Morning, everyone. Welcome to the Schroders 2021 full- year results. We've got a lot of people online today, so we're gonna try and mix it up between the room and online. What I'm gonna start, normal format, I will take you through big picture flows. Rich will take you through the financial numbers, and then we'll do Q&A both in the room and online. Just starting with the high- level numbers. You've seen these. Top line grew 18%. Profit before exceptionals up strongly. Cost-income ratio down slightly. Number we're proud of, GBP 35.3 billion of new flows.
Importantly, the underlying drivers of this strong performance in our private assets business, strong performance in wealth business, but also good organic growth coming through from our traditional core business. I think we'll talk more about that. The investments we've made over the last five years really starting to come through across the business in terms of decent organic growth. Getting into the detail. W e are nothing without being able to produce strong returns as an active manager. We were very pleased. Our three-year performance number last time we got together a year ago was 74%. Today, it's 79% of funds outperforming over three years. What that actually means in practice, I've taken here the top 25 funds across our fund range.
Over five years, these funds have outperformed their index by 16.1% net of fees. As an active manager, the importance of making money for clients is absolutely central, and I think that's a good way of me demonstrating what that 79% means to people at the end of the day in their funds. Assets under management reached a new high of GBP 732 billion. I've put on the right-hand side the mix of revenues across the business. Clearly, when you've got a compound growth rate of 10% across your business, all areas are growing. What we're starting to see is those high- margin, high- longevity areas growing as an increasing portion of the group.
I'll come back and talk about what that's meant for the longevity of our business and the stickiness of clients. The dynamics of that virtuous circle of growth starting to come through here. In anticipation of the question, if you look at the AUM growth rate ex joint venture associates, it's still 7% compound over that five-year period. Just a reminder in terms of strategy. This chart won't be new to you. It's precisely the chart that we've shown, really, for the last five years. We're wanting to get closer to our end customer to improve our client stickiness and avoid disintermediation. We're reinventing our core asset management business by doing more in solutions, more in the attractive contemporary products, more in sustainability.
Expanding our geographical reach so that we're doing more in North America, more in Asia, and what you've seen is those areas coming through. Obviously, when we've talked a lot about this, the attractions of private markets. Over the five years, clearly the market's recognized the attractiveness of that segment. Both client longevity and revenue margin. That's the strategy. What I want to do now is link the results directly to this. Here's our overall flow picture for the year. We saw GBP 20.2 billion of new flows coming from our JVs and associates, particularly in China and India, and I'll come back and talk more about that. On the right-hand side of this chart, you can see those high- margin areas delivering GBP 19 billion of net new business.
Institutional saw a small outflow, but there was quite a lot of churn within that, and actually, our move towards higher margin areas within the institutional business, actually the net new revenues was GBP 6 million that we earned in our institutional business. Although if you looked at our asset growth rate, you get to a 5% organic growth rate. To my mind, perhaps the more important number, if you just take out the joint ventures associates for a moment and look at the annualized net new revenue that are coming from those five business areas, was running at an organic growth rate of 7.3%.
The 144 million of net, 145 million of net new revenues, which is coming from the traditional asset and wealth management business, is a 7.3% organic growth rate on net new business alone. Clearly, I'll just give you the stats for this if you look through a geographic lens or a product lens. Private assets and alternatives saw GBP 6.9 billion of inflows. Our equity business saw GBP 3.8 billion of inflows. Our fixed income business saw GBP 2 billion of inflows. Our multi-asset was out by GBP 1.7 billion. Within equities, the major areas of inflow were global equities. The major areas of outflow was quantitative equities, so there was a nice mixed change within there.
The other areas to talk about is geographically, we saw Europe was the strongest market, GBP 7.1 billion of inflows into Europe, GBP 5.3 billion of inflows into North America, both retail and institutional. The U.K. saw small outflow, as did Asia, ex associates, of 0.2., U.K. was 1.2 out. Clearly, the Asian business was flattered very much if you add in joint ventures and associates, because we saw GBP 20 billion of net inflow into Asia. To my mind, a really rebalancing of the group, but growth where we wanted to see it. As I say, that underlying revenue growth rate of 7.3% compound in the organic business.
We've talked a lot about trying to reposition the business into areas where there is fast-flowing water. This has not got the consolidation adjustments in, but I wanted just to demonstrate those areas that we talk about in strategy, saying we can see new growth in those. If you look, we talked about the joint ventures, but Schroders Capital, our private assets business, without the alternatives, saw GBP 7.4 billion of inflows. That's before GBP 2.5 billion of dry powder, which we have not invested, and we don't include in our assets under management. You'll recall, for those of you who attended our Capital Markets Day, that we said we would be able to achieve growth of GBP 5 billion-GBP 8 billion for Schroders Capital business. We've done that, and we've...
In fact, if you think about the dry powder, we've actually exceeded it, but we've done that here. Article 9 funds, those funds which are focused on sustainability in Europe, GBP 5.7 billion of inflows. Thematic funds, an area of big growth, GBP 4.4 billion of net inflows. Wealth management, I'll talk more about. North America, we said, is a strategic priority. Again, very strong inflows, both in North America and in South America. Areas that we put in organic investment, and we're now seeing the payback from those areas. To my mind, this, you know, what this is demonstrating is the strategy we put in place is coming through across the areas that we would expect it to do so.
