Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, and welcome to the MoneySuperMarket Group Announcement of 2020 Full Year Results Conference C all. At this time, all participants are in listen- only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question- and- answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one on your telephone. Web participants may submit a question by typing it into the question tab. I must advise you that this conference is being recorded today. Now I would like to hand the conference over to your first speaker today, Peter Duffy. Please go ahead.
Thanks very much, Lynn. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us. I'm Peter Duffy, CEO of MoneySuperMarket. Also on the call with me is Scilla Grimble , our CFO. We're very much looking forward to taking your questions this morning. Now, just in advance of that, I hope you've had opportunity to take a quick look at the presentation online. I'd just like to draw your attention to perhaps three of the main messages which we are communicating this morning. That's firstly, our 2020 performance was really driven by exceptional market conditions. I don't need to say that it was an unprecedented year and that some of our markets have clearly been heavily impacted by COVID-19. As a result, revenue is down 11% overall.
If we take our travel-related channels out, that was 4%, and the EBITDA was down 24% to GBP 108 million. Secondly, we've updated the strategy. We have announced an update rather than a change. As a reminder, we're going to be focusing on three strategic objectives, which are, one, efficient acquisition, two, how we retain and grow our customers, and three, how we sensibly expand our offer. Finally, I hope you heard a big message coming through this morning on execution. We need to make sure that we are delivering against the promises that we are making, and that is very much front of mind to us. A big part of that is how we're going to improve both our product and our data capabilities to begin to do that so the customer begins to get a superior experience.
No doubt we'll get into much of that for questions that you have. I'll now hand over to Lynn, who I think will get the first question on the line. Lynn?
Thank you. Once again, participants, as a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. If you wish to cancel your request, please press the hash key. Web participants may submit a question by typing it into the question tab. Your first question comes from the line of Jo Barnet-Lamb from Credit Suisse. Please ask your question. Your line is open now.
Excellent. Thank you very much for taking my questions, and welcome back to the fore, Peter. I have three questions, if I may, but don't worry, they're all crackers. Firstly, this strategy is clearly going to entail some investment. Can you talk about how much investment is effectively being repurposed from other areas, i.e. net investment is zero, but what's gross investment and where is it coming from? Secondly, when we think about the aims of your strategy, it's really targeted at CAC, LTV, and TAM. You've mentioned the industry getting back to plus-5%. Is your goal to match that growth or exceed it? On margins, do you believe that CAC- and LTV-related gains can keep gross margins flat? Thirdly, and finally, you talk about energy split between auto-switch, Pick Me a Tariff, and DIY Search.
You mentioned you would explore this in other products and categories. Should we read this that you may launch auto-switch products in other categories? That the mentality behind Pick Me a Tariff will be repeated elsewhere? Thank you.
Great. Thanks, Jo. I always love your cracker questions, so thank you very much for that. First one on investment, what's the growth and where is it being repurposed from? I think what I'd like to draw your attention to really is just focus. We've shared what our tech spend is, and that for an organization which is a U.K.-based digital business is a perfectly reasonable spend. The question is, how are we spending that money and what are we focusing on? I spoke a lot this morning about what we're doing in the digital world. Yeah, there are some relatively small reinvestments which are being made, which I am hoping will sort of net out within a sort of 12 - 8-month period because we will find savings within each of those areas elsewhere.
I think at the heart of your question is, are we stopping doing something that you would kind of notice? The answer to that is no. It is much more about how we focus our existing expenditure, our existing resources on some key bets, which we think are going to make a significant difference to the business. In terms of number two, in terms of the strategy, are we going to be looking to match or exceed market growth? Let's start by getting to match, which will be a sensible place for us to kind of get to. Let's see where we go to from there. Clearly we're going to be comping in the short-run against very low numbers for 2020. You'll see essentially some sort of artificial amplification.
