Meeting is being recorded.
I'm Peter Harrison, Chief Executive, and with me is Richard Keers, our Chief Financial Officer. I know it's a busy reporting day, so let's get started. We'll follow the same format you're familiar with. I'll give you a quick overview of how our business has performed, strategic progress. I'll hand over to Richard to walk you through the financials in more detail, and I'll come back for the outlook and Q&A. Please don't forget to raise your hand on Zoom if you'd like to ask a question later. You'll have all seen the results we announced to the market this morning. I have to say, we consider these to be a resilient set of results, considering industry headwinds, demonstrating the strength of our business model. Our diversification and pivot towards higher growth areas and increased longevity has again enabled us to perform well.
Headline numbers are operating profit of GBP 341 million, positive net new business of GBP 5.7 billion, an unchanged interim dividend of six and a half pence per share. On flows within the GBP 5.7 billion of new business, particularly pleasing was the combined assets generated by our strategic growth areas in wealth, in private assets and in solutions. I'll come back to this with a breakdown of flows in more detail. On the assets under management side, even with FX reducing assets under management by GBP 30 billion, we saw positive market returns, investment performance and net new business increase total AUM by nearly GBP 19 billion. We ended June with assets under management of GBP 726 billion.
To my mind, that reflects the strong performance of our underlying business. Richard will give you a bit more context about the market dynamics in the H1 in a moment. I've talked in the past about the benefits of having four different businesses under one roof. The synergy benefits we've seen from a unique combination of capabilities. I'd like to just give you a few examples. Our relationship with Lloyds Bank might seem now to be focused on wealth and our joint venture, Schroders Personal Wealth. It's worth remembering that originally the partnership began with winning the SWIFT mandate and solutions running their balance sheet assets. Fast forward, we've seen entirely new benefits come from co-locating our regional wealth offices near the Lloyds commercial banking hubs. That's driving up the organic growth rate we're seeing in Cazenove Capital.
Those referrals are one measure of Cazenove Capital's strong brand name and exceptional client service. The other is our retention statistics. We've had over 99.4% advisor retention and 99.6% client retention last year, which both speak volumes about the quality of that business. There are important synergies with Lloyds Bank across both wealth and solutions, and it's a really important strategic partnership for us. The next one's a really interesting one. We've launched the U.K.'s first Long-Term Asset Fund, Schroders Climate Plus. In addition, we also received approval to launch the first renewables and energy transition dedicated Long-Term Asset Fund. That was really only possible due to our strategic acquisition of Greencoat last year, and it's timely, given the Mansion House reforms to the DC pensions market, announced earlier this month.
We're combining Schroders Capital expertise with access to our global distribution capability and our sustainability leadership in public markets. In other words, thanks to flywheel effect, we're right at the frontier of innovation in public-private space to meet the evolving needs of clients. My final example, as you know, we announced last year the investment partnership with Lloyd's of London, the insurer. In this half, we announced the launch of an innovative solution for the Lloyd's of London platform, the Private Impact Fund. Now, this draws on the advisory expertise of our solutions team and the private markets capability of Schroders Capital, who will manage the initial allocation of GBP 250 million for sustainability-focused assets.
Being able to create this type of solution for Lloyd's of London takes a breadth and depth of expertise that not many in the rest of the market are set up to provide. That's the flywheel effect in action at a firm-wide level, driving future growth whilst making our business more resilient. I spoke about the flywheel effect specifically in relation to Schroders Wealth Management briefly in June at our focus event. For those of you who weren't able to join, I thought I'd just recap the key messages from that capital markets day. We outlined how we built a leading U.K. wealth manager. Our wealth business enables us to stay close to clients in a trusted advisor capacity, that, combined with more stable margins and several distinct strong brand names, is a compelling growth proposition.
The wealth division is intrinsically valuable to us and more valuable because the interlinkages with the rest of the group I've just outlined. We refreshed our forward-looking targets for the group. First of all, we increased our expectation of growth. We increased from 5% to 7% net new business per annum. We also believe the profitability of this business will have a compound annual growth rate of 10% from 2022 to 2025, before the impact of markets, FX and acquisitions. A recording of the transcript of the event is on our IR website, in case you want to catch up on the rest of the detail behind our conviction in this business. The business wouldn't be a success if we weren't meeting our key deliverable to provide excellent investment performance to our clients through active asset management.
