Today, and welcome to the abrdn Analyst Webcast and Conference Call. At this time, I'll turn the call over to your host today, Mr. Stephen Bird, CEO. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you, George. Good morning, everybody. Thank you for joining us for our Q4 trading update. And for the first time with you, I'm pleased to say that I'm joined by Jason, with Jason Windsor, our CFO. Today, we are doing two things: first, announcing a new cost transformation program, and second, we're updating our AUMA and flows for the second half of 2023 and giving you a preliminary outlook on the full year of 2023. Starting with the transformation program, we have said previously that we plan to go further on cost. We have conducted a root-and-branch review of all our support and operational costs, and today we are announcing a transformational cost reduction program to save at least GBP 150 million by the end of 2025, as we rightsize the corporate center to fit a fully competitive modern investment business. These savings come in addition to the GBP 75 million cost reduction target in investments that we have achieved in 2023. Our Investments business remains core to our group, and we are committed to taking the steps that are necessary to improve its profitability. Around 80% of the total cost savings will benefit our Investments business, representing a substantial unburdening and providing more opportunity for future investment into the areas viewed by the board and by management as fundamental to improving the performance of the business. The changing dynamics and challenges within traditional asset management are very well known to you, and we have been reshaping our business to address these factors. We have a clear view on what our clients want and on our areas of core strengths, and we are continuing to align our resources and capabilities accordingly. Market conditions have remained challenging. Institutional clients have been de-risking portfolios, moving into cash primarily, in response to the geopolitical uncertainty and high inflation. That has had an impact across the entire industry, as you will have seen from our sector peers. The strong rally late last year did not change those fundamental dynamics. I'll now hand over to Jason to give you more detail on both the cost savings and the AUMA and flows disclosure that we are sharing with you today. Thank you, Stephen, and good morning, everyone. I'm very pleased to have joined abrdn and to be here today to present this new transformation program and the trading update. As Stephen just mentioned, the business has made considerable progress in recent years and has successfully refocused on three core segments. Today, we'll concentrate on the group's largest segment, investments, and the steps we need to take to improve profitability and transform the way we operate. To be as simple as possible, using best-in-class technology wherever possible. The cost transformation we're announcing today to remove at least GBP 150 million of costs has required us to look more deeply at the group's operating model, particularly in the support areas. Let me give you a little color on how we're going to achieve this new target. We will be delayering management structures and increasing spans of control, so everybody in the company will be closer to the customer. While we do expect a reduction of around 500 roles across the group, the bulk of the savings will be non-staff costs. We're looking at further efficiencies from our outsourcing and technology. There will only be modest cuts to the front office and investments. In fact, the program has been designed to avoid disruption to client service and to ensure we retain absolute focus on delivering investment performance for all of our clients. The work to achieve these savings is already underway. We expect the bulk of the implementation to be in 2024, and the work to be completed by the end of 2025. We expect around GBP 60 million of benefit to be in the P&L this year, and that we will achieve the run rate of GBP 150 million by the end of 2025. Turning now to assets and flows. At December 31, 2023, Group AUMA was GBP 494.8 billion, which is pretty much in line with the end of the first half position. There are a number of corporate actions which moved AUM up and down and represent active reallocation by the group. The divestments of the discretionary fund management and US private equity businesses accounted for GBP 10.2 billion of AUM, and this was partially offset by the acquisition of Tekla closed-end funds from Macquarie added GBP 3 billion of AUM. In aggregate, corporate actions led to a net reduction of GBP 6.9 billion. Looking at flows. In the second half, we saw group net inflows, net outflows of GBP 12.4 billion, which is about 3% of AUMA. In investment specifically, AUM was GBP 366.7 billion, down slightly from the 30th of June 2023, following positive market movements offset by net outflows in corporate actions. Insurance Partners net outflows was GBP 1.3 billion, benefiting from strong bulk purchase annuity wins. In institutional and retail wealth, net outflows were GBP 11.2 billion. Excluding liquidity, net outflows of GBP 8.3 billion were driven by equities and fixed income, reflecting the challenging market environment. This