Well, a very good morning to everybody, and a very warm welcome to Rathbones' 2023 Interim Results Presentation. Now, of course, we are recording today's presentation. Thank you for making it here physically. Do check those mobile phones, that would be hugely grateful, so we don't get interrupted, and we'll press on. Thank you very much indeed. The first six months today, I'm joined by Jenny. First six months of 2023 has been particularly eventful for Rathbones, and I'll certainly take you through some of the key highlights of that six months. Jenny will then take you through some of the numbers, obviously, that we've reported this morning.
That'll give me an opportunity to sum up briefly. We'll have plenty of time for questions and answers after that. In terms of a sort of general business update, of course, the main event in the last six months has been the announcement we made in April, considering our combination with Investec Wealth and Investment. Our focus in the H1 has very much been on continuing to drive the change agenda we outlined in February in our preliminary results announcement. Notwithstanding some rather challenging market conditions we've all witnessed in the H1 of 2023. The slide here tries to depict some of those market conditions, and really, they've been driven by persistent inflation and higher interest rates, which have made some notable changes in asset allocation.
On the right-hand chart, you can see there, that shows retail sales of UK funds. You can see that in the last, particularly the last quarter, or Q1 of 2023, having clearly switched from out-of-favor equities into money market funds and short-term fixed income investments. There's no question that these trends have impacted our single strategy funds, any, particularly those with equity mandates, that have seen a negative net outflows of around GBP 190 million in the half. Also fixed income funds, obviously, investing in a longer duration, a negative GBP 90 million, in spite of the first quartile performance in our Rathbone Ethical Bond Fund, and particularly our Rathbone Global Opportunities Fund.
However, the business model is balanced in our unit trust business, and net flows into our, what you might call our all-weather multi-asset funds, held up well at GBP 98 million of positive flows. Of course, the composition of wealth portfolios is not quite as dynamic as the asset management industry, but even so, our average UK equity weighting fell from 29.4% at the start of 2022 to 26.9% at the end of this last half year, and fixed income investments rising from an allocation of 11.1% to 15.3% at the end of June. Notwithstanding those conditions, our focus has very much been to continue to support our clients, both face-to-face and digitally. We are available as a face-to-face business model, which is important in these times.
Obviously, our increased financial planning capability has given us the opportunity to increase the number of planning-based conversations that effectively focus on the long-term outcomes rather than the short-term conditions. Our investment process continues to be active, and of course, seeking investment opportunities, no matter what the market conditions are. As a bank, we've also been able to offer time deposits to our clients that have given them more opportunities to invest and improve their returns on their cash balances, obviously holding cash with us for longer periods. Of course, we continue to focus on efficiency, being accessible to clients, and ease of doing business. In a way, there is a reassurance about what is a balanced and diversified business model in these market conditions.
Our wealth business continues to be positioned for the long term, and in spite of the market conditions I've just talked about, client retention rates remain high at 92.8%. Overall, gross inflows in the H1 of 2023 have been strong, and they've more than offset what Jenny will talk about in a moment, as some elevated outflows that we saw in the H1. Overall, client numbers continue to grow by 600 in the H1. Also, our footprint continues to grow in the UK. The number of investment managers and financial planners grew 4.2% year-on-year, and that's a longer and more extensive client network, with, of course, financial planning professionals playing a bigger part of that, representing around 35% of that footprint today.
Of course, what that means is the number of advice-based conversations that do focus on that long-term view are growing all the time. In fact, funds under management with advisors has grown to GBP 8.8 billion, up 9% year-on-year. Now, I mentioned earlier that our multi-asset funds remain all weather, and it's an important proposition, not only supporting the fund in itself, but also in terms of supporting our discretionary investment propositions as well. Overall, multi-asset funds were up 9.1%, excluding, of course, transfers from Saunderson House, which Jenny will talk about in a moment. Let me talk about some of the business aspects of Saunderson House while we're here.
