All right. Good morning, everyone, welcome to our 2025 results presentation. Before I start, we are all conscious with the very uncertain global political environment that we see, geopolitical environment. Across Quilter, our thoughts are with our colleagues and our clients in the Middle East right now. Let me get on to the results. I will start with a review of the year, I will cover our business highlights and talk through our flow performance. Mark will take us through the financials, I want to spend some time today talking about the growth outlook and the exciting opportunities that we see ahead. After that, we'll finish with Q&A as usual. I'm very pleased with our strategic and financial performance in 2025. We delivered another good year of strong profit growth from a very strong base in 2024.
We saw excellent momentum in flows, taking market share in growing markets. Let me run through the highlights. Core net flows were up a record to a record GBP 9 billion. That's 75% higher than 2024. Our operating margin is at 30%, in line with our medium term goal. Adjusted profit increased 6% to GBP 207 million. That reflects higher revenues and good cost management combined with increased investments. Earnings per share increased 4% to GBP 0.11 . The board has declared a dividend for the year of GBP 0.063 , an increase of 7%. We've also announced a share buyback and a change in distribution policy, which Mark will cover later. Let's now drill down into the flows. This slide shows gross new business outflows and net inflows for the last two years.
New business flows on the left have continued to build momentum with sequential period-on-period improvement across both channels. Outflows in the middle temporarily picked up with the protracted speculation and uncertainty around the U.K. budget in November last year. Even so, we've seen consistent improvement in net flows on the right. Given the market share gains we achieved last year and the current level of net flows of around GBP 2 billion a quarter feels broadly sustainable. Our strong flows are no accident. It's the direct result of the strategic progress we've made. First, in distribution. We've delivered flows ahead of our targets. We've added to the number of advisors and advisor firms in our corporate channel, and we've increased their productivity. More than 100 advisors graduated from our Academy, and they're now starting to build their books.
In High Net Worth, we added investment managers and announced the acquisition of GillenMarkets in Ireland, building out our footprint there. Next, in propositions. Our high-performing WealthSelect MPS is the largest in the market and is now on six third-party platforms. Early in the year, we launched Smoothed Funds with Standard Life. This is a unique product for clients nearing the accumulation of retirement. We've been working on our targeted support proposition, and I'll say more about this shortly. In High Net Worth, we've added a private market proposition for those wanting alternative asset classes and a new decumulation offering for clients in retirement. In terms of becoming future fit, we've completed our Simplification program, invested in our brand, and progressed our advice transformation program. We've started rolling out AI productivity tools to advisors, as you will hear shortly.
We've achieved a lot, and we're doing it from a position of strength. We're already the U.K.'s largest single advisor platform and the fastest growing of the large platforms. The vertical axis here shows gross flows of each platform in 2025. The horizontal axis is net flows as a percentage of opening assets. The size of the bubble is the total AUMA. We are clearly the largest and fastest growing. This gives us scale in a market where scale matters. What's especially gratifying is that we've been increasing flows onto our platform consistently month-on-month, year-on-year, as you can see here. The charts show cumulative monthly net flows, the corporate channel in green and the IFA channel in gray.
As you can see, inflows onto the platform from the corporate channel were up 12% year-on-year, and net flows are around 18% of opening balances. Similarly, in the IFA channel, net inflows were up 92% year-on-year, and these are running at 9% of opening balances. The key to delivering results like this is providing a market-leading proposition to customers combined with excellent distribution. That's been our focus over the last two years. Let's step back to 2020. Back then, we were only capturing around half the platform flows generated by corporate advisors. Following the successful migration to our new platform in 2021, we started focusing on advisor alignment and began reviewing the productivity of our advisor force, we streamlined where appropriate.
As you can see in the top right, our advisor force is now smaller, more aligned, and far more productive, more than doubling the gross flows it generates onto our platform. In the IFA markets, our focus since launch of our new platform was growing market share by deepening our share of wallet with existing relationships and winning new friends. You can see the success of that in the black line in the bottom right, which combined with the improvement in total flows across the market, has driven a trebling of gross flows over the period. There's also a slide in the appendix which gives a helpful perspective of our performance against the markets. We've done well, and we've got real momentum, and we're continuing to invest where we see opportunity. There are three areas I'm focused on to drive our distribution even further.
