You always like to make an entrance, Farooq. Great. Good morning, everybody, and welcome to our full, our interim results. I'm David Richardson, Chief Executive of Just Group PLC. As usual, albeit for the last time, I'm joined today by Andy Parsons, our Group CFO. I'd also like to welcome our incoming CFO, Mark Godden. There he is at the back, who's in the audience today. I saw him speaking to a number of you already, if you haven't had a chance, I encourage you to say hello to Mark afterwards. We have an excellent set of results today to share with you today. Before we dive into them, I'd like to remind you why we at Just are here. We help people achieve a better later life. That's our purpose and why we exist. We fulfill our purpose by helping more people, and we achieve that by growing sustainably. We are the retirement specialist, and we use this strategic focus, our market insight, and our intellectual property to differentiate Just. We achieve this by successfully innovating to deliver award-winning service, propositions, and exceptional outcomes for our customers. We continue to be disciplined in our pricing and risk selection, both on the asset and liability side, to ensure we write low-strain, profitable new business. This means we stretch the organic capital we generate to fund strong new business growth. It's a self-financing model that delivers attractive rates of return for shareholders and supports a growing dividend over time. Turning to the highlights on slide five. This is the first time we and our peers are presenting results using IFRS 17. You'll be pleased to hear we don't plan to step through the technical nuances of the changes today, but we're happy to pick up with you any of those questions following our presentation. We've had a very strong start to the year, continuing the momentum from the second half of last year. Let's start with underlying operating profit, which has more than doubled to GBP 173 million. This profit was achieved by delivering an excellent new business sales figure, more than double last year's to over GBP 1.9 billion. Just a reminder for everyone, last year's sales were very much weighted to the second half of the year. Our strong performance in the first half provides an excellent position from which we are highly confident that we'll comfortably deliver more than the 15% growth this year for the second year in a row. With the opportunities available to us, we are more confident than ever that we can continue to outperform. It's not just our DB business where we've achieved strong sales growth. It's been very pleasing to see a return to growth for our individual guaranteed income sales, fueled by the rise in long-term interest rates. In both businesses, we've had a strong start to the second half of the year. We've achieved this growth while maintaining an exceptional new business strain, this time only 1.6% of premium. Our new business teams continue to exercise superb pricing discipline and risk selection. The solvency ratio has been maintained at a very strong level of 204%. The jump in profits has increased our return on equity to an annualized 13%. We will continue to strive to improve this metric on an ongoing basis by growing profitable new business and prudently managing the business. We know the importance of a dividend to shareholders. The interim dividend is up 15%, being 1/3 of the 2022 full-year dividend. Just six months ago, I set out four main reasons for the growing confidence in our ability to hit the 15% profit growth pledge on average over the medium term. Now we've added a fifth: retail market growth. The original four are just as important as they were then. First, there's the DB market. We've never seen a busier first six months of the year, and this is still barely scratching the surface of the potential GBP 1.4 trillion opportunity. Second comes our place in that market. Our very successful Bulk Quotation Service is helping to extend our lead in the smaller transaction size segment of the market. We are ambitious to grow our footprint in the large transaction space now that we have the capabilities to do so. Next is retail. There are long-term demographic and structural reasons why the market will grow over time. Interest rates have stimulated strong growth in the retail market. We anticipate there may be further tailwinds in the next few years after the introduction of the FCA Consumer Duty rules on the 31st of July, and when the FCA publishes their response to the thematic review into retirement income advice, which is expected at the end of the year. The fourth reason is that our investments capability is highly scalable, and in the first 6 months, we sourced a further GBP 800 million of other illiquids through our manager of managers' origination model. Finally, the combination of our even stronger balance sheet and very low new business strain mean we are equipped to continue driving the business forward and to achieve our ambitions. Let's move on to the DB market, which has never been more active. It also, though, represents a long-term opportunity for us. We showed this chart in the top left side in March. It's an LCP estimate of how funding levels develop by quartile in the future. The top quartile, or around 1,000 schemes, is fully funded today. Now, that doesn't mean they are all necessarily transaction-ready today, but these schemes will provide the near-term pipeline. The next 2,000 are well on their way, with larger schemes able to partially de-risk via pensioner-only buy-ins before de-risking fully via an insured solution later this decade. Finally, the last 2,000 will provide business beyond 2030. This is a market that has a long way to run. The bottom pie chart is a reminder that since 2007, only 13% of the liabilities have been insured. The pace is now hotting up, though, and LCP expects that GBP 600 billion could be transferred over the next decade. The market has been exceptionally busy, and so have we. The level of activity in July and August continues to be elevated, and our conversations with EBCs indicates that this strong momentum will continue