Good morning all. Welcome to our interim results presentation. We'll follow the usual format. I'll set out my perspective on business performance, flows, and some of our important initiatives, and then Mark will walk you through the financials. I'll then summarize, and we'll take Q&A. We've also got the exec team in the room with us today, so I'll draw them into questions as appropriate. Let me start with the key highlights across my three key axes, financial momentum, operational improvement, and strategic progress. First, financial momentum. We all know it was a tough market in the first half. Despite that backdrop, there's good momentum in our business, and that's come through in our first half performance. We drove GBP 1.6 billion of net flows to our platform versus GBP 1.8 billion last year, and half a billion pounds of flows into our high net worth business versus GBP 0.4 billion last year. A creditable performance. We increased adjusted profit by 9% to GBP 61 million. That was achieved by delivering a two percentage point increase in the operating margin to 20%. The other notable feature of the first half was the return of GBP 350 million to shareholders from the sale of Quilter International. Taken together with our previous buyback, we've now reduced our share count by about 25% since we listed. Next, operational improvement. As you know, we've substantially completed our optimization plans, delivering some GBP 65 million of cost savings against the original target of GBP 50 million. We're now making good progress with our simplification plans. We've accelerated initiatives wherever we can. We've also agreed a more straightforward process to help expedite the back book transfers, which we told you we were targeting at our Capital Markets Day. Last, in terms of strategic progress, I'm delighted that our new platform continues to be well-received. In both Q1 and Q2, we were the leading firm for retail advised gross flows across the entire platform industry, according to Fundscape data. To maintain that momentum, you'll recall we talked about targeting 700 IFA firms back at the Capital Markets Day. Well, we've already successfully converted over 10% of those to using Quilter as a platform of choice. We also launched our expanded WealthSelect offering to give customers a choice of investment solutions that can cater for whatever risk appetite they have with whatever investment style they prefer, and all with an ESG overlay. We continue to make progress on our plans for tomorrow's Quilter, including investment in our mobile app delivery and our hybrid advice plans. Overall, continued good progress, notwithstanding the backdrop. Let me now say a few words about each segment, starting with affluent. As you can see from the chart on the right, we experienced some revenue headwinds, principally from lower advice and mortgage and protection revenues. Despite those challenges, we increased profits in this segment by 7% to GBP 47 million, supported by good cost discipline and the benefits of simplification. We reduced year-on-year costs by 6% despite inflationary pressures. More broadly, from a strategic perspective, we've seen the first movements in transferring our advisor back books onto our platform. We've streamlined the process to make transfers easier for advisors and their clients, and this should allow us to accelerate momentum from here. We've also been pleased with feedback on our enhanced WealthSelect managed portfolio service, which I mentioned earlier. Turning now to high net worth. Here we delivered solid revenue growth and a year-on-year increase in net flows, which we'll come onto shortly. We've also continued to invest to drive longer-term growth in this segment, so that means profits are down about GBP 3 million year-on-year. That investment includes growing our team of investment managers. We've added eight investment managers since this time last year. We're also building out our advice capabilities in our Dublin office, and we're recruiting financial planners in the UK. As we outlined in November, this is the start of being able to offer both financial planning and investment management right across all of our offices. We've seen strong flows into Quilter Cheviot's managed portfolio service, which we relaunched last November, as well as our Climate Assets Fund, which has gone through the GBP 400 million AUM milestone during this period. We're intending to launch a more growth-focused version of this fund in the fourth quarter. Now let's get into the detail on flows. This is the usual flow chart that you've seen before. As you can see, total gross and net flows were down somewhat in the first half. This overall high-level picture doesn't really give you a good feel for the key trends in both our UK platform and in our high-net-worth business. That's because the overall group figures also include the assets we manage on third-party platforms, including those related to businesses that we've sold, which are obviously in structural outflow and so distort the picture. Today, I want to dig a bit deeper and break out separately the flows for the platform and the high-net-worth business. These are the main flow engines for Quilter and will allow you to more easily make comparisons with our listed peers. I'll start with the platform. As you can see, both net and gross flows for the first quarter were actually marginally ahead of the same period in 2021. In the second quarter, we saw a step down in the level of discretionary investment flows. Looking at the trends behind that, while we enjoyed consistent levels of flows into pensions in the second quarter, pressure on discretionary investment reflects a combination of both weaker market sentiment and the squeeze in household incomes. That led to a step down in gross flows from about GBP 2.3 billion in the first quarter to around GBP 1.9 billion in the second quarter. Basically, people are putting less in their ISAs. It's worth noting that the lower Q2 gross and net outturn for the platform was still higher than the level we were at before our new platform came on stream. We're confident that our new platform has definitely moved us to a higher sustainable level of flows. We're now capturing more flow from our own advisors, and we're also targeting a wider range of IFA firms across the market. We've continued also to improve persistency this year. You may recall that our platform persistency in early 2020 was inflated by some of the transfer and operational problems that other firms were having in the early stages of COVID. The 93% persistency you see here, up a percentage point on last year, is welcome evidence of continued progress. I'm particularly pleased that we've seen notably fewer clients leaving us to go to other platforms. The feedback we get from IFAs is that they no longer need to do so. Our new platform is so much easier to use, and because we now offer such a comprehensive service. Despite that improved persistency, the lower level of gross flows has fed through to lower net flows in Q2. Of course, this is the trend you can see right across the market from last week's Investment Association statistics. One point six billion pounds of platform net inflows for the half, versus GBP 1.8 billion in a much better market a year ago, is a pleasing result. While we know there is more to be done, as I said earlier, we've been delighted with the market reception to our new platform. We were the leading player for retail advised sales across the entire platform industry in both the first and second quarter, according to Fundscape, and our market share position is clearly heading in the right direction. As the chart shows, relative to our major listed peers, we've shown the most significant improvement in gross market share over the last 3 years. Back at the Capital Markets Day in November, we said we were actively targeting around 700 larger IFA firms who've historically not used us or been very low-volume users of our platform. We've made excellent progress here. Around 80 of those firms have now adopted us as a platform of choice for new investments. We are having in-depth discussions with another 60 firms, and we're