It is, it seems like yesterday, but it is actually October 2021 that we welcomed Saunderson House into the Rathbones Group, acquiring really a financial planning business that operated with a proposition that was heavily investment advisory-based, a time-based revenue model, and an expensive fund to fund proposition. We're well on our way to enhancing this business model considerably. We're able to offer clients a much wider choice of Rathbones solutions, ranging from bespoke discretionary to multi-asset fund, and indeed, to specialist services at a lower cost to Saunderson House clients. That creates a business model with a much more stable and predictable revenue base. Our investment case for that acquisition centered around the migration of assets from third-party platforms into Rathbones. To date, we migrated around GBP 1 billion funds under management into Rathbones propositions.
During the migration, we've chosen not to charge clients for any activity and investment advisory fees while this migration is happening. This is the reason why our advisory revenues have fallen for the short period that is this year. We expect that all funds under management will be migrated by the end of the Q1 of 2024, after which, advice revenues are expected to return to more normal levels. Once migrated, we, as Rathbones, now the provider of those investment solutions, will be earning approximately 55 basis points on fee income across investment management and our unit trust business. The Saunderson House acquisition not only leverages our in-house investment capability, but it also creates greater distribution.
Importantly, post-migration, we expect to significantly enhance the amount of capacity that is sitting with the financial planning and advisors in Saunderson House that have been tied up with some very busy migration activity. That is our aim. Very much to deliver an enhanced business model that will just start delivering results very much into next year. The other thing that's been really, really important for us, of course, is digital. Just to remind you, there are three main strands to our digital strategy. Firstly, the implementation of an InvestCloud Client Lifecycle Management system, which really transforms how we prospect, onboard, and service clients. The installation of Charles River Asset Management Systems into our asset management business, and a significant upgrade to MyRathbones websites and client reporting, all with a digital flavor.
Progress on our CLM project has sadly been slower than we've planned in the H1, so we will be applying extra resources at InvestCloud throughout the H2 to accelerate delivery. We now expect full launch to happen in the early part of 2024, which is a timetable that prioritizes more high-quality usability rather than speed for the sake of it. We'll, of course, continue to develop the system post-launch, but certainly won't be as much in terms of activity. We therefore expect some costs now to move into 2024 as a result. Following the successful launch of Charles River phase I last year, we've been working in the first six months to launch phase II, which involves performance, measurement, attribution, and risk models.
These together will give a truly institutional asset management capability in what is a very capable investment management business. It will also add efficiencies, and it will also make us easier to deal with in terms of reporting to financial advice firms. Now, 55% of our clients are now using MyRathbones, and we'll obviously continue to gather feedback and make improvements. Clients can personalize now the view they want and also have much more data, historical data available, as well as transaction histories. We'll continue to operate a six-weekly upgrade cycle and, of course, proactively respond to client feedback, which is really, really important. That will enable us to build much more digital pathway between us and clients to improve engagement and actually sell Rathbones in a brand-new way.
We've also made a number of improvements to our client reporting, which has been received very favorable, and we hope favorably, and we will continue to do so. Obviously, if you are looking at the overall budget, it's important to say that we continue to expect that the total cost of this digital program will not exceed the originally announced GBP 40 million. We're merely talking about it moving over time. Of course, the other thing with our technology model is that we are currently looking at planning that in light of the Investec Wealth transaction, and obviously, we'll update you on that as we progress. Overall, if you'll recall, we are continuing to press on with a five-year strategy.
It does seem, only yesterday, I was sitting here and telling everybody about that, but it's nearly four years now. We hope that next year we'll be talking to you again with an enlarged group, to refresh our strategy. In terms of the strategy for this year, we continue with our four pillars. As we expected, Consumer Duty has been actually a very helpful piece of legislation that has enabled us to streamline and simplify the products and services that we've offered to target markets, enabling us to focus on new client affinity groups, and streamline our approach to market and marketing and sales. The outcome of this work effectively is reflected in material upgrades to our website, please do visit those.
