Good morning, everybody. A very warm welcome to London Stock Exchange. Thank you for coming along to see us this morning. We're going to present our results for the year ended 31 March 2025. Now, it was another great year. We're really, really pleased with the results. As you can see, we're announcing revenue growth of 18%. Of course, we announced that a few weeks ago, but we're pleased to show you that that's been delivered with really strong operational gearing. We've got EBITDA up 27% and adjusted EPS up 36% over the year. Now, that's the third year in a row of really, really strong performance. We are absolutely delighted that we're compounding the levels of growth that we've seen in recent years now, which is fantastic. Now, it's fair to say that the market that we operate in is a good one. There's a lot going on.
You know, you just open the FT and there'll be a story about pensions in there. Whenever that happens, it's quite likely there'll be things for us to be talking to our clients about. I guess what we're really proud about in the results that we're showing today is that the growth has come in areas that we invested in some years ago and built our capability to be ready to help our clients. That's in areas like risk transfer, where pension schemes might want to access insurance solutions. It's in areas like GMP and data work and so on, where we continue to be extremely busy. Of course, it's also been in the McCloud, this public sector rectification project. That investment in the McCloud really paid off.
We are the only firm we are very proud to have delivered for its clients in that very big project this year. The margin improvement that you can see is partly a mix of business effect. We are doing more high margin project work now than ever before, and that has helped. It is also driven by underlying efficiencies. Snehal will say a little bit more about the impact of these. We are using technology in smart ways, and that is really helping with our efficiency and margin as well. I guess most of all, we are really proud that we have done things the right way. We are big believers that if we have happy, motivated people, first and foremost, they will in turn deliver good service to clients and good things will follow.
This year we had fantastic results from our employee survey again, and that in turn has led to really happy clients. The results of our client survey are very, very strong as well. We have a really strong brand in the market. This was a year where we won more awards again. We are very proud to win arguably the biggest award, which was the actuarial firm of the year at the Professional Pensions Awards again, which happened during last calendar year, which is fantastic. Of course, we are also broadening our horizons. The world of pensions and insurance increasingly overlap. This year we hired a number of senior people headed by David Honour to build an insurance consulting practice to take advantage of some of these opportunities in front of us.
Of course, we then accelerated our path into that with the acquisition of Polaris, which happened towards the end of the financial year at the end of February. That really sets us up for some exciting broadening of our horizons into the future. In combination basically with that, but all that's going on in the pensions world, where we are incredibly busy and there's just so much happening, we continue to be really, really excited about the future. With that, we'll get into it and we'll unpack a little bit of the detail.
Thanks, Paul.
FY25 was another strong year, as Paul just said, and marks the third consecutive year of growth across all key metrics. In the three years, revenues are up 66%, adjusted EBITDA up 104%, and diluted EPS up 104% as well. The growth rates are a real testament to the quality of our business. Returning to FY25, adjusted EBITDA margin has improved further to 30.1% from 27.9% last year, benefiting from the business mix, one-off impact of McCloud Remedy Project, and continued cost efficiencies. Adjusted diluted EPS of GBP 0.206 is up 36%, benefiting from, of course, the higher operating margins, but also slightly lower finance costs and a one-off tax benefit. Leverage at the end of the year was just below 0.6 times, which includes the initial consideration for the Polaris acquisition, and it remains well below our medium-term target of one to one and a half times.
In line with our progressive dividend policy, the board has proposed a final dividend of GBP .082 , which is up 17%, making the full year dividend GBP 0.119, up 19% year on year. This underscores our continued confidence in the business model and growth prospects. Paul and Ben will cover the divisional revenue performance shortly. One thing to note, increasingly we are finding that there is a significant overlap between our consulting services offering. In the future, we intend to disclose and discuss performance in our advisory, administration, and SIP divisions. I will not go through all the numbers, but to give you the highlights, the group revenue growth of 18% grew from obviously McCloud impact. If you take out the impact of McCloud, that is a 14% growth, which is still a very strong performance year on year. Costs, which I will cover in the next slide, have grown 14%.
McCloud boosted EBITDA margin by about 1%. Even excluding that, margins have grown strongly year on year. Net finance cost decrease reflects the debt reduction following the sale of NPT, and the effective corporation tax rate is 24% due to a one-off prior year tax adjustment. That has resulted in the adjusted profit after tax growing 36% year on year. On the non-trading and exceptional items, which are all consistent with previous treatments and the majority of them non-cash, amortization of acquired intangibles is flat year on year, but will go up to about GBP 9 million-GBP 10 million from FY2026, reflecting the Polaris acquisition. The higher share-based payment charge reflects the higher expected vesting on the back of strong EPS growth, improvement in TSR, and of course, the higher national insurance charge, both from a higher share price as well as the increase in the headline rate.
Exceptional costs include deal fees in respect of acquisition of Polaris, and they also include the contingent deferred consideration for both Polaris and Penfida. The Polaris deferred consideration will be built up over three years because of IFRS 3 requirements, and we expect that to be a charge of GBP 10 million per annum, depending on expected business performance. Turning to the underlying guidance for the near term, the one-off impact of McCloud washes out in FY2026, and we are also in a much lower inflationary environment. Short to medium term, we expect organic revenue growth rates to normalize to mid to high single-digit percentage, but of course, FY2026 will also benefit from a full year impact of Polaris. FY2026 margins will be comparatively lower as McCloud washes out, and we have the cost headwind from higher national insurance. This is all reflected in current consensus before this morning.