If you look at that in a bigger picture and go back to those things, the areas we talked about, private assets, wealth, solutions, those have all more than doubled over this period. I think to my mind, that rebalancing of the group which is going on nicely. You know, from Richard and I's perspective, the more we can do that, the more that enables the revaluation of the business to be driven by the quality of the earnings that are coming through. Just going back into wealth management, to my mind, we've set out, again, as a Capital Markets Day, that we hope to achieve 5% organic growth rate from next year. We've actually achieved it this year with a 5.7% organic growth rate.
We've excluded from that number another GBP 0.6 billion of MPS flows because that's serving existing clients. It didn't fit our definition of NMB. Nevertheless, even without that, with that 5% growth rate has been achieved. Just quickly in terms of that breakdown, I've shown it on the charts, but what was important to us was that the Schroders Personal Wealth business, having been an outflow for many years, has turned positive. We saw a very significant change in the Lloyds rate of referrals. If you go back last year, we had 22,000 referrals. This year, we've had 56,000 referrals and 103,000 meetings, I think, if I recall correctly. I mean, we're starting to get this business to becoming industrial scale.
Once you've turned that corner on net new business, you know, I think our confidence of seeing that grow nicely from here is clearly growing stronger and stronger. I've mentioned I'd come back to joint ventures and associates. This has been clearly an important part of the driver, but is increasingly a dependable part of our business. In India, we are now the largest equity manager. Our market share increased from 5.6% last year to 6.7% this year. And the BOCOM FMC joint venture assets increased 32%. India and China growing strongly, and we see it as potential for future growth, that being clear. Now, the bit that we haven't yet got in these numbers is the launch of our WMC.
That formally launched on the 28th of February. The first products will be launched early in April. We anticipate that being a significant additional driver to growth going forward. Then later in the year, we will launch our wholly owned FMC business, which we expect will take longer to ramp up. Nevertheless, the WMC, which is a 51% owned business, we think will ramp up pretty quickly. Overall, those businesses all demonstrating good growth. I think the dynamics of future growth also looking strong. The issue on sustainability is not new to anybody here. I put just a few proof points on this chart because I think it has to be taken in the round. There's no single answer that demonstrates whether or not you're good at sustainability or not.
To my mind, you know, what we're able to look at is, you know, we are the only major asset manager to have set a science-based target, have that approved. CDP rating of A- is a very strong rating. MSCI rating of AAA. GBP 5.7 billion of new flows in sustainable assets. The acquisition of Greencoat last year, I think looking increasingly timely. Not only clearly you're gonna see a very rapid acceleration of renewable energy in Europe for very tragic reasons, but that trend is just going to be accelerated. Also, if you think about the change to Solvency II regulation, is going to enable a wider set of insurance assets to also want to invest more into renewable energy.
I think our net of our efforts here coming through really very strongly. Our brand in this area performing very strongly. Our engagement with clients being very strong. I think this is a critical battleground to win. You've got to be good at it as a business, but you've also got to be good at it as an investor. Private assets, final piece of those variables. I'd mentioned the GBP 7.4 billion of flow from Schroders Capital. You'll hear later that following on from the acquisition of Greencoat, we think it's appropriate to increase that objective we set in the past. We previously said we thought we could do GBP 5 billion-GBP 8 billion of new business growth a year.
To my mind, that number probably needs to be nearer GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion of net new business growth a year. We will change our guidance on that. Because not only do we do GBP 7.4 billion of growth, but we also have GBP 2.5 billion of dry powder. Just to reconcile for you that number difference, Schroders Capital did GBP 7.4 billion. We had a small outflow from our liquid alternatives business, which is why the division did GBP 6.9 billion of flows, just to tie those two numbers up. Now, we've talked a lot about the importance of creating more client longevity.
I thought this chart was just try to make that point very clear to you in terms of what the impact of the changes we've had made looks like on the business. It looks at our outflows as a percent of our assets. Our longevity may have gone over the last five years from 4.1 years to 5.3 years, but the stickiness of our assets for every 100 billion of assets, 25% used to flow out every year, previously. Now that number is 17.6%. That to my mind means we're running a lot less hard to stand still, and it's one of the key differentiators.
If you benchmark those numbers against the rest of the industry, you'll see that we start with an inherently stickier book of business, which means that the sales that we make are much more likely to translate directly into net new business rather than just gross inflows. I think a metric which isn't often measured, but a really important one to draw your attention to that transformation working through. I think given the changes we're making, we expect that to carry on flowing through into future years. We've obviously done a bit more this year to drive that strategy harder. I think we made three strategically important acquisitions. I just want to spend a moment about the rationale behind those. I'll start with River and Mercantile because that was a really important acquisition.
In the U.K., we've put organic growth into our asset management business, and this is really important because this is the business which I think most analysts said is, you know, it's gonna really struggle. It's got major pricing power, indexation, et cetera. But through launching the right products, growing in the right geographies, making that organic investment, we've seen good organic growth coming from those areas. I think, you know, with the WMC launching this year, with more sustainability product, more thematic product, with 79% of our funds outperforming, we're demonstrating that you can grow as a good active manager.
