Good morning. Welcome to the Chesnara Full Year 2023 Results Presentation. I'm Steve Murray, Group Chief Executive, and with me today is Dave Rimmington, our Group Finance Director. Dave and I are hosting the presentation from RBC's offices in London today, and as well as those of you in the room with us here, I know we have a great number of people dialing in from across the world, including Chesnara colleagues from Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Thank you for joining. So what will we cover this morning? Well, I'll start by looking at how we've been continuing to deliver against our strategy, and also our headline financial results. Dave will then cover those results in more detail, and I'll finish looking at our current views on the M&A market and our future areas of focus. We'll have plenty of time for questions at the end of our presentation. Those of you watching online, you can send us questions during the presentation, and for those of you in the room, we'll hand a microphone round at the end. Now, the four key areas set out on this slide are at the heart of what we do at Chesnara every day, and these remain unchanged. Firstly, we've strong line of sight across a variety of sources of value growth and long-term cash generation, which in turn supports our longstanding progressive dividend policy. 2023 has seen a return to Economic Value growth and continued strong cash generation. Our Solvency II balance sheet remains strong and continues to be highly resilient to market volatility, and our Solvency II ratio has further increased this year. Thirdly, we have a great track record of delivering acquisitions, and this provides our investors with a further opportunity for growth. We've got continued momentum here with two deals secured in the year, and we're also seeing a positive acquisition pipeline in 2024. Finally, we have a management team and board that are highly focused on creating sustainable shareholder value, and we've strengthened the management team again this year over the course of 2023. So let's look at some of the highlights from 2023. The acquisition of an insurance portfolio from Conservatrix in the Netherlands was completed on the 1st of January. In May, we announced a U.K. acquisition, a protection portfolio from Canada Life with a reinsurance agreement supporting that deal implemented in H1. As a reminder, together these deals have added GBP 28 million of Economic Value to the group. We've seen strong commercial cash generation in the period of GBP 53 million, providing ample coverage of the dividend. In contrast to 2022, our Economic Value grew, with acquisitions and equity market growth being the material drivers here. Our solvency ratio is strengthened to 205%. This is substantially above our normal operating range of 140%-160%, and that provides significant headroom to support future acquisitions. We also delivered improved commercial new business profits of GBP 10 million, including a contribution from the U.K. for the first time. Finally, off the back of the strong performance this year, we have yet again announced a 3% increase in our full year dividend, and that continues our 19-year track record of dividend growth, and we know our shareholders continue to value the stability and consistency of our dividend policy. It's also been a highly productive year on operational delivery. The transition and integration activity that we're undertaking in the U.K. continues at pace, with a Part VII transfer of Sanlam Life and Pensions policies completed in December, and adding positively to our financial results. And the integration of the Conservatrix portfolio in the Netherlands was also completed earlier in the year. In May, we announced a long-term strategic partnership in the U.K. for policy administration with SS&C Technologies, which gives us access to a more modern platform, wider capability, and capacity from this large global technology player. And access to this modern platform and wider capability, along with a commercial construct that encourages both parties to bring in further scale, will be a positive enabler for our U.K. M&A strategy. Our teams across Chesnara have been working very hard to implement IFRS 17 reporting, with the results that Dave will show you shortly, the accumulation of five years of work. On Consumer Duty, we remain on track for the July deadline for U.K. closed books, having already successfully met the earlier deadline for open books. As well as our established Consumer Duty program, there have been regular product reviews and fair value assessments for a great many years here at Chesnara. We don't foresee there being any material commercial impact on the group when the July implementation date is reached. We've also undertaken further management actions in the period, including implementing a new reinsurance agreement for part of the U.K. book to protect against a mass lapse scenario. We rolled forward and slightly broadened the FX hedge that we introduced last year. We've also been busy on the people side, where we've transitioned leadership across Scildon, the U.K., and Movestic. Pauline Derkman joined us as Scildon CEO, with extensive insurance experience from companies including Aegon, a.s.r., and PwC. Jackie Ronson joined as our U.K. CEO, with 25 years of experience across a range of financial services and other industries. And in December, we announced that Sara Lindberg was being appointed as CEO of Movestic, having impressively stepped into the interim CEO role in August. We also announced in December that Dave Rimmington had agreed with the Chesnara board that he would not be seeking reelection as a director at the AGM in May, and would be stepping down as Group Finance Director after 10 years in the role. And at the same time, we announced that Tom Howard would be joining from Aviva as our Group CFO and Executive Director of the company, subject to regulatory approval. Tom's a highly experienced CFO with over 25 years of industry experience across asset management and insurance, as well as having great experience in M&A as well. Tom starts with us on the 15th of April and will join us for our investor roadshow. And finally, on sustainability, we've now set out our initial interim reduction targets on our investments, commonly known as financed emissions, as well as publishing our second annual sustainability report, which you can find on our website. So with that, I'll hand over to Dave, who'll take you through the results in more detail. Over to you, Dave. Morning, all. Thanks, Steve. Steve says this will be my last time presenting the results, and I'm pleased to be going out with somewhat we believe very strong numbers. So starting with a bit of background, as I tend to do, just a reminder of the economic conditions during the period which impact our results. So looking at these in turn, equity markets across our territories were generally positive, recovering a good proportion of the losses we saw in 2022. In particular, you can see the Swedish OMX index, which you might not be so familiar