This year, again, we've had strong investment performance, with our 3-year KPI standing at 77% of assets outperforming their comparator. The 5-year number stands at 73%. Investment performance over 1 year was up to 59%, impacted by the rotation last year. You'll also see that our 3-year longevity this year has increased again. Increasing our longevity is a key goal of ours as we move to areas where the greater difference between gross and net flows, greater stickiness of assets. Let me take you through the flows as they stand today. In total, we generated GBP 5.7 billion of net new business, as I said, across the business, excluding JVs and associates. Importantly, we had net new business of GBP 11.8 billion from our areas of strategic growth.
These are the areas over the medium to long term, where we think we'll see consistently higher, more predictable flows, that protect on the downside in turbulent times. Our public markets business, at first glance, looks impacted by industry headwinds, but given the risk-off environment in the H1 and the significant outflows from active funds across the rest of the industry, I thought these were particularly resilient. Let me go through the details by business area. First of all, in wealth management, now we had a standout H1. We've seen the growth come from across businesses with total net flows of GBP 3.7 billion.
That was a result of GBP 2.4 billion growth in advised assets, GBP 0.4 billion of growth in platform assets, and GBP 0.9 billion of growth in managed assets, all of them as the net new business numbers. On top of that, Schroders Personal Wealth had positive inflows of another GBP 0.2 billion. These charts are just the business area, but if you layer on Schroders Personal Wealth, our total wealth management assets under management were up 4% since the end of 2022 to GBP 116.3 billion at the end of June. We're keen to leverage our existing operating platform, streamline our resourcing strategy, in order to increase profitability. We'll be relocating a number of roles from our wealth service center in Zurich to our operations hub in Horsham, in the U.K.
This saving will generate an opportunity to improve in profitability in the business, and Richard will cover the specifics on that in a moment. As you know, private markets have experienced an industry-wide slowdown in the H1 of the year. That's not news. Despite the asset repricing we've seen and the pressure on fundraising, in total, our private assets business, Schroders Capital, generated fundraising of GBP 5.3 billion of new assets. Non-fee-earning dry powder was GBP 3.9 billion, and net new business was GBP 1.8 billion. We've now got a broad private markets business that's well placed to create multi-private asset solutions for a range of clients. As a result, we remain confident in this business, given the market dynamics and pipeline that we see today.
We're gonna retain our guidance of GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion of net new business for the full year, albeit I think we'd probably like to come in at the lower end of this. We've talked previously about how we've navigated the gilts crisis well in Q4 of last year, and I'm pleased to say that in solutions, the flows we said would come back have done exactly that, and we've seen GBP 6.3 billion of net inflows in the H1 of the year. Assets under management is marginally up at GBP 212 billion, and that's following the hikes in interest rates, decreasing the value of our liabilities under management. We get a lot of questions about how the potential loss of U.K. DB clients as they move to buyout.
At the moment, what we're seeing is how healthy the pipeline is. Looking over the next year, the strength of our reputation with intermediaries, there's opportunity for us to take market share, is greater than any impact from outflows we could anticipate from end-game solutions with insurers. We continue to have big ambitions for this business. It's a valuable part it plays in being able to deliver the whole firm to clients. In our more traditional businesses of mutual funds and institution, a couple of things to note. First, in mutual funds, we've seen continued inflows in thematics, in sustainability, which have been a real testament to how we've evolved our core business into high demand areas. Our partnership with Hartford in the U.S. continues to be a driver of new growth.
We've had total net outflows of only 0.8 billion in the mutual fund space, which, to my mind, seeing the positive net new business in Europe and the U.S., is a particularly pleasing outcome, given the risk-off environment we've seen elsewhere in the sector. I think it's a great result. On the institutional side, we've had a couple of larger mandate losses. Outflows stood at GBP 5.3 billion. These are primarily large, lower margin mandates, which have led to an overall improvement in the margin for that area. I'd like to spend a moment on China before I hand over to Richard. It's a key geographic expansion for us.