Building the advice business of tomorrow. Our advice transformation program is giving advisors the tools to materially increase their productivity, serving more customers and bringing in more new business. Quilter Partner assets are also growing significantly, and these are assets that are both on our platform and in our solutions. Brand will also play an important role here. Second, on recruitment. We'll continue to add firms like the six we announced earlier this week. The Quilter Academy will deliver a higher number of graduates this year. Our goal is for the Quilter Academy graduates to offset the natural attrition from advisor retirement, so that all the recruitment into the advice business drives net advisor growth. Support. We'll continue to invest in the award-winning service and propositions which sit behind our platform and our solutions. This is key for our network and for the broader IFA community.
Now let's turn to our solutions business. We wanna be recognized as the leading asset manager for advice flows. As you know, across the industry, we're seeing a move away from active management towards passive and blend solutions, and a trend away from fund of funds towards MPS. That's reflected in what you see on the left. Our growth is biased towards our WealthSelect MPS, as well as to passive and blend solutions with outflows in Cirilium Active. The regulatory environment is also encouraging advisors to focus on planning and to outsource investment solutions, and we've been clear beneficiaries of this. On the right, you can see our managed assets have increased from GBP 26 billion in 2023 to GBP 37 billion at the end of 2025.
The strong performance and competitive pricing of our WealthSelect MPS means that it's now got over 25 billion GBP under management. It's recognized as the market leader and in direct response from requests from IFAs, it's now available on multiple third-party platforms. That means they can use it as their core investment solution across their entire client base, no matter which platform those clients are on. Now to High Net Worth. Net flow growth improved year-on-year, and we continued to outperform our listed peers, as you can see on the left. We've broken down the flow picture by channel on the right-hand side, and you'll see good net flows from our own advisors in green. There's a more challenged picture from the IFA and the direct channel. This is generally a more mature book with higher natural redemption rates.
It's also worth noting that the uncertainty caused by the pre-budget speculation was a notable concern amongst High Net Worth clients, which led to above average outflows in Q4. This is a strong business with strong foundations, but we know it's got more potential. Over the last 12 months, we've made good progress. Advice and investment management commissions are now in a single entity. We've digitized a number of core processes, and we've launched a mobile app to provide a much better client experience. We've expanded our plan solutions, and we've continued to deliver strong investment performance, but we still need to do more. When John Goddard took over the reins in September, I gave him a clear mandate to grow the business. We're refocusing our distribution strategy across both our own advisors and the IFA markets.
We've reviewed the fit of our own RFPs to deliver High Net Worth products and services more effectively, and we are realigning and rationalizing the team in some places. The advisors impacted by this change can explore options within our Affluent segment or exit the business. Once we've done that and enhanced productivity, we will grow the team. We're also leveraging our MPS capabilities. We're moving smaller scale clients from DPS to MPS, which are more suited to their needs and come at a lower cost. This also frees up investment manager capacity, allowing them to concentrate on higher- value clients where discretionary solutions are more appropriate. We were the first U.K. retail wealth business to offer private market evergreen solutions, and we've led the way with the accumulation offerings. It's important to offer a broader propositional range beyond the traditional VFM offering.
We're aiming to attract a broader client base, and as ever, distribution is the key. We intend to build a high-performance business. That means building out our digital capabilities, continuing to invest in proposition and distribution, and maintaining the strong client service and investment performance culture. We're working towards delivering mid-single-digit rates of net flows as a percentage of assets and operating margin in the mid-20s. Right. With that, let me hand over to Mark.
Thank you, Steven. Good morning, everyone. Let me start by echoing Steven's comments that our business is in great shape. We delivered a strong financial performance in 2025. Let me give you my three key messages. One, we delivered revenue growth of 5%. That included 7% growth in net management fees, partly offset by lower interest income on shareholder capital, which reduced revenue growth by around 1 percentage point. Costs were well managed and came in below our GBP 500 million guidance. We invested in initiatives such as our brand and Quilter Invest and absorbed higher National Insurance costs. Our cost discipline and the remainder of our Simplification initiatives contributed to 1 percentage points increase in our operating margin, which has now reached 30%. Our balance sheet remains in very good shape. I'll cover the conclusions of our capital review later.
Let's get into the detail of my usual analysis of our P&L dynamics. Starting top left, net flows of GBP 9.1 billion were, as already covered, significantly ahead of 2024. Strong flows and positive markets meant that average AUMA was up 14%. Top right, you can see revenues grew 5% to GBP 701 million, despite the impact of lower interest rates. Costs, bottom left, were up 4% to GBP 494 million, reflecting inflation and higher national insurance, as well as planned business investment. As a result, adjusted profit increased by 6% to GBP 207 million. Positive draws gave an operating margin of 30%.