with, doing very well. Interest rates have been relatively volatile during the year, but from start to finish, we've seen a relatively modest reduction in yields in all territories. Somehow, sterling managed to strengthen against both the EUR and the SEK, and credit spreads widened in Europe and narrowed in the U.K., with kind of pretty much a net neutral position. So if I move on to what did that do in terms of the impact on our results? So taking equities, you can see that's had a relatively sizable positive impact on Economic Value, GBP 21 million. And it's also, if we look through the Symmetric Adjustment, which is a feature of Solvency II, which requires us to hold more capital in growing equity markets, tends to be a temporary feature. But looking through the Symmetric Adjustment, that equity growth has also had a positive impact on cash generation of about GBP 7 million. The reducing yield environment's been positive for both cash and Economic Value, about GBP 10 million apiece. Credit spreads, because as I said, they were offsetting a relatively modest and almost insignificant impact. And then you move to FX. The FX movements, the strengthening of the pound, has had a GBP 11 million negative impact on the value of the company, but a much less marked impact on cash generation, which was helped in part by the FX hedge we put in place at the back end of 2022. And then finally, inflation. We all know inflation remained relatively high for the year, but it's coming down. And because we'd already baked that profile into our opening valuation, we've been very little exposure to inflation over the year. So they're the macro impacts. So what's that done to our financial highlights? So I'll just highlight at this point some of the main features of the scorecard and then take you through each one in turn. So I note firstly, a strong commercial cash result of GBP 53 million, which is 150% coverage of our annual dividend. Really pleased to report a growth in post-dividend Economic Value from GBP 511 million to GBP 525 million. Strong closing solvency position, in fact, at an all-time record high. Moving to IFRS, because I'll walk onto the IFRS results at some point, because it's the first year of IFRS 17, we're really pleased to report an increase in the IFRS capital base and a relatively sharp reduction in our leverage ratio. So a really strong set of financial highlights. Moving through to cash generation. Quick recap here. How do we define cash? Our base cash generation result is, in essence, a movement in Solvency II surplus. What that means is it's impacted by some of the more technical components of Solvency II. So we create a secondary measure called commercial cash, which quite simply backs out some of those more technical features, not least the Symmetric Adjustment. So focusing on commercial cash, you can see the divisions have generated about GBP 73 million of cash, almost twice the annual dividend. And after adjusting for central items, that remains GBP 53 million. And encouragingly, all divisions, all sectors have got positive cash results. The results did benefit from two management actions. We have taken out some Mass Lapse reinsurance in the U.K., and we benefited by about GBP 30 million from the change in the Solvency II rules as part of the PRA Solvency II reforms. So moving on to a slightly more simplistic view of cash, the cash in the bank. We started the year with GBP 108 million and reassuringly ended with GBP 124 million, which is helpful. How did that happen? Well, the dividend receipts from the divisions of 2021 were larger than the parent company outflows, which are in the form of dividend payments, debt funding, and working capital. So really great to see that central bank account getting healthier. We expect GBP 50 million of dividends to flow through to the parent company at some point during Q2, based on the 2023 proposed dividends, which we expect to cover the general outflows during 2024. So we would expect everything else being equal, that bank balance to remain relatively stable over time. And just a point to note, there's a fair amount of surplus retained in our overseas divisions. So although we're getting the dividend flow up, most of our overseas divisions are still slightly overcapitalized, so there's potential there for further. So cash looks good. This slide takes a kind of forward-looking view on cash. What it highlights, broadly to scale, apart from the acquisitions block, and what it's highlighting is that we have three relatively predictable and secure sources of future cash. And that's what the purple blocks are showing. We get runoff in SCR. We get real-world returns, which might not happen every period, but over time, you would expect them. And then we take management actions. And what this illustrates is those three sources of future cash are larger than the expected outflows in the form of dividend payments and Tier 2 debt financing. Now, of course, acquisitions, it's difficult to draw the scale on that because it depends what acquisitions would do. But from an illustrative point of view, what this is saying is that as we do deals, we should add cash generation potential to the business, as has been the case for the deals we've done in the year. So the cash outlook looks strong. Moving on to solvency. I think a key feature of solvency for the kind of 12 years I've been at Chesnara is a huge level of stability in that headline solvency ratio. And this is illustrated if you look at this waterfall and you take the central five components on the waterfall, they net to zero. So basically, the BAU items, yet again, are creating a huge amount of solvency stability. You've then got two exceptional items. The deals in the year had a small negative impact on the solvency ratio. This is quite normal. We tend to expect deals, especially those which are non-equity funded, do create a temporary solvency strain. In actual fact, that 8% impact was better than we expected when we did the deal benefit assessments. And there's a slightly technical positive of 2016, where we changed how we account for the Tier 2 debt. Last year, we were accounting it for on a book value, and now we're accounting for on a fair value, which we think is a more technically appropriate approach. And that's had a positive impact on the solvency ratio. So all in all, as I said earlier, great closing solvency position, all-time high. And just a quick reminder, we don't have any transitional benefits baked into that. So looking at growth, slightly an underreported metric sometimes, but really great to see that we've delivered Economic Value growth post-dividend. Strong earnings in the year of GBP 59 million, as Steve mentioned, largely from M&A, but also positive real-world returns. So looking at a slightly different view of growth, you might recall a few years ago, we introduced a concept called the Chesnara Fan, which was really to illustrate where we see future growth potential. And, I don't know what color it is, actually. The turquoise blocks on this are the areas where we