Beyond FY2026, we're confident of delivering 0.5% improvements in margin per year in the medium term. Interest costs will be higher to reflect the full year effect of the Polaris acquisition in 2026, but then it will start to come down as we pay down debt. On the operating costs, total operating costs are 14%, well below the 18% growth in revenues. Additionally, costs as a percentage of revenue have continued to fall, leading to further margin improvements. Within that, staff costs increase of 15%. 10% of that is driven by higher headcount and the rest due to inflationary increases in pay, as well as the higher accrued bonus, which is commensurate with the performance of the group. Increase in IT costs reflects our continued investment in technology, particularly cyber security. Increase in property costs reflects inflationary increases, partially offset by the closure of two of our offices.
Within professional fees, the largest component is PI insurance, which usually tracks the growth in revenues. However, this has remained flat, reflecting the quality of our business and our focus on risk management. All other costs as a percentage of revenue remain in line with prior year. Turning to cash flow, one of the key features of our business remains a strong cash conversion, and once again, we've delivered slightly ahead of our guidance of 90%-95%. The comparator year was higher because of the advanced receipts in respect of the McCloud Remedy Project. Lower interest payments reflect the significant reduction in debt following the sale of NPT. The EBT has spent just over GBP 18 million during the year to buy back shares, which have been used to satisfy the vesting of share awards, therefore minimizing the dilutive impact.
Remainder of the outflow relates to dividend equivalent payments and employer's NI contributions on share awards. CapEx of GBP 8.2 million was spent on a combination of Aurora, on leasehold improvements, and BAU IT spend. In March, we completed a refinancing exercise, increasing our total available facility to GBP 120 million until March 2029. Of this, we currently have GBP 65 million undrawn. Combined with the impact of strong operational performance, this has led to a net debt at the end of the year of GBP 40.3 million and a covenant leverage of just below 0.6 times. Just to reiterate our capital allocation priorities, the focus remains in capturing the organic opportunity within our core and tangential markets, as we have done in FY2025. We want to continue to invest in creating market-leading proprietary tech that creates a competitive advantage as well as drives efficiencies.
Now, relative to the size of the business that we are, we still remain CapEx light. We will continue with our progressive dividend policy and scan the horizons for strategic M&A, but we will remain disciplined in that approach. With that, I'll just hand over to Ben.
Thanks, Snehal. Before we get into the business review, just a quick reminder of how we structure ourselves at XPS. We've got three key parts to the business. Actuarial and consulting, which is where we advise clients and help them to make sure they're compliant with a myriad of regulations that apply to the schemes themselves and defined benefits schemes. That obviously includes making sure there's enough money to pay out all the benefits. We have our investment business, where we advise on where to invest the assets and broader risk management. Of course, as Snehal mentioned, these two parts of the business work really closely together. They also share resource on occasions as well. We often talk about them under the combined banner of advisory. We then have our administration business, where we deal with the members themselves.
This covers everything from record keeping, answering their questions, and ultimately doing everything needed to make sure we pay the right benefits to the right members at the right time. At the bottom, in terms of our market, the bulk of our work is for pension schemes. As we previously mentioned, we're increasingly providing services into the life insurance market as well. This slide shows what's going on in the private sector DB world, which is a big part of our addressable market. For the vast majority of my career, probably the first 25 years or so, was spent helping clients deal with deficits. I was generally giving clients bad news. Probably the only silver lining was that one day, many years in the future, they might have enough money to pass the scheme to an insurer and do what's called a pension scheme buyout.
Now, as you're probably aware, we've had rising funding levels, and they've improved quite dramatically over the last few years, mainly because of rising interest rates. Now more and more schemes have got enough money to do a buyout. You can see from the chart in the top left that this has led to increasing volumes of bulk and annuity transactions. Whilst the scheme ultimately disappears when a buyout is completed, these are really good for XPS, as there's a huge amount of work involved along the way. It typically takes three to four years from a scheme deciding they want to go towards an insurance transaction to completing a buyout. During that period, we typically earn a multiple of the fees that we otherwise would for care and maintenance.
Now, for each transaction, there's also an insurer on the other side, and they often need help too, whether that's dealing with all the data that's being thrown at them or just to make sure they keep paying the members their correct benefits. Buyouts also create opportunities for XPS with the life insurance companies. What's really interesting is schemes now have a choice. This is because, as part of the government's agenda to try and get more money invested to grow the U.K. economy, they're encouraging schemes to run on. Actually, just last week, a pensions bill was laid before Parliament, which paves the way for this now to happen. This option's getting lots of traction. A recent survey by one of our competitors said that 60% of large schemes now think that that's the way that they'll go.
Every time there is another survey, this just seems to get bigger and bigger. You can see why. One of my large clients, which has got about GBP 5 billion worth of assets, they were previously heading towards buyout, and they have decided now that they are going to run on because they are excited by the prospect of about GBP 1 billion of surplus emerging over the next 10 years or so. That can be used to improve member benefits or ultimately benefit the company after they have paid in so much money over the last decades and beyond. Run-ons are good for XPS too, as alongside providing all of the care and maintenance services, we also have to help schemes with all of the new challenges that go with that different phase of their journey. The key message here is this backdrop is really positive for XPS.
Whichever way schemes go, it will drive a lot of demand for our services. Now, you can see all this coming through in the actuarial and consulting results, which grew 14%, of which 13% was organic if we exclude the impact of Polaris. This was driven by lots of risk transfer work supporting clients' head towards buyout. We are also still very busy on GMP equalization. We did more work for insurers, primarily supporting their bulk and annuity businesses. As Paul mentioned at the start, we also established our footprint in the broader life consulting market, firstly by making some senior hires and then by the acquisition of the Polaris business. Paul will come on to talk a bit more about how we see the life consulting business developing.