We're talking how that looks beyond that when we get into a more steady-state. I'll be happy to kind of return to that in the first instance, and then let's see where we go from there. In terms of your question on energy, yeah, it's a really good question. Energy, as you know, is not regulated in the way insurance products are. What we can do with one product category isn't always the case that we can do exactly the same with another. I think the principles behind it are really similar. Can a customer at renewal receive from us a pre-quote, essentially, of what their savings next year could begin to look like? Can we make that switch really easy for them? Can we make that as simple as possible based on what we already know about them?
If we ask them anything, it's kind of clarification and what has changed rather than going through the process as if you were a first-time customer in terms of how that works today. I think that will be a step forward from where we are. I think the principles of the sort of auto-switch type products apply very generally. The regulation will sort of say how far down that line can we get for each product.
Excellent. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Andrew Ross from Barclays. Please ask your question. Your line is open now.
Great. Thank you, and morning, everybody. My first one is following up on Jo's. Peter, you mentioned there that you think you can get back to matching market growth in the medium- term. Do you see that coming with margin expansion as well? I guess to extend that question, do you think the work you're doing around marketing customer retention can mean that gross margins for this business start to go up? Any way you can quantify that would be very helpful. My second question is on the FCA review into insurance. It sounds like there are puts and takes as you see it, but if you had to hazard a guess, how much of an impact do you think it will have on switching volumes in home and motor?
Thinking beyond that, is there anything else that you don't see fully recovering whenever the post-COVID phase is? In your eyes, is there anything in this group that is structurally impaired because of COVID? Thanks.
Okay. Brilliant. Thanks, Andrew. First question was about matching market growth. Does that come with margin expansion? Essentially what I'm trying to say with breaking the expensive marketing loop is that we're going to have to try and stop re-recruiting our own customers, to use a very simple phrase. If you're already with MoneySuperMarket, can we get you to come back and buy future products, either a renewal of an existing product or a new product that you don't currently have with us without that expensive re-recruitment cost. As a first objective, margin stabilization on that core part of the business is something that I would hope we can begin to achieve. Now, in saying that, let's be clear that we're also expanding Decision Tech and B2B, and that operates at very different margins, and we have different products that are delivering different margins as well.
That overall margin picture is sort of nuanced in terms of how that works. The principle is how can we begin to get that expensive marketing loop focused very much on the acquisition of new customers and try as much as we can to re-recruit existing customers through our own methods. Andrew, you won't be surprised that I'm not going to put a quantification on that at this point, because I think we have to get some of that up-and-running and show you what that begins to look like. In terms of the FCA review, what do I say on that? The consultation phase has just finished in January. FCA is coming back in quarter two, and clearly we don't actually know how those proposals are going to be netting out at the moment.
I think there are, as I said in the presentation, two significant components. Number one is we know something's going to happen on price walking. I'm not going to share internal data here, but there are multiple drivers for why people come to us with insurance, and price walking is one of them. Actually changes in personal circumstances or just reviewing your situation on a regular basis are other reasons as well. My view very much is that insurers are always going to be competing with each other. They're always going to price risk differently, and there are always going to be price advantages for certain cohorts of customers. Fundamentally, the only place where you're ever going to be able to see that is on a price comparison website.
That deal is done in that we're the sensible place for customers to come and find out where they're getting best value and to begin to switch. I think then the second thing, which perhaps hasn't quite had the same level of focus is this potential proposal on auto renewal. Auto renewal is a real pain point for customers in that essentially you just find you're being renewed on some policy because you sort of did nothing about it. Now, it does make me sort of smile in car insurance. When I last looked, I think you have to have three things to drive a car. You have to have a license, an MOT, and insurance. On the license and the MOT, we're trusted to sort it out ourselves. With insurance, we somehow think that that has to be also renewed on our behalf.
I think this is an area where regulation will be very helpful for the customer, and I think that will begin to provide an opportunity. The question at this point is how does that net out? Obviously that's what you're going to want a view on. Honestly, I think it's a brave person that calls that at this point. There are headwinds and there are tailwinds, and I think I would really want to just begin to understand what the proposals actually look like when they finally are published in quarter two before we call that one way or the other. I think it's still just a little bit early doors in terms of that. I'm going to throw to Scilla, because Scilla's got a point of view on that in a second.