see growth potential. And what you can see in the top right is, in the year, all of them have been materially positive. So the Chesnara Fan is alive and kicking. I should note that in the opposite direction, we've had some operating variances in the period, and we do, of course, have outgoing costs in terms of the debt servicing. But overall, the net impact of the Fan has been a 12% growth in Economic Value pre-FX and dividend. So we remain confident about long-term growth. New business. Modest increase. Slight reduction in the overseas territories. Conditions do have remained relatively difficult, but we're comfortable with these levels of profits in the overseas divisions. We'd like them to kind of tick up a little bit, but we're comfortable at this level. And there's been a really welcome contribution from the U.K.. We've not moved into new business in the U.K., for the avoidance of doubt. But when we bought Sanlam, they were selling an onshore bond through a third-party model. And there's a bit of profit in it, so we've kept that open. And there might be a little bit more in that space, but it's a welcome uplift. But we're not moving big time into new business in the U.K. But good new business results. And then finally, last but not least, our friend IFRS. So this is the first year of IFRS 17 results. Personally, I'm pleased by the lack of drama we've had because it's been like a 20-year in the making, and it's kept me awake for a fair few of those 20 years. But just a bit of background on IFRS 17 or IFRS before we move on to the results. A reminder that only 42% of our portfolio is actually classified as insurance. So IFRS 17 has only affected less than half of our business. And this is important because when you've got the CSM, which is the future profit store which IFRS 17 has generated, and we've got about GBP 127 post-tax, that's the future profit of only a proportion of our business. So we've got future profit potential from investment contracts of a similar amount. It's also important to just remind people that IFRS 17 has done nothing to change the underlying real fundamentals of the business. It's not changed solvency. It's not changed cash flow. It's not changed long-term value. And therefore, it's had no impact on our views on dividend potential. So moving on to the results themselves, we've created a KPI called IFRS capital base, which is basically the sum of the IFRS equity and the CSM. We think it's important that they're looked at in conjunction. And this waterfall is showing that that IFRS capital base has increased from GBP 469 to GBP 487 post-dividend. So what are the moving parts? The moving parts are, firstly, the movement in the CSM. The deals in the year have added a significant amount, GBP 57 million. So that's more future profit we've bought into the group. And it's really good to see that the new business, actually, operations are adding CSM, which confirms that that new business profitability we refer to is being recognized on the IFRS balance sheet as well. Then you've got the actual comprehensive income during the year of GBP 10.3 million. That's a profit after tax of GBP 18.7 million. And then moving in the opposite direction is a small FX hit, but a positive overall comprehensive income in the period. And then finally, you've got the outflow of the dividend of GBP 35 million. But we're pleased that we've managed to grow the IFRS capital base. So I don't normally do a recap, but seeing as this is going to be my last time, I would just like to kind of summarize the results in a way. How I see it, all live companies have kind of 5 key financial building blocks. There's long-term value, IFRS capital base, cash generation, solvency, and leverage. And I'm really pleased to go out with a clean sweep of positives on all of those metrics. We've increased the Economic Value post-dividend. We've increased the IFRS capital base. We've covered the dividend from cash gen by 150%. We've got a record level of solvency, and our leverage ratios were reduced below 30 when last year ended with 37. So I can't think of many periods I've been here when we've had a clean sweep on all 5. And I think it's a relatively unique situation. So mic drop. Thanks, Dave. So a nice segue then into our future areas of focus. So on this slide, we've set out the three things that we do here at Chesnara. So firstly, we maximize the value from our in-force books of business. We now look after around 1 million customers across Europe and the U.K. who rely on us to provide their life cover, pensions and savings, and other products. And as Dave highlighted, the books of business we have continue to deliver significant amounts of cash, and we see plenty of opportunities to deliver further synergies and take further management actions in the future, such as the U.K. mass lapse reinsurance and the widened FX hedge that I mentioned earlier. Secondly, we seek to deliver value-adding acquisitions of portfolios and businesses. Our activity over the last two years demonstrates that the M&A part of our strategy is working, with two acquisitions delivered in 2023. And in the U.K., our new partnership with SS&C should provide a positive enabler for the U.K. leg of our M&A strategy. And we start 2024 with a positive acquisition pipeline, and we have the financing options to execute opportunities across a wide range of deal sizes. And importantly, we see no material barriers to us doing further M&A in the future. And finally, we write focused new business where we have a good level of confidence that we can make a profit. And we've seen an increase in commercial new business this year, including a contribution from the U.K. for the first time. Let's now turn to M&A. So as well as our own transactions, we've seen good levels of activity continuing across the U.K. and European insurance M&A market. And you can see some examples of the deals announced recently on the right-hand side of this slide. We're continuing to proactively engage with potential vendors and advisors across the U.K. and Netherlands, and we're actively assessing the Swedish market as well. We're seeing some larger potential transactions in our 2024 pipeline, as well as some of a similar size to the ones that we delivered in 2023. And over the course of 2023, as well as the deals that we did deliver, we actively engaged with vendors on several additional potential transactions. And those included some in the GBP 150 million-GBP 300 million consideration range. On the left-hand side of the slide, we've set out what we continue to see as the main drivers for insurers reshaping their books. These are, firstly, the simplification of product sets, operational and technology platforms, including legacy outsourcing arrangements. Secondly, a desire to release capital from disposal of non-core products to reinvest elsewhere. Thirdly, people refocusing on specific geographies. The majority of deals in our markets have continued to be portfolio transactions, where there are a smaller number of counterparties competing for these opportunities as