into 2024. We achieved record sales for our first half period and completed both our largest and our smallest transactions to date. We closed 32 deals under GBP 100 million in this 6-month period, and we are particularly proud of the service we provide to these smaller schemes. Our capability to transact larger schemes is also constantly improving, we have enormous growth opportunity in all areas of the market. We are the market leader in the smaller segment, smaller scheme segments. Let's just talk about that for a minute. There are over 3,000 schemes with assets of less than GBP 100 million, in total, it's about a GBP 100 billion opportunity. We have been ever present here, we've established a strong reputation for outstanding service and consistently being available to quote. The success and popularity of the Bulk Quotation Service has taken that to the next level. We were responsible for a third of all smaller transactions last year. We expect that share and count to be even higher in 2023. As a reminder, the Bulk Quotation Service gives live insurer pricing to any scheme with clean member data once it's uploaded onto the system. A year ago, around half the EBCs were actively using the service to assist their clients. Now pretty much all of them are. We are significantly increasing the capacity of the service. We expect to add hundreds of additional schemes over the next year. Given we already have member data, we can quickly transact using standard terms. Our Bulk Quotation Service provides a solid and growing base of potential future transactions. Let's shift the focus to larger opportunities, where we have an even bigger opportunity for future growth. In the charts on the left, you'll see the number of transactions in the market each year, and just number split between those above and below GBP 1 billion. In the below GBP 1 billion, top left, we have been increasing both the number of deals we transact and the size of those deals. This segment has accounted for over GBP 50 billion of deals in the market over the last three years, so huge activity. The over GBP 1 billion market is likely to be significant, be significantly busier going forward, and this may divert other companies' resources away from the mid-size segment, which in turn provides us with the ability to select the most attractive deals available. We've many opportunities across small and medium transactions. We've been very successful in winning in these segments. We don't need to write deals in excess of GBP 1 billion to meet our objectives. Should we choose to, we are ready to transact at these levels, both on our own account or with a partner. We've increased our capabilities to penetrate larger segments of the market and have made several new strategic hires across the DB team and across our investment teams to do so. Concluding on DB, you'll see the opportunity is continually increasing. Higher interest rates have had a positive stimulus on the DB market and have revitalized the retail market. In the top right chart, you'll see the amount of retirement income payable to a customer has grown by around 50% over the past 18 months, making this category highly attractive to customers. You'll see in the top left chart how sales have increased materially in what we refer to as the open market, which is where Just compete, shown in the coral bars. These are customers who are looking beyond their current pension saving provider, perhaps using a broker or a financial advisor, to shop around the market and find the best value. The recent growth has been driven by the increased attractiveness of the income paid relative to alternative retirement income solutions, helped by those long-term interest rates rising. Long-term demographic and shorter-term regulatory focus should also support further growth in this space.... Many younger retirees chose to use a pension drawdown solution when they first accessed their pensions. As they reach older ages, we think many will switch some of their assets to a guaranteed income. This will provide new opportunities to grow the category. On the regulatory side, we are optimistic that the FCA Consumer Duty and the thematic review into retirement income advice should further encourage advisors to reexamine the attractiveness of guaranteed income solutions for their customers. That was the retail market. I'd like to remind you why Just are so well positioned to win in this market, because we haven't discussed it for some time. We have unrivaled intellectual property that delivers a competitive advantage. On the top left, we show our UK GIfL premiums, and they show a similar growth pattern to the market on the previous slide, with sales more than doubling compared to the previous 6 months. That should say, increasing by more than 50% in the prior 6 months. What is especially encouraging is the financial advisor activity shown on the bottom left chart, which shows that around 1,000 more advice firms were seeking GIfL quotes in the first half of the year compared to the first half of 2022. Advisors, back to my earlier point, are really waking up to the value of guaranteed income solutions. Something that sets Just apart in this market is the strength of our medical underwriting capability. The top right chart illustrates the level of extra retirement income that a customer with a medical condition or lifestyle factor might achieve compared to a customer receiving a non-medically underwritten solution. Let me spend a minute bringing that to life for you. The first blue bar shows the additional income we'd pay to a customer who was obese and taking one medication to control blood pressure and one to control cholesterol. This customer would receive an additional 6% income, which is about GBP 380 per year, or more than 7,000 over a 20-year retirement. More severe medical conditions generate significantly higher increases in lifetime income. The blue bar at the bottom of the chart is for a customer with stage three lung cancer. The 73% increase shown translates into GBP 4,800 of additional annual income. Now, because we've been using medical