Finally, anything which is not going to fully recover from the pandemic, I think the answer to that is no. If I look at what the most significant headwind is, it really is all about the recovery of travel for both the travel insurance, but also the TSM part of the business. When does that come, and at what rate does that come? When does that begin to get back at scale? I think there is nothing which is fundamentally impaired, which is what your question was. Scilla, do you want to just add anything to that?
The only point I'd build on FCA is exactly your point, Peter, that there are a number of different triggers, if you like, that drive somebody into switching markets. Andrew, we've discussed this before, whether or not that's a risk-changing event or just as Peter's saying, a change in your own personal circumstances. That represents quite a lot of our visitor base that fall within those categories. Clearly, as we make some of our journey easier, and we make the ability for us to prompt and nudge in terms of renewing your insurance, we should be able to, exactly as you're saying, drive long-term value. That is a sort of self-help initiative, if you like, that should begin to offset whatever comes out of the FCA GI review. Great. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Ross Broadfoot from Investec. Please ask your question. Your line is open now.
Morning, everyone. Yeah. Two sort of strand of questions from me. Firstly, regarding the strategy tweaks. Sort of sounds broadly similar themes that we've heard in the past in terms of better customer journey, cross-sell, better SEO, et cetera. To what extent does new expertise need to be brought into the business to drive this? How complex a task do you see the SEO is, for example, and the natural search? If I may ask, have you been in a similar position or a similar point in the road before in previous roles? If so, could you give an example or two? The second question really, the 60,000 sign-ups to the auto compare-and-switch and the 17 Pick Me a Tariff. How many of those are new customers for MoneySuperMarket rather than coming from Cheap Energy Club?
What are the plans for marketing this service more broadly? I guess, any thoughts on whether an Autosave style product plays a role as part of your proposition? Thanks.
Okay, great. I'll do the first one, Ross. I'll throw over to Philippa for the numbers, and then I'll come back and just talk about the role of auto-switch again going forward. Yeah, strategy tweaks, I think your question is around new expertise. We've already brought in new expertise on the data side. I've brought in somebody who I've worked with previously at Just Eat. He built the global data platform there, which essentially powers the product in everywhere from Canada to all of Europe to Australia. He's ex-Amazon, and he's ex-dunnhumby, and already is making a very big difference to our overall approach to data. Just as an example, he joined in November. We signed up Google Cloud Platform as our major strategic platform in December. I actually saw first real-time data coming live yesterday, flowing through the system.
We're hoping to get the marketing platform sort of working for first customer contacts slightly at the end of Q1. I think probably it's now just tripped into the first week of April, so the start of Q2. I think in places we will need expertise, and we will bring expertise in where that begins to make sense. I think also we've got great expertise on the inside of the organization as well. One of the things that I touched on in the presentation is looking at the team at Decision Tech, who I really do rate very highly, not just in terms of the B2B capability, but just as an engineering shop.
We have brought them already very close to the heart of the business because Michael Phillips, who set that business up and who ran that business, is now running our home services vertical for us. Essentially, we're looking to sort of apply the Decision Tech model essentially to how that works. I guess the question is, how more broadly can we begin to use that sort of internal talent in the right way? I think we've got some really great people on the inside of the organization as well. The question is, can we just improve the clarity and the focus of what we're trying to achieve and get them aligned behind delivering that in a way that they can do their stuff? It isn't just about new expertise.
It is about just actually getting the right talent on the right tasks and making that happen. How complex a task is all of this? I think the comment about sort of a micro-service or a componentized architecture is sort of quite important, really. When you hear about companies that are struggling with their legacy tech, quite often they have what are called monolithic systems. Just one big box. What a micro-services or a componentized architecture does, it's broken that up into a series of components. That means when you want to change, fix, or update something, you're just picking a smaller box rather than dealing with the big monolith. It's quite important that we have got to that point, because when it comes to sort of future-proofing or improving, that becomes a simpler task than it would have been if that wasn't the case.