an existing operating platform and regulatory license are required. This is an area where we have great experience. We will, of course, continue our disciplined approach in assessing future M&A. When it comes to M&A, Chesnara's key strengths remain unchanged. We strongly believe that these strengths will continue to enable us to compete successfully for acquisitions. As you can see here, we have the flexibility and available financing options to deliver a wide range of deals in terms of their product set, structure, and size. We'll continue to ensure that any deals result in us operating within or above a solvency ratio range of 140%-160%, maintaining our investment-grade rating with Fitch. Lastly, also ensuring we maintain appropriate levels of cash reserves, including consideration of capacity for further M&A. Overall, we see a positive 2024 pipeline, and we remain highly confident in our ability to deliver value-adding transactions. Looking now at sustainability, we'd previously committed to our first set of sustainability targets, which we show on this slide, along with some of the activity we've undertaken over the last year or so. As promised, we've also set out an initial interim target to reduce our Scope 1 and 2 Financed Emissions of our listed equity and corporate debt investments by 50% by 2030. To be clear, that's for those assets that we're able to exercise control or influence over, and that represents the majority of assets that we hold here at Chesnara. Looking forward, we expect to publish our more detailed transition plans next year. As Dave and I have shown, Chesnara has continued to deliver operationally and financially. We've seen strong cash generation, a return to EcV growth, and our group solvency ratio has also increased. We've further strengthened the senior leadership team during the year, as well as entering a strategic partnership with SS&C, which will further support our U.K. M&A strategy. We start 2024 with a positive M&A pipeline and remain optimistic about the prospect of delivering value-adding acquisitions in the future, following the additional two acquisitions that we've implemented in the period. It's fitting that, as we approach our 20th anniversary as a listed company in May, that we've yet again increased our full-year dividend for the 19th consecutive year in line with our longstanding progressive dividend policy. Now, the strong delivery this year would not have been possible without the tremendous efforts of colleagues across Chesnara. Thank you for everything that you've done to ensure we've delivered for our customers and wider stakeholders. Now, Dave mentioned earlier this will be the last time that Dave and I will be presenting our results together. Dave's a hugely popular figure both inside and outside of Chesnara. Over his 12 years at Chesnara, he's played a key role delivering the changes required for IFRS 17 and Solvency II, raising our Tier 2 debt, and of course, supporting the group's successful acquisition strategy. I wanted to thank Dave for everything he's done at Chesnara, and we wish him the very best in the future. He's leaving the business in a strong position with some exciting opportunities. Following another year of strong delivery, cash generation, and further M&A, I continue to believe there's a lot to look forward to here at Chesnara. So thank you for listening. What we'll now do is open up for questions. As always, I suggest we start in the room here in London. That allows those of you online to type your questions. I think, Mandeep, given that you're hosting today, I'll let the guests go first, if that's OK. I'll start with Abid. Roddy is on microphone. He's got a promotion today as microphone handler. Morning, all. It's Abid Hussain from Panmure Gordon. Congratulations on a good set of results there, and particularly given it's your last set, Dave, as well. I've got a few questions, but I'll limit myself to three and perhaps come back if there's time. So the first one is on management actions. I think it's slide 14 where you've highlighted the different sources of cash generation. And it looks like around a third of the future cash generation over the next five years will come from management actions. So just wondered if you could give us any more color on those sources and what gives you confidence that you can indeed secure those management actions. Then I've got two on M&A. So the first one on M&A is, I think, again, thank you for the slide on 25 where you've shown the various activity across the market. But I was just wondering, which of those deals, or indeed any other deals, did you participate in, choose to walk away? What was the competition like in the market? So that's sort of backwards looking. And then the second question on M&A is more forward-looking. I think you said there in your presentation that you are willing to go up the scale in terms of what you've previously said in terms of deal size. Just wondering, what's changed? What's driving that? Is it possibly that a larger peers is now focusing on organic new business growth and so less competition? Is it because private equity-backed players are facing a higher regulatory hurdle? So just any more color on that, please. Yeah. Do you want to start with management actions here? Yeah. So two things. What actions are in that bucket? The reality is, despite having done a little bit more reinsurance over the last few years, we're still not very heavily reinsured. So there's always more reinsurance we can take out. And actually, it's proved when we've been looking at the mass lapse reinsurance as an example, there's still more we could do in that area. But other forms of reinsurance would be in there, including slightly more radical things like reinsuring some of the VIF, particularly in Sweden. So the type of things we're looking at. Also, the FX hedge was probably the first time we've moved into hedging territory. Now, I don't think we envisage going hugely into kind of becoming a fully hedged business, but there's definitely more we can do on the hedging front to just de-risk somewhat and therefore release capital and create a bit of cash. And I think, to some extent, when the company chooses to do those management actions, will depend on how well the other two blocks have performed. So we're not necessarily committing to do management actions every year as a matter of course. We do them when we think it's appropriate and required. I think the other thing I'd say, Dave, and I use this slide when we present the business plan to the group board as well to give people a level of confidence in that underlying kind of cash generation. So part of the reason for continuing to put this in the presentation is to give people a strong feel for where that cash can come from. So having that kind of basket of management actions and the interesting thing about those is they can change over time. Particularly if you do M&A, that creates some different opportunities as well to accelerate cash generation and do other things. Generating synergies clearly also creates