Standard Life plc (PHNX.L) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Good morning. Welcome to Standard Life's Half Year 2026 Results Presentation. I will now hand over to Andy Briggs, Group Chief Executive Officer, to introduce the session. Andy, over to you.

Thank you, Claire. You said that without moving your lives. It was quite impressive. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to Standard Life's 2026 half year results. Today, I'll begin with an update on how our delivery is building momentum across our strategic priorities. Nic will take you through the detail of our financial performance, which supports achieving our 2026 targets. I'll then return to update on our next phase of growth before taking your questions. We're now in the final stages of our 3-year strategy, and I'm delighted with the progress we've made since 2024. First, the U.K. market is one of the most attractive globally for retirement savings and income and we're uniquely positioned in that market because of the capabilities and platforms we've built our leading brand and our commitment to putting our customers at the core of everything we do. Second, we're building momentum through execution of our strategic priorities, which is driving growth across our key financial metrics. That means we've already achieved some of our 2026 targets with our strong half year results, and we're on track for the remainder. Third, we're poised for further growth and an acceleration of our strategy through both the GBP 2 billion Aegon U.K. acquisition and the recently announced GBP 2 billion U.K. PRT partnership. Together, these are a step change in strengthening our capabilities and customer offering, and provides us to a broader customer base, all of which means we are accelerating our vision to be the U.K.'s leading retirement savings and income business a retirement helping customers achieve better outcomes and greater financial security. And it also means we have even greater financial flexibility to further invest in growth and deliver strong shareholder returns. As I mentioned, the execution of our strategy continues to translate in the strong performance across cash capital and earnings as demonstrated here. Once again, we have good growth in operating cash generation and we remain confident in mid-single-digit percentage growth into the long term. Our growing business is generating surplus capital, which we've used to improve the quality of our capital by paying down debt while remaining in the upper half of our solvency range. Finally, on earnings, we remain on track to achieve our GBP 1.1 billion operating profit target in 2016, having delivered another period of strong operational performance. And we continue to grow our dividend, bringing total dividend payments to GBP 1.4 billion across this phase of our strategy. In 2024, we set a highly ambitious 3-year strategy underpinned by 3 strategic priorities: grow, optimize and enhance. We've made excellent progress against all of these in the first half, which has contributed to the strong financial performance that [indiscernible] covered. Under grow, we announced the Aegon U.K. acquisition and our U.K. PRT pasture I'll come back to these later. Alongside these transformational developments, we're also continuing to innovate launching future opportunities, a new alternative deport solution designed to improve outcomes by opening up access to high-quality private assets. And we're increasing the allocation to private assets in our main default fund. The overall investment in our new business capability is driving strong outcomes. I'm particularly proud of the workplace wins in the first half, which I'll touch later. Under Optimize, we achieved our deleveraging target ahead of plan. and increase the amount of annuity-backing assets managed in-house to GBP 12 billion. Under Enhance, we delivered GBP 210 million of cumulative run rate cost savings using technology, including AI, to reshape our organization, enhance our colleague experience and create a more efficient and scalable business. The message is simple. We're executing with this event, delivering against our strategy and building strong momentum for the second half and longer term. Let's look at the market we operate in. I continue to believe that the U.K. market has never been this exciting and better still in this rapidly growing market, we're the only scale U.K. player solely focused on the full savings and retirement life cycle with strong existing market positions in workplace, retail and annuities. This slide will be familiar as we've used it before, but we've now added our pro forma market positions to reflect Aegon U.K. and our new PRT partnership, both of which significantly strengthen those market positions. Specifically in workplace and retail, we moved to having #2 positions in both markets. And annuities, we moved to a top 3 position. Let's now talk to the progress we've delivered in the first half in our key markets. The themes on the left-hand side of the slide are the key reasons we're winning in our markets, consistent with what we set out in March. Each of these are underpinned by a broad range of capabilities, which we continue to enhance to meet the evolving needs of our customers and which are further supported by the trusted Standard Life brand. I'm delighted that our relentless focus on delivering better customer outcomes is in turn translating into strong operational performance. Starting with workplace at the top line, where winning requires 3 things: a leading employer proposition, excellent customer service and cost-efficient administration. We're strong in all 3 as demonstrated across a collection of key customer metrics. We've seen our Net Promoter Score increased 4 points this year to 64. And we have maintained an exceptionally high level of client retention at 99.8%, which demonstrates how happy our customers are with us. We secured GBP 6.2 billion of new scheme wins over the half, including the largest ever for Standard Life, which will support our flow trajectory into 2027. We Scheme wins are lumpy, but the GBP 6.2 billion compared to favorably to the GBP 1.5 billion of wins across the whole of last year. So more great progress and hugely exciting that this market will be further supercharged by market consolidation as minimum fine sizes enforced and expected contribution increases. Moving to Retail. This is an area that we more recently focused on. We're investing to ensure effective customer engagement and that we offer the right products and solutions at the right time. For example, to help customers navigate some of the recent budget changes, we've reentered into the onshore investment bond market, which you can see in the flow uplift on the right of the slide. We're also preparing to expand our advice proposition to include inheritance tax planning and aim to launch our first targeted support proposition around the end of the year. I've called out in the dotted box that we still have a significant opportunity to leverage our digital infrastructure and there's more to do here. This is an area Andrew Burn has been focusing much of our energy on since joining earlier this year, and will be further bolstered by the arrival of Wendy Redshaw, who will join us in our newly created role of Chief Digital and Technology Officer in the coming months. The outcome of our existing efforts in retail are already encouraging visible on the right of the page. Similar to Workplace, our retail customer satisfaction scores are improving with our Net Promoter Score of 61%, a 6-point improvement in the first half. I'm particularly pleased that our advice proposition is resonating so well with customers, a of them rating it as good or excellent value. Lastly, the annuities business in yellow, which includes both individual annuities and PRT is all about having a leading employer proposition, excellent member experience and competitive pricing. Our strength in all 3 is why we're winning in both these markets. Growth in our new individual annuity products continues up 14% year-on-year. Our disciplined approach to annuities is evidenced by the attractive returns generated with lifetime IRRs and our annuity business maintained at more than 20% in the first half. From a PRT perspective, our existing business is delivering strongly, actively quoting on a pipeline of about GBP 7 billion. And with huge client interest in our new partnership, it means that we expect an even stronger pipeline once it launches. With that, I'll hand you over to Nic, who will cover the financials in more detail.