We've been in China for many years, Today, we go to market there, with a comprehensive set of licenses to serve the domestic marketplace, and we've got a successful cross-border business. In June, we received approval to begin operating a wholly owned fund management company, which we expect to be revenue generating towards the end of this year. In total, we now have four ways to access the onshore domestic market in China. Our two BOCOM partnerships, which is the existing fund management company joint venture, and the wealth management company, which is majority-owned, which we launched last year. On the wholly owned side, we've got the Adveq Private Equity license and the new fund management company. This year, the environment has been challenging, given fixed income disruption and the effect of rate hikes on investor sentiment.
We've seen total outflows across all our associates and JVs of GBP 5.3 billion for the H1. However, what I want to demonstrate with this chart is that we're focusing on the long-term build-out of China to partake in the potentially significant market there. Just to remind you, the scale of the opportunity in China's personal financial assets, they're predicted to grow at an average annual rate of 9% from 2022 to 2030, reaching RMB 475 trillion by 2030. We wanna be a part of that growth, we have all the licenses in place to do so. That's it from me on the strategic update, the information on flows. I'll now hand over to Richard, who'll talk about the financials, we'll come back and talk about the outlook. Thank you. Richard?
Thank you, Peter. Good morning, everyone. As you know, it's my last results announcement, and it's a real shame you weren't able to make it in person. Let me talk you through the numbers. We believe these are a resilient set of results. I'm particularly pleased by the progress made by our strategic growth areas, the revenues from which grew by 5% year-over-year. This helped us deliver net operating revenue broadly in line with last year, and an operating profit of GBP 341 million. Now, let me move on to the detail. In doing so, it's useful for you to understand how the market dynamics have impacted us, and the best way of doing this is by looking at the development of our average AUM.
The slide in front of you shows our average AUM, excluding associates and JVs, for the last three half-year periods. As you know, markets were particularly strong at the start of last year. That was followed by significant falls coming through in the H2 of the year. This meant that the starting point for our AUM in 2023 was considerably lower than at the start of 2022. This year, we have delivered growth both through NMB and investment returns, but it's been hidden by the effect of FX movements. Our average AUM has remained flat. If, instead, you look at our average AUM for the current year on a constant currency basis, as shown by the dotted line, you can see the growth we have generated. Let me move on to net operating income, which shows how these dynamics have affected our results.
This first bridge compares our net operating income year-on-year. As we've just seen on the average AUM slide, this doesn't help explain our results for this half year, as the market and FX movements you can see in front of you largely relate to the H2 of last year, so they were already reflected in our revenue run rates at the start of the year. This bridge, which uses the H2 of last year as a starting point, provides a clearer explanation of the development in our income. This highlights how the adverse FX movement of GBP 34 million has more than offset the benefit of both the investment returns and the NMB we have generated. This is the key driver behind our net operating income for the H1 of 2023.
Before I move on, let me touch on performance fees and carry, as that's where the benefit of the investment returns we have generated does come through. For the H1 of 2023, we generated GBP 33 million of these fees. That's an increase of GBP 11 million on the same period last year. In light of that, looking forward to the full year, there's likely to be some upside on the guidance and performance-related fees I gave at the start of the year. Next, I'll cover the performance of our operating segments and then come back to the performance of our associates and JVs. I'll start with the wealth management segment. Average AUM for wealth increased by 2% to GBP 101 billion. That's due to our strong flows, which more than offset the impact of the falling markets in the H2 of 2022.
Net operating revenue increased 8% to GBP 210 million. This includes our net interest margin, which is an additional revenue stream for us. Given rising interest rates, these revenues increased by GBP 17 million- GBP 30 million. Overall, the net operating revenue margin increased by 2 basis points- 42 basis points. Let me break this down further. Our net operating revenue margin for our advise business was 58 basis points. That's a bit higher than my guidance at the start of the year. The margin for our platform business was in line with my guidance from the start of the year. For our managed business, the margin was a bit lower than my guidance due to the change in the mix of business. I expect these net operating revenue margins to stay at these levels for the full year.
Let's move on to the asset management segment. This was more significantly impacted by the market dynamics I talked about earlier. Average AUM reduced by 4% compared to the same period last year. This predominantly impacted our public markets business and solutions. Overall, our net operating revenue reduced by 2%. Schroders Capital was somewhat insulated by the broader market factors. Its revenue grew by 12% compared to the same period last year. Within this, real estate transaction fees were down GBP 8 million because of reduced deal flow. This decrease was more than offset by the increase in performance fees and carried interests, which grew to GBP 21 million as a result of strong investment performance. Our net operating margin for Schroders Capital, excluding carried interest and performance fees, was 58 basis points.