Finally, we built out the suite of private asset products, and I think now putting our solutions capability on top of it, so combining them together into an income solution or a holistic private markets product for smaller pension funds, we're able to really address markets that perhaps others aren't able to get to. That strategy starting to open up as we've gone through, it opens up yet more optionality to do more in other areas. We're pleased with the progress this year, just from an operational perspective, but also because strategically, I think we're starting 2022 in better shape. Lots of good things happening. You know, I've touched on many of them. The one I probably haven't spoken enough about is the importance of talent. You know, you've...
You will have read lots of words about talent retention. I can say that our talent retention has remained at an extremely high level. 84% of our employees are shareholders. Our talent retention rate is over 94%. It feels to me like that we're in a good position to carry on retaining the people who've been driving the strategy, which is frankly the most important thing from a delivery perspective. With that, I'm gonna hand over to Richard, who'll talk more about this year, and I'll come back and talk about the outlook, and we'll go from there. Thank you.
Thank you, Peter, and good morning, everybody. I'm really pleased to be taking you through what I believe are a very good set of results. This poor performance reflects a lot of what Peter's talked about already. In particular, results show firstly, very good growth in our strategic focus areas of private assets and wealth. Secondly, the success of our ventures with both BOCOM and Axis. Thirdly, high growth in our core asset management business, especially mutual funds, which were in high demand. As a result, we delivered profit before tax and exceptional items of GBP 836 million, which represents a new high. Our profit after tax increased by 28% to GBP 624 million. Now for some more detail, starting with net income. Net income increased by 18% from GBP 2.2 billion to GBP 2.6 billion.
The largest component of this was the increase in net operating revenue, which grew by GBP 350 million to GBP 2.4 billion. As you know, average AUM is the main driver of our net operating revenue. This increased by 15% to GBP 597 billion, excluding joint ventures and associates in our asset management segment. There were two main reasons for this. The first was the rise in markets, which, net of currency headwinds, drove an increase in average AUM of around GBP 55 billion. This translated into GBP 204 million additional net operating revenue. Secondly, our net new business led to an increase in average AUM of approximately GBP 20 billion. This generated GBP 101 million in additional revenue, including a tailwind of GBP 14 million from net flows in 2020.
Turning to 2022 for a moment, we have a tailwind of GBP 58 million at the start of the year due to net new business we won in 2021. The next largest increase in our net operating revenue came from performance fees and carried interest. As you've heard from Peter already, we delivered strong investment performance for our clients during the year. This enabled us to grow performance fees and carried interest by GBP 31 million to GBP 126 million. GBP 23 million of this increase came from carried interest, an important part of the overall contribution from Schroders Capital. Virtually all our performance fees are earned from institutional clients. Looking at performance fees and carried interest over a five-year period, you can see that the normalized level has increased over time.
This time last year, we increased our guidance to GBP 70 million based on a three-year rolling average. The three-year average has now grown to just under GBP 100 million, highlighting the increased value of the revenue stream. Although given markets in January and February, if I were you, I might haircut this back to last year's. Now, let me talk you through how all this breaks down by business area, starting with wealth management. In October, we explained how we were building our wealth management business and its significance to the overall group. The segment has shown good progress during the year. This is illustrated by the growth in annualized net new revenue that is shown in this slide. Average AUM increased by 17% to GBP 76 billion, which drove an increase in management fees of 21%.
Net operating revenue increased by 15% to GBP 421 million. Within this figure, the growth in management fees was partly offset by some reductions to transaction fees and net banking interest. Peter's talked about the progress SPW has made during the year. Its net operating revenue increased by 12% as it started to emerge from pandemic-related constraints. Across the wealth management business as a whole, their net operating revenue margin, excluding performance fees, decreased to 55 basis points. That's slightly less than the guidance we gave at Capital Markets Day. You should note, this reflects only the effect of roundings either side of 55.5 basis points. For 2022, as we enter a higher interest rate environment, and as we see other fees return to more normalized levels, we expect the margin to increase to around 56-57 basis points.
Now, moving on to the business areas within our asset management segment, starting with private assets and alternatives. Peter has already highlighted that the strong net new business we generated within Schroders Capital more than offset small outflows in liquid alternatives. As a result, average AUM increased by 9% to GBP 49 billion. Net operating revenue increased by 20% to GBP 351 million, including GBP 44 million of carried interest and performance fees, and GBP 11 million of real estate transaction fees. This translated into a net operating revenue margin of 72 basis points. Excluding carried interest and performance fees, the margin was 62 basis points, which is in line with last year. In 2022, we expect this to reduce due to the change in mix and the onboarding of the Swift real estate mandate.