That's why I can have some confidence around the numbers that I'm giving you in that it can just be managed in a much more sensible way. In terms of, have I been in a similar position before? Yeah, I think I have. I think if you look at what happened at easyJet, we essentially were a business when I joined that sold an awful lot of airline tickets. We really began to look at how we could cross-sell into those customers, essentially in that case, ancillary services. For those people who are close to that sector, you'll understand what an important component that became of the overall story. I think when it comes to data and what we're talking about with data, this is very similar to what happened at Just Eat.
I'd observe that when I arrived, essentially, people who lived next door to each other just saw the same listings of restaurants. The big thing that we did was to personalize that product so you could see what you ordered last week, what was trending in your area, what was new, if you were vegetarian. All that sort of good stuff I think is just about analyzing customer data and saying, how can you then create a product proposition on an app, on a website that makes it feel really relevant? Essentially, that's what we're talking about here, but just in a different category. Yeah, I do think that those things are relevant in this case. Philippa, do you want to just talk about auto-switch and where we got to in 2020?
Sure. As you'll remember, Ross, we launched it basically really in the autumn. It was coinciding with when the energy savings levels were falling across the market. The numbers that we're quoting to you are people who've actually done a switch. Within that, we've got 70,000 users who've done it under Pick Me a Tariff and 60,000 who've done it under the auto-switch or Pick Me a Tariff Every Year service. We're pleased with those numbers. It is, I think, a mixture of people who are already existing MoneySavingExpert users, and also newer people to the site. The interesting thing to me, you remember we've talked in the past about how people are at different stages in terms of how comfortable they are with a guided journey or an auto-switch product.
If we look at our switches over that sort of final third of the year, they're pretty evenly split, actually, between people who were doing the old DIY journey, the guided Pick Me a Tariff Journey, and then the Pick Me a Tariff Every Year. The final point I'd just point to is in the RNS, the nice thing that we've seen, and because clearly we're not at the anniversary yet in terms of people sort of auto-renewing. Even for those people who've gone through that Pick Me a Tariff and that Pick Me a Tariff Every Year journey, we're seeing nice increases in conversions versus the standard DIY journey.
Thanks, Scilla. I think just to close that off, your question there is sort of how many of these people are new going forward, which we're not sort of talking about directly today. I think as a concept, it's one of the things that we're going to be very focused on in terms of when we recruit a customer, how do we then begin to develop that relationship over time rather than see it as a sort of single product transaction. That's definitely a sort of area you're going to be hearing more from us about.
Great. Thanks very much. Great insight. Cheers.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Natasha Brilliant from Citi. Please ask your question. Your line is open now.
Hi. Morning. I've got a couple of questions on the strategy, if I may. The big sentence I think is that this is an evolution rather than a revolution. I guess my first question, is there anything that you've been doing up until now that really isn't working that you're going to sort of stop? Anything that you've been talking about over the last couple of years that you're really going to put an end to, or is it really just about tweaking things for improvements? Then second to that, you talked about not recruiting your own customers. Of your current customer base, have you got any evidence or anything that you can talk about where the very best customers, they are coming directly and regularly, and therefore it's about trying to replicate that across the wider customer base?
Is it really something new that you're trying to get across the whole base? Those are the first couple questions. Finally, just on M&A, clearly organic growth is first, but what's on your wish list in terms of M&A?
Thanks, Natasha. Yeah, I think the words evolution rather than revolution do describe the strategy. I think when it comes to implementation, when it comes to execution, it may be revolution rather than evolution, because it may be flipped around in terms of how we begin to do things. I don't think that then is about tweaking. I think fundamentally, we'll look at how we are aligning resource. I'm not embarrassed about the fact that the strategy I presented to you this morning is pretty simple, really. I think that's what this business really needs to do. I think we have to begin to focus on how we acquire well, how we then cross-sell to those customers, how we then retain them.