Thank you, Andy. Good morning, everyone. I am pleased to be presenting today another strong set of results at the half year point of this year as we navigate towards the delivery of all of our 2026 financial targets and prepare Standard Life for the next stage of its journey. Starting my presentation with the usual financial headlines. Operating cash generation of GBP 75 million in the first half was in line with our mid-single-digit growth guidance while total cash generation stood at GBP 900 million. We have achieved the leverage ratio target at 30 June, while ensuring that our solvency cover remained in the upper half of our operating range at 169%. IFRS operating profit was 25% higher at GBP 563 million, supported by asset growth and cost savings which reached GBP 210 million on a cumulative run rate basis. Adjusted IFRS shareholders' equity was GBP 2.7 billion, benefiting from strong growth in operating profit that now covers recurring users, offset by the negative head-related market impacts. In line with our previous practice, we have declared an interim dividend of 28.05 per share, up 2.6% year-on-year. Overall, we remain on track to deliver all the targets at the end of this year. I'm very pleased with the step-up achieved in our operating cash and earnings performance over the last 2 years. In line with what I indicated back in March 2025, -- this has provided us the headroom to reduce leverage, improving the quality of our capital and has lifted IFRS operating earnings to more than cover our recurring uses. I will now take you through the financial results in more detail, starting with the performance of our main businesses. Backed by our leading propositions and brand, our Pensions and Savings business, continues to grow, assets, margin and profitability. Workplace saw gross inflows of GBP 4.9 billion in the first half of 2026 in 0.8 billion from new schemes. A total of GBP 6.2 billion of new scheme wins have in fact been secured this year, most of which are expected to incept in early 2027, and we continue to see a healthy pipeline of new opportunities, including -- excluding, rather, the contribution from new schemes, regia gross inflows were GBP 4.1 billion in the first half highlighting, once again, the strong flywheel effect of this business. Outflows reflect the higher asset base and the natural attrition from members taking their pensions. Turning to retail. Gross inflows are up 9% year-on-year at GBP 3.6 billion, benefiting from continued momentum in international bonds and the early fruits of our retention efforts. Gross outflows remain sizable at GBP 73 billion, but we expect these to continue to improve as a percentage of AUA as our retention focus gains further traction. In the top right, you can see how these flows have combined with post market effects to lift the overall AUA base to refined 26 billion, up 7% year-to-date. In the bottom half of the slide, I summarize the drivers of the financial performance for pensions and feeding given the capital-light fee-based nature of this business, we consider IFRS operating profit to be the most suitable performance measure. Average AUA grew 10% year-on-year to GBP 270 million. which combined with an improved operating margin of 22 basis points, drove operating profit 36% higher to GBP 244 million highlighting once again the power of our scale advantage and operating leverage. Our Retirement Solutions business also delivered a strong operating performance in the first half. As I have previously stated, new volumes are not the primary driver of profits here. We run 40 billion of annuity assets, and it is the management of this large book that drives our profitability. We have 2 main product lines in this business, namely individual annuities and PRT. For individual annuities, product innovation and rising consumer demand, so new premiums grew by 8% year-on-year to GBP 0.6 billion, supported by a 14% growth in premium secured in the open market. PRT premiums in the first half totaled GBP 1.6 billion, with a further GBP 0.4 billion completed or at an exclusive stage since the end of June. Our state of them is to deploy up to GBP 400 million of capital to annuities this year, provided we secure sufficiently attractive terms. As Andy mentioned, new business returns were broadly similar to those achieved in 2025. But given ongoing low credit spreads and competitive pricing, we expect these to be lower in the second half. We remain disciplined and confident in our ability to win in this market, and our competitive position will be further supported by our new U.K. PRT partnership with prominent global financial institutions. The drivers of performance for Retirement Solutions are covered in the bottom half of the slide. Given the capital utilizing spread-based nature of this business, we consider OCG to be the most appropriate performance measure. Our effective management of the in-force book, combined with our scale, efficiency and expertise in delivering asset portfolio optimization actions enabled us to sustain the annual spread-based margin of 222 basis points which applied to our growing average AUA of GBP 42 billion produced OCG of GBP 466 million, up 5% year-on-year. I will now move to the Group metrics starting with operating cash generation. In line with our guidance, OCG decreased 6% to GBP 745 million, reflecting both growth in the surplus emergence and higher recurring management actions, which contributed GBP 318 million in the first half. The composition of these management actions is broadly similar year-on-year with further detail provided in the appendix. We're confident in achieving our guidance of GBP 500 million recurring management actions each year as the capabilities and dynamics that underpin this performance are both differentiated and enduring. On the right, you can see the business segment analysis of OCG. P&S grew by 23% to GBP 203 million. supported by underlying business