underwriting to price and risk select for longer than any of our competitors, our experience grows exponentially, so it's almost impossible for any of our peers to catch up. You've heard me say we help people achieve a better later life. That's our purpose. It's, it's why we exist, and I hope what I've shown on this slide is a very tangible demonstration of one of the ways we fulfill our purpose and help our customers. Of course, to take advantage of these growth opportunities, we need to have the right investments to support new business pricing and deliver reliable and secure returns to shareholders. We've had a very successful first half, sourcing ever greater amounts of other illiquid investments. You can see the growth on the top left chart. Bottom left, the fall in LTMs as a proportion of new business premiums. This was a very deliberate strategy as we applied strong pricing discipline in a softening LTM market and acquired more attractive risk-adjusted assets elsewhere. The pie chart shows the diversification of our liquid asset sourcing since 2020. Our manager of managers model approach gives us the flexibility to source assets when they provide an attractive risk-reward profile. That means we downplay less attractive asset classes while ensuring that we're not reliant on any one asset class in particular. This approach allows us to grow without compromising on quality. As the government's Solvency UK agenda takes shape over the next two years, we expect this will unlock additional opportunities to grow our investment in illiquid assets. I'll pause there and hand over to Andy to take you through the financial results. Thank you, David, and good morning to you all. As this slide shows, the strong momentum we achieved during the second half of 2022 has continued this year, with GBP 1.9 billion of business written in the first half, of which roughly a quarter represented retail, a pleasing return to growth in that business line. Our first half performance gives us a strong foundation as we enter the second half. Retail and DB markets continue to be buoyant, with the DB market consistently busy so far in 2023, and hence we expect less seasonality than in previous years. We expect to maintain sales in half two in line with or above our first half level. The chart at the bottom of the page shows how the increased sales in the first half have generated a new business profit of GBP 161 million, more than double H1 2022 at a margin of 8.5%, which is very much in line with the margin achieved during 2022. Through ongoing strong pricing discipline and targeted risk selection, I expect the business to continue to deliver consistently strong margins going forward. Our performance in the first half reinforces our strong confidence in meeting the medium-term annualized profit growth pledge we set 18 months ago. These are our first live results under IFRS 17, following the restatement of our 2022 IFRS results communicated in July. As noted before, IFRS 17 is an accounting change. It does not affect the underlying economics or indeed the cash flows of our business, it does amend the layout of the financial statements, and there are also some changes to our management view of the P&L, as you can see here. Under IFRS 17, our new business profit will add to the Contractual Service Margin, or CSM, held on the balance sheet, with the stock of CSM from previous years amortizing each year through the IFRS 17 P&L. The combination of these two items is a very healthy, GBP 132 million increase in CSM during H1 2023. This is an 8% increase in our stock of CSM over this six-month period. Below this, the in-force operating profit line is made up of three main components: return on surplus asset, the CSM net amortization, and the credit default release. The detail of these components and how they would be expected to grow are included in the appendix. Going forward, we expect in-force operating profit to continue to grow strongly, driven by ongoing growth in both the CSM and our surplus assets as we add more new business each year. Below this, other HUB Group company results, essentially the PLC costs and HUB Group of companies and development expenditure, were broadly unchanged year-on-year. Financing costs fell to GBP 33 million after our repurchase of GBP 76 million of Tier 2 debt in November. Putting all this together, underlying operating profit grew by 2.5 times to GBP 173 million. A position that leads us to be very confident of comfortably exceeding our profit growth pledge for the year. Our commitment to deliver 15% growth in underlying operating profit per annum, on average, over the medium term, continues unchanged under IFRS 17. As illustrated through our H1 numbers, we're confident of our ability to continue to meet or exceed this target through continued strong growth in both our new business and in-force profits each year, coupled with ongoing control of our financing and other group costs. We'll further develop our disclosure and sensitivity analysis for the full year results in March. Looking at the bottom, our return on equity rose strongly to 13%, in excess of the 10.3% achieved in 2022. The 2023 interim dividend is up 15% to 0.58 pence per share and aligned with our medium-term profit growth target. In the previous slide, I set out our first half figures under IFRS 17, and spoke about our confidence in delivering the 15% underlying profit growth pledge. This slide illustrates the growth we expect in our adjusted shareholders' equity, as ongoing new business growth adds each year to the existing stock of CSM, with the amortization also growing each year as the stock of CSM builds. At the year-end 2022, adjusted shareholders' equity was GBP 2 billion, of which GBP 1.2 billion was held as CSM on the IFRS 17 balance sheet. The site shows over time how our CSM is expected to rapidly build, with the 15% per annum sales growth illustrated, driving a doubling of CSM over the next five years. The CSM is a store of value in respect to the contracts we have written to date, with a very predictable release over future periods at a spread that is locked in at