in the early stage of engagement with a further 100 firms. I'm confident that the market share improvement you can see on this slide is set to continue. Turning now to the high-net-worth segment. As I mentioned earlier, you can see that flows have been resilient. Gross flows at GBP 0.6 billion for the second quarter were broadly in line with the quarterly average over the last 3 years. Net flows were essentially flat in the second quarter versus the first quarter and up year-on-year, which I think is an excellent performance given the current market. That's a great outturn relative to our peers and shows the benefit of our dual distribution approach. Let me now switch gears and turn to advisor numbers and productivity. As you remember, we repositioned our advisor force last year to take full advantage of our new platform. Our objectives were to maximize usage of the platform by our own advisors and to ensure that they were better aligned with our products and services. It's worked. As you can see in the lower chart, we saw a sharp improvement in advisor productivity last year, and that has been sustained into this year despite lower flows across the market. Indeed, flows generated by our advisors in the first half onto our platform and into our solutions were running at a mid-teens rate of opening assets in affluent and a low-teens rate in high-net-worth. Putting that into perspective, net flows from Quilter advisors onto our platform were just under GBP 1 billion in the first half of this year, up 10% on 2021. I'm also pleased to report that as we predicted, advisor attrition has normalized. Adding newer advisors has been challenging this year. Our robust vetting of new entrants and the slower pace of regulatory authorization has meant our pipeline of new joiners hasn't fed through as quickly as we'd have liked. Some aggressive consolidation in the market has definitely increased competition for advisors. What have we done? Well, we've repositioned our offer to compete more strongly, and we continue to support our firms with practice buyout and management buyout funding. We've also launched our advisor retirement plan, where we can acquire and we can now accommodate retiring advisors' client books directly into our national business. We're pleased to see our pipeline of advisor firms wanting to join us continue to grow, and we've added further resources to our recruitment team. Once advisors are in our network, we want to ensure that they feel fully embedded into the Quilter culture and philosophy. We've launched our Ties That Bind program to underpin this. This program is focused on three core areas. First, we're helping advisors run profitably. We're investing in technology to make it easier for them to engage with clients and with us. Second, we're helping advisors grow sustainably. We're investing in new central paraplanning and support structures. We're helping them to grow advisor numbers through our financial advisor school and by providing recruitment resources. Third, we're helping advisors exit with confidence. As I just mentioned, we've got market-leading practice and management buyout schemes. We've completed 22 such transactions this half alone. Of course, advisors can now sell to our national business, securing the transfer of client ownership and assets with little disruption. With the foundations of our advice business firmly in place, we're now refocusing back on advisor growth. To that end, we've appointed Stephen Fryett back into the business as Managing Director. Stephen was a founder of the business that became Quilter Financial Planning before moving to manage our largest network firm. He has a unique perspective from both sides of the fence, and I know both Steves are excited about the opportunities they see to accelerate our growth here. Turning now to the assets we manage. Our most important initiative in 2022 to date has been the relaunch of our WealthSelect managed portfolio solution. WealthSelect now incorporates a full range of risk and investment styles, all with ESG overlays. That allows us to accommodate a wider range of investor needs than many of our peers. We provide a choice of 56 portfolios to cover the full spectrum of client appetites, from active to passive, adventurous to conservative, and with responsible and sustainable options. There's a chart in the appendix which shows you the detail, but as I highlight on the chart, performance of our Wealth Select portfolios continues to be extremely good, as is the performance of our Cirilium passive and blend ranges. Cirilium Active has an excellent long-term record, but as a more quality, growth-focused proposition, its short-term performance has been more mixed in these markets. Before I hand over to Mark, let me summarize. We all know it's a difficult operating environment, but what differentiates us at times like these is how we respond and the opportunities we seize. How are we responding? First, I'd emphasize that through our advisors and our investment managers, we're staying close to our customers to help them manage their financial affairs. In tough markets, our customers really appreciate the value of advice. That's what makes our advisor-focused model so resilient. We're investing in our Ties That Bind program to reinforce the relationship between advisors in our network and Quilter. Next, to drive growth, we will keep adding new IFA firms to the platform. This will be the principal source of incremental flow to get us to our 6% target. Meanwhile, we've continued to drive strong flows to our platform despite a difficult market. In high net worth, we'll continue to add investment managers and build out our advice capabilities, which will also support growth inflows. While investing, we'll maintain our resolute focus on costs and accelerate our simplification plans wherever possible. We remain well-capitalized, and we continue to believe in the attractiveness of our integrated business model. Finally, I wanted to mention that we are conscious that it's not just us that has to manage through tough times. Our staff have to do so as well. That's why we've announced a one-off GBP 1,200 payment to all staff who earn GBP 50,000 or less with their August pay. Our colleagues have been phenomenal throughout the ups and downs of the last few years, and so we want to support them also. With that, let me hand over to Mark to run you through the numbers. Mark. Thank you, Paul, and good morning, everyone. As Paul has said, the first half of 2022 had its challenges for a whole bunch of reasons. Obviously, the decline in equity markets and the rise in bond yields had a significant impact on our assets under management and administration. That led to some revenue headwinds which, unless equity and bond markets improve, will be felt more in the second half. I'm going to drill down in a bit more detail than normal to help you understand how we are managing our business to deliver the right outcomes for all our stakeholders. Let me say up front, there are four messages that I hope you take away from our presentation. One, that the business is in good shape, delivering robust flows and improved persistency. Two, the trend in revenue margin is playing out in line with our expectations. Three, we've got costs under tight control despite inflationary pressures. Lastly, we've got a strong balance sheet following the completion of our capital return program. Let's get started. We think our financial performance during the first half was pretty good given the market environment. Overall, adjusted profit and our operating margin all stack up well against market expectations. We know net flows were below 2021 levels, but the sustainable trend in our flows is on an upward trajectory. Let me walk you through the details. Starting top left, and as Paul mentioned, flows were lower than a year ago in affluent, but up in high net worth and came in at GBP 1.4 billion for the half overall. Our average AUMA to the end of June were modestly ahead of last year, and I'll get into the detail behind that in a moment. Top right, you can see revenues were broadly unchanged with a slightly higher management fee revenue offset