growth. As covered earlier, the OCG from Retirement Solutions grew by 5% to GBP 466 million, while that from with profits, Europe and other taken together, produced GBP 76 million. Turning next to the group solvency walk for the first half. After covering recurring uses, we generated GBP 0.2 billion of net recurring capital mostly in the form of owned funds, which added 5 percentage points of solvency cover. Nonrecurring items netted to a small negative amount and included GBP 0.1 billion negative contribution from economics net of hedging. The operating capital generation in the period, combined with support from the opening surplus position enabled us to retire GBP 0.5 billion of debt in June. The resulting shareholder coverage ratio declined to 169%, but with the debt reduction program behind us, we expect this ratio to rebound in the second half. Turning next to leverage. Our ratio improved to 29%, reflecting the GBP 0.5 billion debt redemption outlined in the previous slide. We have achieved our 30% target in the first half of 2026, while remaining in the upper half of our solvency operating range. Since the end of June, we have issued a GBP 350 million RT1 debt instrument to fund a portion of the cash consideration for the Aegon U.K. acquisition and a further GBP 300 million debt raise will be undertaken ahead of completion. I would remind you that the mixture of debt and equity funding of the transaction has been structured to produce a leverage ratio on completion that is in line with our 30% target, a level which I consider appropriate for our business going forward. Turning next to cost savings, where we remain on track to achieve our GBP 250 million target net of inflation by the end of this year. On a run rate basis, we have achieved GBP 210 million of savings up to the end of June 2026. Savings on an earned basis in the first half of 2020, were GBP 95 million, which was some GBP 55 million higher year-on-year, with broadly 2/3 of this uplift reported through earnings and the remaining 1/3 accounted through the CSM. The chart on the left depicts the delivery timing of the GBP 250 million cost savings with the final GBP 40 million component expected in the second half of 2026. On the right, the pie chart shows where the cost savings have come from, highlighting how we have structurally reduced the ongoing -- our ongoing cost base through a combination of migrations to end-state platforms and business simplification. These actions will both underpin and sustain the improvement in our operating margins as we grow the business from here. Moving to the IRS results. Our adjusted operating profit increased by 25% to GBP 563 million. Profits from pensions and savings grew by 36% to GBP 244 million, while those from Retirement Solutions, increased by 13% to GBP 324 million. With the pensions and savings earnings growth outpacing that from retirement solutions, we have continued to improve the capital light mix of our profits. These performance improvements were driven by business expansion, cost savings and higher investment margins, reflecting the successful delivery of our grow, optimize and enhanced strategic priorities. We are on track to give our GBP 1.1 billion operating profit target at the end of this year. This next slide completes the IFRS basis picture. As you can see in the dotted box, the improved operating profit performance is now covering our recurring uses in line with what we said would happen in 2026. And Nonoperating items include the planned investments spend to deliver our strategic priorities and GBP 25 million of expenditure relating to strategic transactions announced in the first half. Adverse economic variances of GBP 473 million were almost entirely driven by negative marks on equity hedges following an 11% blended rise in markets. As previously explained, this is a known consequence of our hedging strategy, which protects cash and solvency capital, but gives rise to an accounting mismatch volatility under IFRS. The resulting IFRS shareholders' equity level continues to pose no practical restrictions to our strategic and capital flexibility nor to our ability to pay a dividend. As I have previously indicated, this adverse variance is offset elsewhere in our financials will come to next. I have updated the slide that I first shared in March, which shows where these offsets come through in our financials, namely in the increases in our 2 key stores or future value. These are the insurance contracts CSM and the investment contracts value in force, which grew by GBP 0.1 billion and GBP 0.6 billion, respectively, year-to-date before tax, with GBP 0.5 billion of the combined increase coming from market effects. These future stores of value are now over GBP 10 billion on a pretax discounted basis and will emerge through IFRS earnings in future years, providing a strong underpin to our performance trajectory for many years to come. In my final slide, I would like to take stock of the notable transformation in our ability to generate positive excess cash since 2023. By growing OCG and moderating our recurring uses, we have significantly improved our ability to both cover our growing dividend and generate a rising level of excess cash. In the first half, this excess was GBP 229 million, and we expect this to be GBP 0.5 billion at the full year, the level required to cover the 2026 debt redemptions from in-year capital flow. Also in 2026, we have announced 2 strategic transactions, namely the acquisition of Aegon U.K., which is expected to enhance recurring excess cash from year 1 in the new U.K. PRT partnership. Both will allow us to accelerate the growth of our main business and will provide further support to our mid-single-digit OCG growth guidance. With these transactions in place and the leverage ratio target achieved, our capital allocation focus from 2027 will be directed to growth and shareholder returns. I will now hand you back to Andy.