We reported adjusted diluted earnings per share of GBP 0.11, an increase of 4%, with the difference in growth between EPS and adjusted profit attributed to a small rise in our effective tax rate. Getting into the moving parts. Let's start with revenue margins, which are in line with guidance. On this slide, each chart shows the average revenue margin for the past four half-year periods. The main point I'd like to draw out is the relative margin stability into the second half. In High Net Worth on the left, the overall margin was down 3 basis points in 2024, largely reflecting mix and changes to some fee structures. Touching on Steven's point earlier, in time, we expect the mix of DPS to MPS to result in a slight attrition in High Net Worth margin.
That mix change will provide greater capacity for larger clients, which in turn will improve the operating margin. In affluence, the year-on-year reduction in the managed margin largely affected mix shift, with Cirilium Active outflows offset by growth in MPS and other solutions. This is in line with our previous guidance. I expect the managed margin to fluctuate around the low to mid 30s basis points level, with mix being the driver of movement. Given the success of our MPS solution, I expect that range to hold. Finally, our platform or administered margin was 23 basis points. Let's now turn to revenue by segment. Our High Net Worth revenues grew modestly. High net management fees and advice fees were offset by lower investment revenue, with total revenue up 3%. In the Affluent segment, revenues grew 7%, a good performance.
The main contributors were higher net management fees on both administered and managed assets and a stable contribution from advice fees. Turning now to costs. I'm pleased to report that while total costs increased 4%, that was lower than revenue growth, giving us positive operating leverage for the year. The waterfall on the right summarizes the main cost changes year-over-year. Increases came from inflation, higher National Insurance and regulatory levies, and the investments we've made. These include bolt-on acquisitions such as MediFintech, brand building activities, and the Money needs a plan campaign, continued support to grow and develop Quilter Invest and the Quilter Academy, as well as costs associated with cyber and technology functionality. Reductions basically came from our Simplification program, which I'm pleased to report is now completed, and I'll touch more on that shortly.
With our large transformation programs now complete, many of you have asked how we expect our cost base to evolve. As a people and technology-focused business, the main drivers of our cost base are linked to salaries and technology contracts. I previously guided to inflation plus a few percentage points. We do, of course, remain vigilant on costs and continue to focus on effective cost management to provide capacity for reinvestment in revenue-generating activities. Looking to 2026, with the significant growth opportunity ahead of us and the returns we already see, I expect the business to invest a bit more to support the growth opportunities we see for our business. These include costs associated with acquisitions, including GillenMarkets in Ireland. We plan to develop Quilter Invest proposition further, including targeted support.
We will continue to grow the Academy to add new financial advisors. We expect to spend a bit more on technology, including AI capabilities. We do intend to build our brand profile, and we'll continue with the marketing campaigns that we kicked off in 2025. As some of this investment started in the second half of 2025, that level of cost run rate is a reasonable base to add inflation onto. On the far right of the slide, you can see the first half versus second half cost split. In terms of thinking about the half-term for 2026 costs, I'll take the second half level, double it, and add around 4% or so for inflation.
That would get you to a figure somewhere between GBP 530 million-GBP 540 million, which seems a sensible base for your models, with the actual outcome likely to be managed with an eye on market- sensitive revenues. I'll provide further updates on our cost expectations at the insurance. I should underline that the current rate of investment, excluding acquisition activity, won't increase to this extent every year, and our longer-term guidance of inflation plus a few percentage points remains unchanged. While on the topic of transformation, I wanted to take a step back and reflect on what we've achieved with our cost programs since listing in 2018. Since then, we've done a huge amount.
I won't run through it all, and you can see it here on the slide. With savings coming across the business, particularly in the technology state, operations, and support functions, while we've continued to invest in revenue-generating opportunities. In total, we've delivered over GBP 160 million of savings, and this has enabled the operating margin we report today. Importantly, it also provides the foundations for efficient and disciplined growth as we continue to scale. Putting the segment revenues and group costs together, this slide shows the segmental contribution to group profitability. Affluent profits showed a healthy 14% increase to GBP 169 million. High Net Worth delivered profit of GBP 47 million, broadly in line with the prior year. The operating margin declined marginally in High Net Worth and improved by 2 percentage points in Affluent.
As you heard before, this part of our business is very scalable, so there's scope for further improvements here. Now let me turn to the balance sheet. As you'd expect, we've maintained a strong solvency ratio and cash position. You'll recall that last year we raised a provision of GBP 76 million in relation to potential remediation for ongoing advice. We have now started our remediation program and based on our current expectations of expected remediation and administration costs, we anticipate that this will cost us some GBP 20 million less to complete than we originally anticipated, and we have therefore reduced the provision by this amount. You can see that come through as a positive contribution to the Solvency II ratio.