Looking ahead, we've still got lots to do on GMP equalization, and there are some other regulatory changes that come into effect that clients will need help with. We expect to see lots of demand continuing to help schemes figure out which way to go and then help them implement their routes to buyout or run-on. This is both on our own clients and also potentially new ones as well, because it's quite common that schemes will tender for a specialist risk transfer advisor. It gives us the opportunity to win that work on other people's clients. We're also finding that schemes will often review their advisors as part of their decision to run on to make sure they've got the best people in place to help them over that new phase of their journey.
We hope that will create some new business opportunities for us as well.
In investment consulting, the same market changes are having an impact as well. In a sense, what happened in investment consulting is the impact was just more immediate. When interest rates rose and funding levels got better, of course, there was a huge amount of turmoil in the market, the LDI crisis and so on, which caused our team to be extremely busy helping clients to navigate their way through that. That caused growth of 46% over the last two years. Against that backdrop, a performance of almost flat is actually not bad at all, hanging on to a lot of that increase in volume, even as things have stabilized a bit. That is the outlook.
Things are generally more stable in the sense that well-funded pension schemes generally need a little bit less advice than when there is a huge amount of turmoil going on around them. That is not to say that we do not see good opportunities from the market changes that are going on around us. For example, if a pension scheme is getting itself ready to potentially go down the path towards buyout that Ben was describing, they may need to remodel their assets. They may need to get them ready so that an insurer can take them on. In particular, that might mean removing illiquid assets that they hold. At the same time, on the flip side, if you are planning to run on, there may be opportunities to acquire illiquid assets, potentially at a discount, especially if there are now some forced sellers in the market.
What we have established is something called Xchange, which is a mechanism of bringing buyers and sellers together such that transactions can then get done. We expect to do quite a bit of work in that area in the coming years. Another consequence of rising funding levels is that some of our clients do not need some of the more expensive and complex products that they might have invested in over the years, particularly in the area of fiduciary management. Better funded schemes are fine with a simpler care and maintenance type offering, the type of thing that XPS excels at delivering. We also see potential opportunity for those using fiduciary management products that are provided by some of our competitors who may prefer to work with us at XPS instead.
Now, more generally, of course, all of that regulatory change, the new pensions bill, new funding regulations, and so on, all of that affects our investment clients as well. The backdrop for having a lot of things generally to talk to clients about is pretty favorable. We're optimistic about the direction that investment consulting is heading in. In terms of administration, an absolutely fantastic year, 30% growth, a lot of project work, as well as onboarding of new clients contributing to that growth as well. We've been very busy on things like GMP work, very busy on data cleansing, helping schemes that might be getting ready towards insurance. Of course, we've also been really, really busy on McCloud. Just to say a little bit more about that, that is a rectification project.
Essentially, about 10 years or so ago, the government made changes to public sector pensions that were then legally challenged. Ultimately, those legal challenges were successful. We are now having to rectify and put people back where they might otherwise have been had these unlawful changes not been put through all those years ago. It is phenomenally complex and challenging to do that. We look after about half the police forces in the U.K. For those clients, we sent 38,000 statements before the statutory deadline of 31 March this year. We are the only administrator to have achieved actually that kind of milestone of hitting, sending statements to every single one of our members that needed one. We are very, very proud of that. Of course, it has contributed to our revenues and so on this year.
Really excitingly, it creates potential opportunities because our reputation in public sector administration is now very, very high. As we look to the future, there is lots going on. There are those McCloud type opportunities and so on in the public sector. There is a huge amount more activity around GMP and wider data cleansing and things like that. We still see a healthy pipeline of new business opportunities in the private sector. Of course, this was the year that we onboarded John Lewis successfully, our new biggest win in the private sector, which is great. We are driving efficiency, Aurora, our administration platform. We have continued to develop and onboard clients. We still have not even hit half of our members under administration on Aurora yet, but we expect to get there by 2027.
With that comes operational efficiency and just better working models internally, and all sorts of good things will follow. On technology more widely, this is the area of our business that's perhaps got most of the benefit from AI. We are doing some interesting stuff. We have our own proprietary offerings utilizing AI that are kind of at the pilot stage at the moment that are starting to show some really interesting potential benefits. That might be something that we talk about a little bit more in the future. Our SIP business had a great year, benefiting from making it onto the St. James's Place panel a little while ago. That's driving still record levels of new business.
That, combined with the increase in the bank base rate, where we share in some of the interest on customer cash deposits, drove the growth that you can see. The future looks much more of the same, really. Again, those new business volumes are very healthy and continuing, particularly from the St. James's Place source now. In the background, again, similar to administration, we had legacy systems, particularly after our acquisition of Michael J. Field a couple of years ago. We have now completed that integration. We are on one common platform. Again, we expect that to drive more efficiency into the future at the same time. Got a very strong brand. It is another area where we are proud of the awards that we win, winning a few more just in the last few weeks. Again, well set with a strong reputation for good new business.
Now, one of our objectives, as Paul alluded to, is to be the best place in our industry to work. Our simple ethos is that happy, motivated people with the right training and technology do a brilliant job for clients. Happy clients are loyal. They want to take more of your services and recommend you to others as well. This then creates strong financial outcomes. Our culture and values underpin everything that we do at XPS. You can see from the bottom, we have won more awards again this year for our culture. We run an employee survey each year, and we have shown some of the results here from the 2024 survey.
These demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of people at XPS think XPS is a good place to work, that we're a forward-thinking and innovative organization, and that people of all backgrounds can thrive at XPS. Our attrition rate continues to be low. To give an example, our partner retention rate over the last four years has been 100% if you take out retirements and non-regretted leavers. It is also worth mentioning that a key part of our culture is celebrating success. Earlier this year, we gave everyone in XPS a GBP 250 Virgin Experience voucher to celebrate our entry into the FTSE 250 back last June and to thank them for the part they've played in reaching this milestone. This has created a real buzz in the firm, and it really sets us up well for the year ahead.
Now, we also ask our clients how they think we're getting on. One way we do this is by running a formal client survey every two years to get their feedback. These are some of the results from the survey we did in 2024. You can see that nine out of 10 of our clients said that they would recommend XPS, which is great. The seven out of 10 stat in the middle is really interesting. This was a question directed to clients who have got experience of other providers. They might be an independent trustee with a different actuary or administrator on some of their other schemes that they work on. They were asked how XPS compares. Are they better? Are we about the same or are we worse? Seven out of 10 thought that we were better.
Hardly anyone actually thought that the other people they used were better than XPS. That is a really great validation of how our service stacks up versus our competitors. We also get feedback directly from the members themselves. The best place to find this is Trustpilot. Our rating there is 4.6, which is in the excellent category. That is the highest by a bit of a margin, actually, versus the other competitors we have in our market. You can see on the bottom there some of the lovely things that members have written about the members of our administration team who provided them with help.
To come back to this broadening of our horizons, the world of pensions and insurance overlap in the area of bulk purchase and utilities. Of course, insurers do a huge amount more than just writing bulk purchase and utilities.
They've got whole other areas of their business, all sorts of different products and offering into the market. Of course, they've been in those markets for decades, many of the bigger insurers. Now, they face a lot of challenges across the piece, not dissimilar to some of the challenges that pension schemes face. There's a huge amount of regulatory change, things like changes in solvency rules, changes in accounting standards, recently IFRS 17 coming in, changes in the way the FCA wants them to deal with customers, and so on and so forth. They've got to constantly adapt and change as the world moves around them. Of course, they're doing that against a backdrop where often they've got perhaps legacy IT systems, they've got data challenges, and so on. More positively, they want to be on the front foot. They want to be using new technology.
They want to be introducing AI and all that it can bring and so on to really differentiate and be commercially successful. The insurers need a lot of help and support. A year or so ago, we were just at the tip of the iceberg. We could help them with this stuff because it is what we do. That was obvious and easy. Often, we were actually even turning away work where we had great relationships if you went any lower than that because that is where our expertise would run out. To address that, we started to professionalize what we do in the insurance consulting space and really put some infrastructure around it. We hired David Honour, a PwC partner, to come and lead and grow the team in that space. David made a number of senior hires during the year.
Now, that team, of course, has got a great opportunity, but we always wanted to accelerate and go a little bit quicker. That is why we did the acquisition of Polaris in February, which is a real step forward for us into the insurance consulting market. Polaris, of course, there is quite a bit about it in our capital markets today. If you want to take a look, Roger Houlihan, the founder of Polaris, and David did a really great presentation for about 20 minutes or so about what they do. If you have not seen that, it is, of course, on our website. Do go and have a look. In brief, how is it going so far? The business that we bought had great relationships with a wide range of insurers, did about GBP 18 million or so of revenue in their last full year before our acquisition.
In joining with us, they now have the benefit of all that XPS infrastructure to help them grow, and merging in with David's team and so on creates a very, very strong combination. It is early days, but a couple of brief anecdotes for you about how it is going. One very large insurer that everybody in this room would be familiar with had liked Polaris and wanted to use them in the past, but had struggled actually because they were a little bit too small and struggled to get through their procurement team and processes and so on. I am pleased to say that insurer was delighted to hear of this partnership with XPS and has got in touch. We have immediately won a decent-sized strategic project to provide help to them because it is not a small firm that struggles to get through procurement now.
It's part of the FTSE 250 group that is XPS. That's fantastic, breaking down those barriers that Polaris had before and winning new work where they had a good relationship. Another simple anecdote, we've also won for a different insurer some work to help them with some of their financial modeling around longevity, quite a big project. Initially, we're sending in a team of six people, and three of them are from XPS Heritage, three of them are from Polaris Heritage. I think in all honesty, we would not have won that mandate purely as XPS, and neither would Polaris. Actually, the combination of experience and offering that we've got is powerful, and we have won it. Those are just little anecdotes. This is a multi-year play for sure, and it's still very much in our investment phase, but we are off to a good start.
Those little anecdotes illustrate exactly what we were hoping would happen when we made the acquisition. In terms of M&A more widely, you have seen a slide like this before. To briefly repeat the way we look at M&A, big consolidation opportunities of coming together in our industry still potentially exist. The honest truth is we feel like we are very capable in everything that the world needs in the pensions market. There are not really many skills gaps, etc., to fill. On that basis, coming together with another firm would need to be financially driven. It would need to produce very good EPS and so on. Of course, it would probably come with quite a lot of distraction, potentially. Integration of two very large firms is definitely a challenge. At the moment, we are producing fantastic returns organically ourselves.