is a common picture for the sector, but one of the key differentiators for this group is the diversity of our revenue streams we achieve through our Adviser business and Interactive Investor. Adviser ended the year with AUMA 2% ahead at GBP 73.5 billion compared with the thirtieth of June. However, there were net outflows of GBP 1.5 billion in the second half. Q3, in particular, saw the lowest net flows on record across the Adviser platform market, and Q4 was also soft. It was great that II delivered net inflows of GBP 1.1 billion in the second half, with growth in customer numbers. There are now 407,000 people paying fees to use the II platform. I now want to take a moment to walk you through the 2023 margins, which we've set out in our statement. Starting with Investments. Average AUM in the second half of the year was approximately GBP 363 billion, which is around 2.5% lower than the first half average. Outflows were most significant in higher-margin asset classes, and the second half market recovery was stronger for us in fixed income and in our higher-margin equity business, which is, as you know, Asia and emerging market-focused. Putting this together, our revenue margin in Investments for the second half was lower, at 22.4 basis points, compared to 24.6 in the first half. Group revenue was supported by higher interest income in II and Adviser, which offset the revenue decline in Investments. With lower group operating expenses, too, we expect 2023 adjusted group operating profit to be broadly in line with the consensus that we have collected from analysts. For completeness, we expect adjusted capital generation to be ahead of that consensus, which is a result of the higher interest income on cash balances in group treasury. Finally, from me, a note on segment reporting, where we have decided to make the following changes. Finimize and our group digital innovation group will move from Investments to Corporate Strategic. Corporate Strategic will be renamed Other Business Operations and Corporate Costs, and the Personal business will be renamed Interactive Investor, which is a terrific brand that we should be using consistently. Thank you, and I'll now hand back to Stephen. Great. Thank you, Jason. We hope that you appreciate these additional disclosures that we're offering today. We're happy to take questions, but please remember that this is a trading update, and the more detailed, full disclosure, audited disclosure will wait until February 27. So with that, we're happy to open up for questions. Thank you very much, sir. Ladies and gentlemen, if you'd like to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone keypad. So it's star one for questions. Our first question today is coming from Mr. Nicholas Herman, calling from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open, sir. Yes, good morning. Thank you for the call. Just three questions for me, but all, all kind of on the same thing or on the same theme, rather. So, excuse me. You referenced the savings as free up capacity to reinvest. I guess with the expected investments and inflation, how do you see net cost savings evolving over time? That's the first part. Secondly, given that these are mostly back-office-related savings, do you expect... Could you kind of give us a sense of expected revenue attrition from today's announcement? And then, finally, just kind of rounding that all up together, are we still looking at an approximate 70% cost-income ratio for the group over the medium term? I guess I haven't seen any reference to a target cost-income ratio, so I'd be interested to hear how you're thinking about longer-term profitability for the group, please. Thank you. Sure thing. Thank you for those questions. Well, let me hit the program that I'm gonna hand over to Jason in a moment, but the program has been designed to protect clients, protect the process of investing, and to protect relationship management. So we have not built into or expect asset attrition or revenue attrition. We've actually, as you know, we've completed most of our fund rationalization that we previously shared with you. This program has been designed to have minimal impact upon the front office. Let me hand over to Jason for the other two elements- Sure. of that question. ... Thanks, Nicholas, for the question. Overall, the program we've announced is GBP 150 million of cost removal, and between now and the end of 2025, we'll hit the run rate. I mean, what we say in the statement is a GBP 60 million benefit to P&L in 2024. That's a net figure for the group overall. Beyond 2024, we will expect some growth in expenses in Adviser and Personal. But the GBP 150 million you can see is, we're saying 80% of it is coming out of the Investments business, so around GBP 120 million, and GBP 30 million, primarily, if not exclusively, in the group strategic costs. That is an absolute removal there, but there will be some growth in the Adviser and Personal business. I think within our envelope, there will be some opportunity to reinvest, but I see that as, you know, further down the path, more of a 2025, 2026 issue as we do push, you know, or we prioritize cost reduction in the near term. In terms of... We have not established a cost-income ratio that we're aiming for. You know, this will move us