inception. This CSM release or amortization feeds into the in-force operating profit, which drives sustained growth in our IFRS 17 shareholders' equity, alongside the growth each year in the CSM itself. I'm sure there'll be many detailed technical questions as you familiarize yourselves with the impact of IFRS 17 on our financial statements, and we're very happy to help answer these questions over the coming days. I hope this picture shows clearly how, under IFRS 17, we expect Just Group shareholder value to grow significantly as we deliver on our profit growth commitment. Moving on to Solvency II on slide 18. Key components of the surplus movement over the period. Our underlying organic capital generation over H1 was positive at GBP 18 million. Note that this is after we've funded GBP 1.9 billion of new business through GBP 30 million of capital strain. On an ongoing basis, we'd also expect to see an impact from future management actions and also potential mortality releases, in particular, given that mortality experience continues to run above our assumptions. These will further add to our organic capital generation. Payment of the 2022 final dividend represents a relatively small cost to our capital during the first half, and the impact of non-operating items were broadly neutral to our surplus capital, but slightly positive to the ratio, as interest rates rose by just over 50 bits over the period. The value of properties in our diversified LTM portfolio remained resilient, performing slightly ahead of our prudent long-term growth assumption. During the first half of 2023, we purchased GBP 2 billion of long-dated gilts as part of an enhanced interest rate hedging strategy. This enabled us to significantly reduce the Solvency II sensitivity to future interest rate movements, locking in a large part of the gains in the solvency ratio over the past 18 months, whilst maintaining our IFRS exposure at close to 0. In aggregate, over H1, these movements have translated to a further 5 percentage point strengthening in our Solvency II capital coverage ratio to 204%. We're obviously very comfortable at this level of solvency, which provides both security and additional flexibility to us to support our growth ambitions going forward. Turning to slide 19. Low new business strain is a key enabler for us to maximize the financial return from our available new business capital budget. By carefully managing the budget during the year, we can take advantage of market conditions to write business at attractive returns, at or above our mid-teen IRR. As you can see in the chart at the top left, we've built a tremendous track record of delivering a low-strain new business model, with the business consistently delivering strain well below our 2.5% target. That enables us to deliver sustainable ongoing growth in new business, and in doing so, to add significant incremental shareholder value. That shareholder value creation is illustrated on the right-hand side of the chart. The green bars you see are cumulative, and from the left to right, show how our day one capital investment in new business then throws off cash each year into the future. Breakeven is after approximately 4 years, following which the business is capital generative. As the chart shows, over the past two and a half years, we've invested GBP 130 million of shareholder capital, which will generate around GBP 1 billion of cumulative future Solvency II cash flow. Each year, as the in-force book grows, increased cash is available to support new business strain, with the resultant new business in turn generating further growth in the in-force. Very much a virtuous circle. Moving on to slide 20, to look at our diversified investment portfolio. The pie chart in the middle shows our investment portfolio. Our investment mindset is long-term and predicated on a buy and maintain strategy. Therefore, when we originate assets, we expect to hold them to maturity through the economic cycle, although we will take action where we perceive there are risks. We have a consistent track record of excellent credit performance, with 0 defaults on the portfolio in over a decade. Furthermore, under IFRS, we already have a prudent credit default reserve set aside, which stands at over GBP 900 million. The chart on the top left shows how LTMs, as a% of our investment portfolios, have declined over the past four years. This reduction's been driven by three portfolio sales, totaling GBP 1.6 billion, and much lower new LTM origination. Furthermore, we've hedged the No Negative Equity Guarantee or NNEG on 20% of the portfolio. Taken together, these actions have significantly reduced the Solvency II sensitivity to UK house prices. Economically, these assets continue to perform exceptionally well, with less than GBP 5 million of cumulative NNEG claims since we started writing this business in 2005. The chart at the bottom left shows how our other illiquid assets are well diversified across both a range of asset types and geographies. Across our GBP 4 billion portfolio, we have over 300 separate investments, at an average of just GBP 13 million each. We continue to build our illiquid investment origination capability to ensure we maintain a range of investment opportunities to support new business. As demonstrated by the recent growth, our outsourced investment model provides us with the ability to scale rapidly and also to flex allocations across sectors and geographies, while maintaining strict credit underwriting through our in-house team. The team continues to grow in size and experience, and works very closely with our external managers on structuring each investment to maximize protection, while retaining a right of veto on every new asset. Finally, on the right-hand side, the public bond portfolio represents over half the GBP 21 billion investment portfolio. Over the past few years, we have brought in management of the public portfolio in-house. Our diversified portfolio is positioned with a defensive bias and well-balanced across a range of industry sectors. Credit rating upgrades have outnumbered downgrades so far in 