As you have heard, we have arguably got the best opportunity we might have for the next few years to just keep growing on that organic basis. We would be a little bit reticent about distracting ourselves from that path, but we are not saying never. Yes, we would be very cautious about such an opportunity. Alternatively, market expansion opportunities we are always actively scanning for. Smaller bolt-on transactions that enable us to infill a capability or go further and expand our addressable market, exactly as Polaris has done, we are interested in. That is likely to potentially be part of our future. I guess we are signaling it is more likely that that would be in an area like insurance consulting or perhaps data science, etc., that would be compatible with that.
We have covered an awful lot.
To sum up, it's been another really good year for XPS, both in terms of our financial performance, but also setting us up for the future as we've continued to invest in technology, our services. We've also now got a much bigger footprint in the life consulting market, which really expands the addressable market we provide services into. Looking ahead, we expect strong client demand to continue driving growth, albeit as Snehal mentioned. FY2026 will obviously be impacted by the McCloud revenues washing out as they were delivered on a highly automated basis. We expect to see good new business opportunities both across the private and public sector pension scheme market, but also with insurance as well, given our increased presence in that market.
But most importantly, we'll continue to focus on our culture and client service, which is ultimately what's driven the strong performance over many years now and is the foundation for our strong future. Thank you very much for listening. That's the end of our presentation. We'll go in a moment to Q&A. Before we do, just in case people aren't here at the end, I did want to publicly thank Alan because it was announced this morning that Alan won't be standing for re-election as our chair at the forthcoming AGM. Just a huge thank you to embarrass Alan for everything that he's done over almost nine years now with us since we listed. A big thank you and a big welcome to Martin, who will be taking on the baton. We're very excited about working with him. Thank you for that.
We will now go to Q&A.
Thank you. In terms of Q&A, there will be a roving mic. If people can wait for that, especially so everyone online can hear. Please introduce yourself when you ask the question. Should we go Jacob here first?
Yeah. Morning, guys. Jacob Armstrong from Stifel. A couple of questions from me. Firstly, in terms of the market, we recently saw the acquisition of Barnett Waddingham from Howden. What are your views on kind of the insurance firms coming into the pension market, if that's a potential trend? We have seen quite a lot of M&A activity. Obviously, Redington has been part of Gallagher for a little bit of time now. Have you seen any increase in competition from those guys and just the general kind of competitive landscape? Secondly, in terms of your people, kind of what utilization rates are you running at the moment? How is the hiring environment? Thank you very much.
Okay.
Okay. Paul, do you want to take the first one?
Yeah, I'll take the first one. Thanks, Jacob. M&A activity in our market is generally quite positive for us. You single out Barnett Waddingham being acquired by Howden. Barnett's are a firm that's not dissimilar to us. They were a partnership before this recent acquisition by Howden. Similar kind of scale and in similar markets to us. We did see that with some interest. I guess it's difficult to speculate, but other insurance consulting broking firms, etc., it's more the broking side of things, I think, coming into the market to acquire businesses like that probably validates a bit the business model that a firm like Barnett's like ourselves will have very high repeat recurring revenues, etc., which is a very good bedrock against perhaps a slightly more cyclical business in insurance broking and so on.
It is not dissimilar to the models that Aon, Willis Towers Watson, Mercer, the so-called big three in our market, that are all part of those bigger, wider kind of broking groups. It is sort of a mini version, in a sense, of a transaction like that. It is nothing new, that is for sure. The transaction may go well. I am not here to say anything negative about any of our competition, but we do just observe that culturally, there is often quite a challenge when any firm is acquired, especially a firm that has got very strong DNA itself as a long-standing independent partnership. Inevitably, it is a challenge, I suspect, to then integrate into something that is wider. That could potentially create opportunities for us. Of course, it may go swimmingly well, but it may be a little bit difficult, and there might be some opportunities.
We do see that with other deals that have happened in the industry as well. One of the bigger deals that happened in administration was the complete carve-out of a firm called Aptior, which is the administration arm of what was part of Mercer. Transactions like that, they can be quite difficult. I'm sure there are some stellar successes that they would tell you about if they were sat where I am. Sometimes it's quite hard to break open an infrastructure like that and move things forward and so on. In general, when there's transactions in our market, it's more likely to create opportunity for us in the short and medium term as those things happen.
As I say, we look a little askance at whether we'd want to do a very big transaction such as that because we've got such a strong culture and identity now and are doing really, really well. We are cautious about the level of distraction that such a thing might cause.
Ben, do you want to take the utilization forward?
Yeah. Your question about utilization, so it's currently running about 70%, which is very consistent with previous years. I do not think we view that as something that we really want to push up. There are always areas of the business that are a bit higher and are challenges moving work around, but we think it's probably at about the right place. In terms of the hiring market, we generally now hire from school leavers and graduates, and that's a really good market. It's quite rare that we would look to recruit at higher levels. Where that happens, it's often because we want to bring in some expertise like we did in life consulting with David Honour. There, actually, I think we've got a really good story to tell versus some of the bigger firms in our market about our culture and the excitement here.
We don't see the hiring market as being something that can stop us achieving what we want.
Okay. Great. Mandy?
Hey, good morning. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions. Mandy Jagpal, RBC, and three from me, please. First one is, how should we think about the EBITDA margin progression from here? Clearly, you have efficiency gains coming through from Aurora as you migrate more clients. How does this play through with investment elsewhere, such as insurance consulting? Second one is, what is your order of capital allocation from here? Your dividend payout ratio has edged down in recent years, and you've spoken about investing in the business and potential M&A, but is there room for additional shareholder capital returns in the absence of M&A? Finally, the pensions bill introduced multiple significant changes across DC, private sector, DB, and LGPS. You spoke about the surplus extraction implications, but is there opportunities in the DC Master Trust and LGPS consolidation announcements?