Together with the utilization of the provision during the year, the provision balance at the end of 2025 was GBP 42 million. The solvency ratio reduced marginally over the period, largely due to regular dividend payments and our proposed capital return, which I'll come to shortly. In terms of cash, you'll note the capital contributions into subsidiaries, where we capitalized our regulated advice business to cover both the original GBP 76 million ongoing advice remediation provision and provide funding for modest acquisitions to support our advice and High Net Worth businesses. The subsequent GBP 20 million provision release from the remediation provision is not reflected in the cash position and will be netted off against future capital contributions into the advice business.
On the right you can see we've got around GBP 270 million of cash available after payments of the recommended final dividend and the proposed buyback. That leaves us with a good buffer to cover contingencies, liquidity management, and business investment while retaining balance sheet optionality. Our balance sheet is in good shape. The board has recommended a final dividend of GBP 0.043 per share, giving a total dividend for the year of GBP 0.063 , an increase of 7%. That was modestly ahead of earnings growth with the payout for the year at the midpoint of our current dividend payout range. The total cash distribution for the year was GBP 85 million. This next slide sums up our revised approach to capital allocation.
Going forward, we plan to return 70% of adjusted post-tax, post-interest earnings to shareholders, and the other 30% will be retained to support growth, including funding both on M&A, as well as investment support in business growth and development. Of course, we'll keep the amount of capital we have under review, and if we do build up further excess capital, we will of course consider additional one-off shareholder distributions. As well as the distribution policy, the board's capital review also looked at our stock of capital and concluded that given the strength of our balance sheet, we currently have around GBP 100 million of excess capital over and above what we are likely to need for the foreseeable future. We'll return this to shareholders through a share buyback, which will start as soon as practical and which we anticipate will complete before year-end.
Given the strength of our business, coupled with its high cash generation, we intend to switch from a dividend payout policy to a distribution policy. From 2026 onwards, we'll distribute around 70% of post-tax, post-interest adjusted profits to shareholders. Within this, we expect to see progressive growth in the ordinary cash dividend in sterling terms, which together with the reducing share count from share buybacks, will lead to progressive dividend per share growth. Starting from our 2026 full year results in March 2027, alongside the final dividend announcement, we'll also set out the amount of any buyback for the year. The buyback will represent the difference between the 70% distribution target and the dividend cost for the year.
The interim dividend will be paid in cash, and in normal circumstances, I expect this to represent 1/3 of the previous year total cash dividend measured on a per share basis. For 2026, you should expect an interim dividend of GBP 0.021 Pence per share. Let me conclude with our usual guidance slide. Our expectation is for the operating environment to remain constructive and our margin guidance is unchanged. I spoke earlier in detail about cost expectations for the remainder of the year and dividend distributions and capital I've already covered in detail. Let me finish by summarizing my three key points from our results. First, we delivered solid growth in overall revenue despite the low interest rate environment. Second, costs are well managed even as we stepped up the investment for future growth.
Thirdly, our balance sheet remains in good shape, which has given us the scope to announce the capital returns, the return plans I've set out today. With that, let me hand back to Steven.
Thank you, Mark. I'm now gonna talk about the opportunities that we see. We've successfully established a leading position in the advice market, and we're continuing to grow our market share. Furthermore, the market is growing, driven by a need for advice in an increasingly complex tax environment. The need for individuals to invest more for their retirement and the demand for financial planning to minimize tax leakage on future intergenerational wealth transfer. As you know, there is a fundamental supply-demand imbalance. There simply aren't enough advisors to meet the overall need. Let me share some data that we've collected from Boring Money to give you perspective. Our current advised market is the circle on the left, around GBP 1 trillion of assets across about 4 million people. That's an average investment portfolio of around GBP 240,000.
Beyond this, in "The Advice Gap," there are a lot more people who need our help. We need to turn a nation of savers into a nation of investors. There is significant excess cash sitting in the banking system, generating subpar returns and being eroded by inflation. There's a huge amount of wealth that will be transferred down the generations over the next 20- 30 years. Work by Boring Money suggests there are around 12 million people with over GBP 800 billion in assets who are currently unadvised and have got low confidence around investing. They need help, and that's the circle on the right. While the average wallet size across this portfolio is about GBP 90,000, that's smaller than our typical advised client. They're also younger and still accumulating, so they have good long-term growth prospects.