This margin includes real estate transaction fees. As those fees have fallen, the margin is lower than the guidance I gave at the start of the year, although we expect this to increase by a bit for the full year. The margin for solutions, the third of our strategic growth areas, was 12 basis points, which is in line with my guidance at the start of the year. I expect it to remain at that level for the rest of the year. Moving on to our public markets business, starting with institutional. Peter already talked about the institutional net outflows. Those were from lower margin mandates, leaving us with a higher quality business. As a result, our net operating revenue margin, excluding performance fees, increased 35 basis points.
That's a bit higher than my guidance at the start of the year, and I expect the margin to stay at this level for the rest of the year. The net operating revenue for mutual funds was 70 basis points, which is in line with the guidance at the start of the year. Again, I expect it to stay at this level for the full year. Let me move on to our associates and JVs, which is the final component of our net operating income. These businesses have not been immune to the wider market environment. In the first six months of the year, our share of profits reduced to GBP 34.9 million, a 3% decrease on the H2 of last year, principally due to lower AUM and FX movements. Moving on to our operating expenses.
We continue to have a laser focus on our expense base. This slide shows the impact of the actions we are taking to reduce costs. Despite the inflationary environment and the impact of last year's strategic acquisitions, our costs have reduced. Let me touch on compensation costs before moving on to non-comp. We are accruing compensation costs at 46% of net operating income. As always, bonuses will be finalized later in the year based on market conditions. For non-compensation costs, as you can see, these have trended down since the H2 of last year. For the full year, we expect them to be around GBP 645 million. That's GBP 15 million lower than the guidance I gave at the start of the year, because of our continued focus on costs. Let me now talk you through two key cost-saving initiatives we have made.
Firstly, the cloud program. I've talked to you about the many benefits of this previously. From a financial perspective, this includes the avoidance of GBP 100 million of server update costs that would otherwise have been incurred, and the mitigation of IT inflationary pressures more generally. In addition, as we no longer need to maintain as many data centers, completion of the program has allowed us to restructure our team with a net reduction in headcount to 70. The second key initiative is the relocation of our wealth management service center from Zurich to our operational campus in Horsham. The move means we will no longer incur lease costs for the existing office, with 0 incremental premise costs in Horsham. Given the difference in average salaries between the two locations, the move also provides us with a significant saving in compensation costs.
These cost savings will help us realize the 10% annual growth target we set out at the recent investor day. For your models, it's important to remember that this target growth rate excludes any market growth on FX assumptions. Both of these restructuring initiatives required us to recognize one-off expenses in our H1 results. These principally comprise redundancy costs and have been separately presented. Lastly, before I sum up, let me update you on our capital position. We had a capital surplus of GBP 643 million at 30th of June. It's worth me adding that additional capital requirements of around GBP 45 million, which became applicable in the H2 of the year, are not reflected in these numbers. As I said previously, we will continue to hold a level of capital that allows for organic investment and enables us to meet our dividend policy.
To sum up. Our operating profit for the period was GBP 341 million. Our central costs, which reflect the cost of the PLC, were GBP 23 million. These were more than offset by the net gains on financial instruments and interest income of GBP 24 million. That's in line with what I said in March. In a typical year, these gains will broadly offset our central costs. You can see the same was true in the H2 of last year. This gives us an underlying profit before tax of GBP 342 million, a 2% reduction compared to last year. Our acquisition-related costs increased to GBP 43 million, reflecting the impact of the transactions that we completed in the H1 of 2022. These costs principally include amortization of intangible assets and expenses related to contingent consideration.
For the full year, we expect these to total around GBP 90 million. We recognized restructuring costs of GBP 24 million. These mainly relate to the items that I explained earlier. Our effective tax rate on operating profit was 19.5%, which reflects the increase in U.K. rates. This meant a basic operating earnings per share of GBP 0.168. In light of these results, we have maintained our interim dividend at GBP 0.065 per share. In the 10 years that I've been here, I'm proud of how we have transformed the business from being a traditional asset manager to a broadly diversified investment firm, providing greater stability and resilience for our stakeholders. That transformation is reflected in these results and positions us well for the future. Back to Peter.