materially toward sort of industry averages across the piece. You know, we think this is a significant program, and it will make the business considerably more profitable. Thank you. Thank you for that. If I could just one final follow-up. Stephen, you've been at abrdn for three and a half years now. I guess, the group has always kind of stood out a little bit in terms of being, having a heavy non-comp cost structure. Why are you only doing this now? Certainly, thank you for your question. So first and foremost, what we did when I joined the group, we first focused on strengthening the relationship with Phoenix, which was our largest client, which we did, and we renewed them until 2031, and we have an excellent relationship with them. In fact, you can see strong BPA flow coming from them. Secondly, we established the three-vector model, and the reason we did that was because we wanted to take the listed state capital from India, primarily, and invest in areas of higher growth. So we acquired Interactive Investor, and that established a leader in U.K. savings and wealth. The group has benefited enormously from that investment, and in fact, as you can see in these reported numbers, Interactive Investor continues to grow and take share during 2023, in spite of a tough environment. We made commitments to rationalize our fund range from over 700 to less than 400. We have completed the bulk of that, and as you know, the global Investments busines s, complex regulated business, we've refocused on areas of strength, which is specialist equities, fixed income, and alternatives. What we're now doing, and we promised GBP 75 million of net cost reduction in 2023, which we fully delivered. What this change that we have announced today, which is a step change, is about having a lighter corporate center, such that the three businesses are entirely responsible for product delivery, process, technology, competitive responses. That's the model that we built. So we have, and you'll note, if you look at the numbers, we have reduced cost sequentially for all three years. The challenge has been that the revenues have fallen faster. The external environment, there was $1 trillion of outflows in 2022 across the market. There was $500 billion of outflows in 2023. Traditional light of asset management has had 30 consecutive months of outflows. So the environment has been tougher than we anticipated, but our design of our group and the rigor within which we have established this operating model is continues. Thank you very much. Thank you, mister. We'll now move to Hubert Lam calling from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Hi, it's actually Hubert Lam from Bank of America. I've got three questions, too. Firstly, on fee margin. The fee margin dropped significantly in the second half by two basis points, half on half. I know Jason mentioned a mix shift out of high margin equities, but is there more than that in terms of repricing, dropping the margin lower in second half? That's the first question. The second question is on cash margin and consumer duty. The FCA is asking you to get back to them by the end of January in the Dear CEO letter. I was just wondering what, if you can share with us your thoughts on cash margin and II, how we should think about it going forward, given the pressures the FCA is implementing. And lastly, on fund performance, can you share with us an update on your fund performance at the end of the year? I know if each one, about 58% of your funds were above benchmark. Well, what is that today? And can you also talk about your fund performance in equities and fixed income? Thank you. Thank you for those. There's a lot, a lot to unpack there. Jason, I'm gonna hand to you to talk about, fee margin and fund performance that we're focused on. Let me deal first of all, with the CEO letters and cash margin in II. So, I've said this before, but we welcomed the consumer duty focus because we believe that transparency in pricing, delivering high value for clients is the right way to serve the U.K. market. That's why we bought Interactive Investor who is well known as being a challenger in that market, with very high customer satisfaction and supporting growth rates. II have been incredibly transparent in the interest rate increases that we give. If you Google them right now, you'll see a table pop up, and you'll see the interest rates that we have, that we pay and our clients enjoy. We have responded already to the Dear CEO letters, because in a very detailed manner. We are confident that the overall value proposition that we provide is high value, is enjoyed by customers, has transparent and explicit pricing because it's a subscription-based model. We believe that we will continue to be able to take share in the U.K. because of the unique value proposition and the way that we deliver in Interactive Investor. So I think we're in a strong position there. Let me hand to Jason to address the other two pieces of the question. Okay. So, morning, Hubert. On the, the fee margin, I mean, it is basically what I said, that we've seen a shift in the AUM, you know, from, slightly, you know, from higher margin equities, and alternatives to slightly lower margin liquidity and fixed income. We, that's partly market movements, it's partly the