You can see a much more streamlined experience, which not only presents our material better, is easier to navigate, and of course, gives clients a lot more opportunities to engage with us directly. This, of course, will be work in progress. Websites are always going to develop. You may also notice that from some signage in the building that Rathbones has a new and refreshed brand. It is new and refreshed, and adopted after a considerable amount of feedback that we've got from both clients and indeed employees. We hope its reassuring simplicity will epitomize how seriously we take our responsibility to clients and how hard we work to earn their trust.
The brand is digital-friendly, and hints at our maritime roots as well, to symbolize the direction and guidance we try to provide to clients as they grow their wealth. This brand and digital shop window complements a higher cadence of business development activity, which is behind the gross inflows that you've seen in the H1. Our focus on key affinity groups, together with the benefit that we're already seeing from greater use of technology as well as the customers in-house migration, places us in a strong position. We've also got 3,500 clients now that are in our Rathbones Select service, versus about 1,000 a year ago. This service does not require, time-consuming, suitability reviews to be performed indeed, so very important saving in capacity there.
After streamlining the way we work with advisers, too, which is very important, our new Reliance on Adviser service has now over 280 IFAs versus 100 this time last year. That not only reflects a lot of business development activity, but it equally reflects the ease of doing business and the streamlining of that proposition that is making us a lot easier to do business with. Overall, let's not forget our employees, hugely important to us, but engagement scores continue to be high, and we continue to focus on diversity, inclusion, and wellbeing as a priority.
Of course, the story, as we go into the future, will be, we hope, Investec W&I, and we were very grateful to shareholders, who overwhelmingly voted in favor of our combination, recording 94% of votes in favor. Clearly, we've been working very closely with Investec over the last few months to make sure that integration planning is as well advanced as possible. I can report that interactions between employees to date have been very positive and constructive, and we very much look forward to welcoming them all into the Rathbones Group.
We expect completion to be towards the end of the Q3 in 2023, and we remain very excited about the prospects and opportunities that this transaction can deliver for us to create the UK's leading discretionary wealth manager. A lot happening in the first six months in the business. Let's now turn to my left. Jenny will talk about the numbers.
Thank you, Paul, good morning to you all joining us today. As you might have already read, funds are up, operating income is up, and profit is up, and costs are under control. My aim this morning is to share with you the key points behind these results for the H1 ended June 2023. Over the next 10 minutes, I'll focus on four main areas: flows, revenue, costs, cost management, and capital. That by the end of the presentation, you can see that the business is in good hands and as guided in March, on track to deliver a low 20s operating margin for the current financial year. Turning to the headline KPIs in front of us here, funds operating income and underlying profit, as I just mentioned, all up on the same period last year.
Just to draw your attention to statutory profit, this was impacted by the new acquisition costs expensed in the period for the Investec combination. Our stable underlying earnings means we continue with our progressive dividend policy and announce today an interim dividend of GBP 0.29 . Let's move on to look at some areas in more detail, starting with flows. We continue to attract net inflows into our discretionary and managed services, albeit at a lower rate than recent trends, 0.7% annualized. If I can take you to the top left chart here, where we have seen strong and improving trend in gross flows, gross inflows to nearly GBP 2.5 billion, up 17.5% on the same period last year.
Disappointingly, though, we've seen elevated outflows in the period, and that stems from two main drivers. Firstly, the charities business, where outflows are generally lumpy, we saw a long-standing large client exit. In addition to this, we saw a greater number of clients using cash from their portfolios to fund lifestyles and pay down debt. This is where the incidence of inflation is coming through. We see this very much evidenced in our ancillary banking service, where our loan book has reduced GBP 35 million in the H1 of 2023, and that's as people use their cash surpluses to pay down debt in light of rising base rates. Just to clarify, these elevated outflows are not being seen from closed accounts. Very much, this is demonstrated in our positive client retention stats that Paul touched on earlier.