by lower other revenue, principally due to lower advice revenues and mortgage-related income. Costs, bottom left, were down 2% to GBP 242 million. By completing our optimization plans and maintaining cost discipline, we largely offset expense increases, and we've also benefited from lower FSCS levies this half. That gave an operating margin of 20%, up 2 percentage points on where we were a year ago. As a result, we delivered a 9% increase in adjusted profit. That translated into adjusted diluted earnings per share of 3.7 pence, a decline of 5% year-over-year. That decline was mainly due to a more normal tax rate of 18% in the first half compared to the tax credit in 2021 from a one-off deferred tax benefit. This more than offsets the lower share count from the share buyback and share consolidation scheme. Right. I promised you a little more detail on the evolution of AUMA, and this slide shows it. The detail in gray shows how AUMA evolved over 2021. The bars represent the month-end positions. The gray line shows the rolling average as it built up over last year, and the green shows the same for this year to date. What you can see is that the 2021 AUMA trended up throughout the year. In contrast, in 2022, AUMA started at a high point and has been on a declining trend given the movement across equity and bond indices. From a P&L perspective, what's important is average AUMA because this is what drives revenues. If you look at the two lines, you can see that in the first half, average AUMA this year has been ahead of the corresponding period of 2021. As the year has progressed, those lines have been converging. As you think about modeling revenues for the remainder of the year, bear in mind market levels will impact how that green line progresses. If markets don't improve, the two lines will converge further, as you can see with the dotted line, making the second half a tougher comparator for revenues. It's worth adding at this point that end July AUMA was up a bit on end June levels, taking it back above the GBP 100 billion mark again. If the July trend continues, then we will have a better average AUMA outturn for the second half than what I'm showing here. Now, AUMA is only one component of revenues. The other part is margins, where, as you know, there are pressures across the industry. Let's turn to that. I'm pleased that the picture here is totally in line with our expectations. In high net worth, the black line, we hold in relatively stable margins with just a single basis point decline from the second half of last year. New business is coming onto the book at a broadly similar margin to our existing stock. Next, our investment platform in dark green at the bottom. Here, we see gentle dilution of around a basis point a year in line with our guidance. That reflects the new business being generally priced in the mid-twenties. Finally, let me say a few words on the managed assets in our affluent segment, the lighter green. You'll have spotted that we have restated revenue margins here. This relates to the restructuring of our WealthSelect range, which Paul mentioned. You'll remember that I called out the financial impacts of that back at the full-year results. Basically, we now earn a fee on an additional approximately GBP 3 billion of assets in our affluent segment, which are in WealthSelect on the platform, but not managed in Quilter Investors funds. Because the wrapper management fee margin is modest at 15-20 basis points, the inclusion of that additional GBP 3 billion of assets reduces the managed revenue margin we report in the affluent segment by around 4-5 basis points. Clearly, this is just optics without any impact on the business economics. Now, let's turn to the cost side of the equation. In the first half of 2022, we reduced our total cost base to GBP 242 million, down GBP 6 million from last year, despite inflationary headwinds and investment in growth. Here you can see that we've continued to manage down base costs as a percentage of revenues. That's the hard work bit, and that's the driver behind our expected operating margin expansion. The cost of revenue generating staff as a percentage of revenues has moved up modestly, reflecting the sort of investment that Paul mentioned earlier. We've accrued variable compensation at a similar level to last year, and the uplift in other variable costs reflect more normal levels of operational expenditure after the pandemic, as well as a tick-up in development spend within the business and a full period of FNZ platform costs after the migrations last year. Finally, we've benefited from a reduction in FSCS levies this year, resulting from the industry-wide levy surplus that was carried forward from last year. The waterfall on the right-hand side summarizes the main changes year-on-year. Cost push came from inflation as well as more normalized levels of investment, and lower FSCS levies and our management actions more than offset these, leading to reduced overall costs. When it comes to thinking about second half costs, please bear in mind that, as Paul has mentioned, we are making a one-off cost of living payment of around GBP 4 million to staff in August. In addition, we'll also have the full half's impact of inflationary salary increases. Overall, I'd expect a run rate higher than simply doubling the first half expenses excluding FSCS, and then adding that GBP 16 million back on. By way of guidance, we think the current consensus for costs in the mid GBP 480 millions is sensible, assuming stable markets. This could be high if markets improve, which would push up both revenues and variable staff compensation. Now let me turn to the strength of our balance sheet, starting with the major movements in solvency ratio, which are all straightforward. We began the year with a ratio of 275%. The capital return program reduced the ratio by 56 percentage points. Below the line transformation costs were a 3 percentage point drag, while profits added 5 percentage points. The interim dividend reduces the ratio by 2 percentage points, bringing us to the 219% you see here. I should also say that we continue to evaluate options around our Tier 2 bond, which, as you can see, contributes 35% of our Solvency II capital. As you know, it is a call date early next year. As the bond markets have become more turbulent since our full year results, it makes the decision a little more complex. Regardless of the decision we make, we expect higher interest costs in 2023 and beyond. It's also worth flagging here that we have completed our review of the Lighthouse British Steel pension scheme transfers. We have reduced our outstanding provision at the end of the period to GBP 2 million, reflecting investigation expenses still to be paid. A claim under the Lighthouse professional indemnity insurance has been agreed. In total, the net cost of the remediation program to us has been around GBP 12 million. Next, let me touch on the cash position at the bottom. You'll recall that we ended 2021 with GBP 756 million in cash. Completion of the Quilter Life Assurance buyback cost GBP 28 million. The B share issue and redemption cost GBP 328 million, and the final dividend cost GBP 62 million, of which around GBP 25 million was part of the Quilter International capital return. Remittances from subsidiaries totaled GBP 107 million, and so we are left with just under GBP 390 million of cash in the bank at the end of June. We've earmarked around GBP 120 million for the interim dividend and our business simplification and investment plans, which leaves the remaining cash balance broadly in line with our risk appetite. The board has decided to leave the interim dividend unchanged on last year. Given the lower earnings after the higher tax charge, this represents a broadly unchanged payout ratio of around 53%. We expect to continue to move up our targeted payout range at the full year. The extent of that will be determined by the overall profit outturn for the year, as well as the market and business conditions prevailing at the time. You'll be familiar with this slide. It's the targets we set out at our Capital Markets Day last year. The only caveat I'll flag is around