Policy makers have woken up to the scale of the problem. Their response has been targeted support and a national advertising campaign on the benefits of investing. Both of these are constructive steps. We wanna be recognized as a customer champion. A big focus is on breaking down the barriers to brighter financial futures for customers and unlocking the potential of their money. We believe advice and support is key to that. On the left-hand side are customers with less complex needs that can benefit from prompts and nudges, from guidance and targeted support to help them make better decisions with their money. As we move up the complexity spectrum, in the future, we expect simplified advice to reach more clients. At the far end of the spectrum, those customers with the most complex needs will continue to seek holistic, personalized advice.
With an additional 12 million potential customers, this is a huge market. At its heart is the need to deliver better outcomes for customers and for society. Quilter can be a home for clients throughout their financial life cycle, from targeted support to simplified to full financial advice. Clients can move up the curve as and when it's relevant for them to do so. Importantly, we believe the role of advisors will remain critical for materially more productive. What AI won't do is remove the need for advice. Here's why. First, navigating the U.K. financial landscape is challenging. Each individual is different, and most clients don't have the time or confidence to do it themselves. It is very complicated. The U.K. has an incredibly complex tax and pension system that changes on a regular basis.
While AI may be able to provide the answers to basic planning questions or provide simple investment advice, when it comes to more complex situations, long-term tax planning, it's completely reliant on the individual knowing the right questions to ask. The role of the advisor is to help clients through the complexities of U.K. income tax, inheritance tax, trust and legacy planning, and to provide the reassurance and help to let clients take actions at the key moments of their financial lives. Clients want the empathy and the coaching that an advisor provides. The more complex or vulnerable their financial situation, the more they want the help of a trusted expert. That human personal relationship and the trust that underpins it is something that AI just can't replicate. Critically, we give a regulated financial advice. This gives customers comfort and strong protections.
With AI tools alone, there is no comeback. How are we gonna build on the power of AI for our advisor capabilities? We need technology and AI tools to deliver the propositions and the services needed at scale. We need a strong brand that's recognized as a customer champion. Let me start with technology and AI. Advisors are crying out for tools that will make them more effective. The stats on this slide summarize some recent research by NextWealth. Frustratingly, advisors say only a third of their time is actually spent with clients. More than half of advisors cite compliance and regulation as their top challenge. They want streamlined compliance, automated onboarding, and better system integration. Nearly half believe AI will positively impact their workload. We agree.
We've spent the last two years working with advisors to deliver a solution to them to meet this need. As you know, driving up advisor productivity is something we've been working on for years. It started with ensuring advisor alignment and back-up transfers. We've now rolled out market-leading AI tools, and I'll say more about this in a moment. The next part is a brand new end-to-end advisor support system that we're in the final stages of development with FNZ. It includes further AI capabilities. The aim is to help firms run more profitably, advisors to work smarter and service more clients, and for clients to have a smooth, intuitive digital advice experience. Our new technology will be all-encompassing. We're already rolling out some of the elements ahead of full implementation in early 2027.
The goal is full end-to-end technology integration between our platform and the tools that the advisors need to avoid them having to repopulate data fields across applications and allow seamless client data management. We see three high-impact ways in which AI will support further growth in our business. First, in enhancing productivity. We've already rolled out an AI solution for advisors that allows them to record, transcribe, and summarize meetings and actions. Work that took hours now takes 10-15 minutes. We expect it to materially expand advisor and paraplanner capacity over time, helping generate additional flows onto our platform and into our solutions, which is where we make our money. Secondly, improving client and advisor engagement through next best actions, client reporting, and portfolio insights. Helping advisors and investment managers to have higher quality conversations.
Thirdly, operational and process redesign, reducing the steps in the process and speeding up fulfillment while reducing operational costs. These tools will also enhance risk management by making compliance file checking and advisor oversight a lot faster. A more efficient advice network brings greater scalability and operating margin potential. Of course, we've done all the testing and the research to make sure the AI systems we're giving to advisors are robust and their client data is safe and secure. Investment in AI is therefore critical to us, and it's incorporated in the guidance that Mark set out earlier. Let's now turn to brand. As we move to a world of digital delivery, it's important that the market knows who we are, and most importantly, what we stand for. We're investing in the Quilter brand.
We launched our brand awareness campaign late last year in conjunction with the Quilter Nations Series. The strapline is, "Money needs a plan," the feedback has been extremely positive. This is the first step in what is a multi-year effort. We want Quilter to build on our position as a leading advisor brand to being a trusted consumer brand focused on retirement, advice, and savings, and investments. Ultimately, we want to be recognized as a customer champion. Let me return to our business growth plans and draw things together. Our three key profit drivers are platform, solutions, and High Net Worth. We have clear goals for each, which I've summarized on the left, we know exactly what levers we've got to pull to enable us to deliver on them, I've set these out on the right.