These withdrawals are all coming from accounts remaining open. To summarize, excluding our charity segment, we can see here in the bottom left chart that growth was steady and consistent with prior periods at 2.3%. Let's move over the page and look at revenue performance in a little bit more detail. Total operating income for the period is up 3% at GBP 238 million. Total fee and commission income reduced by 2%, but this was in line with the reduction seen in the performance benchmark we measure against MSCI. You also can see here the drop was largely driven by lower market volatility, so therefore, lower trading volumes coming through commission revenue when compared to the H1 of 2022.
As expected, we benefited from a rising base rate with nearly GBP 17 million increase in our net interest income this year. This has offset the anticipated reduction in advisory fees in Saunderson House. As Paul mentioned, our advisors are focused on migration, and we are switching from a time and materials charging basis to an ad valorem structure. I would treat this as a one-off reduction, and we expect advice income to return to levels consistent with 2022 during 2024. Just at the bottom left, our revenue margins remained robust in the period. Investment management slightly up on last year, and the funds margin demonstrating the mix effect we see through a higher proportion of the multi-asset portfolio, which carries a lower annual fee. Just, I often come to this one to look at the long-run trend.
The top left, the basis point return from our investment management discretionary fees remains stable. I just want to spend time on the two right-hand charts on this slide. Again, the fees from advisory services are GBP 6 million lower than compared with the H1 of 2022. That's the GBP 17 million, down to GBP 10.5 million, and this is entirely driven by the Saunderson House migration. To remind all, and as Paul described, going forward, we will continue to see advisory fee income in Saunderson House, but we will also see the benefit of the 55 basis points on the assets migrated. You will see that in fee income through investment management fee income and funds fee income going forward.
Lastly, on the bottom right of this slide, we see the tangible benefit of our banking license in a rising base rate environment. Net interest income increased faster than we expected in the H1 of 2023, as base rate moved from just 1.25% this time last year to now 5%. We continue, though, to pay very competitive rates to our clients on all client cash balances. To underpin this, we're continuing to implement our treasury strategy, where we're able to place cash out in the money markets to earn a longer fixed rate term as a result of having our license. That therein plays towards the growth in Net interest income, which I'll finish on the forward outlook later. Turning to expenses.
The total underlying operating expenses increased just 3% when compared with the H1 of last year. We've taken proactive steps in light of the inflationary environment in both business run costs and our digital investment program, enabling us to deliver the operating margin in line with expectations. While staff costs have increased, this is offset by lower operating expenses, both controllable and the less controllable ones. Let me take you through this in a little more detail on the next slide. The top chart here shows total staff costs, so including variable performance awards, up GBP 8.3 million versus the same period last year. I've split this out between the increase in headcount hired since the end of last year. We did a lot of hiring in the H2 that support our digital program.
Average salary inflation of 6%, which we guided on in March. Separately here in the pink, we split out the staff costs exclusively relating to our digital program, and this very much reflects the planned move from hiring delivery resource this year and moving away from more expensive strategic consultants that we incurred in the H1 of last year. Those consultants, you can see a corresponding pink box in the non-staff costs. The other operating expenses, that GBP 3.5 million, that's where the consultants were incurred last year as we set up the run rate on our program. Overall, digital costs, digital program costs are down GBP 2 million year-on-year, but this is a program over two years, so a half-versus-half period isn't too much to focus on. However, along with...
If we stay here with this other operating expenses chart now, along with that reduction, we've also seen a welcome reduction in the FSCS levies. These both items have helped offset some of the embedded inflation now coming through in non-staff expenses, and as you can see here, running at about 5%. Lastly, here, we draw out for you the increase in contact with clients. We said post-pandemic, we were increasing client engagement, investing in our marketing and distribution strategy, and refreshing our brand and website, as Paul's mentioned today. We have done all of that, and we'll continue to build on that iteratively, but you can see that initial rollout coming through there. This is an important pillar to our client engagement and attraction strategy, and we'll talk about more of that in the future.