our operating margin targets. As you know, we are targeting a 25% operating margin in 2023, and 30% by 2025. I very much believe that achieving an operating margin in excess of 30% is absolutely the right place for a business like ours. You'll recall that when I set those targets at the Capital Markets Day, I did say three things were required to achieve them. First, we had to achieve net flows broadly in line with our target. Second, we expected equity market growth of around 5% per annum. Third, we had to achieve our business simplification plans. Now, our flows are slightly off the pace, and we almost certainly won't hit the 6% flow target this year. I'm not unduly worried about the impact of that on our operating margin targets. Our simplification plans are very much on track. However, so far this year, markets are clearly not helping at all. If we don't see a market improvement later this year and into 2023, it may well have some impact on the timing of our target operating margin delivery. Those targets remain at levels that this business should be more than capable of achieving. In summary, I am pleased with the financial performance of the company so far in 2022. The business is in good shape, and we are pleased with the first half profit outturn. We are on top of and managing everything that is in our control. The trend in revenue margins is broadly as anticipated. Costs are well controlled. Our balance sheet remains in good shape. With that, let me hand back to Paul. Thank you, Mark. Right, before we go to questions, let me summarize our key priorities. First, our principal focus is always on looking after our customers and advisors. By doing that, we'll drive revenue growth. We'll continue to increase flows across our business and aim to manage more of those flows over time. Second, we will maintain strict cost discipline and deliver our business simplification plans. Third, we will drive operating leverage and improve our operating margin. Finally, we'll move up our dividend payout range and deliver strong returns to shareholders. Clearly, despite the backdrop, we've been busy. There's significant value still to come from Quilter, and we're really focused on delivering it. Right. With that, let's open up for questions. Over to the operator. Thank you. If you wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now to enter the queue. Once your name has been announced, you can ask your question. If you find your question is answered before it's your turn to speak, you can dial zero two to cancel. Our first question comes from the line of Andrew Sinclair at Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thanks. Morning, everyone. Three questions for me, please. First couple on financial advisors, and then one on margins. Firstly, headcount down a little bit again. I realize it's been a tough backdrop, but there are still some peers who are growing. Just really wondered if you can give us some context of when you think you can get back to growth and what sort of growth you think is achievable over the medium term. And I suppose as well, if you can just give us the breakdown into, if possible, growth, recruitment, and attrition numbers. That's a long question one. Second question was just on the financial advisor school. Just wondering if you could tell us how many students are in it at the moment and how many graduated in H1. Final question was just on margins. I totally understand that markets are gonna make things very difficult at the moment. Just really wondered if you think about the 2023 and 2025 targets differently. When you look at 2025 targets, are there some levers that you can pull a bit harder if markets still remain depressed? I mean, you can feel a bit more confident in those targets than perhaps 2023, which will clearly be more influenced by markets. Thanks. Okay. Thank you, Andy. Well, I'm gonna take the first question then hand over to Steve Gazard, who runs Quilter Financial Planning for us. Steve, I think you can also take the question on FAS in terms of how many graduates and what we're expecting. Then I'll open on the margins question, hand over to Mark. Andy, the RFP result isn't where Steve and I would like it to be, and quite frankly, I'm not happy about the figure we're presenting. We've been open about having a shakeout of our restricted planners who needed to leave the business over the last 18 months, and quite frankly, a few of those were still making their way out of the numbers in this half. However, the result of the initiatives we've taken and put in place is now an advisor force where we are all more strategically aligned. It's a stable advisor force. Productivity has improved substantially, as you've seen, and it's been maintained even in these markets. If you look at the result of that, we delivered GBP 1 billion of net flow onto our platform from our own advisors this half, which is up 10% on the last half. There's no doubt that the pain we went through to strategically align our advisor force has worked and is working. I'm also heartened to see the pipeline that we've got, which is coming through, and also the recruitment into our advisory school, which, I'm sure Steve will talk about now. We've got a great proposition, a relevant and compelling one for advisors. You know, from what I'm looking at now, it could take to the end of the year, six months to see net advisor growth, not only stabilize but, you know, start getting back to growth. Certainly what we've done is working. Steve, do you wanna- Yeah, of course. Add some color to that. Yeah, of course. Morning, Andy. I mean, look, advisor numbers are ultimately a combination of recruitment and retention. If I deal with those kind of separately. From a recruitment perspective, we are seeing positive results with the numbers of advisors engaged with us in active, meaningful conversations. That's up about 50% at this time last year, and our pipeline applications is up circa 25% as a result. However, as Paul kind of alluded to, we continue to focus on the robust vetting, and this combined with regulatory authorization delays across the market mean that pipeline is taking longer to land than we would have hoped. I am pleased with the numbers that I now see feeding through on a month-by-month basis, and as a result, we've added 75 planners so far this year. From a retention perspective, as Paul said, look, I'm equally heartened to see that not only are attrition levels nearly 50% favorable to this time last year, but more importantly, they actually returned to those levels we experienced pre our business alignment work, so that's circa around 10%, on an annual basis. Interestingly, what we've seen is a meaningful chunk of the losses this year have been outside of those actually terminated by us, have been retiring advisors. As Paul mentioned, we therefore added our national retirement plan. As a result, since we've launched that, we are capturing an increasing number of those opportunities. Meaning that, yes, we do lose the headline Advisor number. Importantly, retaining both the clients and the assets. That's definitely working for me as far as I'm concerned. Solid foundations in place, launched into the next stage. Again, as Paul has alluded to, we've appointed Steve Fryett back into the business to drive that accelerated growth agenda with me. With regards to financial advisor school, 30 graduated in the first half of the year. We have over 50 currently in the school in the current cohorts. I'd expect around 70%-80% of those to graduate out before the end of the year and add to that population of advisors being authorized. Okay. Just before we jump on. Sorry, just the 75 that you were saying that, you know, added this year in terms of gross recruitment. Does that include the 30 grads or not? Yes, it does. Perfect. Thanks. Okay. Margins. I think your question, Andy, was, 25 targets. Given the market conditions, you know, can we go harder? I think one thing you've seen in the first half of this year is that we have gone harder. You know, we've brought forward quite a bit of our simplification initiatives. To give you an example, we had planned to exit. You know, we had two major