On the reverse side, could you have any contracts which could be at risk?
If I take the first two, and then Paul is going to take the pensions bill. On the EBITDA margins, clearly, there is a big one-off benefit this year from McCloud Remedy. We said that 30% margin would have been 29% absent McCloud. Consensus for next year is 28.5%. Going from 29% to 28.5%, this is with the inclusion of investment in insurance consulting, headwind from national insurance increase as well. Underlying, the margins are improving. Beyond FY2026, we're guiding to half a percentage point improvement each year as some of those efficiencies that you just said start to come through. In terms of the order of capital allocation, I think that the first and foremost is there is a big organic opportunity, especially that we entered an addressable market of GBP 1.5 billion in insurance.
That is the prime focus of the allocation of firepower here. Progressive dividend policy, I think, will continue. We're not going to be wedded to a payout ratio. All I can say is that in every year since we've listed, we've paid a dividend. It has grown quite healthily. In terms of return to shareholders, I think in our view, that's a path of least imagination given the track record of how we've allocated capital previously. Before the Polaris acquisition, the five bolt-ons that we did, it was GBP 27 million of capital deployed for an IR of in excess of 20%. We know that we've got a track record of delivering strong returns, and that's what we would be looking to do.
Pensions bill. In terms of this, it was laid before Parliament last week.
It did contain quite a lot. Surplus extraction was probably the biggest thing we're interested in. On DB, it also talked about a super fund regime and PPF levies. On DC, it talked about value for money being a new requirement effectively for DC schemes or a boosted requirement. All DC schemes now need to offer a retirement option. There were things around small-pot consolidators and the like in local government. In terms of then directly your question, I don't think any of that would put any of what we're doing at risk. We don't have any contracts that will be impacted by that. It's probably fair to say a lot of this was trailed, so it was nice to see it being written down, but there was nothing in there that was perhaps unexpected.
In terms of opportunities, probably the main one is that this is all just DC schemes becoming increasingly regulated. The new value for money effectively criterion tests a requirement around retirement. Effectively, vehicles needed being provided just means that DC trusts will need a bit more support. It is not a big part of our business, so it is not going to have particularly major impact. I do not think that side of things is going to be major one way or the other. The same is true for local government. We do very little for local government. It might create opportunities, but it is not one that I would call out as being one that we are very focused on today.
Just a reminder for everyone online, you can submit a written question, and we will come to those as well. Rahim here. Oh, sorry. Portia.
Thank you. Portia from Canaccord. Can I just clarify, Snehal, on the gearing? You mentioned in the statement a target range of one to one and a half times, but you're obviously significantly below that, even having drawn the debt for Polaris. Should we think of that range more like a limit range should you undertake further M&A rather than a target, so to speak?
Absolutely, yeah. We often get asked the question that if there was suitable M&A opportunity, what would you be comfortable going up to? I think that is more what we are answering there. Up to one and a half times, as long as we can see a path to sort of de-gearing, whether it be through revenue or cost synergies, etc., to sort of below one times, that is what our aim would be. It is not something that we are guiding that we were going to gear up to in the near future. Rahim?
Good morning. It's Rahim Karim from Investec. Three questions, if I may. The first was just around McCloud. I understand that you did your job very well, but others did not. Does that mean that there is potential for you to win new business in 2026 and your assumption around revenues from that source being quite conservative as a result? The second was just around the retail pensions market. I mean, obviously, the SIP business is small in the context of that industry. How do you see that business longer term? Is it one that you want to grow, or is it one that you might potentially exit given your capital discipline that you've demonstrated in recent years? The third question was just around Xchange. I think Paul, you mentioned that it has potential longer term.
Just maybe talk a little bit about the revenue model there and what that potential might look like. Thank you.
Thanks.
Ben, do you want to take the McCloud?
I was going to say that.
You take McCloud, and I'll take retails.
McCloud, yeah, I mean, we're very, very proud of what we achieved in McCloud. It's a really tough project. The complexity of McCloud is quite a thing. It's one thing to say that you need to sort of put somebody back where they would have been for these changes, had they not been made. You need about 10 years' worth of salary data. You need all sorts of complex calculations to be coded up and done. When you've worked out how much somebody should be being paid going forward, you work out that they're owed four years of back pay. When you give them four years of back pay, it might change their tax bracket. How do you work out the interest on what they should have received over the time? It's phenomenally complex. It's involved HMRC. It's involved the Government Actuary's Department.
It's involved all of our clients and so on. It's been a very, very big project. We're very, very proud that we made it. How did we make it? Why did we make it when others did not? We designed Aurora specifically to be a tech-enabled, scalable solution to be able to deliver this project. Where other administrators are using technology that's old, it's quite hard to patch it and make it do these things. Indeed, some of the technology providers failed and let their clients down on that front. We did not because we could see this coming a few years ago and made Aurora capable of delivering. It still needed a lot of hard work and a lot of human involvement, but that's fundamentally how we got there. Where does that leave us?
It leaves us in a good place because, as I said, just directly in our own markets, some other police forces, fire, blue light services have not managed to miss the deadline. There is a cord that they can pull and extend that deadline, and that's happened. There are opportunities to talk to some of them and help them potentially. More widely, a number of blue light schemes have talked to us about whether actually having intervened and helped with McCloud, which we've done for some that are not ongoing administration clients, that they'd like us to just do the ongoing administration now that we're through that, which is a good exciting opportunity. That's then an annuity income for us for the very long term, which is good.