Thank you, Nic. We continue to be focused on delivering our promises for 2026 and we are really excited about what comes next as we progress to our next phase of growth. So let me cover some of that now. When we started the strategic plan, we set out a clear vision to be the U.K.'s leading retirement savings and income business. We began building out the capabilities shown here in blue to achieve this vision. And the evidence of this comes through in our strong first half results. The light blue box at the top, a digitally enabled and personalized customer interface focused on data, guidance and advice is the last bit of the picture. Building this out is now very much our focus and expect to hear more on this in 2027. Through both our GBP 2 billion acquisition of Aegon U.K. and the up to GBP 2 billion PRT partnership, we can scale and accelerate that same strategy. And in doing so, help more customers achieve better outcomes and greater financial security in later life. It's not just me who is excited about what's to come from Standard Life. It's fantastic to see the collective energy from our colleagues throughout the organization. With the Aegon U.K. transaction, we're bringing together 2 businesses with shared goals, ambitions and social purpose to create a new leader in pensions and savings. This transaction is both strategically and financially compelling. Let me remind you of the logic behind this set out on the slide. First, it gives us increased scale, Standard Life will become the largest retirement savings and income business in the U.K. Second, it's really complementary in terms of capabilities, which I'll come on to. Third, it accelerates making us a more capital-light business. Fourth, the financial metrics of the deal are attractive, we expect to unlock GBP 0.8 billion of net synergies and increase our excess cash by GBP 0.4 billion over the next 5 years. That will give us even greater flexibility to invest in growth and return capital in the future. Finally, the funding structure is efficient and it enhances our capital strength. We continue to make good progress towards completion, which is expected around the end of the year subject to regulatory approvals. And I look forward to welcoming Aegon U.K. colleagues into the Standard Life family at that point and working together to capture the huge potential in front of us all. As well as giving us increased scale, this acquisition strengthens our capabilities and what we can offer our customers. Many of you will be very familiar with Standard Life's existing products and solutions, which are set out along the top of the slide in the dark blue box. Aegon U.K. adds a number of areas where our Standard Life business has less of a presence today, and we regard as being very important to our offer going forwards. In workplace, Standard Life tends to be stronger with BC while Aegon strengths fly more with corporate advisers focused on small to midsized workplace clients. In retail, Aegon's advisor platform will extend our adviser reach and relevance. While the financial advice proposition will add significantly as well. And the additional products, including ISAs and general investment accounts that will broaden our range. Aegon's expertise in these and other areas will help to significantly accelerate our growth ambitions and better meet our customer needs. The enlarged group will have broader waterfront capabilities, strengthened distribution with an enhanced digital and technology offer. Another important milestone this year is the announcement that we're expanding our PRT business through a GBP 2 billion partnership. This is, first and foremost, about helping more customers achieve greater financial security in retirement. As more defined benefit pension schemes look to secure member benefits over the coming decade, we see a significant opportunity to expand the strength of standardized PRT business to schemes above GBP 2 billion. Schemes at this upper end of the market represent over half of the GBP 1.1 trillion of U.K. scheme assets, the majority of which are expected to be derisked over the next decade and customers here are currently only served by 3 providers. Second, we thought carefully about the best way to serve this part of the market and concluded that this structure creates a differentiated and unique proposition for trustees of the U.K.'s largest DB schemes. As the partnership combines Standard Life's trusted PRT expertise customer service and operational capabilities with substantial long-term capital and specialist investment expertise from our partners. Here, our brand, a household vein will be a key differentiator Trustees have specifically told us they want Standard Life to participate in the larger end of the market. We selected partners who have similarly strong brands and reputations. The partnership will bring access to diversified private market origination through multiple leading global institutions. This consortium approach gives us access to a broader range of asset classes sectors and geographies that will be available through any single provider, which means more competitive pricing and structuring flexibility, and this is available to the whole of Standard Life. Let me now touch on the attractive financials of the partnership. In addition the attractive returns the partnership expects to generate, Standard Life will receive fee-based payments for its oversight of operational services and revision of PRT transactions, creating a new capital-light earnings stream for us. Together, these underline our confidence in delivering mid-single-digit growth in operating cash generation and also growth in operating profit over time. The partnership is expected to launch in the first half of next year, subject to regulatory approvals and will build volume over time. On this slide, we outlined the structures of our PRT businesses in a bit more detail. On the left-hand side, you can see our existing business as it stands today, a leading player in the PRT market that has completed over GBP 32 billion worth of transactions. We allocate around GBP 200 million per annum of capital to this business, which generates around GBP 6 billion per annum in total annuity volumes. This business remains unchanged, but will have the additional benefit of private market origination provided by the specialist capabilities of our partners. There is clearly a lot of private capital interest coming into this market, which shows the opportunity. What makes our offering unique is the nature of the partnership. We've deliberately brought together multiple global institutions with very strong and complementary private credit origination capabilities, including CBC, Prudential Financial and Goldman Sachs. I'm also delighted to further deepen our long-standing strategic partnership with MS&AD. This investment reflects their confidence in both the U.K. PRT market and the strength of the proposition being created through this partnership. The potential is for GBP 5 billion to GBP 7 billion per annum of incremental business from the partnership. And of the GBP 2 billion total over 5 years, Standard Life expects to fund its GBP 500 million capital contribution from yearly excess cash generation. So 2 different ownership structures, but trustees and sponsors will continue to engage with Standard Life directly and receive the same high standards of service, governance and member experience that have underpinned our success in the PRT market to date. Putting all this together, within the pensions and savings market, we'll be the largest player underpinned by our #2 position in both workplace and retail, as I outlined earlier. What is unique to us is that we're big in both of these markets, which brings real synergistic benefits, whereas the other players are any big in 1 or the other. And the additional annuities capacity from our PRT partnership on top of Standard Life's existing business moves us to be a top 3 player in the annuities market as well. But we will remain disciplined in our approach with our laser focus on value over volume. Put another way, these transformational developments extend our participation. We're now able to play in the 1/3 of the retail profit pool, which we weren't before, with the added products of ISAs and general investment accounts. And we're opening up the other half of the profit pool in PRT. Overall, will be the U.K.'s largest retirement savings and income player with GBP 0.5 trillion of assets. To give a sense of scale, the #2 player is around GBP 300 billion of assets. This scale supports greater commercial advantage and further operating leverage given a high proportion of costs in our sector are fixed. We'll use our expanded scale and expanded capabilities to be better for customers, advocating for better retirements and helping our customers achieve lasting financial security. As we champion in the belief that everyone's journey to and through retirement, can be better. So to summarize, we operate in 1 of the most attractive retirement savings and income markets in the world and we are uniquely positioned to benefit. Our strong execution is delivering better customer outcomes. We're building momentum through executing on our strategic priorities, which means we're on track to achieve our 2026 targets. And we're poised for further growth with Aegon U.K. and our U.K. PRT partnership. Post 2026, the broad strategic direction of the Standard Life will be in line with our current vision. In November, we'll share a high-level view on our future strategic priorities as well as new financial guidance. We'll also outline uses of excess cash for 2027. Executing on our vision gives us greater financial flexibility and the luxury of generating excess cash and capital, and we'll look to strike the right balance between investing in growth opportunities and shareholder returns. In summary, I'm really confident and excited for what is to come from Standard Life. So with that, let us move to questions. We'll start with questions here in the room. We'll then go to any questions online. So I hand first up there very quick and keen.