gross flows, you know, and there is, you know, a small delta between, you know, the new business, which is coming on slightly lower margin, some of the old business that's going off, that's sort of going on, you know, within that. So there's a, there are a few moving parts, across that piece. But we haven't given, fund performance updates. I mean, the trends are not dissimilar from what was discussed at the half year. We know fixed income continues to perform well, and equities is, you know, under Peter Branner and Devan's leadership, you know, very focused on redressing some of the issues that they've had and improving the performance within that. That is at the heart of the overall program, is to make sure that we protect and then we enhance investment performance, and there's no ambiguity about that. And the way that we've gone about setting up the group for success is to absolutely focus on investment performance. Yeah, let me just add a little bit of color there. I mean, we have—as you know, we have a high proportion of assets that are about 38% of equities are APAC, 23% are EM, 3% China, 15% UK, 21% world equities. So we do over-index to Asia, and that has, because EM's been somewhat out of favor, that has been a challenge. But we are seeing very strong interest, RFP flow into these strategies as people prepare for the next stage of development of the world economy. So I think that it's been challenged, and you saw the equity outflows that we refer to. But the combination of our focus on improving performance, Peter's been in for almost a year now. Peter and Devan, and team have actually implemented a whole series of investment process improvements because we are focused on turning that number around, and we're confident that we're gonna get there. Great, thank you. Thank you much, sir. We'll now go to Enrico Bolzoni from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead, sir. Thank you. Good morning. Three questions from me, please. So the first one is just a clarification. If I look at the expected cost reduction, is it fair therefore to expect a year-on-year decline, sequential decline on the Investments vector in 2024 versus 2023, and then in 2025 versus 2024? While if I look at the other division, considering the reinvestment, we might actually not see a sequential decline year-on-year in costs. This is the first question. My second question is on the Adviser vector, also in light of recent reports from some of your peers. The flows were, as you say, they were a bit weak there. Can you just give us an update in terms of what do you see from a competitive landscape standpoint? Are things evolving in a way that you didn't expect? There's more competition or anything else we should be aware of? My final question, I guess, will be more generic. In light of these cost savings and reinvestments, shall we expect any change in terms of dividend policy or whether additional buybacks in the future would be more likely or less likely? Thank you. Okay, so, If I deal with the first one. Yeah, please go ahead, Jason. Yeah. So as I said in my prepared remarks, the GBP 60 million benefit is to group operating expenses in the P&L. The overall program is targeted at Investments and the group and strategic costs, known as other and corporate going forward. We do expect some growth in the Adviser and Interactive Investor costs, but that's a much smaller percentage, you know, of the overall group. So even, you know, even with that, given the scale of this program, group operating expenses will be coming down across the piece. Those two, those two segments will continue to grow modestly. They're already efficient, but there'll be some modest growth in the expenses there. Let me talk about the Adviser business. We shared with you before that we did a very substantial tech upgrade last year in the spring. That was the first time in 17 years that we were able to really invest in improving the experience for the independent financial advisors that use our platform. We had challenges as we did it. It was these large, complex tech programs are tough, and we had challenges, particularly in the summer. We have internally a focus on the timeliness of all of our service indicators, all the transaction processing indicators, and we've now got them all back to green, which is very important in terms of having the business set up out there competing. We should, we're telling you today that, you know, net asset value is up 2%, benefiting from market movements, but we had net out GBP 1.5 billion in the second half. We haven't seen. We mentioned that the environment has been tough, cost of living pressures. We have seen clients deaccumulate faster. That's really what that number is that we shared with you, as they've coped with the, you know, inflation and cost of living pressures. We should expect those to ameliorate over time, but mostly, we should expect us to be back competing hard for business. And, you know, we'll talk more about that at the full year, and we'll have Noel address that topic at the full year. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Bolzoni. Next question today will be coming from Andrew Crean, calling from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Good morning, all. Could I ask a number of questions? Firstly, to be clear around the base rates. If base rates come down to 3%, do you think your own cash margin will be unaffected? Certainly, Hargreaves have given that indication, but that's before we did see the letter. Secondly, could you talk about. You say that you're gonna come in line with your consensus. Could you actually give us what the consensus is? And then thirdly, this is the second round of cost cutting, GBP 225 million cost cuts, substantial, particularly in the investment business. If markets don't recover in time, what is your plan B? Is there further cuts which can be made, or is it really just doldrums? Terrific. Thank you, Andrew, for those. So base rates, what's consensus, numbers we're using, and plan B. Jason, do you want to pick up on those? Sure. So, I'll start with the easiest one. So consensus of the 12 analysts that we've looked at, we've got, for op profit, we've got a mean of 247 and a median of 239. That's not everybody, and the Bloomberg and FactSet source is slightly higher than that. They picked up a couple of older, discontinued ones. So when we say consensus for op, just to be clear, that's what I'm looking at, is those two figures. We'll publish this in due course. But obviously, it might change slightly. And for cap gen, which is a fewer people provide this, but we see consensus as 303, and that's the number we've got from, I think that's about 7 or 8 numbers. So just to deal with that one. I mean, base rates, obviously, if it moved that much, you know, we would have to think about, you know, how that would affect, you know, the cash margin that we are currently moving. I think with more modest reductions, you would expect, you know, a similar level of cash between. I think when you say own cash, I think you're thinking about Interactive and Adviser, but I'll talk about both. So there would be some, you know, adjustment, given the percentage, you know, if that was a material reduction. I couldn't give you a figure on the hoof, you know, for that. Obviously, for group, we've got around GBP 1.8-GBP 1.9 billion of cash and liquid resources invested, and then we make a yield that is just below, you know, bank base rate. Some of that is slightly longer invested, so there'd be a period where we'd perform higher, but eventually, that would catch up, you know, to something closer to base rate. I think that's where forecasts are a little bit low at the moment, is on that level of interest income that is coming through the group. In terms of the plan that we've set does not rely on markets recovering. Obviously, we'd expect flows to recover, but we haven't. We're not sitting here expecting, you know, to make materially higher revenues from a, you know, massive correction upwards in equity markets, for example, any of the other markets. You know, the cost position that we are going to move the company to will be resilient in the face of, you know, different market conditions. We will have a higher variable component as we look forward. But clearly, we're confident, you know, that we can turn around the flow position, which will require a number of things to happen in it to set the business up, you know, for more profitable growth into the future. Okay, thanks. Thank you, sir. Next question today will be from Bruce Hamilton of Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead, sir. Hi, morning, and thanks for taking my questions. Firstly, just on the revenue margins in the asset management or, sorry, in the Investments business, obviously, those came down quite a bit, and you've explained why, and that all makes good sense. But I assume the, given 22.4 is the average for the second half, and you saw kind of flows throughout from higher margin, I'm assuming the exit could be a fair bit lower than that. If you could give any sense on that, if that's sort of, you know, 21 basis points or 20 basis points or whatever, that would be helpful. And then anything around your sort of confidence on flow recovery. I mean, it sounds like obviously the, your performance is improving, but still quite tough. And then secondly, and sorry, I may have missed this earlier, but in terms of the sort of capital return planning and distribution policy, given the downgrade, the GBP 150 million cost to achieve, which I guess is a cash cost, how are you thinking about the, you know, the strengths of the capital position and any ability to, you know, do further buybacks or support the dividend? And where are we with the FCA, sort of discussion around perhaps, you know, reassessing your capital requirements? Thank you. Okay, I'll take the first one, if that's okay. So the revenue margins, you know, were under pressure, as we said, for the reasons I set out. We're not giving more precise figures than that, but you can imagine, you know, there was some movement across the two quarters. The Tekla did come in, which is a small, but not insignificant benefit to revenue margin that came in sort of mid-October. So there's a little bit of movement in the other direction as well. I won't give you sort of forecast margins for 2024. You know, I think we would did want to make it clear, you know, where margins did end in terms of the second half overall for 2023. I think on capital, we remain a very strongly capitalized business. We've got significant