Be outside of blue light and in wider public sector, it does not directly immediately read across, but we obviously see opportunities we would like to run at. To your question about whether we are being sort of too cautious a little bit, in fairness, it is untested. Being brilliant at McCloud work in the police, etc., does not buy you the right to go and talk to the NHS immediately. There are frameworks and things you need to be on to go and get involved in those conversations. It is unproven as to just how far we will be able to go with that. Hopefully, we will have good stories to tell you in a year or two. There are still barriers to entry into some of those other places we might go.
We're optimistic, but cautiously optimistic is probably the best way to describe, I think, where we might go with it all.
In terms of the question about retail markets, our SIP business, I guess the SIP business, in the same way that we talk about insurance consulting, which is leveraging a lot of our core skills into a slightly different market of end users, that's probably how I'd articulate the SIP business. It's lots of administration, great member service, helping schemes and members navigate quite complex kind of regulatory regimes. It's effectively deploying our transferable skills into a slightly different set of end users. In terms of the growth opportunities, we are positive about them. We have a relatively small market share in the bespoke SIP market. It's below 10%, we think, based on the figures that we see. When we're on IFA panels, the feedback we get is our service compares really favorably to some of the other providers on those panels.
We see there to be good opportunities to grow our market share by writing more SIP new business. It is something in the past that we've grown through acquisitions. Perhaps those opportunities will come up too. We effectively see it as deploying our core skills to a slightly different set of end users in the same way we talk about insurance consulting.
Your third question was about Xchange, this sort of interesting emerging market, which, yeah, it's got multiple stakeholders in. As I said, pension schemes that want to be insurance-ready often need to remodel their asset portfolios, and that might involve selling assets. Bear in mind, they might have bought an illiquid asset they thought they'd hold for 10 years because they thought they were more than 10 years away from being able to do an insurance transaction. Suddenly, they're two years away, in which case they need to sell something that hasn't run its course. Selling an illiquid asset midstream can be quite difficult. The buyers on the other side, there's opportunities then. If they're forced sellers, there's opportunities to pick up assets that are relatively cheap, including, in some cases, insurers, maybe for different bits of their business.
The insurers are very interested in this market too. It is a great example of where pensions and insurance overlap. Being able to connect buyers at insurers with sellers at pension schemes and so on is very, very valuable. There probably are not many firms in the world that can join things up in that manner, which is, again, part of what we are excited about with the broadening of our horizons. In terms of the revenue model, we do do things in different ways in that market. It is good margin work when we add a lot of value to a client. If we are helping somebody to sell a GBP 100 million asset or what have you, then if we can get them a really, really good outcome, we do get paid well to do it. The margins are not wildly different to the rest of the business.
They're perhaps a smidge higher, but they're not massively game-changing. Again, caution, it's still a nascent small market. There's opportunities beginning to emerge, and we're hopeful that we can take a good market share in these things that are going on. You'll imagine there's quite a lot of competition. There's broking firms and so on equally coming into the market trying to help facilitate all of this. It's a good opportunity for us. Again, let's see in a year or two how we've managed to do with that. Yeah, so far, we're something new that we kind of put together this year that's making some nice gentle headway at the moment. We'll see how we go.
Thanks.
I had public sector, so.
Oh, okay.
Sorry. Any other questions here? Otherwise, we've got a couple. Sorry. Yeah, just behind you.
Hi, James Fletcher from Berenberg. Just a couple of quick ones. Just on recruitment, just going forward, I think Snehal mentioned it was 10% last year. Just given the outlook across the business, just kind of where should we think of that going forward? Just on run-on, I was just interested to know about kind of client thoughts about how attractive that offer is versus buyout at present and how you think those surpluses might be deployed. I saw some pushback last week on that. Just your initial thoughts on that, please.
Thanks, Thomas. Okay, good morning. Yeah, on recruitment first, yeah, as we were saying, the recruitment market is a good market. Our strong culture and so on definitely help us. The simplest way to think of our business model, there is some operational gearing in it, but fundamentally, we're a people-driven business. To do twice as much work, we generally need roughly twice as many people. That will shift and change with deployment of technology, and you've seen that, where we could deliver more efficiently. Perhaps one area for me to touch on a little bit was the comment I made in the presentation about AI helping us a little bit with efficiency. With regard to AI, we're certainly not at a stage where we think it's going to have a huge wholesale change in our business model.
Our clients really love the fact that there is a human being talking to their members, and that is really important. Bear in mind, our members phoning in are often doing so at a challenging moment in their life. It could be a happy occasion like a retirement, but it may well be a bereavement or something like that that we are dealing with as administrators of a pension scheme. That human connection and warmth and empathy is very, very important. We have always been onshore with that as well. It is a conscious decision in our business that that is all done from the U.K. The clients that we have really value that and like that. AI can still do really, really good things. It can help our people deliver better for their clients.
Some of the simple pilots that we've been running lately that are looking really quite exciting are around, for example, AI taking a transcript of every call that we record into our member connect center, which is the first point of connection for members. The transcription of those calls is interesting because AI can interrogate what the call was about and what happened and produce great data for you, identify any weaknesses in our processes. The really interesting thing that we've put to work on that is to use sentiment analysis. We now know in the pilot whether a call starts negative and ends positively or the other way around. We know it instantly on every call that comes into one of our call centers, or rather, we will when we fully deployed it. That kind of innovation and technology is fantastic.