It's Abid Hussain from Panmure Liberum. I hvae got 3 questions, I think. The first one is on PRT partnerships and the economics there. Just wondering if you can explain how the credit risks are shared between the partners and what you will receive in terms of the economics? You gave us some flavor there. But just, for example, on a GBP 1 billion PRT transaction, what would be the absolute OCG or OCG margin on AUA or IRRs if that's a relevant metric? That's the first question. And then the second 1 is on Europe and other. It looks like there's an OCG drag there coming from the numbers. Just wondering what the stable base there is. Is there anything structural or strategic that we should be aware of? And then finally, on the transformation of the group. You've -- you're acquiring Aegon and you're launching a PRT partnership. Are there any other capabilities that you need to add to the group? I'm thinking here of more asset management more broadly?

So I'll take the third of those and then get Nick to take the first and second. So I mean we're pretty happy already as we sit here today with the capabilities we have. And I think you can see that in the strong operating momentum that we're delivering in the business. I think the move to bring on U.K. in and the PRT partnership, both add to that, and I covered in the prepared words, in particular, adding ICs and general investment accounts opens up the other 1/3 of that retail profit pool their strength in the small to midsized employers in workplace, the adviser platform. And similarly, we're basically playing in, in just under half of the PRT market with schemes up to GBP 2 billion in size and we're now playing in the whole market. So from here, very confident that we can build out everything we need organically. I mean I wouldn't rule out capability-based bolt-ons, but equally don't feel that we need those very confident that we can go organically from here. There's a lot to do. We're launching the new partnership. We've got the Aegon U.K. business to integrate as well as all the further steps we want to make on the retail side to drive to positive flows. So we've got a lot on our plate and quite happy to get our heads down and crack on with all of that. Nick, do you want to take the...