Thanks, Richard. let's talk quickly about the outlook, and then we'll go to questions and answers. As ever, I'm afraid I'm not gonna try and predict markets from here out to the end of the year, but I do wanna focus on the long term. Importantly for us, we've had a year embedding in these strategic acquisitions, navigating changing market environments. Our goal is really to push ahead with growth, and in practice, that means continuing to deliver excellent investment performance for clients. It means accelerating operational efficiencies. We've covered a couple of those programs today, but those are really gonna help us meet that goal of operational efficiency. It means delivering on the growth ambitions we've got for those areas of fast-flowing water in wealth, in solutions, and in private assets.
We're confident we're coming in line with guidance that we gave you for the full year, for both. If you combine Schroders Capital and Schroders Wealth, I suspect they'll average out in the middle of their respective ranges if you were to combine them. That's it from us in the room. Let's go over to Q&A. If I could ask you to raise your hand if you'd like to ask a question, state your name and firm, and for the record, that would be great. Any questions?
Just a reminder to raise your hand if you have a question, and for everyone to remain on mute until you're called to ask a question. The first question is from Chris Lewis. Chris, please mute yourself. Repeat your name, the company you're calling from, and your question, and who's it directed to.
Chris, I can't hear your question.
Okay. Okay, the next question is from, Mike Werner. Mike, again, please unmute yourself. Ask your question, say your name, the company you're calling from and who the question is directed to?
Thank you. It's Mike Werner from UBS. Can you guys hear me all right?
Yeah.
Yes. Thank you, Mike.
Excellent. I think this question is for Richard. Again, Richard, it's been a pleasure having you as CFO. You will certainly be missed, and thank you for all the help you've provided in the past, what, seven years that I've been here, and you've certainly been in that role longer than myself, so...
Thank you.
Thank you. I'm just looking at the restructuring. Just wanted to confirm that the restructuring charges, GBP 25 million, that you took in the H1, will be, you know, all of the restructuring charges that you expect from these two initiatives, or, you know, is there anything we should expect in the H2? Just thinking about the potential cost saves here, is there? You know, can you provide a little bit more clarity as to, you know, how much that lease in Zurich costs on an annual basis? You know, how many people perhaps were located in the service center in Zurich? Thank you.
Taking the first question, in terms of the, do we expect anything more from these two initiatives in the H2? This is accelerating all those costs into the H1. Some of those redundancy costs in Switzerland will be incurred in 2024, but we need to be booking at the half year because we've announced that program. No more from this, but we will always continue to look for opportunities to, as Peter says, selectively address cost opportunities where they arise, but on a very targeted basis rather than across the board. In terms of the service center, it is a significant operation. There are no net head saves. We are simply moving those heads from Zurich to Horsham.
There's a period of overlap, as we build out the capability in Horsham, but we expect that to be fully onboarded by the year end. There's no net head saves. It's very much just moving from one location to another.
Thanks, Richard. Just one thing I would add. We think it's really important to be a healthy organization and keep on moving. Yeah, importantly, we're not talking about making a 5%-10% across the board cut. We don't think that leads to a healthy organization. What we do want to do is keep on creating efficiency and then growing into that capacity we've created. That's, that's very much our mindset on costs.
Thank you.
Any next questions, please?
Okay. Thanks, Mike. Please lower your hand and remute yourself. Next question is from Bruce Hamilton. Bruce, please repeat your name, the company you're calling from, and your question, and who it's directed to.
Hi there. Thanks, Bruce Hamilton, Morgan Stanley. If I could add, my thanks to Richard, and congratulations on a, you know, terrific career at Schroders. I hope you, enjoy whatever you do next.
Thank you.
In terms of my question, one on the sort of institutional business. You know, clearly good that what left was lower margin, but can you give any sense on the outlook and any color around why you saw outflows? Was it anything to do with performance? Was it more kind of asset class or in more kind of traditional areas that have shifted to sort of thematic, or sustainable? Linked to that, maybe just within thematics and sustainable, is there any color on where you're seeing demand? I mean, I guess we've anticipated that security themes probably grow in popularities from the tech disruption reduce, and then climate transition remains a key one. Any color there in terms of shifts within kind of thematics?
