to Andrew's point about in the future and what does that look like. It's not like you wrote to PRT and you get profit tomorrow, unfortunately. It's, you know, fall back, four-year payback period around the capital regime and OSG. When you see that OSG increasing, clearly that's when we'll be having a discussion around it, which will be the sort of 24+ year timeframe that we're looking at around that. In terms of rates, longevity, I mean, it's all driven by the risk margin.
We've said that if there was enough done on the risk margin and rates is an element of how big that is, we would clearly look to retain more longevity. We've also said that at the moment, the level it is doesn't materially move our view of that when there's very competitive pricing out there. We constantly review that, what gives us the optimal return on capital versus price to the schemes, as well as, you know, where is the reinsurance pricing within that. We're open to it. It's not. As you said, we've got the capital. We're open to, do we retain a bit more deferreds? Do we retain a bit more in payment, depending where the relative pricing is and the capital strain that it's given?
It's not a big strategic decision to do more of it at this stage. On the number three, I can remember right. Yeah, there's nothing particularly going on in there. Most of that is mark to market around that. There's nothing really going on there.
Thank you, everyone, for your continued support. Thank you to all my colleagues for the great year in 2022. That's all been done with, and now it's about 2023. We've got huge opportunities. It's all about our execution capabilities. We've been very strong, even during the COVID period. I'm very confident that the team's pumped up for 2023 and beyond. There's a huge amount of transactions in the hopper. Andrew, Michelle, Laura, and Bernie, get on it. Look forward to seeing many of you during the course of 2023. Thank you.