Good morning, and welcome to our results webcast. Today's presentation is once again being pre-recorded, and we'll be hosting a live Q&A at 9:30 A.M. In 2020, at the height of the pandemic, St. James's Place demonstrated real resilience during difficult circumstances. Thanks largely to the agility of our advisors and employees, but importantly also, the investment in technology we have made over the last few years. Whilst 2021 was another extraordinary year, with society continuing to navigate lockdowns and disruptions caused by COVID-19, the rollout of vaccination programs saw many economies rebound strongly with investment markets recording positive returns. Supported by this more favorable external environment and the desire by individuals to save and invest for the future, I'm pleased to report that St. James's Place had an excellent year in every respect.
This time last year, at our 2020 results presentation, we announced new medium term targets for gross and net flows, funds under management, and controllable expenses. At our capital markets event in May, we added further color to our plans and covered other business priorities. Let me recap on these medium term operating targets. First, to grow new business by 10% per annum, which would be delivered by growing the number of advisors and increasing productivity. Second, to maintain the existing strong retention, thereby generating 10% growth per annum in net inflows. Third, these targets for flows together with modest stock market returns would see funds under management increase by over 50% to more than GBP 200 billion by the end of 2025.
Fourth and finally, we also set a target of containing controllable expense growth to around 5% per annum, while continuing to invest in the business to support our growth and provide us with greater operating flexibility and efficiency. We went on to say that the growing funds under management, together with maturing funds from gestation, would see a growing cash result and therefore a growing dividend, which would be set at 70% of the underlying cash result. Today's presentations will be anchored around these medium-term targets. 2021 has been a record year, and therefore, 12 months into the 5-year plan, we have made a great start and are well on track to meet these stretching targets we have set ourselves.
In a moment, I'll hand over to Craig to remind you of the flows and funds under management that we had already announced, as well as the financial result and the full year dividend announced today. I will then cover the strong progress we have made on our non-financial business priorities that are all about setting us up for future sustainable growth. I will then finish on the outlook. Craig?
Thanks, Andrew, and welcome from me too. As Andrew's mentioned, it's now a year ago since we first set out our 2025 plan. In presenting the results, I'll also be referring back to this in order to set the context for the strong performance we achieved in the year. What's clear is we've made a great start all round. We've achieved strong growth in new business and favorable markets together with our ability to maintain very high retention means that funds under management increased significantly. We've done this while containing expense growth to 5%, which means our financial results have been very strong across all metrics. This puts us in great shape for the future. Before getting into the detail of the financials, I want to first revisit new business.
In our plan, we said we'd seek to grow our gross flows at a compound rate of 10%, but we emphasized that reality would differ from modeling and that the rate of growth would not necessarily be straight line. Well, as you can see, we got off to a great start with gross flows of GBP 18.2 billion, which was some 27% higher than in 2020. As we all know, 2020 brought with it a unique operating environment, and using this as a comparative can arguably distort things. Whatever the analysis, however, nothing can take away from the fact that 2021 was a very strong year and a credit to the partnership and the whole SJP community. How do you follow a year with 27% growth?
The consensus view of around 7% is one that we're comfortable with, and it's worth noting that if we grow by this amount, our flows in 2022 will be well ahead of the original business plan. It's worth reiterating again that our pattern of growth will not be linear from year to year or quarter to quarter. We know, for example, that we're up against a particularly challenging comparative in the first quarter. As we said many times before, it's long-term compound growth that drives shareholder value, and that's how we will track our progress. We also set out an objective in our 2025 plan to retain 95% of the business that we write. In 2021, surrenders as a percentage of opening firm were some 4%, leading to retention of 96%. Again, a strong start to the 2025 plan.
As this slide also shows, regular withdrawals have also remained at a low level, no doubt influenced by the operating environment over the past couple of years. Looking ahead, we continue to target no more than 5% surrenders, but it's likely that regular withdrawal levels will normalize over time as the operating environment itself normalizes. Strong retention will, however, continue to be a hallmark of the business. The impact of all of this in 2021 was a net inflow position for the year of GBP 11 billion, which represents growth year-over-year of 34%, which contributed to record funds under management of GBP 154 billion. Turning to the cash result, there are a number of areas of guidance that we set out and these are worth commenting on.
Firstly, we guided that our net income through funds margin would lie within a range of 63-65 basis points. We achieved a margin within this range for the year, which resulted in net income being GBP 577.5 million. We expect this margin to remain within the same range in 2022, and you may recall that at the half year we posted a note on our website to help you with modeling for 2023 and beyond, taking into account planned tax rate changes. During 2021, the cash results saw a benefit from maturing gestation of over GBP 40 million. At the end of the year, our gestation balance stood at GBP 49.3 billion. If we extend our simple modeling analysis looking forwards, this balance will be contributing over GBP 390 million a year by the time it fully matures in 6 years.