A final one, just on the, and to Peter, on the sort of flywheel effect you talked about. Obviously, it feels like you've got all the ingredients to drive growth in the strategic areas. Where are you in terms of the evolution of your kind of distribution approach? How much could that add to the kind of future growth and over what, you know, when might we see that in terms of, you know, distribution turbo boosting that? Thank you.
Thanks, Bruce. Let me try and take both of those. On the outflows in institutional, I basically focused in two areas. About 2/3 of them are in equities, 1/3 of them were in fixed income. The biggest individual moves was a couple of clients, which were big, both of which went passive. Both of them were Asian-based. Those highly fee-sensitive clients who were managing a fee budget, and I think, you know, that's a normal course of business. From my sense that the constant iteration of making sure that we've got long-term sticky money becomes ever more important when you see those changes, but those were in Asia.
There was one in fixed income, again, similar characteristics, but that was more orientated towards our poor performance in that particular team. In the sustainable areas, I think, seeing it across a lot of areas. The repricing in renewables, we're seeing a lot more interest in climate transition, particularly wind and solar, where we've got a lot going on, as you'd imagine, post-Greencoat. Global Sustainable Growth has been the big selling point for us, Energy Transition, Food and Water. Really across the range, where you find these pockets of interest, and then you can exploit them.
I would say, Bruce, it's about product design and then hitting the right moment in time with that product. The one that we're still working through and too early to know, but is the launch of these Long-Term Asset Funds, which directly address the Mansion House reforms. Really important for the DC market. We'll see, I think, more of that in the H2 of this year and the H1 of next year. On the client group, there's been a lot of change going on there, so we've implemented all of that in the H1. Massive change to account planning, a move towards really boosting our segment representation, so across pension funds, insurance, wealth, and sort of long-term assets, like endowments.
Really being focused on that, which enables us to target messaging much more specifically to client type. We're starting to see the benefits of that already, and we've got a couple of really interesting examples of things that are coming through. I would hope, Bruce, that during the H2 and again into next year, we'll see that continuing to build momentum. But it's certainly something that we're working really hard on. I think that the next big change will be about the distribution of our intellectual property to clients in a really specific way. I hope that helps. Let's go on to the next question. Thanks, Bruce.
Yeah, thanks, Bruce. Please remember to remute yourself. Next question is from Haley Tam. Haley, please unmute yourself, restate your name, the company you're calling from, your question, and who it's directed to.
Good morning. It's Haley Tam from Credit Suisse. Hopefully, you can hear me. Like a stuck record, congratulations as well from me to Richard on. I can't believe it's been 10 years, but thank you for all your help over that time. Again, all best wishes for the future. If I can ask a couple of questions, please. The first one, just to follow up on the costs and the cloud migration completion, could you remind us, please, about how to think about those costs in the future? I seem to think you had talked about, in the past, some double counting of costs. I wonder if there any sort of specific reduction we should be thinking about going forward into 2024.
Secondly, in terms of surplus capital, could I just reconfirm that a maximum of about GBP 1 billion is still a good benchmark for us to think about for you before any potential for possibly shareholder returns, buybacks, et cetera? Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Haley, I'll take those. On the first one, on costs, on IT, largely, this program is about avoiding future costs. We were in a position where we were going to have to deploy, probably GBP 100 million on server upgrades, and we took the decision. That was not the right way to go, and the operational benefits of the cloud, the greater capabilities that gave us, it was the right way to go. The double costs have largely gone. We do expect some savings to come through fully in this year-end, and hence, the guidance I've given, at GBP 645 for non-comp reflects that. Looking forward, it's about avoiding those significant inflationary increases that we would otherwise have seen.
Just getting the cost model optimized for the future. In terms of the GBP 1 billion surplus capital, I don't see that changing. It's GBP 643 million at the half year I referred to. There's some changes in capital rules, which mean actually from the 1st of July, it's a little bit lower than that. If it's over GBP 1 billion for any period of time, we would have to have a very good plan on what to be doing in terms of deployment back into the business or returning that to shareholders.
Thank you very much.
Next question?
Yeah. Thanks, Hayley. Please remember to remute yourself and lower your hand. Next question is from Hubert Lam. Hubert, please unmute yourself. Restate your name, where you're calling from, and the question and who it's directed to.
Hi, can you hear me?
Yeah. Thanks, Hubert.