You think about what that enables us to do. Any call that did not end well can get a call back within five minutes. We can identify if there are weaknesses, what types of call are not going so well, how do we train people, what does great look like, and so on, interrogating all of that information. It is just such a rich source of data to help us improve. I could name four or five other pilots in different areas. Our approach is to develop our own proprietary software in those spaces. Generally, by the way, it is like Lego. You pick a bit of AI from over here, something that transcribes a call. You pick a different bit from over here that does sentiment analysis, and you build your own thing with these Lego blocks. That is very much what we are doing.
We're finding that to be quite cost-effective. We are really excited about some of the things that we might be able to develop. I do not think it massively, drastically changes our people model, but it does help those people to do well. If we win more new business and so on as a consequence of having great services like I am describing, then actually, yeah, we will continue growing and we will need more people.
The second question was about run-on, client thoughts, and how surplus might be deployed. I guess it's constantly evolving, but we've talked to a lot of clients, and we get feedback from our kind of consultants about what's going on. I think the general view is that you do need a certain size and economies of scale to make run-on worthwhile. Small schemes, perhaps sub-GBP 500 million, perhaps sub-GBP 200 million. I think the majority will still think buyout is the right endpoint from that. That will not be the case for all of them. We've got one scheme that runs on, and it's, I think, sub-GBP 20 million because they want to run on to provide higher pension increases to the members. I think the majority will probably decide financially buyout is the better course of action.
On the flip side of it there, it does make sense, I think, for a lot of the larger schemes. Again, there's lots of different factors that trustees and employers will consider, how strong the employer is, and just their appetite to keep running what ultimately is a financial risk to them. The surveys generally say about 60% at the moment of billion-pound-plus schemes say that run-on looks attractive for them. I think we'll see that emerge over time and we'll find the real answer. That's roughly where things seem to be heading at the moment. In terms of how the surplus be deployed, again, that's early days. The pensions regulator issued some guidance last week around what trustees should be thinking about when schemes are running on.
A lot of the tone of that guidance is it's really important that run-on is good for members. That means that they're really well protected. Fundamentally, we can't have a situation where this jeopardizes all of the work the industry has done to make sure members do get their full benefits, but also that perhaps in some way they do benefit from a surplus. There are lots of different ways that can happen, whether it's the option terms that they often get within the scheme might be a bit better than within some of the insurers, or it might be through just getting slightly higher increases to benefits or augmentations. Most schemes aren't yet at the point of having to decide that they've got too much money and they want to do something about it. I think that we'll see it emerge.
The regulator seems to be quite clear that members should get something, albeit that might end up being a smaller proportion than the sponsor.
I might just add an anecdote. It's a scheme that I know very well. We calculated for them just last week the level of increase that people who've retired have had in that pension scheme for the last three years and what inflation has been for the last three years. The increase, cumulative increase, is around 10%. Their increase in cost of living is about 25%. That is a pension scheme that is in surplus that is contemplating a buyout with Legal & General or whoever else. You've kind of asked the question why. We could claw some of that gap back. We could put people back and restore some of their purchasing power. If we give this to an insurer, they will get the contractual minimum forevermore.
If we run it on, maybe we can pay an extra couple % each year and give us five years and give us 10 years. Actually, those pensions will be fully restored to where they otherwise might have been. That is sort of why, in a nutshell, a trustee would look at it and say, "I'd like to do that," but with all the provisos and caveats that Ben talks about, about making sure that is done safely.
Great. Any other questions? Otherwise, I'll go. There are a couple online. First one's, there are plenty of issues for trustees to think about near term. How can you mitigate agenda congestion to catalyze organic fee income across all disciplines?
I guess I'd say it's been that we always need to have lots of stuff to talk about. For the last few years, we've just had lots of stuff to talk about. It does mean that some projects can sometimes be pushed back, but only by definition because we're full. We're doing everything we can. The probably prominent example of that over the years has been GMP, where sometimes when there's so much noise going on and we're dealing with big strategic questions, volatile markets, emerging advice around surplus and so on, GMP is the one item on the agenda that doesn't have a statutory timeline and can wait a little bit. We've talked in prior years about GMP being a sort of underpin to demand.
If actually converse to the question, if the wind dropped and there was nothing to talk about, we've got years' worth of GMP that would leap up the priority order that we deliver. Actually, we've got a really nice balance. We're going through GMP slowly. There was a statistic, I think, on one of the slides that only 17% of our clients have finished GMP. Bear in mind, it's a multi-year project for each of them. We've got more mid-flight, but only 17% have yet finished, which gives you an indication of just how far there is to go with work like that as that kind of underpin to the wider advice and so on that we're giving.
Thanks, Paul. Another question, which I think partially has been answered. What sort of underlying cost growth should we think about this year, particularly staff comm? So how many more employees likely to hire and what sort of compensation inflation? So I'll take that. In terms of the overnight sort of staff cost growth, it's probably about 5% on average. Of course, next year, we will have the full year impact of the employees and the team that we're assembling within the insurance consulting division. In terms of underlying cost growth, I mean, I think I've already alluded to where the consensus margin is at the moment. It has got a tough comparator. If you sort of strip out the impacts of McCloud and also the one of it will be an NI increase for the first time this year.
Underlying margins are still improving and sort of more longer term from FY2027 onwards, as I said earlier, half a percentage point improvement each year. Any other questions? I think we haven't got anything else online, so thank you very much.