However, the acquisition of Greencoat later in Q2 should increase the margin back to 62 basis points for the year as a whole. Now, moving on to solutions. Average AUM increased by 12% to GBP 193 billion, driven by strong investment returns. This drove an increase in net operating revenue of 9% to GBP 276 million. The net operating revenue margin was 14 basis points, in line with my previous guidance. We expect this to reduce by a basis point in 2022 as the impact of the GBP 43 billion of AUM we acquired to the acquisition of River and Mercantile comes through. This transaction is a testament to the continued importance of our solutions business, the assets which have high longevity, as you've heard from Peter just now. Next, on to our mutual funds business.
Peter has already talked about the high level of demand for mutual fund equity products we experienced throughout 2021. This sustained the strong momentum I highlighted to you at the start of the year, and you can see the impact of these flows on our annualized revenues on the chart. These flows, together with strong investment returns, resulted in average AUM increasing by 19% to GBP 113 billion. In turn, this drove an increase in net operating revenues of 19% to GBP 815 million. Excluding performance fees, the net operating revenue margin for the year was 72 basis points. That's a bit higher than last year due to the mix impact on net new business and markets. We expect this to reduce to around 71 basis points in 2022 due to continued fee headwinds.
As ever, the impact of markets on business mix may also have an effect. Now, finally, on to our institutional business area. In total, net operating revenue for our institutional business increased by 17% to GBP 601 million. As a result of strong investment returns, average AUM increased from GBP 143 billion to GBP 166 billion. Those investment returns helped us generate GBP 79 million in performance fees. Excluding those fees, the net operating revenue margin increased a touch to 31 basis points, in line with my guidance from the half- year. We expect the margin to be at a similar level in 2022. That covers off the key movements in net operating revenue. Now let's return to the net income bridge. We generated net investment gains of GBP 57 million.
This principally comprises returns on both seed capital and the co-investments we make alongside our clients in our private asset funds. Given market returns since the start of the year, we wouldn't expect to see the same size gain in 2022. Moving on to returns from associates and JVs. Our associates and JVs continued to perform very strongly. This historical trend highlights the success of our investments in these businesses. Over this period, our share of profits has increased by compound annual growth rate of 28%. In 2021, the AUM of these interests increased by over 30% to GBP 116 billion, and our share of profits increased by 48% to GBP 75 million. That represents 11% of the group's profits as a whole, underlying their significant contribution to the group's performance.
Our existing venture with BOCOM, again, performed particularly strongly, with our share of profit increasing to GBP 60 million, driven by greater AUM and a shift in the mix of assets to higher- quality equity products. That increase in quality is also true of Axis and contributed to an increase in the overall revenue margin for these interests, increasing from 35 basis points to 39 basis points. Overall, our total segmental net income increased by 18% to GBP 2.6 billion. Now, moving on to our operating expenses, starting with compensation costs. This time last year, I talked about the investment we were making to build out two key priorities for us, U.K. Regional Wealth and China. At the time, I expected this to represent around 1% of our income and for the total compensation ratio to therefore increase from 45% to 46%.
The strength of our financial performance this year has, however, enabled us to keep the ratio at 45%, and we expect to remain at this level for 2022. Non-compensation costs for the year increased to GBP 565 million. That's higher than the guidance I gave you at the half- year, and they are therefore worth a bit more detail from me. The main driver is our decision to accelerate our cloud migration program. The majority of these costs cannot be capitalized under accounting rules. This acceleration means we will have migrated the vast majority of our estate within the next two years. Importantly, we expect the program to drive cost savings on a like-for-like basis of at least GBP 50 million per annum from 2024.
The transition to the cloud will deliver other benefits, improving our speed to market, providing better data and insights, increasing our resilience to cyber risk, and also resulting in a very significant reduction in real- world emissions. Together, these benefits will provide us with a competitive advantage. I want to reiterate that transition is gonna take two years. We really have accelerated that program. We believe it's the right time to do that. You've heard me say on a number of occasions that our non-comp costs as a percentage of our average AUM gives us a good indication of operational leverage. It is true that the acceleration of our cloud program has had a dampening effect. In spite of this, the percentage has continued to fall. For 2022, we expect non-compensation costs to increase to around GBP 620 million.
There are four key components of this. First, there are variable costs that are linked to the growth of the business in AUM. Increasingly, we are changing over now our own non-comp cost to software as a service. Aladdin is a good example. Salesforce is another. Or Oracle in the cloud. The variable nature of those costs is increasing. Second, the acquisitions we have announced they're substantial businesses that come with costs, along with the continued build-out of our China businesses, particularly the FMC in 2022. Third, marketing expenses. They return to more historical levels with easing of COVID-related restrictions. Importantly, as we've talked about, we've got a great sustainable range. We've got fantastic investment performance. We took the decision that we're going to increase and market those to generate new growth in 2022 and beyond.
Finally, the year two costs of our investment in our cloud migration program. Before I finish on non-compensation costs, it is worth noting that we expect our travel costs to remain at about half pre-COVID levels. They are not normalizing to an extent. They were basically nothing, but half what they were pre-pandemic. This is in part highlighting our ongoing commitment to reducing our carbon emissions. Now let's move on to our group capital position. The sustainability of our business model has enabled us to build a strong capital position. At the end of 2021, we had a capital surplus of GBP 1.5 billion. We're using some of this to invest in the three strategic acquisitions that we've already talked about. As the transactions were not complete during 2021, they're not reflected in our year-end capital position.