buildings in Southampton as a result of running two platforms, quite frankly, for several years. Or building one platform and running another one. We had planned to consolidate those into one building. That was supposed to happen next year. We've done it this year. We completed that about six weeks ago, which has given us a, you know. That will give us a good cost run rate benefit going forward. We're looking at all of those things. Mark, do you want to add some color to that? You've already added some of the color I think, Paul. Andy, look, I've always said to achieve the targets you set out at the Capital Markets Day, you need to believe in three things, and I outlined some of those in the presentation. It's the NCCF growth, it's the ability to achieve the simplification plans, and it's market levels also providing some support along the way. Really, it's the market level component, given the reliance that our revenue base has on average assets under management, which are driven by market indices that actually sort of has probably the biggest impact. Should market conditions stay difficult, tight, lower indices like they are at the moment, then clearly we will look at accelerating simplification things, which is what we've done in the first half. We'll look at making other, cost reduction initiatives, which you can also see from the slide we made in the first half. There is a limit in the ability and capacity to do that forever. Frankly, we would obviously be looking at if we can go to be in tougher markets for a longer period, and that is what we're looking at at the moment in any event. There does become a point at which it's very difficult to go any further. Excellent. Really appreciate the color. Thanks, guys. Thank you. Our next question comes from Greg Simpson at BNP Paribas. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hi. Okay, good morning, everyone. Hi there. A few questions on my side. The first one would be, I think you mentioned there's 80 firms or so that have agreed to use Quilter as their primary platform on the IFA side and a pipeline of more. Have you been seeing that come through in this period in terms of flows? Or is it something you expect to build in H2? The reason I ask is in H1 flows on the platform from the IFA side were down year-on-year and quite limited in Q2 versus a more robust outcome on the restricted advisor side. That was the first question. Second one is, could you remind us of the different drivers of other income? How much is mortgage related and how much is in particular market linked directly in terms of how we should think about that evolution? The third one is what is the kind of run rate you're at in terms of the GBP 45 million of simplification savings? I think that was a target out to 2024. You know, where are we at today? Have those been accelerated? How are you thinking about, you know, next year with the benefit of that versus maybe more inflation? Thank you. Okay. Thanks, Greg. I'll tell you that I'm going to bring Steve Levin in in a moment on the IFA flows on the platform. Just say that we're really delighted with how much progress we're making with getting advisors, new advisors on our platform. 80 in the first half of the 700 we've been targeting. 60 in active discussions and another 100 that we've opened discussions with. Clearly, they don't give you all the, all the business on day one. So getting them. The first thing is to get them on and get them using you as a platform of choice. Steven, do you want to add some color to that? Yeah. Greg, we didn't actually say we're primary for all of them. We say we're a platform of choice, which means we're in the top two or three. For some we are primary, for some we will build up to that. What advisors do, what advisor firms are, and obviously our goal is to be primary platform for all of these firms and many more. But what advisors do is, they have to go through a process. You know, we're talking about larger firms here. These have got panels, vetting processes, internal things that they go through before they pick a panel, and that takes time. We've been doing that. Some of those 80 that started using us from, you know, January, actually we've already started seeing meaningful flow, and there's some good flow from that that's in our numbers already. Others that have, you know, adopted us and made their decisions only in May or June, we wouldn't have seen much flow from them yet because that'll be coming through later. Also, what practically has to happen, and just so you understand how these lead times work, is once an advisor firm has adopted us, that would be sort of a decision of the management or whoever controls the panel of which platforms they use in that firm, then you've got to go out and train all the advisors in that firm. Which could be a small firm of five advisors, could be 50 advisors, and that takes a little bit of time. From then you start seeing the pipeline of flow. Advisors also first obviously focus on new business, and so we see new business flow coming to us, and then later we would focus on trying to get them to move books once they've built confidence in our platform as well. That's how we see it. Okay. The next question I think, Greg, was on other income drivers and how the other income line breaks down. Mark, do you want to. Yeah. Look, other income is predominantly made up of revenue earned within from advice fees. There's a small component of it in the first half now that interest rates have started rising that is related to revenue that gets generated from interest, and it's on cash deposits. And that's principally in Quilter Cheviot and in the group. There's about sort of GBP 4-5 million of the total coming through from that. The rest of it is all pretty much predominantly QFP and TCA. Anything on the advice side revenue. Within that, it roughly breaks down, and this percentage movement does move, but about 50% of it is in recurring fees, which is obviously market linked, and it's gonna go up and down as markets rise and fall. About 15% of it is fixed, and about 35% of it is variable coming through from initial charges, fees and charges made. Within that, the initial component, mortgage and protection income within that is a significant component of it because most of that is transactional. You don't get any recurring on it, and it all comes through as initial. Hopefully that provides you with a little bit of flavor around that. I think the third question was on simplification. On the GBP 45 million run rate and where you are today. On the 45. Where we are today, we have, we've got a benefit of GBP 5 million coming through in the first half, which is part of the slide. We have got the GBP 12 million on it overall. GBP 7 million of it was optimization, GBP 5 million simplification, and that GBP 5 million translates into an annualized run rate of about GBP 12 million-GBP 13 million. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Enrico Bolzoni of J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking the questions. One partially asked and answered already, just lightly rephrasing it. Of the 80 new firms that you onboarded, could you quantify in terms of gross flows how much they contributed or how much you expect them to contribute? Also just I think you mentioned, I just couldn't hear well, when you say primary, so platform of choice, do you mean the main platform used or one of the two or three platforms used by the IFA firms? So that's my first question. My second question was, you mentioned that now, basically due to restructuring, it is much easier for advisors to sell the business to you. Can you just give us a bit of a practical example of what was not possible before and what instead is possible now? Just trying to understand in practical terms how that could help. Finally, another question. I mean, I appreciate that we're now mid-August. Clearly, there's been a nice rebounding market over the last month or so. Have you seen any change in investors' behavior or are people still on the cautious side in terms of contribution to ISA and to their pension? Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Enrico. Question, of the 80 firms, can we break down what their flows, the gross flows are or what they're expected? Basically when we talk about platform of choice, I think, do we mean primary or secondary? Stephen, do you want to get into this? Yeah. We have said that these firms have represented about 10% of our gross flows from the IFA channel this year from these 80 firms. That I think gives you an indication of the size of them. In terms of, our objective is to be the primary platform, which means, you know, you get the largest market share of wallet from that advisor firm. These 80 firms we're talking about, though, just to be clear, they are firms that were not really using us in the past at all. You don't go from not being used by an advisor firm to being their platform of choice. That wouldn't be sort of a natural decision of an advisor. They want us to first get onto their panel. Most advisor firms would have a panel of two or three core platforms that they use. We haven't been on that list at all. We've got onto that list for those 80 firms. That means we'll be in the sort of the two or three that they are primarily using. Then our objective is to get to the number one spot in there, and that will take, you know, time as they get more familiar with us. That's how it practically works. Okay. The next one, Steve Gazard. Steve, it's easier to sell the business to us now than before. Can you let Enrico know what was not possible before and what's possible now? Maybe give some examples. Yeah. Without names. Absolutely. We've long supported our practice buyout and management buyout schemes where we have helped other network firms acquire businesses both internally and externally, and that continues to do so. The new piece for us is the launch of our national retirement plan. The key difference there is that advisors retiring can now sell to our own Quilter Financial Advisers business, whereby we can directly look after the clients, look after the assets and drive that forward, allowing the advisor to retire off with little disruption, and that was a new launch this year. The third question related to July, August. We've seen a good rebound in markets in July and, well, first 9 or 10 days of August, which has been very welcomed. That's stock markets, obviously, we're talking about there, which certainly helps our assets under management and helps our revenues and everything. Look, it's too early to say, Enrico, with this, you know, obviously, you know. The retail investor will lag a bit the market rebound. It's also July and August, so everyone's on holiday. I would expect if there is a rebound, I'd expect to see it from September onwards really, rather than in the summer months. Thank you. It also depends on whether this is a proper rebound or whether it's a temporary thing. None of us know that. Thanks. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of James Allen at Liberum. Please go ahead, your line is open. Hi. Morning, guys. Morning. Two questions from me, if I can. First one is just around the hybrid advice proposition. You've held your cards pretty close to your chest on this. I was just wondering whether you could provide any more color on this now, kind of rough launch date, pilot testing feedback, similarities or differences versus the advice proposition being proposed by Hargreaves. Secondly, just on the WealthSelect relaunch. From my understanding, there was about an extra GBP 1 billion of AUMA expected to move into Quilter Investors this year, with around a GBP 2 billion impact next year as part of the relaunch. What was the benefit of that in the Quilter Investors inflows in the first half as part of that relaunch? What should we expect for the full year? Okay. Thanks, James. I'm gonna bring Steven Levin in a moment on hybrid. Hybrid advice proposition. We're making good progress with our hybrid advice proposition. It's basically going to enable us to, quite frankly, address a more mass affluent market and a younger market. One of the attractions of Lighthouse that we bought was that we have 30-odd affiliates with contracts to provide advice to almost 6 million people in this country. Which quite frankly is almost impossible to get to face-to-face, certainly economically face-to-face. That's gonna provide a lot of the lead generation and access for our new hybrid advice proposition, which we're launching. Clearly, we are keeping it under wraps and we're keeping it under wraps for the very simple reason. All other of our competitors are also going along the same lines and, you know, just as, you know, they're keeping it under wraps. Chris is keeping it under wraps over at HL. We're coming from different positions. He's coming from a DTC position into hybrid advice. We're coming from an advice platform into hybrid advice. I hate the term hybrid advice, by the way. Hybrid. What's it a hybrid of? I mean, we've gotta come up with a different term, and we will come up with a different term. You know what we mean. We're not gonna unpack it today, 'cause we do believe it's a competitive USP that we're launching. We expect to launch actually in early 2023. We're gonna get this right and do it right and launch it with impact. I've probably taken all your color there, Steve, do you want- Yeah. Yeah? Okay. WealthSelect launch. Look, one of the things that Mark said is in the first half of this year with our relaunch proposition and now all of our, you know, ESG proposition, it's enabled us and we've taken the opportunity to take a wrapper fee on all of the assets within WealthSelect, not just the assets which are actually not just the Quilter Investors funds. That's brought GBP 3 billion of assets within WealthSelect, if you like, within the charging function of WealthSelect. It's added another 15-20 basis points on GBP 3 billion of assets. Mark was saying whilst in terms of, you know, how it looks, it looked like therefore the average margin in QI has gone down. The reality is the revenue's gone up because we're now getting that revenue on GBP 3 billion of assets. Clearly now we've only just launched them. The performance since we launched, which is three months ago, has been very good, excellent for a second quartile type performance of those portfolios. It's a pretty good time to launch, you know, ESG responsible and sustainable portfolios, you know, given what had happened to that market up to that point. It will build from here. Again, you know, Stephen or Marcus, either of you want to add to that? Have I stolen your thunder? Okay. Yeah. James, those are your answers. Thanks very much. Okay. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Ben Bathurst of RBC. Please go ahead, your line is open. Morning, everyone. Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. I'll start on costs, if I may. In particular, just wondering which parts of the cost base have you been feeling the sort of inflationary pressure most keenly in H1 making up that GBP 10 million increase that you show in the waterfall chart. I just wondered, is there any evidence of the pressure there sort of building any more in recent months given the macro backdrop? Secondly, on platform flows. Paul, you mentioned that you're now in a position to accelerate back book transfers. I just wondered, is that something we should expect to see sort of imminently in H2? Or does the more challenging market backdrop complicate the ability to conduct those transfers in any way? Thank you. Thanks, Ben. Mark, do you wanna take the first one? Yeah, I'll take inflation. Look, I mean, in broad terms, we're feeling inflationary pressures across all cost categories. If I could call out a few specifics on that. Utility bills in our buildings are obviously massively up, as they are in people's homes and everywhere else. Staff inflation is also pretty keen. We increased our average sort of staff payroll cost by about 4% in April. You know what headline inflation rates are running at in the UK. You know it's below that. You know, that's a big component and really part of the one-off payment that we're making that Paul mentioned earlier to some staff. You know, just reflective of the inflation environment that we are living in. Then some