Collectively, these will sustain our growth, deepen our competitive position, and drive our operating leverage. To conclude, we're really pleased with our performance in 2025, and we've started 2026 with strong momentum across our business. The messages I'd like to leave you with are: We operate in a large fragmented and growing market, helping us deliver sustainable growth. There's a new nascent market opportunity that could be significant in time. Our propositions and the breadth of our distribution are both market-leading, and they're delivering strong inflows. Our platform and solutions business allow us to generate scale efficiencies and operating margin progression. Through investment in technology and AI tools, we'll be able to augment these existing strengths to meet customer needs across a larger market and deliver faster growth over time. That's why we're excited about the future. Thanks. Let's open up for questions.
We've got a mic in the room. We'll go to the room first. At the back there, sorry.
The question is on cost. The way you've looked at your 2026 guidance looks more like a multi-year program. You know, don't view that negatively at all. It's more, you know, you're growing market share. It's working very well. You're gonna need to invest probably more. Is there a section of your cash flow or your liquidity that you've just mentioned that you would dedicate, the same way that you're dedicating part of your profits back to shareholder? I think it's a very important point because it's a bit ignored in the industry right now. Thank you.
You know, it's, look, I mean, it's included within the overall guidance I've provided. I'm not sure if you mean sort of part of the sort of the capital piece of it. I mean, most of our costs, we capitalize very little costs. Most of our costs, we expense as we incur them. You know, it's kind of it's driven through the P&L rather than necessarily through certainly the investments that we're making, that sort of stuff. When you look at our balance sheets, we've got very little capital builds up in IT and software development and that sort of stuff. Usually, everything's expense. The way that I like to or prefer to treat it is through the P&L, get it all out when it's incurred, provides better flexibility later on. You don't have any recurring depreciation charge and things like that.
That's how we tend to look at it. The reason why I've typically guided to inflation plus a few percentage points is those few percentage points are really there for that sort of stuff. In different years. Things, then there's the things this year, it's a sort of, it's a slightly higher amount than normal. If you think about it in overall terms, I mean, effectively, and maybe if I sort of just a bit of a broader question on the cost side. I previously guided that I expect our costs to increase by inflation plus a few percentage points. Inflation this year for us is about 4%. That's what our salary increases are on average, et cetera, et cetera. We had a couple of percentage points of that to get into 6 percentage points.
The actual guidance I provided today is saying it's 8%. It's really 2% higher than what my previous guidance has been. In any event, 2% in our world is about GBP 10 million. Of that GBP 10 million, about half of it is in things like targeted support and Quilter Invest and the investment we make in there. The other half is kind of split between some of the acquisitions we made, so that's more inorganic add-on and a bit more going towards brand build and some tech investments. I mean, you know, in the grander scheme of things, in GBP million terms, it's relatively small amounts.
Thank you. Three questions. The first one just to clarify on the new dividend policy. You said that it'll grow in absolute terms. Is that on both a per share and a total pound basis? The second question, you mentioned the opportunity in targeted support and simplified advice. Is it possible to give us a sense of where you think the margins on that may land and how long it will take to show in the earnings? The last question, you've had impressive growth in your MPS range in recent years. Any thoughts on competitive entering the market? For example, Vanguard and Wellington launched a low-cost product, two years ago.
Let's take the first question off and go to Mark. First one, very quickly, per share.
Thank you.
So in terms of targeted support and the margins, one of the key things about the targeted support solution is that it will be Quilter-based funds. Actually the margin should be pretty good because we'll get a platform margin and we will be using our core Quilter Investment solutions. That's good. It is. You sort of ask about, you know, what will it do to earnings over time. I think we've obviously got to recognize it's a small business that's gonna take time to build out and to grow out. I mean, we've also got a very substantial business in our advice space. I think it is going to be, you know, it is going to build out over time.
We look at this market and sort of say the targeted support market over the next 10 years could be very exciting. It's obviously not going to, you know, it's not really gonna move the dial from a profitability perspective in the next, you know, one, two, three years. From a growth perspective, hopefully it'll start picking up and on a medium-term view, we think it's very important, but it should be a good operating margin business. In terms of MPS, our MPS range, WealthSelect, is absolutely market leading. It has got 12 years of first quartile investment performance, a phenomenal track record with a consistent investment philosophy, team, approach, et cetera. I think we're quite a formidable competitor. You can see this, the growth that we've got.