In summary, we continue to manage costs carefully and take proactive steps in an inflationary environment in both the business costs and the digital program spend. Turning to profit. In summary, robust revenue, controlled cost discipline, have delivered an underlying profit for the H1 of GBP 50.7 million. As mentioned at the start, the statutory profit before tax fell to GBP 26 million due to the New Investec combination acquisition-related costs coming through the P&L for this period to the quantum of GBP 11.2 million. Our underlying operating margin, inclusive of our digital investment program, was 21.3% and is in line with the guidance we gave earlier this year for a low 20s operating margin. Moving to slide 17, and a look at capital and dividend. Our capital position remains strong, surplus over total requirements and buffers of GBP 98 million.
As guided in February, the FPC increased the UK countercyclical buffer rate to 2%, and that now kicks in in July. You will see around GBP 16 million extra capital in that buffer coming through in the H2 of the year. Finally, to the dividend, where as well as the board recommending an interim dividend of GBP 0.29 , up GBP 0.1 on the same period last year. We're also announcing the intention to pay a second interim dividend. Given the combination and the fact that our interim and full-year dividends are not split 50/50, we will bring forward payment of a portion of the final dividend for 2023 to shareholders on the register just prior to completion of the combination, and we'll facilitate this by way of a second interim dividend. The final dividend in respect to full year 2023 will then be adjusted accordingly.
Total dividend remains in line with our progressive policy. Looking at the rest of the year, we expect a continuation of our stable revenue margin, elevated by increasing net interest income, which offsets the reduced advisory income for the year. In March, we guided GBP 35 million on net interest income. We now expect this to be closer to GBP 45 million, yet still subject to levels of client cash in portfolios and noting how clients are using that cash, and that's reported widely across the sector. On expenses, we're very mindful of the inflationary backdrop, costs remain under control, and hiring is now largely complete as attention turns to the combination with Investec, expected later this quarter.
Digital program spend, as Paul mentioned, is likely to run into the early part of 2024, but remains within our GBP 40 million guidance and all efforts with accelerating spend the H2 of this year. To close, I reaffirm our 2023 operating margin to be in line with previous guidance of low 20s this financial year. That's all from me now. I look forward to your questions later. Before that, I'll pass back to Paul, who will finish on the medium-term outlook.
Lovely, Jenny. Thank you. Clearly, a fair bit going on, and hopefully that was a good indicator of what's been driving our six-month financial performance. I think the way I would sum it up is that we have had a pretty frenetic and very busy period of delivering change. That was gonna calm down, I think, before the Investec transaction. Of course, we now have a very solid platform on which to build that Investec merger upon.
There'll always be a need to continue what we do, but as we begin to leave, certainly a large part of our operational delivery and legacy integration plans behind, we can now expect to see some margin improvements begin to emerge next year, respecting, of course, market conditions. At the same, of course, we will be shifting our focus, as Jenny says, to delivering the full benefits of the combination with Investec Wealth & Investment, which, as I said earlier, presents a number of exciting opportunities. When we announced the Investec deal, just to remind you, we targeted synergies of GBP 60 million, at 90% of which would be achieved within a three-year period.
Taking account of these synergies, we certainly, with our enhanced scale and indeed market positioning, after three years post-integration, we expect to return to what our long-term shareholders will recognize as a margin much closer to our historical levels. With that, what I will do is open it up to the floor initially for questions, or Sarah, if there's anything that comes electronically. Could I ask anybody that's here, if you have any questions, do please put your hand up. Well done, Ben. You are the first.
Thanks, Paul. It's Ben Bathurst from RBC. I've got questions in two areas, if you don't mind. Starting with Saunderson House, the asset migration there, I think, accelerated in Q2. You've given guidance for completion by Q1 2024. Does that mean you expect to move the vast majority of that GBP 3.1 billion by that time? What sort of rate of further attrition from that would you be sort of satisfied with, looking to that? Secondly, in terms of the digital implementation cost for Jenny, how far through that GBP 40 million cost are we now? How much more do you expect to incur in the H2? I wondered if you could just maybe elaborate on how much of that you expect to retain as business as usual cost, looking forward. Thank you.