some cash generation as well. So we feel good about that. So on M&A, I'll deal with maybe the backward question first and then the forward-looking one. So I think when you participate in M&A, you sign up to NDAs and all that sort of stuff. So it's difficult for us to talk about exactly what we've participated in. But I suppose hopefully, you can sense a positive tone from us this morning about our belief in doing future M&A. And I think that is in part because of not just the deals we'd secured, but how competitive we were on other processes during the year. In terms of the reasons that we didn't win opportunities, it probably sits in two or three buckets. So firstly, there were a couple that people paid more money than us. And that happens. We want to maintain our discipline, make sure we're generating the right returns for shareholders. And you can see from that cash model that we've just talked about that while we want to do M&A, we don't have to do M&A to kind of sustain the dividend and the cash generation. Secondly, you can find things during due diligence, which alter your view on value. And potentially, you can't bridge that result with a vendor. And we had some situations in that sort of space. And then thirdly, you can find some things in diligence, either operationally or actuarially, that actually just prove to be red lines. And no matter what you speak to the vendor about, you ultimately won't do the deal on that basis. And we've seen some deals in all of those three categories. But there's nothing that we're seeing, Abid, in the model that we're kind of saying, you know what? We don't think we can compete for these things. We think, actually, we are a great counterparty for people, partly because we don't tend to compete with them particularly strongly on the new business side in certain markets. We've been pleased with the sort of conversations that we've been having over 2023. In terms of upscaling, I think we've been trying to say to people that we've got a range of ambition and that people shouldn't just be thinking that we'll do smaller deals. I know predominantly, that's where we've been active. We've been looking at that for a while. I suppose what we're probably seeing coming into 2024 is, as big insurers have been looking at other parts of their portfolios, potentially some of those books are just a bit larger than we've seen historically. I wouldn't say it's a particular reaction to what other people are doing. But if others are a little less focused on M&A and then that larger space, that could ultimately be helpful for our prospects. But I think we'll wait and see whether that becomes true or not. Thanks. Barrie. Thanks. So it's Barrie Cornes at Panmure Gordon. I'd echo Abid's comments about a good set of figures. Well done on that. Just one question from me. Going back to slide 14, you have a bar in there which talks about the amount of a five-year dividend and servicing debt costs. And if I strip out what I think will be your debt costs going forward, am I right in thinking that it implies the equivalent of about a 3% increase in dividend? Now, I'm not looking for you to give a forecast. But in terms of the math, is that roughly correct? That was my question. And really, while I've got the mic, if I could echo Steve's comments about Dave and thank you for the help you've given the analyst community over the last 12 years, that's really appreciated. Thank you. Thanks, Steve. Thanks. Yes. So yes, the math is right. I mean, we've been very careful to say the board will look at the dividend every year and look both backwards at the performance, what they're seeing in terms of performance of the business, things that might be coming down the track. But we thought it was helpful. I mean, you've seen the rate at which we've increased the dividend over the last 19 years or so. We've talked about the answer not always being 3%, but we thought that was a good basis to do the calculation and give people a strong degree of comfort that when you look over that five-year period, which mirrors the business plan period, we've got ample sources of cash generation that more than covers dividend debt costs. And that's before acquisitions. That's before the value of new business that comes through as well. Thank you. Thanks. I think Mandeep's been patiently waiting. Hey, morning, everyone. Mandeep Jagpal, RBC Capital Markets. Thank you for taking my questions. Before I start, I'll echo previous comments. Thank you, David, for your support over the last few years. Good luck for the future. Thank you. Three questions from me, please. First one is another one on M&A. Based on what you're seeing in your pipeline, which parts of the market do you expect Chesnara to be most active in going forward, thinking here of the split between U.K. versus continental Europe, capital light versus capital heavy, open versus closed? Second one is on leverage. Solvency II leverage ratio was 29% at the end of the year, which is in line with industry peers. How do you think about leverage ratio moving in the context of further M&A and if you have to raise additional capital? And the final one is on EcV development. There was a negative operating variance in the second half, which includes the assumption changes. Any color on what those specific changes were? Yep. Shall I start with M&A? We might do a combined effort on solvency. Maybe you can start, Dave, and then EcV. Dave, I'm sure he'll cover. So when we look at pipeline, I think the vast majority of what we're looking at is in our current kind of home territory. So we're seeing good opportunities across both the U.K. and the Netherlands. We have been sending Sam, as you know, who's our head of strategic development and investor relations, out to Stockholm a little bit more, not just to enjoy the restaurants, but to kind of try and establish whether there might be broader portfolio opportunities and things in that market. I think it's early days, but we've got a good operating platform in that market. And putting scale on that would make a lot of sense. But it's a less active market than the U.K. and the Netherlands, probably seeing activity in the U.K. a little bit heavier than the Netherlands at the moment. But one feature that we've seen in the Netherlands recently is a number of the larger insurers settling these historic mis-selling claims relating to Woekerpolis. And I think that will be a stimulation for the M&A market because I think a number of these kind of pension investment books probably haven't been moving around until there has been a little bit more certainty around that. And you've now seen most of the big players kind of deal with those liabilities. In terms of capital light and capital heavy, looking at the kind of books, there's a mixture of things, probably a similar mixture to the sort of deals that we've done over the last two years. So we're certainly seeing some unit-linked opportunities in the Netherlands. There are certainly funeral plan businesses that we think will come available as well. I think we've said this