of our IT contracts obviously have inflation-linked clauses within them, which in the past haven't amounted to much more than a row of beans, but it's now becoming a lot more pertinent as far as those are concerned. That's where our procurement team does a good job, despite the contracts maybe linking to some crazy index at the moment, of actually managing that down. Those are probably the main three areas I'd call out. Okay. In platform flows- Can I just ask a quick follow-up on that? Sorry, go ahead, Ben. I interrupted you. Mark, just quickly, when you mentioned IT contracts, can I just confirm, does that include the FNZ contract or is that something? No, it doesn't. Separate? Not like the. No. Okay. Other ones. Platform flows, accelerating back book transfers. Well, first, I'd say we would expect to see an acceleration now from here, having now put the process in place. I would still remind everybody that these are individual advice points. As much as we would love to press a button and do a full reregistration, electronic reregistration, we still have advisors still have to go to clients and do an individual review of clients before they can move them onto our platform. We have got the process in place. Steve, do you wanna put some color on that? Yeah. No, I agree. I mean, as you say, key thing is that we believe it is an individual price point on individual suitability. You know, we have both clients and advisors who are very keen to now gain access to our new platform, and that's great. We've simplified the advice process to make that easier for advisors. We're rolling out supporting technology that makes it noticeably easier for them to transact in that space. We're also helping our advisors through the creation and expansion of our central support and paraplanning team that will help them do it with it. We would expect that acceleration, but we will ultimately deal with it on an individual client-by-client basis, so it will take time. Thank you for that. Thank you. Our next question comes from the line of Alex Medhurst at Barclays. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi, guys. Thanks for the presentation. I actually have had most of my questions answered, but maybe I could take one or two quick follow-ups on the flow side of things. First then, you know, I noticed platform outflows have been, you know, roughly flat for the last couple of years at about 8% versus periods of sort of 5%-6%. Can you just elaborate on what's driving the higher outflows and when you expect that gap to close that you've been talking about for the last couple of periods? Secondly, slightly kind of related point, I guess. I heard the point on the cyclical challenges to flows at the moment, but again, listed peers in the affluent segment, whether that's platforms or advice businesses, we're still doing sort of 7%+ net new money in Q2 annualized. I guess the question is, you know, do you think you can be matching those at some point structurally in the next few years? If so, what are the steps you still need to have to take to get to that structurally higher level of flows even when the conditions are significantly more challenging? Thanks. Okay. Thanks, Alex. 8% platform outflows, what is driving this, when we close the gap? Don't forget, we've got the largest single advisor platform in the whole of the U.K. market, and we've got one of the most mature platforms in the whole of the U.K. market. In a smaller platform, we'll have a much lower delta between gross and net because they haven't got much. They've got lower AUM. You know, we have got that. Steven, do you want to add to that? I mean, as Paul says, one of the points is the age of the platform. Some of the other platforms that you're looking at are younger, and therefore they have less of the business that was written 10 or 15 years ago that is just naturally clients that are older and are more in outflows. The other key driver is, and I think will change on those platforms over time, but the other key driver for us is the difference between net and gross market share, which we've tried to talk about once before. We have been number one for gross market share for the last several quarters now. What that will do is as we have more and more time when we're bringing in the most assets in the front, that will change. That means we're bringing in assets that are, again, sort of younger in their own right. You sort of got to think of this a little bit in a sort of the age of the assets of which you've brought in. The challenge that we had is before we did our platform migration, there was a period of time over a number of years when our flows were lower and we lost market share before the platform migration, which you will see historically in the numbers. What now needs to happen is we have to have several periods of leading the way in the gross flows, and then the nets will start following that because the outflows as a proportion of the assets will then start shrinking. That's how the dynamic will work. For us, the focus remains on driving the gross flows as much as we can and on minimizing outflows as much as we can. Paul has also pointed out, and we're pleased to see, that there is a reduction in outflows to other platforms because there's less reason for advisors to choose another platform. The outflows from clients taking their money remains at levels that we've seen before, and that's the nature of parts of, you know, people in pension and in drawdown. For us, the big focus is on reducing the outflows to other platforms because our platform is now the leading one in the market. Yeah. In turn, I think that kind of answers your second question too, actually, Alex. You're talking about 7% annualized. I think our platform, the first half did about close on 4.5% annualized in this market. So as we continue to lead the market in gross flows, over time, that will shift the net number, as Steven said. You know, we most certainly can and do expect to be able to do those numbers. Thanks very much. Thank you. We have one further question in the queue at this time. Just as a reminder to participants, if you do wish to ask a question, please dial zero one on your telephone keypads now. That next question comes from the line of Guillaume Descalle of Société Générale. Please go ahead. Your line is open. Hi. Good morning. Thanks for taking my question. Only one for me. Now that Quilter International, the sale is completed, can you give us an update on your thoughts on the group Solvency II supervision versus the ICAAP capital compliance? If I remember well, it's something that you pointed out during the Capital Markets Day. Simply, I wonder what can be the upside in moving to ICAAP capital compliance. I suspect that the reporting burden can be different under the two frameworks. Any color could be really helpful to frame that. Okay. Yeah, because I'm just thinking about, you know, one of the three pillar you mentioned quite a few times is about the simplification plan. I just don't know if you have some costs that can be reduced by this kind of thing. If I may, actually, I know that one of your peers is under IFPR, which I'm less familiar with, and I just don't know if it's something that can be also an option for you. Yeah, a lot of regulatory framework question in one question. No, that's all fine. Look, if we had to move out of group Solvency II, it would be IFPR on the group supervisory basis it can move into. 