We expect that they will reduce our 2022 capital surplus by approximately GBP 760 million. In summary, and pulling all the key numbers together, we generated a record profit before tax and exceptional items of GBP 836 million, an increase of 19% on the prior year. We had exceptional items of GBP 72 million, a decrease of GBP 20 million. These are acquisition-related, principally amortization of intangible assets. For 2022, we expect these to increase to around GBP 100 million, mainly as a result of the three acquisitions we have already talked about. Profit after these exceptional items was GBP 764 million. The tax rate after exceptional items was 18.4%. We expect this to remain at around this level in 2022, but as usual, the mix of our profits may affect this.
This resulted in a post-tax profit of GBP 624 million. That represents an increase in our post-exceptional EPS of 28%. Reflecting our progressive dividend policy, we have declared an increase in the final dividend of 6 pence per share, meaning a total dividend per share of 122 pence. Overall, as I said at the start, we see this as a strong set of results. Now back to you, Peter.
Thanks, Richard. The outlook. It's a challenging time to give a clear outlook, given what's going on in the world. You know, the world is paddling hard. You know, we believe that the strategy has addressed many of the chinks in the armor of asset managers. I think, you know, if I look at the primary drivers of growth historically, we've upgraded our Schroders Capital forecast today to GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion of growth. We've exceeded our wealth management growth commitment, even excluding the MPS additional assets. Both of those, you know, we feel very comfortable about giving a renewed commitment on those. We know we've launched the WMC, and that will kick off later in the year.
It's hard to predict how much. You will have seen, Amundi, which is quite an analogous business, the scale of their business over the first year. That, you know, whether that's the benchmark or not, I don't know. But it's certainly, we believe, is gonna be meaningful in the context of our results. We've materially changed our mutual fund range. We believe it's highly attractive. 79% of funds outperforming across the group, but importantly, they're in areas where we believe there is fast-flowing water. That positioning our asset management business into fast-flowing water, you know, is particularly gonna be helpful with Schroders Solutions, we believe, and already seeing a good growth of the pipeline there. The underlying drivers of the business are all looking positive. There's a but, you know, the macro environment.
That's the challenging piece, is to try and reflect how what's going on today, higher energy prices, higher inflation, a redrawing of geopolitical risk, going to impact on markets? I think there, everyone in this room will have their own views on that. Clearly, it's not an unimportant judgment, but we do believe that, you know, we are incredibly well diversified. We're in the areas of fast-flowing water. The resilience of the business has improved very significantly, as a result of the management actions we've taken. We feel good about the underlying, but we can't predict the short term. Before I go on, in anticipation of the first question, let me answer it.
Total Russian assets, including Belarus, including debt, equity, amount to less than 0.1% of our total assets under management. We had, if you recall, a Russian desk within our wealth business. We closed that, or sold it, actually rather, in 2018. It felt like the right thing to do then. It feels even more right to have done it today. Our Russian exposure is really very de minimis. I think is probably the right phrase for it. We're gonna move to Q&A. What I will do is I'll start with questions in the room, if I may. If you could please wait for a microphone so that people can understand fully, and state your name and firm.
Richard and I will do our best to answer your questions.
Good morning. It's Hubert Lam from Bank of America. I've got three questions. Firstly, on WMC. I know, Peter, you mentioned it, but what should be our expectation for flows near term and medium-term ? Obviously, this is brand new, so all the gross flows you'll be getting will be net. So theoretically it could be quite good for this year. Just wondering how should we think about that. And also, can you remind us on the medium-term guidance in terms of assets or flows for WMC would be great. The second question's on ESG. I think this is the first time you've disclosed your ESG flow numbers and asset numbers. So you've got GBP 5.5.7 billion for last year. What are your expectations for this year?
Do you expect it to be at least the same amount? Also, like, how much of that is really net flows? Because I assume some of that will also come from, come out of your non-ESG assets. Maybe the net number, excluding the outflows you lost in the non-ESG, would be a lower number. Just wondering how we should think about that. Lastly, on M&A. I guess performance surplus capital is probably closer to about GBP 700 million now, if you include the deals that you're gonna be paying for. How should we think about deals going forward? You did a bevy of deals at the end of last year.
Are you gonna kind of sit tight for time being, or are you still hungry to do deals even though your surplus is much lower now? Thanks.
Hubert, thanks. Richard, do you wanna kick off on guidance WMC?
Hubert, we don't normally get drawn in to giving too much guidance on flows. I know we've changed our tune slightly in the Capital Markets Days for wealth and private assets, but historically, we've never really guided to what we expect in such a short period of time. Now, Peter referred to this business is very similar to the WMC, you know, launched by Amundi about a year ago, and you would've seen what they delivered.
EUR 11 billion, I think over 15 months was the number.
Yeah, I think that's almost the best guidance I can give you. It's difficult. It doesn't start until April. I think when we sit here at the half year, we can talk about how the first few months has progressed, and we'll be in a much better position to give you a more definitive view of how the first few months of trading has risen.