2023, just as they did last year. The group continues to have very limited exposure to those sectors that are most sensitive to structural change or macroeconomic conditions, such as consumer cyclical, basic materials, energy, and real estate, with BBB bonds in particular weighted towards defensive sectors such as utilities, communication and technology, and infrastructure. Now, before I hand back to David, recognizing that although I don't retire until the end of this year, this will be my last set of results. I'd like to thank you all for your engagement and interactions over the past three and a half years. I've hugely enjoyed my time at Just, and I'm very proud of the progress we've made as a group since I joined at the end of 2019. I'm very pleased that in Mark Godden, we have appointed a very capable replacement, who I know is looking forward to getting to know investors and analysts alike. I myself am looking forward to retirement, but pleased to be leaving the group in such great shape. With that, I'll hand back to David for his concluding remarks. Great. Thank you very much, Andy. Let me just wrap up briefly. Turning to slide 22. We've delivered what I hope you'll agree are an excellent set of results, and we're confident that we'll comfortably exceed our profit growth pledge this year. With the opportunities available to our business, we're exceptionally well positioned to build substantial value for shareholders. The DB market provides very significant long-term growth prospects for Just. All the ingredients for us to be successful in that space are there. In addition, the retail market has burst back into life, and over the medium to longer term, driven by demographics and proposition innovation, we are confident we will deepen our strong position, helping more customers and rewarding shareholders. We can only achieve strong performance when we have talented colleagues. We invest to grow our people, to develop a strong culture, and build a high-performing team. This all combines to create what we call the Just way of working. For more than four years, by being innovative, focused, and disciplined, we've consistently exceeded the promises we made. We have a growth mindset, and we've developed a winning formula, and one which will ensure we fulfill our purpose to help people achieve a better later life. Putting all of this together, we're more optimistic than we've ever been about the future of Just. Let me now invite questions. If you could just raise your hand and wait for the microphone before introducing yourself and asking a question. For those of you who've joined the webcast, please type in your question, and we will read those shortly. Okay, I made a fatal mistake in looking down there. Didn't see who got up first. I'm gonna say, Barry, you're at the front. Barry, why don't you go first? Congratulations on a very good set of figures. Barrie Cornes from Panmure Gordon. I've got three questions, if I may. First of all, in terms of the Solvency II coverage ratio, I just wondered if you could give us a feel for where you're gonna feel comfortable, if there's a range that you would think you ought to be in, and what you would do if you're in excess of that range. If you come out with some figures. Secondly, in terms of the 15% underlying growth profit, in the medium term, you did 19% last year, clearly gonna blow the 15% this year. Is 15% too low? The third question I've got, in terms of lifetime mortgages, as a percentage of the investment portfolio, obviously, it's down to 19% now. Should we anticipate that that will keep going lower, or are you simply comfortable at 19%? Thank you. Thanks, Barrie. 3 questions there. I'll let you handle the coverage ratio question and the LTM one in a minute. On the 15% underlying profit growth, just, just to remind everybody, that was a target we set in March of 2022, and we wanted to demonstrate our confidence in the future long-term growth prospects of the business by not just talking about it in words, but by putting out a tangible target. We said we would deliver 15% underlying operating profit growth on average over the medium term. You'll have to refer to our brokers why we have to use such convoluted language. However, what it was meant to convey is that we're very confident this is a multi-year growth opportunity, and that remains the case today. 9% last year, Barry, absolutely, we are highly confident we will comfortably exceed that this year. I think in terms of going beyond that guidance or revisiting that guidance, probably something to come back to at the full year rather than kind of doing in the middle of a year. But I'll just today reiterate that overall confidence of that long-term growth trajectory, which has got many years to run. Andy, the other two for you? Yeah. No, happy to. Yeah, no, in, in terms of Solvency II coverage at 204, yeah, clearly, we are very comfortable at that level. We were, we were comfortable 18 months ago when we were at 164. Yeah, I, I, I think, yeah, we're, we're not gonna give a range in terms of what we're, we're trying to target, but that hopefully gives you a, a, a bit of a feel for, for, you know, the, the level of comfort that we have in terms of where the solvency is. We're, we're, you know, in terms of the 204, you know, we, we view that very much as, as, as available to support our, our business as we move forward. It gives us great flexibility. We're, we're starting far more when we're looking at bigger schemes to, to look at whether we potentially warehouse either the longevity or even the scheme itself before passing that on to partners. That gives us sort of temporary strains in terms of Solvency II. It's helpful to have that higher ratio that, that means that you're not, you're not at all worried by a degree of temporary strain on that. On the, on the LTM proportion, I think, yeah, you've, you've, in the 19% is the sort of the, the non-hedged element of LTM. 24 is, is where we actually are. In terms of where we've deliberately reduced that over the years. I would expect that probably to continue to drift down a bit. Mm-hmm. As we