'Cause that's obviously replaced some of the previous regulation that you referenced in there in terms of ICAAP, et cetera. I think on a few things on this. On pure fundamentals, we remain a group Solvency II regulated business, in terms of the calculations that the regulators perform or that we require to perform to determine which supervisory framework we fall within on a group basis. We are in the process of having some conversations with the regulators about that, but I've got nothing to really update you further than that. It is something that we are reviewing. In terms of upside of moving, I've said before our constraints from a shareholder perspective when it comes to sort of call it basically capital returns is liquidity, not capital. It doesn't really matter which group supervisory framework we're under. It's the capital requirement sort of shifts it, and it's the liquidity requirement that still remains a constraining factor for us. There is additional burdens coming out of Solvency II supervision in terms of reporting. I mean, we're really talking stuff at the margin in the overall cost base of the group. It's not gonna suddenly result in a massive windfall change in our cost base as a consequence of that. Frankly, some of it will be replaced by an increased burden from the regulatory regime that we would move to if we had to move to that. It's always an interesting discussion, but I don't think that there's a lot of economic value from a shareholder perspective, derived from the various capital regimes. You mentioned something as well, again, about cost reductions as a result of international coming out. I think most certainly there is. There are things that we've had to maintain cost-wise while we were running that business, which we know which we will no longer need to retain. We have a transitional service agreement with the company we sold it to, Utmost, which, I think, runs for another 16 months or so, something like that. But one of the key things is the IT platform that it has been sat on, which our Heritage business was also sat on, so we had to maintain it. Clearly, we'll be decommissioning that within that, you know, at the end of that period of time, and that will also help quite a bit with our costs. Do you know if it's Utmost taking over the platform or they are just migrating from your old platform to their stuff? Is it something that you know? Well, they are. It's a bit of both. Some of the core- Okay. They're taking over, but a lot of it, they're just, they're doing themselves. Understood. Thanks. Thank you. We've had one further question come through. That's a follow-up from Andrew Sinclair at Bank of America. Please Please go ahead. Your line is open. Thanks, guys. Just one final one from me. I think you mentioned that there were some cash margin boost from interest rates coming through your other income. Just keen to understand. Obviously, we've had a few base rate increases recently, and that will not have been fully phased in H1. Just, what's your outlook for that for kind of H2 and beyond? Thanks. Andy, look, well, there are two components to it. One is the client component within QC, which we're not expecting there to be a major movement in the second half, regardless of what happens to interest rates, just given some of the dynamics on the charging structures we have there. The other component is group cash and our cash management practices that we have within the group, where obviously, if interest rates do continue to go up, well, then we will have a benefit of that. I mean, you're really talking, Andy, I mean, you're talking single-digit GBP millions here. I mean, this is not life-changing stuff in terms of bottom line. Great stuff. Thanks, Mark. Thank you. No further question further to this. I'll hand the floor back to our speakers. Okay. We've got two questions coming from the web. The first is from Mike Pistiolis at UBS, touching on the RFP question and noting the decline and asking if we can say anything about RFP growth over the next, say, 3-4 years. Yeah. Do you wanna take that one, Steve? Yeah. I mean, I think as we said, look, we've put the solid foundations in place now. We've reinvested at the beginning of the year, bringing across a new exec lead from a competitor. I've added 2 further recruitment directors that are going live as we speak. And obviously we've strengthened our proposition. Yeah, I'm confident that we're ready for the next stage of growth over the next 2 to 3 years, and we've talked low mid-single digit growth over that period of time. Yeah, that's what we would expect. Second question comes from Rahim, Investec. It says, can you talk a little to the market conditions with respect to M&A and whether the bolt-ons you've previously talked about are more or less likely given the current backdrop? It then goes on, Mark, you've implied a cash buffer of around GBP 260 million. Is that what you consider to be prudent given the shape of the business and given the underlying cash generation of a business? It would feel like that buffer will continue to grow in coming periods, even given current market levels. If you don't use this for M&A, can we expect this to drive an acceleration of cash returns beyond the current ordinary dividend? i.e., the cash buffer we have, will we use it for M&A? If we don't, will we accelerate additional returns to shareholders? Okay, I'll take the first one in terms of M&A. Certainly, we are seeing a lot more M&A in the market. There are now 32 PE-backed consolidators in the UK financial advice market, and they're all trying to build mini Quilters. You know, some will do well, and a lot of them will not. Certainly competition has increased. I think it's also because I take from that they see how attractive this market is. This is not stupid capital. It's quite intelligent capital, even though not all of it will succeed. Given the business we've built, certainly building it now, if we were trying to do it, would cost us three or four times as much as it has cost us. We're at the situation where we don't need to do more M&A. I'm sure we will do some, you know, bolt-ons, more of, client and advisor books and but probably in the high end, of the financial advice market going forward. Fundamentally, it's an organic growth story from here, fundamentally, in our advice business. We've got the best advice. We've got the best advisor proposition in the market, the best platform, the best choice, best proposition, a fantastic financial proposition, a fantastic retirement proposition. You know, we've got the industry-leading executives to run it. I think now we just need to show the market what, you know, what we can do. The second one is definitely yours, Mark. Yeah, I know. Well, I'll talk a little bit to that. Look, as things stand at the moment, we're very much in line with our liquidity risk appetites. We've got a robust capital management framework that we manage the business towards. Clearly, the board does review and consider cash and capital situations from time to time. They will be considering that in the round. What I'd probably just sort of add a little bit to provide a bit more color, which is getting a little bit into the sort of weeds of it, so I didn't put this in my overall script and those sorts of things. Just given the shape of the way that last year played out and this year, when it came to sort of dividend repatriation up to the holding company level, in the first half of this year, we did see a higher than what I'd sort of probably class as usual repatriation, just given the timing of profit verification and dividend contributions and all the rest of it. Where we are at the half year, we're sort of running sort of slightly ahead of around about the GBP 250 million liquidity buffer that I've spoken about before. We are a bit ahead of that. I'm expecting, and this is gonna be dependent on market conditions in the second half and all those usual caveats. You know, in some ways, almost sort of the funding of the final dividend has sort of been taking place a little bit in the first half, dependent on all these other factors, which obviously the board will consider more in the round when we undergo those deliberations at the end of the year. Okay. Thank you, everybody. I really appreciate your time. Thank you for putting up with our new format. It's saved us about GBP 150,000, so as shareholders or representatives of shareholders or advisors to shareholders, I'm sure that you'll appreciate that. I hope that's helped. We're pleased with what we've produced. We're focused on delivering for you. We're focused on delivering the value that we see, and there's a lot more value to come from Quilter, and we will deliver it for you. Thank you very much and enjoy your summer. I hope if you hadn't had a break, then you're all getting a good break. I think we'll try and get one too in a bit. Thanks very much, everybody.