We're not trying to be all, "We don't know." We obviously we've done it because we think it's a significant new business. We've got a great partner who's been very good at raising funds in the FMC. Let's wait and see. Just on the ESG, we split out the 5.7. I mean, that's the, yeah, if you like the 8, the Article 8 and 9 definition of it. Obviously, it doesn't include things like what we're doing in private markets. It doesn't include what's going on in BlueOrchard. Obviously doesn't include Greencoat. It's very much a narrow mutual fund answer to the question.
I think your bigger point though, is that if you think about mutual fund world, the Article 6, we're increasingly gonna see as stranded assets. That we're not going to see flows into Article 6 funds. The new world is all going to be people want, you know. We've seen it with many European distributors saying, "If you haven't got an Article 8 or 9 equivalent, then, you know, they'll move on and get it from somewhere else. They can't be seen to be allocating to Article 6." So I think that this is gonna be quite hard to underpin the underline the clear trend. What we are seeing is that, you know, we've got 15 new funds planned in that area.
We've now got choice for every major area that people want to allocate to. If you previously wanted to go into global equities, you can now go into global sustainable growth, global sustainable income, global sustainable value. There's a full range. Our view is that we need the whole business to be capable of delivering across the piece. In three years' time, we're not talking about ESG, it's just everything is there. That's why we've changed everything to align to it. Your point is exactly right, really hard to predict, but it will be increasingly dominant in our flows going forward because we're gonna see a runoff on the other side of the book.
On M&A, given the timing of the last two transactions were the back end of the year, and they were both a bit bigger than the average transactions we've done in the past, plus Ken, we're very focused on the implementation of those. The pipeline is quite quiet at the moment. I think we've always been driven by finding really high-quality businesses, with a good cultural alignment, and it's really hard to predict when they become available. We're not active at the moment, but we do believe that, you know, if we look back at the track record of the businesses we've bought, we haven't bought a bad one.
We've seen really good follow-on growth from all of them, and that's been a really important part of creating a new set of DNA in the firm. We're alive to it, but should you expect it in the coming months? No.
Perhaps, Hubert, I can go back to the WMC. I don't want my answer to sound like we don't have confidence in it. We are very excited by the opportunity. We've invested a lot of money. The business is fully up now. We built the business. It's staffed up. You know, we think it's a really exciting opportunity, yeah, over the next five years.
We're very early as well. You know, from a market perspective, you know, this is the there are probably, I think, three of these in existence, so that sort of thing. So there isn't really much precedent, but it feels as if it's the right. Yeah, a lot of fast-flowing water in that segment and backed by regulation. Can we go to the next question?
Good morning. Mandeep Jagpal, RBC Capital Markets. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions. First one is just on the new targets for Schroders Capital. I think you said there were GBP 8 billion-GBP 10 billion. I think previous targets was GBP 5 billion-GBP 8 billion.
Yeah, GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion. I meant to say 5, so I hope I would say GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion is the new target.
7-10 billion. Sorry. I'm sorry about the moving parts there were between the old guidance and the new guidance. Is it all Greencoat, or are there other moving parts in there? Sorry, second question is just on Solvency II reform. Sticking with private assets. Last week, U.K. government announced more flexibility in the matching adjustment within Solvency II. Do you expect this will increase demand for liquid assets from your life insurance clients over time? Could we see a further upgrade to your target for private asset? Final question is just on ESG. I think you mentioned last year that you were targeting 75% of funds in Article 8 or 9. I was wondering if that was achieved or how the expectations progressed since then.
Yeah. What we haven't done is we haven't broken out the GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion in private markets. Our thinking is that it should be a GBP 2 billion addition for Greencoat. What we're not doing is increasing the underlying thinking, particularly. It's more a reflection of the fact we bought the Greencoat business. I have to say that from a run rate basis, the fact that we were able to do GBP 7.5 billion, GBP 7.4 billion last year with GBP 2.5 billion of dry powder, it did make the old target look, you know, comfortable. I think we're slightly early in the build-out of our Solutions business to change our guidance on that.
It's fair to say that, you know, we've invested very heavily in how we bring those products together. It's something that we are increasingly confident about the strength of that business. I think it's probably fair to say, but we're not going beyond GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion at this stage. Your point on the matching adjustment for Solvency II is absolutely spot on. I mean, you know, it was designed by the British government to try and drive more risk assets into insurance businesses. That's, you know, for very good economic reasons, but also good for policyholders. I think the inevitability will be that you'll see more in private markets.
That's gotta be a good thing. I think the other thing we haven't spoken much about is that if you think about the average U.K. DC fund in the U.K. is not participating at all in the real strength that we have. Take our life sciences industries, which are full of brilliant discoveries, you know, more Nobel laureates than anything else. Yet our U.K. market is not reflective of that. Our DC funds are not getting exposure to private markets. I think you should expect, I would hope that there will be changes that enable more of those assets to be channeled into those attractive private companies that they're not yet. I think that's something we feel really strongly about.