That is all then about how our product development and our marketing is kind of completely aligned behind that. Not re-recruiting our own customers. Look, we've got a very broad church of customers. We've got 11.5 million active customers at the moment. As you would kind of guess, some are more engaged than others. What we do is we use CRM today in a relatively simplistic way to begin to try and drive up that usage, that cross-selling in terms of where we are. If you look at how the product works today, it is like a MoneySuperMarket, isn't it? We have a shelf with car insurance. We have a shelf with home insurance, a shelf with life insurance. I think going forward, we want to sort of make that a lot more customer centric.
It starts to say, "Peter, you have this, and we think that you could have that." I think as the first example of that, what I shared today with Credit Monitor is just really helpful because it demonstrates that if we can get content that customers actually find engaging and want to come back to and have a look at, then as a consequence of that, we can begin to drive value. I think, yeah. Fundamentally, at the heart of your question, we do have engaged customers. They do vary, but I think the strategy needs to be much more focused on how do we make more groups of those customers look like the best of our customers. That's absolutely what we're going to be doing. In terms of M&A, you'll understand there's very little I can sort of say bar to say we're open.
We're very interested. Adjacencies would make sense, logical adjacencies, and we've done well with logical adjacencies I would observe as a group up to now. Also capabilities I think are quite helpful. When you look at organizations that just do things really smartly and you think, would that begin to add to how we do things kind of overall? You'd expect I wouldn't sort of have any specifics on that, but I think I'm just saying that we will do horizon scanning all the time, and if there's something sensible to do, then we'll have a look at it.
That's very helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Malcolm Morgan from Peel Hunt.
Good morning, everybody. Thank you for taking my question. You've spoken a lot today about your intentions with regards marketing skills and in terms of technology. I wondered if you had any comments about your view of the commercial teams and the position you think you are in terms of commercial relationships with providers. For example, with Decision Tech and B2B, are you happy with the terms that have been negotiated so far? As you have phase 3 FCA review, how engaged are you at this stage with insurance providers in terms of approaching that? It's just a question of the commercial teams. What's your view of what you've inherited there, please?
Yeah. Great. Thanks, Malcolm. I think our commercial teams are strong. I think in Decision Tech they're very strong. I think we can probably do more for providers. I think we can provide them with sort of richer services. I think in the past when I was at Just Eat, we very much looked at the end customer, and we looked at the restaurateurs as two customer bases and providing services into both of those communities and driving value for them and for us out of what we did. I would hope there is more that we could practically do to begin to help our providers do better with us, do better in their business, and in turn, we would drive value as a result of that. I think the teams are strong, but I think there's more we can do.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question comes from Adam Berlin from UBS. Please ask your question. Your line is open now.
Hi. Good morning. Just want to go back to the theme about monitoring and auto-switching. Just to understand. In the release this morning, you talked about 2 million customers who are on some form of monitoring. Can you just break that out to link back to the numbers you were giving around auto-switching and Energy Monitor, just to understand how that 2 million breaks out? Can you talk about of those 2 million, how many of those are you able to generate switches from that are not kind of re-recruiting, so you're not incurring that re-recruiting cost for? Give us a sense of, is that half of your conversions? Is it 1%? How big a penetration does that 2 million represent in terms of your progress towards getting as many of your customers onto this auto conversion model as possible?
It's just trying to understand where we are and where you're going on that.
Yeah, no.
Just one more is on the page 24 of the presentation, when you talked about the lots of different reasons people switch. Can you give us any sense of how switches break down between those four boxes? I understand there are lots of reasons, but if 99% is price walking, then it doesn't matter. Is there any data or Anyway we can get a sense of how each of those boxes make up the contribution today to help us figure out the headwinds versus tailwinds debate that you were discussing earlier on the call?