Remember, this is long-term business that has already been written. It's on the books and awaiting maturity. Secondly, the margin arising on new business was broadly in line with the percentage margin that we saw in the first half, and this was consistent with guidance. Looking forwards, you should assume that the margin percentage in 2022 will be similar. Thirdly, we committed to containing the growth in our controllable costs to around 5%, and we've delivered on this. It's critical to note that the 5% we've committed to is a net figure, and our investments in people, technology and processes enables us to drive growth and improve efficiency that in turn frees up resources for further reinvestment. We've made a great start to some of the developments that we outlined at May's Capital Markets Event.
This includes an interactive SJP clients app that will be launched in the spring. We're also building artificial intelligence in order to drive efficiencies across our business, for example, in business checking and practice support. We've actively rolled out Salesforce so that partners can benefit from using it as their primary CRM system, and we successfully launched the refresh of our brand. There are many other examples I could cite, but importantly, it's this cycle of cost containment coupled with investments in the business that's already delivered operating leverage and will make SJP an easier place to do business. Like all other organizations, we're carefully taking accounts of potential inflationary pressure on the short-term and longer-term horizons. In the short term, we have a balanced budget for 2022, and we do not therefore anticipate any short-term change to our guidance.
This means we're recommitting to containing growth and controllable costs to 5% for the current year. Our net investments in DFM and Asia are in line with plan, and both slightly positive against guidance. Our back office migration project is progressing well in DFM, and further investment in 2022 will see the significant project completed. We've seen a strong improvement in the outturn for SJP Asia, underpinned by cost control, allied to new business and funds under management growth. Our expected break-even points in DFM and Asia remain 2024 and 25 respectively, and for modeling purposes, you should expect 2022 net investment of GBP 11 million and GBP 10 million respectively. FSCS costs actually fell in 2021 to GBP 28.1 million, but they remain at an unsustainable level for the broader industry, and we welcome the FCA's further consultation in this important area.
Tax relief from capital losses will continue to be a feature in our cash results, and the current stock of losses awaiting relief now stands at GBP 26.8 million. Higher recoveries in recent years, together with potential tax changes that might spread out the pattern of future recoveries, means that you might model annual recoveries going forward of between GBP 5 million and GBP 7 million. Taking account of all of this income and expense, we had an underlying cash result of GBP 401.2 million, which was some 52% higher than in 2020, reflecting not only a strong recovery, but a strong 2021 in its own right. We have two items included below underlying cash. Firstly, a restructuring charge for the year that you'll be familiar with from the half year.
Secondly, a change in IFRS accounting rules during 2021 that's resulted in a change to our accounting policy on software capitalization and a subsequent one-off charge. I'll now turn to EEV, where you'll see that 2021 was an extraordinary year for embedded value creation, not least because of the 27% growth in new business and the long-term value that this creates for shareholders. At the half year, we booked a positive adjustment of GBP 249.4 million, reflecting evidence gathered over an extended period that demonstrated bond and pension business was staying on the books for longer than modeled in previous statements.
At the year-end, the increased GBP 293 million positive adjustment also reflects the impact of strong cost control and economies of scale in the future. Even with these changes and assumptions, we still benefited from an experience variance of GBP 89.5 million, consistent with the strong retention that I mentioned earlier. These significant positives, together with investment variances, offset by a change in the future rate of corporation tax, resulted in an EV profit after tax of GBP 1.45 billion. The EV per share at the year-end stood at GBP 16.57 per share. Again, it's important to remember the store of value that we now have amounting to GBP 395 million that we expect to emerge, but which we don't include within embedded value because of a technical contract boundary. This would add a further GBP 0.73 per share.
There's little for me to say on capital and liquidity other than that the position remains strong. The solvency ratio in our life companies after payment of the 21 dividends next month is 115%, which for a business with our low-risk business model and profile remains prudent. I'll now turn to the final dividend that we announced today of GBP 0.4041 per share. In our 2025 plan, we set out an approach to calculating dividends equal to a payout ratio of 70% of underlying cash. The exceptional growth in the underlying cash result has therefore driven very strong growth in the dividend, which at GBP 0.5196 in total for the year is GBP 0.1347 or 35% higher than the amount attributable to 2020. That's it for me.
A very pleasing set of results for all stakeholders in the group, reflecting a very strong recovery and setting a very positive course towards our 2025 goals. Back to Andrew.