Yeah. Great, thanks. It's Hubert Lam from Bank of America. Firstly, I'd also like to thank Richard for all his help over the years, and wish you all the best in the future. Just two questions from me. Firstly, on Schroders Capital, you still seem very confident that you can achieve the GBP 7 billion- GBP 10 billion of inflows for this year. Why do you think that's the case, given your starting point today? Do you expect the reopening of the market in the H2? Just wondering what your thoughts are around that. Secondly, just wondering on potential risk to fees and margins in SPW. We saw today that St. James's Place is cutting asset-based fees on accounts because of Consumer Duty.
We're just wondering, any potential impact from the FCA on Consumer Duty, regulation? Thank you.
Thanks, Hubert . Yes, Schroders Capital, we've had a really good look at the pipeline. I think that the challenge is that fundraising is taking longer, certainly at the moment, getting clear and getting mandates over the line. For example, we had a big win at the back end of last year that won't be signed until probably September of this year. That's, you know, just the signing process. There is some leads and lags in this, but we've looked at it, and we think that from what we can see, getting to the bottom end of that range is a doable thing. I think we're really keen to not let go of...
You know, it's a long-term range that we want to be able to grow in, but we do think we can get there this year. You know, I think there's, particularly in private equity, there's some good tailwinds there coming through. That was that one. On fees and margins, when we launched SPW, we launched it with a future-looking price structure, so it was priced below the market because we did feel that there was gonna be, you know, sort of further pressure on there. We don't see any Consumer Duty pressures coming through on those. We've already got to a position where we think it's highly price competitive versus peers. I think that that's in good shape. Thanks, Hubert.
Great. Thank you.
Next question?
Yeah. Thanks, Hubert. Please remember to lower your hand and remute yourself. Our next question is from Angeliki Bairaktari. Angeliki, please unmute yourself. State your question, the company you're calling from, and to whom it's directed to.
Good morning, and thanks for taking my questions. It's Angeliki Bairaktari from JP Morgan, and I also want to wish all the best to Richard. Two questions on my end. On Schroders Capital, you had around GBP 5 billion of gross fundraising in the H1. What sort of gross fundraising would we need to see in the H2 in order for you to be able to achieve the GBP 7 billion-GBP 10 billion net flow target that you have set out for this year? Just to come back to Hubert's question on Consumer Duty, I do get the point on SPW, but I guess more broadly, with regards to the Cazenove business as well, is there any risk there of a cap on fees? What we have seen coming out of St. James's Place this morning is actually a cap on fees on certain products that customers are holding for more than 10 years.
For those pension products or perhaps fixed income products that some of the wealth customers have been holding for more than 10 years, is there any risk that you feel, you know, you may have to do something similar there? Thank you.
Perfect. Clearly, there's a gap between. Just coming back to the private asset question, Angeliki, the fundraising number, obviously, there's some back, there's some taildown pressures, there's some deployment pressures, but, you know, if you, if you thought about round numbers, we needed about another 5 in the H2. That would. Because of, because of what we anticipate in terms of deployment and other bits and pieces, that would get us to the number. It's, you know, so much is about the deployment as it is about raising the money. Again, you know, it's these are. There's lots of judgments included, and I, and I hate trying to forecast fundraising because that's the hardest thing of all.
Say, when we did it overall in the round, we thought that the bottom end of that range was the right way to guide you. In terms of Caz, I think it's fair to say that the Cazenove business is quite a different business from SPW. And it's, you know, there's lots of day-to-day discretionary management. We don't feel under any pressure from regulatory change. You know, we've obviously been through the Consumer Duty really actively. We feel very much on the front foot on that. Overall, there is no, there's no impact to any of our numbers on SPW, on Benchmark or on Cazenove, either for time or for absolute level of fees.
You know, we've been, in our subtle business, our unit trust business, we've been, you know, presenting our value assessments. We've made changes in that range. Those have been in the normal numbers that you've seen, those value assessments are all public, but they haven't been in any way material to those businesses. I mean, it's important, I think, to get ahead of these things before you feel pressure from Stratford. No, we're feeling in a good place on that. Thanks, Angeliki. Any further questions?
Yeah. We've got a question from Mandeep Jagpal. Mandeep, please take yourself off mute. Restate your name, the company you're calling from, and your question.