before. We probably tend not to divide things as much into capital light and capital heavy. We'll look at the synergies that we can generate, our ability to kind of manage those assets and the return that we can make. And actually, those returns can be just as good, if not better, from kind of what some people would describe as capital-heavy products as they can be from capital light. So yeah, but overall, we think it's a positive M&A outlook. And we genuinely feel we're in a good place to be able to compete positively in that space. Solvency ratio, do you want to take that, Dave, in terms of? Leverage. Yeah. Leverage. Sorry. Leverage. Yeah. So look, we're pleased we've dipped below 30. And to some extent, 30 seems to be the kind of long-term benchmark people are comfortable with. I think we're very confident that if on the back of an acquisition, that leverage ratio kind of crept up, both internally and I think we believe with Fitch as well, as long as that deal was adding value and there was prospects for the ratio to come back down, that would be fine. I don't think the company would want to have a kind of structural long-term leverage ratio kind of at the top end of the 30s. It feels like 30 is the right number. And of course, the impact of deals on that ratio is very much dependent on the financing model for the deal. If you're bringing in equity, you've probably got quite a lot of capacity for further debt without putting too much strain on the leverage ratio. So yeah, I hope that answers your question. Yeah. We tried. Hopefully, you noticed on one of the M&A slides, tried to set out a little bit of that framework that we consider in terms of some of the pieces that we're managing. And I very much agree with Dave. Look, we're committed to having that investment-grade kind of rating. But we have a lot of flexibility around how that moves in the short term, depending on what sorts of books of business and things that we bring in. And I think if you look across the range of metrics, you can look at it on an IFRS basis, a Solvency II basis, EcV basis. There's a lot of consistency in those metrics. So we're not having to take any action to get the leverage done at a different place. So again, that's helpful support for the M&A strategy. The last one was about operating losses in the Economic Value, in particular the profile between half one and half two. Yep. And two things are at play there. So operating experience losses tend to accrue relatively evenly through the year. So if you're spending a little bit more than your long-term assumption, that can be relatively equal half one, half two. But the reality is our process of setting the long-term future assumptions tends to fall into half two. And therefore, you can get that asymmetry. And what's happened this year is when we've been through that assumption setting process, a few of the long-term assumptions, be they expenses, lapses, transfers, we've strengthened them slightly when we've gone through that process. And that capital impact has been kind of not huge, but has been notable and has driven some of those operating losses in the year. Okay. Abid? Okay, thanks. Is Abid Hussain again? Sorry, it's just coming back on. It's a geeky question. That's why I saved it towards the end. It's slightly hypothetical. It's on the CSM. I know it doesn't drive your business. It doesn't drive the way that you think about the business. But I just wondered, given that only about 42% of the business falls under the insurance in terms of insurance, and so the CSM is not capturing the entire business, have you done a back-of-the-envelope calculation to look at what a rough CSM might look like for the unit-linked or for the other non-insurance business? So sort of rough and ready, does your CSM double? So is your IFRS capital base much higher? Yeah. I think we've quoted, actually, somewhere that we believe there's over GBP 100 million of kind of equivalent future profits sitting within the non-insurance portfolio. And actually, where you see those future profits for all businesses is in the Economic Value. I'm going to just follow up. Is that mainly sort of around the unit-linked pensions kind of business? Yeah. And then if I may, so what sort of rough how long do you assume that that business stays on the books? Because I think that's probably the key kind of assumption, just rough. You don't have to answer it now. But just if you've got a. Well, it's very different by different portfolio. But pension business tends to have a longer tail than some of the insurance business. So I've been here 12 years. And that endpoint just seems to be always 20 years away, which is great. Yeah. You're certainly talking 10, 20 years. That's what you would be expecting. And I think if you take the U.K., what you saw when some of the tax relief changes came in, not the recent ones, but previously, is people starting to understand that it's a very good vehicle for tax planning. You can hand that on through inheritance as well. So Dave's right. I think you've kind of seen some legacy pension books that you might have expected to run off a little bit more quickly, kind of staying for a little bit longer as financial advisors give advice to customers about which pockets that they should draw down from. People tend to take out advice first before they'll kind of touch their pension, so. Mandeep? Just a follow-up question on the balance sheet metrics. Post-Solvency II reform, EcV, and unrestricted Tier 1 own funds are more similar. Is there an opportunity here to simplify your reporting and think about just being more in line with peers and only reporting Solvency II going forward? Yeah. Yeah. We've kind of discussed this, haven't we? And I mean, part of the reason that we introduced the Fan, I think people had thought that the EcV represented all of the potential value that was within the company. And it clearly doesn't. And that's why we introduced that Fan. But you're right. I mean, EcVs moved closer to own funds, particularly after the solvency sorry, the U.K. risk margin reform. So it was something we'd been chatting about already, wasn't it? I think we think long-term value is an important dynamic of a business. Cash generation is one thing. But what long-term value? In the detail, whether we call it Economic Value or own funds and now they're so close, whether we could just move to an own funds model. And actually, interestingly, we've probably missed a bit of a trick here because our own funds have grown by more than the Economic Value in the year. So that's just an example about how we're sometimes not quite as showy as some others. Gordon? Great to see you. Yeah. Thanks all for having us today. Yeah. Gordon Aitken. So I mean, you talk about potentially reinsuring more in future years. And this is a strategy that a company like yours can do. And it's a great strategy from a shareholder point of view because what you do is you reinsure. You can release the capital that's backing that business. And you're splitting the future profits with someone else, with