Let's start with the second one, which is the simplest, and I'll come back to the PRT economics. So you will recall or you may recall last year where we classified the AUA from international bonds out of Europe and other and into U.K. retail. We didn't move the profits of the OCG that related to that, we -- the numbers were small. But we have reflected them in the half year 2026 numbers, and they were GBP 8 million on IFRS and GBP 12 million on OCG for the 6 months this year. On the PRT partnership, now clearly, it will take a little time for the business to ramp up and to deliver OCG and operating profits. We have been careful to guide you to say that this is a component of us delivering the mid-single-digit guidance, which isn't changing of OCG growth. And think of it, if you like, as this is us laying the tracks further down the line for continued growth in OCG because the mid-single-digit guidance is over the long-term guidance, which I believe is very attractive given a business of our size with the base of OCG that we have today, soon to be augmented by another GBP 160 million plus from Aegon. When look at the economics, I mean, clearly, the vehicle itself will produce an attractive overall return. I mean that's why ultimately, both us, our partners are investing. We will be able, as Andy said in his preprepared notes, we'll be able to augment the return when we bring it into the totality of Standard Life because of the deal origination fees and the servicing fees that we will levy on the vehicle. Therefore, if you like, the underlying performance of the entity plus those fees should mean that the business we transact is written on roughly the same economics of what we're doing in P&L today, which benefits from bigger diversification. From the partner's perspective, we'll be able to augment the underlying entity returns from the fixed income for fixed assets, private assets origination fees. So we're excited. As I said, this is -- we are excited about the transaction. We're excited by the fact that it gives us access to half of the value pool that we didn't have previously. We're doing it with partners that bring not only capital but capability. And as I said, this is us laying down the tracks for the long-term delivery of our OCG guidance.

This is Farooq from JPMorgan. I've got 2 questions, but it may feel like 4. So apologies for that. So the first question is on retail. Can you talk about what you see as your kind of in-house addressable market as in your own retail customers be what is addressable there for you? How would you attack that with additional capability and what is this digital tool about that you're talking about? Is that just a platform? Is that what you mean? That's question one. And question 2 is kind of the philosophy that you see in terms of capital management going forward. So I mean, 1 end of that could be we're going to use all of us that is cash to grow and to return to shareholders because we think we're adequately capitalized to have a good leverage ratio, for example, the other end would be, well, actually, we want to keep some surplus going forward because we feel like it's important for our cost of equity to do that. So just kind of wondering how you're thinking about it philosophically.