We also have, our MPS is also very broad in terms of its options, possibly the broadest in the market. We've got, we actually have 56 different portfolios within WealthSelect across different risk profiles, active blend, passive, responsible, sustainable, managed solutions. A lot of people are coming up with, they're launching quite simple offerings. We are very holistic in terms of the support we can provide advisors. Finally, the reporting and tools that we've got around WealthSelect are absolutely market leading. We're very comfortable that WealthSelect is in a very strong position and will continue to perform incredibly well. Yes. James.
Hi. Morning. James Allen from Berenberg. Could I ask two questions? First one, you've obviously done a really good job over the last two or three years of revamping the business, particularly in Affluent. Playing devil's advocate looking forward, in revenues, you've still got the investment revenue drag from interest revenues coming down, interest rates coming down. The cost savings plan is now played out. The upside shareholder returns policy is now out there in the market. I guess if you're a new investor, where is the scope for outperformance going forward?
Second question, just on the private market solutions, there's obviously been a lot of noise in the U.S. over the last few weeks, around the kind of duration mismatch between wealth investors in stuff like private credit and real estate funds, which obviously have a much longer duration than their time horizons from an investment perspective. How do you plan to manage that, particularly around kind of redemption windows and things like that?
Sure. Thanks. I think the first thing that is about our Affluent business is our business has got incredible operational leverage. I mean, we have, as we've said before, both our platform and our asset management business. We can add a lot of extra assets without adding much in terms of extra cost to our business, and that will continue to drive strong profitability, and we would expect to see the Affluent operating margin continue to rise over time. I think that is what is going to drive the sort of future upside as you talk about. The other thing is the size of the market and the size of the opportunity. I mean, we've built up a significant market share.
We still are focused on driving up our market share even higher. We believe we can. Actually we look at the market and say, you know, we actually really see that the size of the market is continuing to increase. There's reports from independent companies who look and analyze the platform market, looking at the growth, Fundscape data on how much they expect the platform market to grow, for example. It is the place where people have to save and invest. We've got a nation, as I've talked about, of people who are over-saving and under-investing. That is starting to change. We've got a nation where people have got to take more responsibility and look after themselves. The age of defined benefit pension funds is over.
The contributions that people are typically making in this country into pensions through workplace arrangements is too little to reach the appropriate replacement ratios. This is a nation that's got to invest more, and we are incredibly well-placed to do that. We are seeing improvements there. You know, there's more work to be done, including across the industry, including with some of the government supports. I'm really pleased because we've got the dominant market share position in a business that's highly scalable, and we're gonna continue to do things to make our business obviously more efficient. I think there's a huge amount of upside for those reasons. Your question about private market solutions. We've launched private market solutions. Ours are focused on private equity, not private credit. They have liquidity options.
You are able to take money out in term, you have to give notice, and you can take money out. There's a small 5% discount if you withdraw. Liquidity is managed. It's an evergreen solution. We think it is appropriate. Obviously, we're not recommending clients put large portions of their money in it, so, you know, you put sort of 5% of your portfolio into things like that. It is only appropriate for clients in our High Net Worth business, but it is something they have been asking for. It's not obviously for every client, but we think it is a very attractive sort of thing to have in our toolkit. Yes, David.
David McCann from Deutsche Bank. Just two from me. You made an interesting remark, and obviously we've seen it through the increased marketing that, you know, they want to resonate more with consumers rather than just advisors. Obviously, the business has come very much from an advisor-driven background. At what point does this potentially cause some kind of internal conflicts in the business, particularly with the advisors, if you are going down in more of a consumer channel, the reasons you've articulated around targeted support and so forth? I guess what gives you the right to win in that area when there's a very well-established, you know, direct to consumer, marketplace out there? Second question, probably from more just, more a technical point here. You mentioned inflation explanation at 4% a number of times.
Obviously, market expectations are closer to 3% for that number. Just wondered what regarding the 4% forecast for inflation rather than sort of more market consistent 3%-ish?
Thanks, David. Mark will enjoy that question. In terms of brands, actually, advisors are very supportive of what we do in the brand. It helps them and the advisors. As the brand campaign, as you'll see, is about "Money needs a plan." It is about people needing to have a plan. It is very constructive towards advisor. Plan doesn't only obviously need advice. You need an advisor. You can do some of these things, you know, with a bit of targeted support. That's why, you know, we pick those words quite carefully. That still is a plan. You can't just sit and expect your money sitting in cash to perform for you. We are not, though, looking to go and create a D2C business, just to be clear.
We are working with advisors. Our targeted support proposition is about, I talked about how clients can move through that spectrum. We've talked about how we're using targeted support, in particular through Quilter I nvest, to work with advisors to incubate clients for the future for them, and things like that. We're doing it very much in a way that is working to our advice core. I think that's one of the strengths that we have. Clients can start in that journey, and then if they need help, we've got, you know, one of the strongest advisor businesses, and based on penetration, IFAs space to help them along the way. That's how we look at it. We look at it as absolutely complementary, and that is consistent with the feedback that we're getting from advisors as well.