go forward, because if, if you look at our new business backing ratio, you know, yes, we're at 4% for this 6 months. That was partly sort of market-driven because the LTM market was, has, has been a bit depressed recently. If the LTM market does sort of rediscover itself a bit, you know, that might push up a bit, but even if we were at 10% on new business backing, you would still gradually, over time, see that overall backing of 24% gradually reduce as you, as you move forward. Thanks, Amin. I'll move left to right. Farooq, do you want to go next, please? Hi there. Thanks very much. Farooq from JPM, JPM. Just going back, I think, to what, I think, to Barry's question a little bit. You, I mean, it seems to me when I look at UK, UK Life, I mean, it's, it's amazing to see you're extremely well capitalized compared to your peers, in terms of quality as well. You're making a philosophical decision, I guess, going forward about how much business to write, because clearly, it, it seems like it's coming out of your ears, and you can write as, you know, as much as you want, almost. I mean, not, not as much as you want, but you know what I mean. Yeah. Can you just talk about... Mm-hmm. How much capital you think you're willing to allocate to growth, and where would you take that versus growing your dividend? Mm-hmm. Then secondly, I, I believe there's a thematic review going on in addition to FCA Consumer Duty on retirement income. What is the range of potential, you know, outcomes being considered there? I mean, how much difference could that also make? Thank you. Sure. I'll probably pick up both of those because on, on the first one, yes, you, you, you used the word philosophy here. Our, our, our view is very simple here, that we want investors to be highly confident that we are a long-term, sustainably, profitably growing company. Therefore, what we want to deliver is, is that consistent, compounding, and sustainable growth, which means not kind of, you know, punching yourself drunk by going for everything that's in front of you, but pacing yourself. We also think that that's very sensible from a, a prudent risk management perspective as well, that you can grow in a controlled manner. Now, control doesn't mean unexciting. I think what we're delivering here is pretty exciting, but it isn't going for absolutely everything that sits in front of you. That's a very, very deliberate philosophy, and we think that going hand in hand in that with, as, as Andy touched on, maintaining the flexibility in the capital base to support that growth is key. As long as we can deploy shareholder capital at returns comfortably at the moment in excess of a mid-teen rate of return, that's an economically sound trade-off. It's something that we don't just kind of put in a box and forget about. We look at it from time to time, with these very, very strong growth drivers, very, very profitable, low-strain business we can write, we think, it makes sense. On the thematic review, it doesn't, it doesn't look good for anybody to try and guess what a regulator is going to say. What's very clear, the intent of the FCA, is they want to look at how has retirement advice evolved since Pension freedoms was introduced almost a decade ago now, in 2014. You know, it's undeniable that with only 10%-15% of people purchasing an annuity, it seems to have kind of gone from one end of the spectrum right over to the other. I think they're just probing and asking questions about that and gathering information, then off the back of that, they will then provide whatever guidance they want to. What they've stated is that it will feed into their strategy for how they regulate the sector. It's kind of left them very open on what they do. Undeniably for us, we view it as creating a tailwind. It might be a light tailwind, it may be a strong tailwind. We, we shall see. We think that is a further factor that's contributing to the sharp spike in financial advisors who are now seeking GIfL quotes. From 1,400 a year ago to 2,400, a 70% increase. Some of that's interest rate rises, but we don't think it's all interest rate rise-driven, and it's something we track, and we're seeing that trend continuing into the second half of the year. Thank you. I think Mandeep next? Yeah. Hey, good morning, everyone. Thank you for the presentation and taking my questions. Mandeep Jagpal, RBC Capital Markets. First one, another philosophy question, this time on interest rate hedging. In a significant reduction in your interest rate sensitivity over the period, this allows locking a large proportion of those 72 gains. Has any more hedging been done since 30th of June, and how do you decide what's the correct level of exposure going forward? Mm-hmm. Second one is on the larger deal space. I think you mentioned that you've added some capabilities over the 1st half of the year. What specifically were the capabilities that you added, and do you think... What do you still need? Do you think you need to add any, add any more to win more of these types of deals? The final one is for Andy. One last question on longevity for him. You mentioned that the potential mortality release is being added to organic capital generation in the 2nd half of the year, because deaths are running ahead of assumptions. What could the level of capital generation, due to experience and moving to the new CMI 2022 table, model be in H2? Great. Thanks, Mandeep. Andy, I'll let you speak to interest rate hedging, what we've locked in, and what our thinking is going forward, and also longevity releases. On the large deal capability. Again, just to restate, we're very comfortable that we can deliver that kind of 15% underlying, say, growth underlying operating profit through what we've been doing already. The smaller space and the GBP 100 million to GBP 1 billion. However, we have the capability to look at larger deals, and we are selectively participating in those. The capabilities that we've added, were exposed brilliantly by Priti and her team at the seminar we did last year. If you look across the piece, what do you need to have in place? You need to have