Thank you, Craig. A very strong operating performance and excellent financial result. I want to start this final section of today's presentation by covering the earlier announcement that Ian Gascoigne will be retiring at the end of March after 30 years with St. James's Place and 19 years as a PLC director. Ian joined what was the startup J. Rothschild Assurance on the 11th of December 1991. He was instrumental over the next 30 years in building the St. James's Place partnership, and we would not be the successful company we are today without Ian's contribution. I thank him wholeheartedly on behalf of the whole community, the board, and shareholders for everything he has contributed. I'm delighted that he will continue on a part-time basis in an advisory capacity, which is great news and means that we will continue to benefit from his wealth of knowledge and experience.
With Ian's retirement, Peter Edwards will continue to be responsible for the U.K. partnership, and Iain Rayner will remain responsible for key relationships with the partnership's largest businesses and the Asian operations. Both now report direct to me. Now, like me, Ian has witnessed huge change in the financial advice sector over the last 30 years with the demise of direct sales forces, greater professionalism, and an increase in the different offerings available in the market. Today, we have robo-advisors, self-select platforms, SIPP providers, and of course, face-to-face holistic financial advice. You would have heard me say many times that the market opportunity in the U.K. wealth and savings landscape is very large and growing. It is therefore inevitable that there are different offerings to address differing client preferences, and this is positive for U.K. savers. At St.
James's Place, as you all know, we offer holistic face-to-face financial advice, and our new business results over time indicate that demand for this has been strong. More and more people need support from a trusted advisor to give them confidence in shaping their future, not least in a higher inflationary environment. We remain very confident that the demand for advice will continue to grow. That's what underpins our confidence in achieving the 2025 financial targets. Last year, we also made real progress delivering against six business priorities that underpin the 2025 ambitions we set out last year. These are building community, delivering value to advisors and clients through our investment proposition, protecting our culture and being a leading responsible business, building and protecting our brand and reputation, being easy to do business with, and sustaining our financial strength.
I'm now going to run through a few highlights on progress against these priorities, and let's start with building community. As a people business, building a cohesive, motivated, and talent community of advisors and employees is what we've been honing and refining over 30 years, and it's critical to driving further success in our business. We must continue to be the best place for employees and advisors to build great careers. This is particularly important with the so-called war on talent for employees and the scarcity of high-quality advisors. A key part of building community in the past has been getting our people together to share experiences and celebrate success. This has been really difficult over the last couple of years, so we look forward to getting back to this. I'm particularly focusing on the partnership.
As Peter Edwards said at last year's Capital Markets event, we will continue to grow the partnership, but with an emphasis on quality, not quantity. It's worth emphasizing that while in a particular year, new advisors will naturally be positive for new client investment flows, the real benefit will be seen in the years ahead rather than the year they join. Growing the partnership is therefore an investment in the future sustainability of our business growth. I'm therefore really pleased that the partnership grew by 5% in 2021 to a total of 4,556 advisors. This was achieved through our now well-established combination of recruiting high-quality experienced advisors and adding academy graduates. The academy continues to go from strength to strength, and there are now 844 academy graduates in the partnership, representing more than 18% of the total population.
During 2021, there were 14 distinct intakes to the academy, which attracted 238 students, contributing to a current total of 350 advisors in training. Just as a reminder, these individuals are not currently included in the partnership numbers. Intake numbers will continue to grow in 2022, and we look forward to taking advantage of new ways of delivering content as we add cutting-edge virtual learning to traditional classroom sessions. For example, using virtual reality headsets, advisors will be able to role-play client conversations with 54,000 different paths that take them through the meeting. As we look forward, these future academy graduates, together with a strong pipeline of experienced potential recruits, gives us confidence for continued growth in the partnership. Having successfully attracted advisors to join us, we must then deliver ongoing support to help partner businesses succeed.
We provide a diverse range of services, from marketing, investment consultancy, technology, client administration, regulatory compliance and business checking, and our in-house technical team. We also provide training, coaching, and business consultancy through our field management team, who are regionally based to be close to our advisors. In addition, the investments we have made in our technology infrastructure and the breadth of our offering mean our proposition for advisors is stronger than ever. This support keeps partners safe and facilitates growth while delivering outstanding value and great client outcomes. Success here will manifest itself in a number of qualitative ways. It will make the partnership attractive to join. It makes us an attractive place to stay. It makes the business safer. It helps partners grow their business and become the best version of themselves, and it provides better client outcomes.
Of course, success will also manifest itself in improving productivity, supporting the new business ambitions we've set out in our 2025 plan. At a headline level, flows per advisor rebounded strongly in 2021, and we're really pleased to see partner businesses doing really well, benefiting from efforts they have put in to build great client relationships and delivering great outcomes. Productivity has also benefited from the technology investments we have made over the years and the efficiencies associated with embracing a more flexible hybrid approach to client meetings. The partnership is the leading edge in what we do. It's how we deliver for clients, and I have no doubt that a strong partnership delivers great outcomes. In turn, this then creates value for all of our stakeholders.