For U.K. savers to benefit from the scientific achievements, the fintech businesses in the U.K., you've got to have a flow of capital coming from DC. I think that's the other potential change that will come on top of Solvency II that sees more growth in there. I don't have the exact number on ESG. We certainly made a huge amount of progress. Whether we're at 75%, I'm not. We can come back to you on that. You know, if you think about the pipeline we've got coming through of new launches as well, that you know, the momentum there is very significant indeed. Any more questions in the room? I can't see who's online, but very happy to take questions from online.
I don't know how we do the choreography of this, though. Okay. Right. Thank you.
If you're online and have a question, please raise your hand. We've got a question from Haley Tam. Haley, please unmute yourself. Please state your name and the organization you're from before asking your question.
Morning. It's Haley Tam from Credit Suisse. Congratulations on a strong set of results, and thanks for taking the questions. I had a couple, please. One is a follow-up on the private assets, the new target of GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion. I guess I would observe GBP 2 billion seems like a big change on a GBP 6.8 billion acquisition. I guess any comment you can give us there would be appreciated. Also, Richard, I think you indicated Greencoat owns a much higher revenue margin than the rest of that business. To help us understand how the mix might affect your margin progression longer term, could you help us with what the margin actually might be at Greencoat? The second question, just in terms of costs. Again, thank you for the clear guidance on the non-comp costs.
Could you give us any idea of how much of that 620 is variable linked to AUM, as you mentioned, and also how much of the increase from 597 is actually discretionary, that you potentially could hold back if market conditions actually required it? And if I were cheeky, a third question on sustainability and impact. Is there any more color you can give us on exactly how you've implemented Articles 8 and 9 for existing funds that you've converted? I guess I'm really just trying to understand that process and understand how confident you are you'll be protected against any sort of future greenwashing risks, which is obviously was a hot topic until about ten days ago. Thank you.
Thanks, Haley, and thanks for your comments. Just on Greencoat. You're right, insofar as for a GBP 6.8 billion business, actually, the prior year, they'd grown by GBP 1.9 billion of assets, if I remember right, of that order. It's not an unachievable number. I think the bigger point here is that Greencoat has moved from being predominantly U.K. and Ireland into doing much more in Europe and the U.S. We see that as a very significant accelerating factor.
Clearly, part of their thinking was Schroders provides the resource to expand our capability from a sort of a U.K. investment trust background to a much broader sources of capital, but also broader sources of wind farms and solar. Those build-outs in Europe and the U.S. are underpinning our confidence in accelerating that growth. Obviously, Solvency II is a bit of icing on the cake. Richard, do you want to take the point on revenue margin?
Yeah, on revenue margins. Again, Haley, we don't like talking about margins at subcomponents of business areas. It's not. It's hard enough giving guidance on business area as a whole. What I am confident about is, with an acquisition towards the end of April, we will improve the average margin enjoyed by the business area by about a basis point. Projecting forward, you could see that going another basis point. It's difficult looking out that far in terms of the competitiveness in marketplace, and the relative mix of what's driving new business in 2023. All things being equal, it is no doubt true that Greencoat is a slightly higher margin business and will have a small incremental improvement factor.
In terms of the question on non-comp and how much is variable, it's increasing. Some is very variable. Now, Aladdin is charged as a percentage of AUM, and others are sort of softly linked. I'm not being evasive, but it's difficult to be precise. I would say GBP 100 million of that number is increasingly very correlated to the AUM we're running.
On Article 8 and Article 9, Hailey, it's a really, really important question for us. I mean, there's not a day goes by, as you say, until 10 days ago, where you couldn't open the paper and say, this is gonna be a source of legal action. That's the one thing that we absolutely don't want. We've invested very heavily in our own data. We've done it from a data-led perspective. You'll be aware that we've got a proprietary tool, SustainEx, which we believe is as good as it gets. We've had 20-odd data scientists working to make sure that our data is the state of the art, and we can demonstrate from first principles that the SustainEx scores of these businesses and funds exceeds that of their benchmarks.
I think that's been a really important validation point as we've audited the process to make sure that what we're doing is A, clearly auditable, but B, backed by data rather than hand-waving. Because we do believe that there is you know, this is a difficult area and people's views differ, so you've got to be able to get back to underlying data. Also, you've got to be able to demonstrate the engagements. One of the things I've circled on the chart with you know 2,000 engagements, we've significantly grown our engagement team so that we're able to work with businesses A on what they're doing, but B to get more data.
I think that joining a number of coalitions and sponsoring quite a lot of change in this area has been important. We feel very comfortable about the position we're in, and we've independently verified the integration into our teams to make sure that we're on top of you know what we say we're doing is actually what we are doing.
One of Haley's final questions was in terms of avoidable non-comp costs. Ultimately, we can avoid a lot, but it would damage our business. If we're halfway through a major program, it's gonna, like, the cloud migration that's gonna deliver GBP 15 million of savings every year from 2024 onwards, yes, we could stop that program, but it would seem absurd, yeah, to cut that investment given it has a very quick payback period. I think marketing cost is the one key variable that we, yeah, move up and down depending on the market conditions. It's moved from GBP 33 million in 2020 to GBP 40 million in 2021. Now, some of that we need to do, but clearly, that is more discretionary in nature. Have we got something good to market? Can we see the return on investment?