the investment sourcing capability. We think that's in really, really good shape. You need to have a broad range of reinsurers that you can work with, and we spent a lot of time building those relationships, not just this year, actually, for some period of time. That's starting to really bear fruit this year with new reinsurers being added to our panel, particularly on a facultative or a deal-by-deal basis. Third thing is capital. We've talked about that. We've, we've got the, we've got the powder to be able to do that. The fourth aspect is people. We've invested a lot in people. We've had some key hires who've joined us from other players in the market who have real big deal experience. They're joining us from firms that regularly write GBP 1 billion-plus deal transactions. So that, allied with the capability we already have from Priti's team, puts us in very good shape. We respect the large deals. As I said, we'll look at them very selectively, and we'll consider whether we'd want to put them on our own balance sheet or whether we use partnering. View it very much as optionality to add something else on top rather than a, a key requirement. Okay. In terms of your question on interest rate hedging, since the 30th of June, there's been no change versus. The sensitivities you see published continue to be the ones which impact on us. In terms of setting that level and, and, and what we see as the right level going forward, that, that was set very much in terms of getting the solvency, Solvency II sensitivity to a, to a level that we were comfortable with. It's not completely eradicated on Solvency II. We, we, we aim to keep keep IFRS to be 0. On Solvency II, we've left some exposure there, and that's partly driven by, obviously, we're hedging through gilts, and through that, we take on gilt swap spread risk, and have to hold some capital against that. We're sort of balancing the two really. I. That level is one that I would expect us to sort of maintain as we go forward. As we would expect to add to the GBP 2 billion of gilts, mainly as our balance sheet grows, so to continue to keep that sensitivity broadly in the same place. On longevity, we. There's a sort of couple of things at play, really. If, if you remember, you know, in terms of last year on longevity, we, we took a view that we'd seen obviously elevated mortality through, through COVID and in, in the years subsequent. We, we, we were recognizing that that would take some time to correct back to the long-term trend, but, but ultimately would correct back to that long-term trend. That, and that gave us around a GBP 80 million release in, in our year-end results. What we're seeing this year is that, that as actually our experience versus that trend line continues to have slightly higher deaths than the than the trend line effectively built in. Also, as you've alluded to, CMI22 has come out. What CMI22 did was, effectively, we, we were, we were correcting back to the long-term, long-term view on where, where mortality would improve to, and CMI22 elevated that a bit. We, we need to bring in to our, our thought process and assumptions in the second half of the year, both that sort of, to what extent do we reflect CMI22 and that, that, that more elevated long-term mortality. Also probably the easier question is, in the short term, how much will the elevated mortality we're seeing now correct the trend line? Great. Thank you, Andy. James? Yep. Yeah. Morning, guys, James Pearse from Jefferies. Congrats on the excellent results this morning. Just looking ahead into the second half of this year and next year, I guess what's the... It's kind of a follow-up to the first 2 questions. What, what's the main constraints of growth? I mean, clearly, it doesn't feel like it's demand right now. Is it ensuring that you maintain positive capital generation? Is it, is it headcount, or is it something else? I mean, would you be happy to report a negative capital generation number this year, just kind of given you're at a 204% solvency ratio, balance sheet sensitivity has come down a lot. Just interested to get your take on that. Second question, you've spoken about operating at both the smaller and larger end of the DB market. I'm just interested to get your take on how the market dynamics are, kind of differ between each market segment. You know, you mentioned that some players might, the focus might shift to the kind of GBP 1 billion plus end of the market. Are there certain pockets that just are less competitive or just look more attractive right now? Sure. And, and I'll let you talk to the, you know, how do we think about growth and, and pacing that? I wouldn't go at it, but I'll give you, give you a chance. On, on market dynamics, the, the, the key constraint on, on the market at the moment in terms of how many deals come to market, now is gradually shifting to be more on actually the sell side. The number of schemes that can actually get themselves deal ready. Remember that graph which showed the upper quartile, and there's 1,000 schemes that, broadly speaking, could actually afford a buyout solution. I mentioned that, that doesn't say they're all necessarily ready to transact, and we're starting to see evidence of that, that some deals that EBCs thought might be ready in the second half of this year just aren't gonna get there. They're gonna be ready next year. I mention that in passing because it's just to underline the sheer volume of opportunity that's building up in the system. What does that mean for market dynamics? That's, that, what I mentioned, that context, is we're seeing very rational behavior in the market. Yeah, we're seeing people price sensibly. Actually, there's decent margins to be had across space. Undeniably, on average, and it is always on average, where we can offer a service where others are struggling to offer a service, you will tend to get better metrics, and that is at the smaller end of the spectrum. The deals still need to make sense to the pension scheme, they need to be affordable to the pension scheme, and they need to represent good value, and they need to get