Take the first and Nic will take them the second. So on the first, if you look across our total cost base, it will be not around 10% will have an active intermediate relationship and where there's an active intermediate relationship, we work with that intermediary to serve the needs of the client. But 90% would have an active intermediary and therefore, they'll turn to us to help and support and guidance as they journey 2 and to retirement. So the opportunity is massive, absolutely massive because more and more of these customers getting the 50-plus age bracket. They've got multiple pension pots from different employments. They don't really understand it all, and they need help and support. So basically delivering that help in the support is really all about 3 things. It's about having the right means by which to engage with customers. So the fact we're launching our first targeted support proposition later this year, the fact we're extending our advisers into inheritance tax planning. It is great and Aegon adding 100-plus new advisers really helps that engagement side. need all the right products and services, and we had those in the pension space, but adding on the in general investment accounts just enables us to broaden and deepen that relationship with customers. So that's in train as well. So most of the residual work is actually the digital infrastructure that sort of third box on the retail slide. And that's basically about 2 real key elements to it. The first is getting our customer data into a Customer 360, it's what we call our customer database, hooking that in with the Salesforce CRM system and then developing a series of proactive nudges to customers to engage them on that journey to and through retirement. At the moment, others are basically engaging them before we do, and that's why we have the flows. We need to get that proactive engagement going earlier. And then the second thing we need to do is optics to drive up the coverage across that because the real focus there prior to the Aegon acquisition is the 7 million pensions and savings customers. Of those 7 million Standard Life branded and half of them are engaged with us digitally. So let's get the other half engaged digitally. And then we need to build the digital front end across the Phoenix Life and reassure branded customers as well to engage those as well. So there is some investment in that. It's not big, big numbers. There's some investment because we're focused on our existing customers. It is going to take a period of time, but and ultimately, it will take time for 2 reasons. Firstly, if you think of the pace of turnaround, we delivered in workplace and PRT, but you've got a small number of professional buyers there in kind of buying in bulk for corporate as a whole. Here, we're trying to engage 7 million existing customers, would be 11 million existing customers when Aegon comes on board. And secondly, you try out these different proactive nudges and different approaches, but you actually want to see what works well and what works less well before you scale it. So summary of all of that is we've got a massive lead advantage over peers in having all these customers with the trusted Standard Life brand. There's work to be done, not massively expensive, but there's work to be done to get all those capabilities in place. Really confident in the long term, but it will take time for all of that to come through.

Okay. On the second for look, it's not lost on us that we have an existing capital, financial management framework that has served us well over the last few years and that elements of it have been completed. So fully appreciate that it needs to evolve. And we're going to tell you in November. What I will say at this stage is that however we deploy this capital, we'll be entirely value-driven. We will look to do the best we can to improve and enhance the intrinsic value of this business completely value rational. And the other thing I'd just quickly add is what we'll cover is the plan Firstly, things will change over the ensuing year and we'll want to make the right allocation destine for 2028 when we get there because different options will have different returns over time. And secondly, let's recognize that we only actually get the keys for Aegon at the turn of the year. And while we've got a very good sense of the business from our due diligence, in my experience, you always learn a bit more when you actually own a business. And so we'll be able to give more color as we take full ownership of that business. Where we go Andrew behind...

Great. Andrew Baker of Goldman Sachs. First one, apologies, kind of return to the capital framework. So you've been pretty clear that sort of next best growth shareholder return for '27. Obviously, there's a bit of an end play between shareholders and leverage I guess how do you think about that into play? And what would be the sort of max mount of shareholder return you could do before, I guess, leverage grows? Any thoughts there and just how you're generally thinking that would be helpful. Second one, I think -- and I apologize if I've got the numbers wrong, but you've said a GBP 7 billion PR pipeline in the release this morning. So I've seen that just for schemes under GBP 2 billion. And if so, do you have a sense of what that pipeline could look like if you were to include schemes above GBP 2 billion? And then finally, just on the shareholder equity walk. Obviously, good to see the sources in excess of usage. Now that doesn't include nonoperating expenses, which we share will come down next year but should still be a bit of a drag. And also taxes are positive. Next year, should we expect if we were to expand sort of to include those categories. Should we expect that still to be covered on the basis? And I guess just directionally, a tax is going to be a positive or negative into next year on that equity walk?

So I'll let Nick take 1 and 3, and I'll take the second one. So the GBP 7 billion pipeline we talked about is very much dominated by the existing sub GBP 2 billion PRT business because we only launched a partnership 3 weeks ago. But what I'd say in terms of potential, I think it's huge because to date, most of the PRT that's been done has actually been, what I call small to mid-size cases up to around GBP 2 billion. What we're seeing now is that the larger schemes and of the GBP 1.1 trillion of DB assets in the U.K., over half of it is schemes above GBP 2 billion. More and more of those are actively looking at derisking and buying or buy out. So for example, the 5 major on the U.S., 4 of the 5 are actively engaged in this I was talking to 1 household name client recently where they were wanting to explore this. And they actually were really -- they basically only want to deal with a household brand and their scheme is in the teens of billions. And they're very keen that Standard Life were participating in this market because they wanted they wanted a larger number of household names that they could put their customers. So that's their employees and members of their scheme. So I do think that the Standard Life brand will be even more powerful and important at this larger end of the market as well. So I think the pipeline, I would expect to grow very significantly now as we get that partnership launched.