excess capital today, common equity and as a total basis. I think what I'm going to do is park this conversation until February the twenty-seventh. We've got further inputs to come, and so I've got further work to do, frankly, just to piece all this together, and I'd rather think about capital allocation, capital return, and deal with it comprehensively. You know, today's about flows, quarterly reporting, and cost reduction. Can you say anything on the flow recovery? Hi, Bruce. Let me talk a little bit about it. We had some very significant wins last year, which are in the won not funded category. You know that we won the Border to Coast deal, which is GBP 2.5 billion, which is won not funded. So that was one which we expect to fund in 2024. When we analyze our total, we do two things: We look at our total pipeline, we look at won not funded, but we also look at wins not yet redeemed, and our won not funded exceeds that quite considerably. I'll not give you all the client names, I'm not allowed to, but the Border to Coast one's been announced. In Asia, we have a couple of significant wins as well, which I can't disclose the client names, but I can tell you they're in APAC. So I think that the deployment there, there's about GBP 3 billion that I'm looking at here that we'll deploy in 2024. We also have and then we track through the sales pipeline, we look at all the bids and RFPs that we're doing, and we've got about 14% increase in RFPs within equities. So we're beginning to see some of that rotation of client interest into our equity positions. We struggled a bit last year because the China recovery had impacts across Asia, and there was more of a value tilt to the factors that outperformed and issued with our long-term quality book. So we expect that to benefit as the rotation continues. Helpful. Thank you very much indeed. Thank you, Mr. Hamilton. Our next question today is coming from Gregory Simpson, calling from BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead. Morning. Yeah, three questions maybe. On II, the release mentions 6,000 migrations from investments, and so if you exclude this, it doesn't look like client numbers moved that much in the year. Are you maybe surprised at this, given the strong value proposition and that you've invested in the marketing? Anything on the kind of outlook around II client growth going forwards. Second question was on cash margins. I think in H1, the cash margin was 2.2%-2.3% in Adviser and II. Has it held up around that level in H2? And then further on, on M&A, I just wanted to check if the cost save plans involve any planned sales of, of businesses like, like you've done with private equity, or are all the plans, organic in nature? Thank you. Ask him to clarify. We didn't catch his name. Yeah, so we lost you right at the start of that. Could you just... We didn't catch your name?... Could you just give us your name and repeat those questions? Yeah. Sorry, hope you can hear me. It's Greg Simpson from BNP Paribas. The first one was just on Interactive Investor. If the client numbers had the 6,000, those 6,000 migrations, and so if you exclude that, there was limited client growth in the year. Just wanted to talk about the drivers given you have a strong value proposition and the outlook. And then the second question was on the cash margin. It was 2.2-2.3 in the platforms in H1. You know, was it around that level in H2? And then the third one was, were the cost plans involve any planned sales or businesses like you do in private equity? Thank you. You want to cover this, Jason? Yeah, I'll just... Sure. So, in reverse order, we know this is a cost reduction plan, which is not reliant on, you say, explicitly we're not relying on, the announced divestment of the private equity business in Europe. So that's, that's the first one. This will be around actually cost removing operating expense from the business. Yes, so cash margin in H2 was similar in H to H1 across the II business. I think what we say in the release on growth in Interactive Investor is the growth excluding the run-off, and we gave that disclosure previously, and then the report was 3.6%. It's a couple of books that were purchased overall. But you're right, you know, there is a reinvigorated focus on organic growth with some expense associated with that, and the business is absolutely focused on gaining market share in its traditional business and SIPPs. You know, we expect to update you, you know, further as they do that. We're pretty excited about that. Yeah, I mean, just a little bit more on that. I mean, Interactive Investor had net flows of GBP 3.3 billion in the year. You'll see that there are external market reports already published for the numbers through Q3, and we had the highest net flow in the industry in those published numbers. We can get them to you if you want to see them. We actually gained share in our share of trading. We gained share in our share of SIPPs, and as you can see, that's a pretty strong asset number. So there's a few ins and outs because you got to look at what is the core book ex the divestments. And when you do that, yeah, we're pretty comfortable that our competitive position improved through the year. Thank you. Thank you very much, sir. We'll now move to Steven Haywood of HSBC. Please