the reinsurer. But what you present to shareholders is a chunk, a lump of cash capital. What sort of proportion do you expect to give up in terms of future profits? I don't know is the honest answer, Gordon. I suppose if you look at what we've done so far, what we've tried to do is take opportunities to take particularly some of the tail risk out of some of the risks that we get less reward around. So last year, we talked about the FX hedge that we put in place. And if you looked at our results, we are quite exposed to FX. And we put a hedge in not to take all of that risk out, but actually protect us from some of those more violent movements, which led to quite a big release. And then we share a little bit of the value of that with the bank. So we looked at the economics of that and just thought it was a very, very good return that you get in terms of the capital release versus the sharing. So there's not a physical cost that we're paying for that contract when you implement it. It's if you end up in or out of the money with the insurer. On mass lapses, it's a relatively cheap form of insurance that you can take, again, because of the part of that lapse scenario that you're insuring. So without getting too much into the detail, but in terms of the standard formula, the mass lapse scenario that you've run is quite acute compared to some people if they had an internal model. So in effect, you have to hold capital against a 40% fall. So if you can reinsure a bit of that, it's relatively cheap to do that. And when I say that, it's a few hundred thousand a year. And you can get a release in capital, but some real protection as well on the balance sheet. But one of the reasons historically that I think we've been a little bit more nervous to do some of this is exactly the point that you're alluding to, I think, which is if you're putting lots of things in place that have a real-world cost and that builds up over time, that can erode your Economic Value quite significantly. We're a long, long way for that space. So I think in terms of the things, when we look at the managed actions that we're taking, we wouldn't see ourselves giving a large portion of that management value away anytime soon. But we haven't kind of set a target or a limit on that kind of spread. In many ways, we're trying to look at the risk pricing on a regular basis. If there's opportunities to offload risk at what we see as an attractive price, we'll do that, particularly if we can deploy that capital onto things like M&A. You'll note the last couple of years, the management actions we've done, which have had quite a big positive impact on cash. There's been no notable corresponding negative impact on the Economic Value, just showing we've kind of found the right ones in terms of that equation. Great question. Ben. All right, Ben. Thanks very much. Excuse me, Ben Cohen. You've not really said very much about the regulatory environment in any of your markets. I know I did promise that I would ask an easy question. So I hope this isn't too hard. But could you just sort of set out where you see the greatest regulatory risks in each of the three major markets moving parts? And maybe also as part of that, just kind of competitive pressures in terms of where you are still in open markets. Thank you. Yeah. So I suppose I referenced what I think most of the regulatory development we're seeing is kind of already in flight. So people know about it. So you have the Consumer Duty regime, which is already in force. And then there's a further kind of window coming in there. I think we've seen a lot in the press about certain implications of that for other organizations. That's been something that's been coming for a long time. As I talked about, we've had a program in place for a while looking at that. We aren't seeing a material impact on the group. We're not expecting one when that comes in in July. I think that's clearly a material piece of regulation. I should say, as an aside, we like these things. Anything that is supporting good customer outcomes, people getting fair value, but creating a high regulatory standard in the market, we like that because ultimately, we're trying to adhere to that standard. Anything that kind of strengthens that, makes it more consistent, we see as a good thing and creates a good competitive dynamic. The other thing it does in terms of M&A is there's a strong focus on the vendors' requirements around Consumer Duty if they're handing those books over to other people as well. So we like the fact that it was designed in a way that people couldn't just try and throw their problem at somebody else. There's a high hurdle if you want to sell books to demonstrate that it's compliant with that Consumer Duty regime. Across Europe, I mean, there's a huge amount of sustainability-type regulation. A number of European insurers are having to work out things like double materiality, the impacts on your balance sheet, and meeting some of those new standards, DORA, which relates to kind of IT security standards across Europe, as well as a regime that's coming across Europe as well. But these are all things, I think, that are kind of known and in flight. And I think in most markets, you're seeing a continued focus on the consumer. So the AFM in the Netherlands certainly is continuing to be strongly focused on customer outcomes. And you're seeing the Swedish regulator look at that as well, Ben. But there's probably nothing else material that we'd be pointing to to say there's a kind of big risk around that. And I think in many ways, implementing against those standards is going to be plenty of work for people in terms of them doing that. In terms of the kind of competitive environment, it's probably slightly different if I kind of focus on Sweden and the Netherlands. So slightly different between the two. So I think in Sweden, we've continued to see the kind of activity of brokers in that market quite focused on the back books of business. So we've continued to see overall a higher rate of transfers between pension providers and insurance companies. We've seen a kind of positive start to trading in 2024. So we've seen good sales volumes coming into Movestic. But it has been a competitive environment. We've seen a little bit of pricing pressure coming through. But I think we're starting to see that market just about returning back to the volumes before COVID. And Sara and the team have done a super job in terms of signing up some additional partnerships to try and broaden the footprint of both distribution and products that we have. In the Netherlands, I suppose the part of the market that we're in to remind people is predominantly in that term insurance space through brokers. It's quite heavily linked to the housing market still. You haven't really seen the Dutch housing market return back to the sorts of turnover levels that you would have seen before COVID. There's still a little bit of kind of suppression there. We're still taking a good market share, staying disciplined on pricing. I think if we see that housing