We need to provide the proposition for our advisors so that they can help create, grow, and protect the long-term financial security for our clients. A critical element here is our investment proposition, the second of our business priorities. How we look after clients' investments was comprehensively covered by Rob Gardner at last year's Capital Market event. Our proposition must continually evolve, and considerable enhancements were made during 2021, and more are planned for 2022, all part of a program to continually develop how we deliver for clients. During his presentation last year, Rob also covered the seven investment beliefs which guide everything we do. I'm not going to repeat them all now, but I do want to touch on one of them, responsible investing. As a business, we are committed to stewardship and engagement.
All of our fund managers are signed up to the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, with 65% having the very best rating at the time of the last reporting window. We're also a supporter of Climate Action 100+. We were one of the first U.K. asset owners to sign up to the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance, committing our proposition to being net zero by 2050. Since 2020, we've also produced carbon reports for all of our portfolios and have recently set out an interim ambition of achieving a 25% reduction in our carbon footprint by 2025, underscoring our desire to create financial well-being in a world worth living in. We've also appointed Robeco, a global leader in company engagements, to support our stewardship activities alongside our fund managers.
We know that integrating environmental, social, and governance factors into our decisions will help us manage risk and be a source of opportunity. It also matters to our community and, very importantly, our clients, and this is a key part of our third priority to be a leading responsible business. Being a responsible business is in our heritage with, for example, our charitable foundation, which has grown to become the third largest corporate charity measured by giving in the most recent Association of Charitable Foundations rankings. As I said at last year's capital market event, being a responsible business is now broader than just charitable giving. We've therefore spent time agreeing a responsible business framework centered around four guiding principles, investing responsibly, which I've just touched on, community impact, climate change, and financial wellbeing.
At the center of the four guiding principles is our vision, purpose, and culture. We are serious here, and that's why being a responsible business is the third of our six business priorities, with the executive objectives for 2022 having been expanded in this respect. It's not just the right thing to do, but ensures that we remain relevant to our employees, partners, clients, and society as a whole. It's also therefore important in managing reputation. Our fourth priority is building and protecting our brand and reputation. We've therefore also been reviewing our brand with support from Landor & Fitch. We took our existing identity and proposed alternatives into testing with clients, prospective clients, and the partnership, and the results were clear and consistent among these groups.
Embrace Your Tomorrow sits at the heart of our brand, informing all that we are, from how we look to how we behave, sound, and feel. We have a modern, dynamic brand mark using a font unique to SJP. From here on, we will simply be known as St. James's Place. We believe it was confusing to some clients for us to be the wealth manager as well as the partner being the wealth manager. Whilst we'll always lead with St. James's Place, we've also created a new bold monogram, SJP. This will be used to support the full brand mark, and we have naturally extended this thinking across print and into our online and digital materials. The implementation will happen in a business as usual fashion, in the most responsible way possible, and we aim to create no waste.
A refreshed look supported by extensive testing and implemented in a responsible way. The final two business priorities of being easier to do business with and our continued financial strength were covered earlier by Craig. We're making very good progress on our technological journey to making it easier to do business, while the results provide a big tick in the box as regards continued financial strength. Making it easier to do business is important, as it will make us more efficient, freeing up more resource to further invest in technology. It will also enhance client experience, and circling back to the partnership, it will free up more time and resource for them to grow their businesses. In addition, we believe the refreshed brand will help attract more clients and therefore support future productivity. Strong, I hope you will agree, progress in 2021 across all six business priorities.
Looking forward, there is no doubt in my mind that the demand for face-to-face financial advice remains as strong as ever. In fact, as we emerge from the pandemic, I believe more people will be reassessing their life plans and be more likely to seek out a trusted financial advisor. St. James's Place is ideally positioned to benefit from this increasing demand for advice. We have a partnership that continues to grow in scale, bolstered in part from our academy, a rigorous and well-proven investment management approach, modernized and scalable infrastructure, and a unique culture and brand. I believe this combination stands us apart from other advisory firms and means we're well placed to continue to lead in our sector.
As we look ahead, our performance in 2021, taken together with the investments we are making for the future, means we remain confident in achieving our 2025 ambitions and continuing to prosper thereafter. As usual, I will finish with a summary of the results, which you can see on the current slide. A strong operating and financial performance from a business that is in great shape. This outcome could not have been achieved without the excellent work and contribution of the whole of the St. James's Place community. I'd therefore like to personally thank our advisors, their staff, all our employees, and the administration support teams for their continued hard work, dedication, and commitment. That's it. Thank you for your attention, and as a reminder, the live Q&A starts at 9:30 A.M.