professional advice that will represent good value. They're also realistically knowing we did our smallest deal ever this year of GBP 600,000. They know a GBP 600,000 deal is not gonna drive a competitive tender in the market. That said, our largest-ever deal we did this year, which is over GBP 500 million, also on its own, delivered outstanding metrics because we were able to get really good reinsurance terms to complement our asset origination capabilities in that particular deal. It isn't that every large deal has got not such good metrics as small deals. There's always a difference. On average, those smaller schemes that are gonna struggle to get competitive tension will generally not get quite such good pricing as you get at the, at the more competitive end. Hopefully, that makes sense. Yep. In terms of constraints to growth, I was just trying to think about how best to answer you on that. I, I think the philosophically, in terms of, I guess, what drives our thinking on growth is very much that, we want to grow year on year on year. That, that, that ability to continue to deliver growth year on year on year is, is very much what drives our thinking. Yeah, obviously, that, that means that, you know, we've got a pretty strong growth trajectory through those years. But it means that, you know, you know, that, that's far more preferable to us than, than doubling our sales this year and then being flat next year. Now, obviously, if you did double your sales, that, that then potentially gives you challenges of can you source the investments to, to, to back that? You know, can you get enough DB pricing actuaries in through the door? You know, the, the, the sort of delivering consistent growth year on, year on year allows us to continue to grow our teams at a sort of a sensible pace as we, as we move forward, that, that then grow in line with that, that increased capacity effectively. That, that's very much philosophically, how we, how we approach it. Yeah, good summary. Rhea, you were next, yeah. Thanks. Rhea Shah, Deutsche Bank. Two questions from me. Going back to the new business strain, 1.6% in the first half this year, you're consistently below the 2.5% target. Is there a scenario where you would consider reducing or improving that target, for example, staying below 2%? What's the outlook for that for the second half of the year, if you're considering a buoyant market again? In terms of the regulator, the PRA has been talking recently about or discussing more about third-party capital and potential negative impacts of that. Could you just provide some color on what that can mean for you, particularly if you are looking to use them for larger deals? Thanks. Andy, I'll let you pick up the question on new business strain and outlook on that. On the PRA's comments on, you know, what they term funded reinsurance, I think if you actually look at what they've put out there, it's, it's entirely sensible risk management. It's very much aligned with how we manage our, our reinsurance, our DB partnering arrangements we have in place. These are long-term relationships and transactions you're entering into. You, you, you, you do one of these funded reinsurance agreements. It could run 50, 60 years into the future. Having the right protections in place, prudently managing that, is absolutely common sense to us. We're very much aligned with what what they're espousing there. Andy, on the guidance? Yeah, so on, on, on strain, I, I, was sort of, in, in some ways anticipating that, that question, that we, that we would get asked that. You know, clearly, we, we set the 2.5% target, you know, probably a couple of years back in terms of... and that, that reflected very much the way that we manage internally within the business. You know, that is very much the sort of the way that we target both the retail and, and the DB businesses. You know, that what, what I guess what we're, we're seeing is that we are consistently beating that target. You know, at some point, we may need to think about whether we change our, our guidance to you. I think in terms of what we see as the market dynamics at the moment, you know, clearly, you know, that they've been sort of positive in the terms of the 1st half. We see that as continuing to be positive in the 2nd half, I would expect that to be delivering, you know, a, a similar level of new business strain for the business we write in the 2nd half. Great. We've got one question on the webcast. Steve, can you read it out? I probably just picked it up, David, but it's Andrew Kenyon, NatWest Markets, and says: "Congratulations, everyone, on the strong set of results. New business strain's consistently and reliably smaller than our peers. Just wondering if there's any further guidance, Andy, what does it assume in terms of premium deployment, investment, lines of business, reinsurance? If there's anything else to add? Yeah, nothing really. I mean, we haven't... We've been consistently reinsuring 90% of longevity. That continues to be our stance going forward, so there's no real change in the dynamics. The only thing that can potentially be a further sort of positive on new business strain is actually any DB partnering that we do because that gives us income. I view that almost as a sort of a turbocharger on new business. Great. There you go. You heard Andy say turbocharging. Before, before I close, whilst I've got the pleasure of working with Andy until the end of the year, as he mentioned earlier, this will be the last time that he presents to all of you today as our Group CFO. I'd like to recognize the outstanding work and contribution Andy has made since he joined us at the beginning of 2020. He's been an excellent partner to me and been invaluable in terms of turning around the business and setting us on this sustainable growth journey. On behalf of myself, the board, and all management, I'd like to say a big thank you for everything he's contributed over the last three and a half years. Thank you, Andy. Thank you very much. Thank you all very much for your attention today, and enjoy the rest of your day. Thank you. Bye-bye.