Mark, do you wanna take the inflation question?
Yeah, I know. Thank you very much for that question. just on the inflation, every report that we use to look at our own workforce inflation, which is about 60% of our cost base, is salary. Probably from about August last year was closer to 4% than it was to 3%. That's why I'm using our numbers. It's about 4%. Four percent, you'll see when our annual report comes out. What we're saying is the sort of average salary cost increase of our workforce across our business for this year, going from 2025 into 2026, so I'm referencing 4%. Using our numbers, that's where I'm getting that from.
Other questions in the room? No. Should we go to the lines—
Yeah.
Or the web?
I think we just have nothing on the lines at the moment. I think we have one at the moment on the web from Michael Christelis at UBS. A two-part question, one of which you partially answered, but he says, "Can you provide an update on NuWealth , Quilter Invest, and the strategy for that business?" We've touched on it, but maybe he just wants to reinforce the points there. He also asks, "How has the launch of the Smooth Managed Fund been received by advisors?
Sure. I'm happy to take those. The key thing that we're doing there is we are giving targeted support commissions for Quilter Invest. That is the business that we will be entering the targeted support market in. Those regulatory applications, that just opened this week, and we submitted an application to be registered and authorized by the FCA to provide targeted support. That's what we're doing and working on Quilter Invest. We're continuing to enhance the proposition and to gear up for that. We've built the capability now to do that advisor incubation that I previously talked about. Advisors can refer clients to Quilter Invest. They can then track those clients, and they can see what contributions they make.
When those clients want to, you know, press a button, I want a bit of help, they go straight back to that same advisor who's introduced them, et cetera. That's the sort of stuff that we've been doing in Quilter Invest, both through our sort of advisor incubation strategy and as we're leading into targeted support. The Smooth Managed Funds that's only just very recently been launched, was launched in January. The feedback from the market has been very positive. You know, these things obviously do take a bit of time. You've gotta go out there. We've got our team out there doing lots of sales presentations and extending the funds to advisors.
It is a lot more transparent than some of the other smooth managed funds out there, which I think has been very well received by advisors. We optimistic about the future there. Go ahead, Greg.
We have a question from Gregory Simpson.
Yes. Thanks for taking my questions on the phone. Just two questions. Firstly on targeted support, I'd imagine a lot of the assets sit in bank accounts and in workplace pensions, so I'm wondering if you can help with how you access the 12 million adults if you're not a bank or workplace pension provider and don't have that direct relationship with what might be quite unengaged customers? That's the first question. Secondly, just on AI. Do you think there's an opportunity on Quilter's own cost base from leveraging AI? You know, there's GBP 20 million or so base costs, a lot of them support staff.
You talk about inflation plus cost growth in the medium term, but why, you know, couldn't that be better, if you can leverage AI to answer the manual processes? Thank you.
Sure. In terms of targeted support, there is a few things to say. It's obviously a very big market. We think that there are lots of different companies that are going to different strategies. I'm sure the banks are gonna participate in the targeted support market as well. We don't look at this and sort of think, you know, there's only one model that is going to work. We've got a different model to the way I think some of the other players are going to participate through our close tie and link with advisors, and we think that gives us a really interesting angle. We are also working in our—w e've got a workplace channel as well, where we do provide support in workplaces and targeted support will also be used there.
We have got a range of distribution strategies, and we think it is, yeah, an exciting market that, you know, there's gonna be a lot of people that participate in it. And a market of 12 million people is a significant market. In terms of the AI, the cost base and AI, we are obviously looking at and we are implementing AI solutions across our business. We're implementing things in our call center, in our back office, in various of our, in our middle office functions, which will look to improve productivity, reduce cost, improve efficiency, et cetera. We are looking to things like that.
We haven't changed our cost guidance as a result, but obviously we are looking to make sure that we run our business as lean and efficiently as we can, and AI is one of the tools that we are deploying. Do you wanna add anything to that, Mark?
No, I'd probably say, Greg, look, I think there is potential in time from getting cost reductions coming from AI efficiencies, but I think given the relative immaturity of all of that at the moment, it's still a little early to actually sort of pinpoint sort of precise numbers or targets or anything else like that on it. I think it's something that'll play out in the more medium term rather than having sort of a more short term impact right now.
Makes sense. Thank you.
Okay, I think we're done. Thank you everyone for your time.