Ben, thank you. Let's talk about the pace of migration, because I think when we said, talked about the Saunderson House acquisition, this migration wasn't a block migration that we would normally have undertaken, with a block of private client business. This is all about client by client. Therefore, it takes a certain amount of process and potentially up to three meetings, with a client to, in order to make sure that we, you know, understand what they want, make sure, understand that, they understand the investment proposition, and then the assets move after that. That's why it's taking, you know, some time.
If you're looking at the run rate of GBP 1 billion so far, the work started on that, I would say, midway through last year. That is sort of work in progress. That advice activity has been building up quite considerably, which is why the guidance today talks about that at the end of the Q1, where we will have, certainly by the end of the year, expected to have at least completed a lot of the advice that we've given to Saunderson House clients. There will be inevitably a delay in terms of when the assets come across from third-party providers. That's broadly the logic behind the move.
Look, inevitably, when you have those client conversations, it does make clients the opportunity to think about their moves and their future, their provider. I think, in terms of where we are on all of that, possibly a few more bits of attrition than we expected, but not materially higher. We did know at the time that, you know, a team had left Saunderson House and would attract a few funds, and that has indeed happened, although not as many by some way than we expected, which has been very positive. Inevitably, you know, client attrition running slightly higher than we expected, but certainly not anything more material than that.
What's encouraging on that then is, those advisers who are further through their migration are continuing to bring in new money. If you go back to the acquisition case, it wasn't just exclusively the migration of the clients, it was, the wider footprint to both farm or mine, the unadvised Rathbones space, but also our regional offices, where Saunderson House has expertise were not present, and we only had our 20 or so planners. We're very much gonna see that capacity start to come back through in the latter part of this year.
Yeah.
Which that helps offset any attrition that might be higher than we've seen before.
Yeah, it's an important point, that capacity point. Migration is an intensive process, so very much looking forward to... I'm sure the advisors at Saunderson House are also looking-
Yes.
looking forward to that position as well, of being much freer to engage in business-seeking activity and client engagement than they are at the moment.
Onto digital, Ben. I'll take the couple of parts of your question, and I might even take advantage of our COO, who's sat here in the front row, which I can't avoid this. First of all, how much have we spent to date? GBP 22 million. We had GBP 18 million full year last year and GBP 6 million in the H1. These programs aren't linear, Ben. In the beginning, you've got a lot of design and development costs, and then you're into build, testing, and implementation. As I mentioned, Well, the H1 last year were expensive consultants in the design and the development, and then you move into delivery phase, which we proactively took the decision to hire people rather than pay lots of expensive consultants to body shop for us.
You see the spend and the burn rate isn't linear. We're still in that delivery phase, which Andy will touch on a little bit more. Why don't I pass to you now, Andy, and I'll come back to the BAU costs and talk about software as a service.
Thank you. Yeah, Ben, so we are right in the middle of the test and learn phase, and we've deployed a number of aspects of the capability out to our pilot group, and it was that pilot group that pointed the fact that we need to continue to add new features to the product before we launch it more formally across the business, which is what we're doing in the H2 of the year. Hence, as Paul noted earlier, we're adding more resources into the InvestCloud business to help us with that. Hence, the fact that we're pushing out the full launch until the Q1 of 2024, and we think that's a better thing to do because it will lead to improved benefit, realization once we do that with new and improved features.
Working closely with Jenny to make sure that we keep within that GBP 40 million, as we've outlined, and that we smooth that over the extended period of time.
Great. In terms of the run costs after, you may remember, Ben, when we first announced this, the incidence of having to take all GBP 40 through the P&L is because this is the new cloud-based software as a service accounting rules, you can't capitalize it over its lifetime. Instead, what you'll see through our profit and loss, and many other firms is IT costs will increase in the run rate because it's licensing. They're changing their revenue models. But to counter that, you'll see lower depreciation costs from historical investment that you'd be paying for this GBP 40 million over the next seven or eight years. I can't be specific with you, Ben, but you will see a higher incidence of run, but partly offset by lower capitalized costs that were there before.