go ahead. Thank you very much, and good morning. Yeah, a few questions from me, please. Firstly, just following on the II customer numbers, could you explain the migration program here? Has it been done? Is there more to come from investments to II? And then you mentioned the 100,000 customers in run-off at II. At what rate do you expect that to run off, and sort of how much AUA is attributable here? Secondly, this might be very difficult to answer, but you gave sort of market flows for 2022 and 2023. Is there any forecast out there that you know about or your indications for 2024 market flows for active asset managers? That would be obviously very useful for everyone. And then finally from me, at the full year results, should we expect any strategic update, any new group targets to come? Thank you. So I'll cover a couple of those things. So yes, there is more growth to be accessed in the group for II. That was a relatively small portion that we did. As you can see, on the 6,000, there's quite a significant transfer that will take place this year from the Investments business. You can think of them as orphaned clients or clients that were sitting without a platform, but a significant investment who will be served better in II. So there is another boost coming from that. But the team is resolutely focused on winning the external market. We went above the line with TV advertising in the fourth quarter. We've had a pretty robust start. I can't give you numbers. We'll give you more insight at the full year, but we've had a pretty robust start to the year, so we're pretty confident in the way that we're trading in II. In terms of the industry expectation, I mentioned the GBP 1 trillion out, GBP 500 billion out. The industry expectation is about 2% inflow in 2024. So, basically, if you take the 2022, 2023 as the, you know, sharpest rise in rates in over 40 years, and if you then model out what is fairly modest, so peak rate assumptions and, you know, cuts in 2024, that starts to see a rotation back into risk assets. So the industry's fairly cautious. I attended a dinner week past Tuesday with most of the providers, and there was, there were a few external sources of market commentary, and the external sources of market commentary were arriving at a sort of consensus of a 2% inflow. So I think we, yeah, we're, we're not counting on it. So the actions we are taking today are about controlling our own destiny, getting our cost structure in the right place, crystallizing the final shape of the group of three businesses with a light corporate center. But the best number I can give you is a 2% inflow. I think on II migrations, we don't expect any more done. No, no, we do. Further from Investments. There's further investment, significant customer and migrations coming in this year, yeah. We always- That's your question, Mr. Haywood. Yeah, well, we always described, we always described it as two pieces. There was a small piece- Okay. -which would happen before year-end, and the more, the larger piece would happen during 2024. So, and that's completely in train. Okay. On the run-off side of II? I don't have... I don't know, Steven, you got a number. I don't have a number. I'll probably pick that one up with you afterwards. We'll follow up on our prior disclosures on the quantum, yeah. Yeah. We'll provide the disclosure similarly to we did in 2022, you know, with the full year results to show the movement in the book, in those books that we're referencing today with the total customer numbers, so you can see the pattern that we reference in the statements. We'll break out at the full year our SIPP growth, which has been robust, as well. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much, Mr. Haywood. Ladies and gentlemen, as a reminder, if you have any questions and follow-up questions, please press star one. We'll now move to Mr. Oliver Carruthers of Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Hi there. Morning, it's Oliver Carruthers from Goldman. Two quick questions, please. The first one, is the GBP 150 million cost save target based on the 2023 P&L OpEx number, or is it the 2023 exit number? And are you able to clarify where you see the 2023 exit OpEx number, just so that we can have a base in mind? That's the first question. And the second question, at the half year results in July, René talked to a strong flow pipeline into fixed income. Where do we stand today on this, and what does it take to convert this pipeline into decent flows? Thank you. Okay, I'll take the cost one. It is based on the 2023 actual number, and it's a reduction from that. And as I said, you know, I'm not giving you the actual closing cost figure for 2023, but we are slightly lower than consensus than the actual, where we take group operating expenses overall, if that's some help to you. Generally, the base, so the exit number is lower than the actual as well, because of the net save, GBP 75 million in the Investments vector in 2023. I mean, a lot of that was done, actually pretty well done in the first half and through the year. So that wasn't a... That was a GBP 75 million achieved in the year program, so across the board. So that was not a run rate figure, that was an actually achieved figure. So that is in the number that I've just referenced for the lower operating expenses. Yeah, and in terms of fixed income, I mean, we had. It's fair to say at the half year, we were anticipating peak rates and a more aggressive rotation into fixed income. You can think of that, I think, probably as a bit of a lag, because it's becoming more apparent. We will break that out in detail at our full year, on the 27th. Okay. Thank you. Well, sir. We now move to Mandeep Jagpal of RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead, sir. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. Just two, please. First one is on net flows and investment. Are you able to provide a split for the FY 2023 net flows between institutional and retail wealth separately? And how do the trends between these two types of clients differ over the year? And also, you talk about the structural headwinds facing the industry. And how do you specifically kind of think of the, of what are the, kind of, the major ones facing abrdn as you head into 2024? And, yeah, how do you think this will impact your ability to turn around the net flows investment vector? Sorry, we're really struggling to hear you. Could you move closer to your mic and repeat those? Yeah, sure. Hopefully, that's a bit better. The first question was on net flows in investment. Are you able to provide the split between institutional and retail wealth, and how the trends between these two types of clients differed over the year? And the second one was on the structural headwinds. You know, what do you see these are specifically for abrdn going forward, and how do you expect to overcome them to turn around net flows in the investment vector? Okay, so we will provide all the detail, the splits and the asset class splits, institutional wholesale on the 27th of February. But this is a trading update, unaudited, so we won't be doing it here. In terms of the structural headwinds, I mentioned, you know, GBP 1.1 trillion out, GBP 500 billion out. So, you know, negative flows across traditional active. The largest headwind in the short term has been the rise of the risk-free rate. So a massive rotation into cash, which is what we've seen. The longer term structural headwinds have been the rise of index-based investing, whether it be ETFs or some form of index-based investing. And also the growth of alternatives, private markets, whether it be real estate, logistics, infrastructure, credit. So we have actually a large alternatives business. I made reference to the Border to Coast win, which is a real estate win, which we'll fund during 2024. So we have focused on growing our alts franchise. We've got a good private credit business, we've got an infrastructure business, we've got a strong real estate business. We acquired Tritax, which is a strong warehousing and logistics franchise. So you would expect us to continue to do that, which we will do. We've - we're sizing this group for being a specialist equities in house. So a specialist equities house, think emerging markets, think Asia, and you know, the growth of India, which is positive, and Japan is having a positive run. We have investments significantly in both of those places. So I think the specialist equities franchise is a good one and has been. You know, we have scaled out of, if you think global large cap as a way of accessing beta, you've got to be a specialist equities investor. Our fixed income franchise is incredibly strong. It's our largest single franchise. It comes from our heritage of being a strong pensions investor. We have very robust investment performance across that franchise, something like greater than 72% outperformance across one, three, and five in the fixed income franchise. So the way we are addressing this market challenge is firstly, making sure that we're differentiated within investments. We've got a program of improving investment performance, but the shape of the group is specifically designed to play into the trend of increasing democratization of finance. People taking responsibility for their own pensions. Everybody having a pension on their phone. The Interactive Investor business is in exactly the right spot with the right value proposition in U.K. savings and wealth. We've retooled the Adviser business in order to be able to serve intermediaries efficiently and with the right services. And we think the combination of having content, distinctive investing content, delivered through platforms, is the right model for a business that is facing disruption. If you're not doing those things, if you're not addressing those major shifts in buyer behavior and the use of technology, we think that you're gonna miss out. Thank you much, sir. As we have no further questions at this time, let's turn the conference back over to Mr. Bird for any additional or closing remarks. Thank you. Terrific. Well, thank you very much for joining us for this trading update. This is a serious business. We have sized this transformation program to get the group to the right shape, to allow each of the three businesses to not only survive, but to thrive. And we believe that we're gonna restore the profitability to our Investments business to a much more acceptable level. And you will see us do it with pace and vigor. Thank you for joining us, and we'll see you on the twenty-seventh of February.