Sure. Okay. I think there are probably three chunks there, and I'm going to pass the numbers over to Scilla and let me go in reverse order. In terms of the last question, unfortunately, we can't share that data with you. I can tell you the answer isn't 99%. Things like changes in customer circumstances is a very significant component of why they would join us if you move house, all sorts of different reasons like that. We don't break that down, and I think that probably is competitive data, actually. I can let you know that the answer isn't 99%, which is why there's a tone of voice here that makes me say, "Yeah, this could potentially be an issue, but can we manage it?" I would hope we could begin to see our way through it.
Let's go back in terms of what is monitoring. I think monitoring is quite important. Monitoring drives engagement. Monitoring is the thing that makes you hopefully come back to the site outside of the repurchase cycle. This is why Credit Monitor is sort of a really, really good example of it. As a consequence of that sort of greater frequency, then you end up MoneySuperMarket, MoneySavingExpert is more front of mind, and as a consequence, you then come back to actually do your purchasing. That's no different to many other digital businesses. In both the most recent businesses I've kind of worked in, a big focus has been how can you actually just get usage frequency up? The challenge in this sector is obviously that they're annualized renewals.
The question is how do we get the customer just to engage with us on a more frequent basis? That's fundamentally what we are trying to do with monitoring, and that's why your question is kind of so important. Scilla, do you want to just pick up the specifics in terms of how that breaks down? I don't think we share a lot more detail on that, but do you just want to say?
Sure. Just for clarity, Adam the 2 million number is about the MoneySuperMarket brand. It doesn't include the numbers that I was talking about earlier in relation to Pick Me a Tariff and the auto-switch product on energy, because that's clearly just on MSE at the moment. Within that 2 million we disclosed today that about half of those are Credit Monitor users, and the remaining half are more skewed towards Car Monitor, but there are a few Energy Monitor users within that. It's not quite like for like, but clearly a way to sort of think about that in terms of penetration maybe is to look at the active users number that we publish. We've been slightly COVID influenced this year, therefore 11.5, but typically that would be at about the 13 million type level.
If I may, just one build on your question in relation to FCA in the mix. Peter's exactly right. It's by far the majority which is not related to price walking. Do bear in mind as well, and we've talked about this before, that when prices are moved up, it's often, particularly in the premium cycle, that people will come to the site, but you do tend to find that it sort of moves up for everybody. The conversion is much stronger for those people who've had some sort of personal event change or risk changing event than people who are coming to the site purely just due to sort of changes in price without any change in risk factor.
Just to say that we have a couple more questions in the queue, and I think we may close after that. I'll take operations from you, Giles.
Thank you. Your next question comes from the line of Gareth Vaughan from Jefferies. Please ask your question. Your line is now open.
Thank you very much. My first question is back on auto-switching. Why not be more aggressive on marketing right now? I appreciate that you presented evolution and everything is doable within existing budgets, et cetera. Equally, if the opportunity is massive, your proposition is strong, and the capital is well spent, why not be more aggressive? Second question is back on M&A. You've been linked to the acquisition of Snoop, and reported to have looked at it and then walked away. Are you able to confirm that? If you do confirm it, is this a flavor of the type of M&A that you want to do? If it is, how are you going to resolve conflicts of interest with other B2B partners?
Finally, just picking up on the elephant in the room, I have no shame in asking it, which is the Uswitch acquisition of Confused.com or the parent company buying those platforms, it's a big change in market structure. What's your thought? Thank you.
Yeah. Great. Thanks very much, Gareth. In terms of auto-switching, why not be more aggressive? I think what I tried to say in the presentation today is when the customer is given a choice of how they want to begin to buy, they basically do it a third, a third, a third. If you look at entirely handing over the responsibility to a third party to switch you from one energy provider to another and sort of let you know where you've been switched to, there is a group of people who want to begin to do that. Equally, there's a group of people who really want to begin to make sure they're getting the best overall deal for them, and there's a group of people who want to do it in a traditional way.
I think this is something about how we actually balance that across all of the three. I think I've just called you Gareth, Giles, which I don't quite know why.
You did. It's fine.