We certainly made that a key decision at the halfway stage last year. We had great investment performance. We had, you know, sustainability was increasingly important. Private assets, we wanted to rebrand. That's delivering future revenue growth, so we made the decision to increase our marketing spend back to pre-pandemic norms. But clearly, we can move that back down or we could increase investment further, depending on market conditions.
I think that's the external spend. We've obviously spent a lot more on internally generated content, et cetera.
Yeah.
Next question.
Next question's from Luke Mason. Luke, please unmute yourself. Restate your name and the organization before asking your question.
Yeah. Thank you. It's Luke Mason from BNP Paribas Exane. Just a few questions. Firstly, on the private assets target for the GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion, I'm just wondering if you could comment. Would you see any impact from markets or macro on that type of target, or do you think it's pretty set in stone? I mean, could you talk through the pipeline of some of the larger fundraisings within that, for example? Secondly, just on the WMC business, could you quantify the cost made to date in that business or how we should think about a timeline to profitability? Thirdly, just on Schroders Personal Wealth, flows have turned positive for the year, and you talked about the increasing confidence in that business.
I'm just wondering if you're seeing any change in the competitive environment or some of the D2C players coming out with robo-advice type offerings. Just wondering if you could comment on that. Thank you.
Thanks, Luke. I think the private asset target is. I mean, clearly, if the world stops completely, then yes, there is an issue. But the more powerful trend is for clients to need to re-up, for clients to need to rebalance their portfolios, and many of our programs that we've got are sustained multi-year programs. I think that is much more resilient target than perhaps, you know, predicting mutual fund flows from one month to the next.
The other benefit we're having is that we've gone, you know, as we've launched a lot of organic strategies. You go from fund one, which is, by definition is you know, a hundred, two hundred million, to fund two, which might be GBP 700 or 800 million, to fund three, which you're able to raise a couple of billion. In many strategies, we're at fund three. You know, for infrastructure debt, for example, we've got fund three coming. Fund two actually got to be the largest infra debt fund in Europe, July 2022. But July 2023, we think will be significantly larger. Our FOCUS II, which is a securitized fund, again, was a significant fund, but we think fund three, which is coming this year, will be larger.
In private equity, there's some good programs coming through there. There's also some good separate account business as well in the pension fund world. I think on balance, Luke, we're comfortable because as our business matures, we're riding up that curve. If we hit the targets that we'll get to, we'll get to being a top ten player in Europe, you know, this year, which will be a really nice achievement. It's moving through quite quickly. The WMC, I mean, I think in terms of profitability, we're more than happy to disclose on that.
In terms of profitability, obviously it depends on, yeah, we have no revenue yet.
We haven't won any funds. We haven't launched those yet. I would anticipate it's going to be around breakeven in 2022. If it continues to grow, you should expect to see a strong profit contribution in 2023.
Yeah.
Broadly flat in 2022.
I think Hubert's point that net equals gross is an important consideration in terms of the build-out.
The reason why it's flat in 2022 is revenues haven't started, and it's fully built out in terms of cost base. It's got premises. It's hired all the people.
It's got four months of not trading.
Yeah.
SPW. I actually think that in SPW, the trends are, you're right, insofar as there's a lot of new launches, but we're not seeing the impact on the business because the state of the U.K. advice market is still, you know, there are still a vast number of people who are not yet advised. There is a great deal one can do in terms of taking them through that advice journey and improving the outcomes that they have as a result. I think that we observe, you know, there's quite a lot of digital activity.
There's been an awful lot of M&A of people. We were beneficiaries of selling our Nutmeg business to JP Morgan last year, or stake we had in it. We observe other businesses changing hands. I think the advice-led business in the U.K. has got very good growth. We've seen that from SJP's figures, and we're growing the market. The fact that we've got Lloyds referrals and a Schroders brand and product range, I think is very helpful. The key thing now is to turn those referrals and increase the conversion rate of meetings, which is exactly the work that's going on at the moment. I think we feel comfortable about the increase in growth rate there. Luke, thank you. Any more questions?
Yeah. Next question is from David McCann. David, please unmute yourself, restate your name and your organization before asking your question.
Morning. It's David McCann here from Numis. Just one on the non-voting shares. I mean, you probably observed, you know, they're now close to a 40% discount to your voting shares. Just wondered if the company had any intentions to try and do anything about that. I mean, it would seem to me that, you know, you still have a decent amount of surplus capital left, and there could be, you know, basically a pretty accretive transaction you could do there with basically zero execution risk, given it's your own business that you already know. So just wondered if you have any thoughts on anything you can do to close that gap.
Is that the only question, David?
That's the only question. Thank you.
Okay, brilliant. Thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah, it's been that discount's moved out quite a lot during this market turmoil. It's something that we do keep an eye on, but we're not announcing at the moment any plans specifically, and obviously, this wouldn't be the appropriate audience to announce it to. We, you know, do keep it under review and always have done. Next question.
If you're online and have a question, please raise your hand.
Great. Well, thank you, everybody. I'm very conscious, it's been a full hour, so thanks for all your questions. Thanks for those attending in person and all the questions, and look forward to seeing you next time. Thank you very much.
Thank you.