Hey, good morning, everyone. Mandeep Jagpal, RBC Capital Markets. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions, and thank you, Richard, for your clear guidance over the years. Three questions, and I think that they're all for Peter. First one is a follow-up on Schroders Capital. Peter mentioned an nearly GBP 6 billion pipeline for Schroders Capital, and, but that might take longer to fund. I was wondering how that pipeline compares to your pipeline at the start of the year, and are you able to provide any insight as to which segments of the institutional client base or you're seeing the demand coming from? Second question is on solutions. You talk about your intention to grow the market share here. Are you referring specifically about LDI mandates or fiduciary or both?
What is your current market share and how much do you want to grow it by? The final question, just on the potential changes to the DB landscape. A few weeks ago, the Chancellor launched a call for evidence for ways to increase productive finance from UK DB schemes. Appreciate it might be a bit early, but what are your thoughts on this, and what could the implication be for asset managers such as Schroders if something like this was implemented?
Brilliant. Thank you, Buddy. Let me, let me take you through. On the Schroders Capital piece, segments are still performing well, particularly Europeans, where the denominator effect was much less pronounced than it was elsewhere, and the need for them constantly to redeploy capital is very much there. DACH region is probably the strongest. You know, bear in mind, we're here taking market share, so, you know, we've seen growth in Asia. We're also seeing, you know, opportunities in wind and solar, which we're working through, which is both in U.K., Europe, and in the U.S. The pipeline overall, I it's not materially changed.
I think it's tougher going in real estate, probably, and, you know, probably more in renewables over time, but that's a reflection of sentiment in the real estate markets. Overall, I think we feel, you know, broadly speaking, we are being able. Partly it's good performance, partly it's the breadth of offering, partly it's being able to offer these holistic solutions of knitting together lots of different things. You know, as I say, I don't want to get over our skis in optimism, but I do think there's, you know, there's plenty of people still activating programs. The other thing is that as markets have moved up, they've taken some of the pressure off the denominator effect that we were seeing at the end of last year.
solutions, yeah, that's across OCIO, fiduciary management, and LDI, and some other bits and pieces as well. There really is a, you know, if we, if we go back to the U.K. for a moment, there was a, there was a major hiatus after the gilts crisis, and everybody sort of went away. Every consultant had to redo their rankings. Every group of independent trustees wanted to rethink what they were doing. And the market sort of froze for several months. What you're now seeing is a very large, assess of, you know, churn going on in the markets as people say, "Okay, we've made our decisions.
Now we need to go to market and reposition." It may be they're gonna move from LDI to fiduciary, which is a better way of matching your growth assets and having a better governance model. Maybe they're going all the way to OCIO. We're seeing the pipeline across all of those areas grow. You know, That is a materially larger pipeline than it was 1 year ago and 6 months ago. Again, it's quite lumpy, and when it will fund, again, is hard, so we won't recognize it as net new business until it's funded. You know, the timings on these things are hard. I'm not making a prediction about the H2, but if I look over the next 12, 18 months, I think we feel very good about what's coming through in that pipeline.
Defined benefit, I think, is a really interesting question. At the moment in the UK, this is a very quiet market, and you've got 5,100 DB pension schemes, about 4,000 of them are less than GBP 100 million, and you've got a lot of proposals around consolidation, so that's a big opportunity. Second is you've got some new wording around Solvency II coming through, so the insurers being able to buy more risk assets. That's another opportunity for us and how we play our, particularly our private markets capability into that. Then you've got some existing clients who are doing an awful lot of buyouts of DB funds that we're getting assets from. We're on both sides of this trade. But I think in.
The reality is, this is a very active moment in a defined benefit space. We are in the right places with the right performance, the right governance, a very clean track record through the gilts crisis. It is an area where we are expressing some optimism. Is there any more questions?
None so far. Remember, if you do have a question, please raise your hand. No.
No, no more? Thank you all for your questions. I mean, you've all passed on your thanks to Richard, but after 20 results, I want to pass on my thanks for your transparency and candor in helping our management with analysts go so smoothly. Massive thanks from me to you, Richard. You'll have seen the theme on our branding change slightly this time in honor of Richard. The next 10 years is gonna be about cycling, so that's what the picture's all about. Listen, thank you all. I hope to see you in person next time at our upcoming interaction. Massive thanks from me, and I'm sure Richard will invite you to the party. Thanks.
Yeah, look forward to seeing you.