market returning a little bit, we should see volumes coming back a little bit as well. Slightly different dynamics in those two markets. Thank you. We've got a few questions from the webcast. So first question is from Guy Thomas from Hazell Carr Edwards. You said that the SS&C deal incentivized both sides to bring extra scale. I can see how Chesnara could add extra scale. But how can SS&C do so? Yeah. So the way that it works, and obviously without divulging kind of confidential details, is if we acquire further books of business or if we transfer further books of business that add scale to that contract, we get a benefit through the rate card. But ultimately, at the same time, SS&C make more money. So we want SS&C to make a lot more money at the same time as us delivering a lower unit cost for our customers. And it's pretty straightforward in that regard. And it was a big part of the early conversations with them as a partner that we talked about our aspirations, the sort of growth that we were looking for in the U.K., and talking about their ability to support that, but also their desire to participate in that and scale up as well. So when we look at M&A in the U.K., they're sat right next to us. They'll be part of the diligence process very, very early to ensure we get the benefit from that relationship and that partnership. So that's how the kind of sharing works. And ultimately, we want the partners that we work with to make a good return on the capital that they're deploying at the same time that we're making a good return on capital from what we're deploying as well. Further question from Guy. The reliable 3% dividend increase is less attractive in a higher inflation environment. You have a strong capital position. How about a higher rate of increase going forward? We've talked before about how we think about the dividend policy. I suppose what we're ultimately trying to do in the kind of medium and long term is have a dividend policy that beats that long-term rate of inflation. I think if you look at that over the last 19 years, it's certainly done that. I think the inflation rate would be about 75%. We've delivered 102% over that period. When we look at the kind of longer-term inflation curve, it's pretty much back down to 2% again. We think our shareholders have really valued the kind of consistency and stability of the dividend. I suppose what we're able to give them is a dividend that ultimately beats that longer-term rate of inflation and then upside potential from value growth because we've got excess capital that we can deploy. It's interesting. I think I maybe said this last year. But when I first came into Chesnara, there was a bit of a question mark about the ability to support the dividend because I think we hadn't given quite as much guidance. So I love it when shareholders and investors kind of ask whether we can pay a bigger dividend because I think that shows then that people have got a lot of confidence in the cash generation coming from Chesnara. Superb. Ming Zhu has asked a question. First, congratulations on a strong set of numbers across all metrics. All the best and farewell to Dave. Two questions, please. What have you seen so far in the M&A landscape given the current inflation and interest environment? The second question. Your share price has been lagging peers in recent years despite the fact that the numbers are fine and strategy is working. What do you think the market is missing? Well, let me start on what the market is missing. I mean, what we've tried to set out again today is the variety of value growth sources that we have available, our ability to continue to generate cash generation. And we do that in a whole wide variety of market conditions. We have this long-term progressive dividend policy, which we think has been really valuable for shareholders. And then within the results, you've seen upside from M&A. And we are very much signalling the potential for M&A in the future. So I think we just need to keep reminding people of that and showing the potential value. I think the insurance sector overall is very cheap at the moment. If you look at the set of results that have been delivered and the sort of yield that you're getting from insurance companies, I mean, for me, I can't understand why people are valuing the businesses in the way that they are. They should certainly be at a higher valuation. So I think ultimately, we need to keep making clear to investors the benefits and the upsides and the potential that you get from Chesnara. And Ming, we've talked about this historically as well. We need to keep telling that story and being very firm on that. In terms of the sort of M&A landscape at the moment and the sorts of things that we're seeing, we talked about, I suppose, what we saw as the three main drivers that were bringing kind of portfolios to the market. You probably noticed that we didn't talk quite as much about the macro. I think what we're tending to see is that while maybe higher inflation has put a little bit of pressure maybe on insurance companies that have got sub-scale books and things, the bigger drivers really have been those more strategic factors when people are trying to upgrade their operating systems, their technology, do some simplification, trying to recycle capital. In the U.K., there's clearly a lot of focus on the bulk purchase annuity space and the growth available there. It makes a lot of sense for people to try and recycle capital if they believe they can get kind of mid-teen returns in that space. Then we've seen international players and some of the deals that we put up on screen showing that they're trying to simplify the geographic footprint and simplify. So I think you'll then look at the macro, perhaps particularly in our part of the market, that sub-kind of billion-dollar sort of consideration part of the market. The macro tends to be slightly more second order. Whereas I think if you're looking at very large M&A, I think the prevailing rate of inflation, interest rates, equity markets tends to be a bigger factor in the overall valuation. I think what everybody is seeing is hopefully more of a trending back to a normalized market environment. And I think that makes it easier again for people to contemplate M&A if you can kind of see a stable interest rate, see stable inflation rates, equity markets that are growing nice and simply as well. And I think we're starting to see more of that now in 2024. I think, Ming, as well, you get the prize for the farthest distance dial-in this morning, I suspect, from China. So thanks for joining us. Superb. We are just about out of time. No further questions at the moment. Pass back to yourself, Steve, for closing remarks. Yeah. So thank you again for joining us this morning. We believe this is a strong set of results, strong cash generation. You've seen further M&A in the group and Economic Value growth. And we believe there's a lot to look forward to here at Chesnara. So with that, we'll end the full year 2023 results presentation. Thank you again for joining.