Clearly, now, as we go into an enlarged group, we've got far larger bargaining power, don't we, Andy, in terms of licensing and users? You know, when we set out on this, we were a GBP 60 billion AUM firm with the number of users we have, and that's about to double. Yeah, all part of cost avoidance going forward and the enlarged group very much contributing to this investment.
Ben, thank you for the questions. Stuart?
Morning, it's Stuart Duncan from Peel Hunt. I've got two questions in different areas, actually. First, on efficiency, and you touched on MyRathbones. Obviously, 45% of clients not using it, why is that the case, and where do you think that proportional percentage can get to? Secondly, you also touched on Consumer Duty, and I just wondered if there was sort of many system changes you had to make there to manage some of the information requirements. Just more broadly, any sort of comments around value for money considerations?
Yeah, okay. Absolutely. I think, I might even play play the Andy Brodie card on MyRathbones. I think we never expected, Stuart, to get a 100% of MyRathbones. I only had a client write to me from Investec who was very digitally, you know, didn't want to engage digitally. We've got to respect that, you know, people are going to want to deal with us in the way that they are wanting to. But as we benchmark the overall 55% today, we'll find that that's pretty competitive in terms of our clients in similar businesses are using their MyRathbones. We will be working hard to sort of tick that up a little bit.
Whether we get to 60, 65, I think that would be what I would describe as a very good result. Any more than that over time, I'd expect. Certainly, when the current generation get to a degree of wealth accumulation that typifies our client base, I would expect this to gradually grow over time. Andy, I don't know whether you've got any particular comments.
Well, you know, I agree with Paul, it's gonna be in the region of about two-thirds, we think. Actually it's less about how many clients are signed up to it's about what they're doing within it that's playing to the efficiency piece. We're seeing a lot more usage of MyRathbones and the features within it, both to access their portfolio information, to understand where their valuations are, to download and client reports, et cetera, and so forth. That's helping hugely across the efficiency of the business, because it requires less paper and less time and effort, but it's also improving the client experience because they have speed of access to their information.
What we're really targeting now, as well as just looking to increase the penetration a bit more, it's actually working with our clients to get them to use it more. That we see as the most important point. Because you can have a very high penetration rate, but actually clients don't use your solution.
Alex, too, on Consumer Duty, the answer is, to date, not many system changes required for, I guess, for a couple of reasons. First is that any data we've required, we're very grateful that the investment we've made in some of the data and analytic tools over the last three or four years has really paid off in terms of being able to access client outcome data. We know obviously, investment performance data, we can look at that in an awful lot of detail. I think from a being able to leverage that capability, it's been relatively straightforward to us.
What Consumer Duty has done, of course, though, is increased the amount of documentation we've needed to have in the organization. Also add, I think, much needed, proposition and proposition development resources that are helping, looking at your comment on value for money, which is important. Us being able to capture sort of competitor rates, and indeed, looking at the overall value for money piece, we've now got resources that are in place to do that. That's more of a resource rather than a system requirement at the moment.
If we can make that more efficient over time, I just do remember, the industry's response to MiFID II was quite manual to start with, then over the next, the following sort of two or three years, there were more processes that were embedded. I'd expect a similar thing to happen here with Consumer Duty, but nothing particular. Look, I think value for money is something we've always looked at quite carefully over time, in any case, in terms of regular pricing reviews, and indeed, in a market benchmarks, in and outcomes. I think there are also developments in the asset management space about activity-based costing, which is a, you know, a bone of contention at the moment in terms of whether that's gonna help or not.
That might have a little bit more system implications for our unit trust business. Other than that, I think in a pretty well prepared, and as it sort of backs up the comments earlier about being able to sort of streamline our proposition and deliver it much more effectively. Any more questions here? Sarah, do we have any?
We don't have any on the webcast.
Oh, we've got. It's a busy day for markets today. I think apparently even busier tomorrow, so we know that our shelf space is somewhat limited. In which case, can I thank you very much indeed for attending this morning and attending virtually as well.
We look forward to what will be another exciting six months. We'll see you in February or early March, I think is our next presentation like this. Thank you very much indeed.