Sorry about that. Call me Steven. I think we're going to be as aggressive as the customer wants us to be, and that's sensible thing. I will say that we are also looking at our advertising at the moment just to make sure that we are clearly and succinctly describing our propositions. In terms of M&A links with Snoop, I think you'd expect me to say I'm not going to comment one way or the other. We're always going to be interested in propositions that customers seem to like, but fundamentally, they've got to deliver incrementality that either, one, we can't do ourselves, or two, they are really driving growth that potentially we couldn't do ourselves organically. It's got to make sense for us.
I'm not making comments on one or another rumor which has been in the market there, but we just need to make sure that we're being really sensible about what we would consider versus what our capability is to begin to do ourselves. In terms of the elephant in the room as you describe it. Yeah, I think it's really interesting, actually. There's sort of been a change in ownership of competitors, and we'll have to see how that begins to change their focus. It is more like a change in ownership rather than I think an increase in competitive intensity. I'd observe this is a very highly competed sector anyway. Of course, what you've got with one is a sort of link up with a publishing arm where they're hoping to begin to exploit the opportunity to sell into an existing customer base.
With the other, you've got the creation of a more full services operation. Both actually are representing characteristics that you would see within our own group with MoneySavingExpert, with the broad range of products that you have. Fundamentally, we're not seeing an increase in the number of products launched, brands launched. I don't see that competitive intensity at the moment changing. It's already highly spent as a sector. It's already highly competed as a sector. I think for them, the issue is like us, going to be all about execution.
That's great. Thank you.
Great.
Thank you. Your last question comes from the line of Harry Reid from Liberum. Please ask your question. Your line is open now.
Hi. Good morning, and thank you for taking the question. My question is just on the cohort of customers that are signing over this autonomy to automated switchers. Do you see this market as a land grab with low churn and relatively little movement between automated switcher service providers? If so, do you think that there's a certain threat with the future takeover of GoCo now that they can leverage this audience to market Autosave too? Thanks.
Thanks. Yeah, I read your report. I think not actually. I don't particularly agree that it's a land grab in the way that perhaps it exists in other digital sectors. I think when it comes to customer relationship management of multiple financial products, it's all about the relationship of multiple products rather than just one in isolation. I don't necessarily see that threat in that way. Actually, if I look at the sector overall, I don't feel that anyone is particularly doing anything massively breakout in driving customers to actually have multiple products with them rather than a single product approach which has sort of dominated for quite a long time.
One other thing I'd sort of say about our approach as well, it kind of comes back to the question which was asked earlier about providers. In that it's got to work for both providers and for customers. The reason that becomes quite important is that if you're only competing on price, and you're switching customers out every single year, then providers will absolutely look at the economics associated with that model. The size of the panel will then be a reflection of how attractive they find those economics. Then the customer isn't necessarily getting the full range of saving opportunities that they potentially could have. I think if you look at what we've done with PMAT, I think this is why it's so important. We've got multiple criteria by which customers can begin to select their best provider.
If that's too complicated for you can ask Martin about what he thinks. When I did that, I sort of looked at it and thought, "Oh yes, I think that too." That all becomes much more helpful. That then means that providers can compete on service, they can compete on green, they can compete on price, multiple variables. Which I think in time will prove to actually deliver richer panels in terms of choices for customers, and from that actually just a better outcome for customers in meeting demands and needs. I think our approach is quite different, and I don't see it quite to be the land grab that perhaps it could be characterized as. Do you want to add anything else to that?
No, I think that covers everything. Thanks, Peter.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Ian, were we saying that was it, or any more questions?
No more questions.
Great
Not on the webcast, so I think we're good to conclude, yeah.
Well, okay. With that, thank you everybody for taking the time today. Thank you for sticking with us through our online presentation this morning, recorded from our home studies. Thank you for making the time to join us in the Q&A today, and hopefully, we can continue to answer any questions you have over the coming days and weeks. We really appreciate your time, and have a good remainder of the day. Thanks very much. Cheers. Bye-bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, that does conclude our conference for today. Thank you all for participating. You may all disconnect.