Okay. On leverage as I said in my prepared remarks, 30% is where we want to manage the business kind of going forward. It's what I believe is appropriate for this group. When I have regard to the kind of 3 criteria that are central in making that judgment, that decision. One is what do we want the weighted average cost of capital of the business to be vis-a-vis the returns that we can execute the strategy, how we generate value. When I look at our ability to cover the ensuing interest payments. And when I look at the kind of rating that I want to have for our business. So 30% is what we're going to target. There is a mechanism for managing that, whether it's bringing it down or taking it because we have a lot of debt that needs in refinancing over the next 3 years. So if we need to do a little less, we need to do a little more, then it provides us kind of a ready-made mechanism. On the shareholder equity walk, yes, on a stand-alone standard-like basis, our commitment was that it would -- excluding economics, it would -- it will be positive. Of course, you've captured the tax. The tax is not difficult. It's roughly 25% on the totality of the profits. So you -- and in the interim financial report we give a split how much of that attaches to the operating performance as opposed to the nonoperating, so you can form a you, you can take out the component that relates to economics. So that's the -- that was the plan. Of course, everything else being equal, everything else isn't equal. We have the Aegon acquisition. So that will bring its own pluses and minuses. And as Andy said, when we get when we're in control of that business, we'll be able to update any guidance. What I would say is -- and I guess in case it needs saying at the meat the moment that the acquisition completes, we'll see the big step-up in the stock of our IFRS equity, which will be the amount equivalent to the market value on the date of completion applied to the 181 million shares that we're issuing to Aegon Group.

It's Andrew Crean from Autonomous. Could I ask on 2 or 3 areas Firstly, on the cost saving program, which is completing at the end of this year, how do you view that going forward in terms of the ability to release a second and cost-saving programs. And this is basically a function of you bringing all those closed books together, and I can say it, whether you can continue on that? Secondly, could you talk a little bit about the competition in the PRT market at the moment, how you're seeing that this year? And then thirdly, on Europe. Do you have any plans for that business in terms of maybe extricating yourself from some of these business?

Okay. So I'll take the second and the third and get Nic to cover the first. So the PRT market has definitely got much more competitive this year. I think the team did an outstanding job to -- so right, the GBP 1.6 billion we did in the first half at the margins we did, I was really, really pleased with that outcome. As Nick said, we don't expect margins to stay at that same level in the second half. The market has got a lot more competitive -- our real edge here is our brand. The fact we are far more diversified than most of our peers. We have real innovation in terms of the longevity swap. So we're very confident can win. We continue to build and add to that capability. So we've now got GBP 12 billion of the assets in-house for example. But broadly, Andrew, my kind of view of this is that most of our competitors are monolines. And there is a focus in some of them around volumes that they've committed to generate either internally or externally. And so when the market has been a little bit smaller, the exact competition has been more intense. I think when market demand increases again, and the reason market demand has been a bit less is there was a focus last year around the government consulting on getting a return of surplus for ongoing scheme. What's basically transpiring there is that trustees continue to see the buy-in or buyout is the gold standard in terms of member protection for their members, but also the corporate sponsor is seeing that the best way to get a return of surplus is to do a buy-in or buyout because you're effectively extinguishing your ability and therefore, that the surface becomes available. So what we're seeing is the pipeline is building up strongly again now. We just had a bit of a period of lower volumes. When those volumes get greater again, I would expect pricing looks to be not as competitive as it is currently in the market. From our perspective, being a multiline player, we will remain very disciplined. And if we write less volume for a period of time, we will not be the least bit concerned about that. we will be very disciplined. We'll only allocate capital where we can generate attractive returns. It's one of the advantages of being a diversified multi-line player. In terms of Europe, the performance of the Europe business is strong. So in particular, the international bond as sort of the international bond is one of the key parts of our U.K. retail business, but it's actually manufactured in our doublet operation. the RS domestic business is also performing strongly. So we talked about this before. We're still working through some of the work on the internal model, in particular, the migration to more modern technology that will give more optionality in the future. But at the moment, I'm pretty pleased with how the European business is performing for us. In reality, the value opportunity lies much more in successfully integrating Aegon U.K. and watching the PRT partnership alongside all the BAU activity we've got going on in the U.K. at the moment. Do you want to take the cost question?

Yes. On costs, really our focus post the completion of the GBP 250 million program will be twofold. The first 1 will be to extract the cost savings that we committed to at the time of announcing the Aegon U.K. acquisition. We said we will target GBP 110 million on a base of roughly GBP 360 million, so that's around 30%. So that will be high on our agenda. Beyond that, in terms of Standard Life stand-alone, my expectation, ambition target would be our objective -- would be to ensure that we can absorb inflation in relation to the proportion of our costs that relate to maintenance. Clearly, acquisition costs, good costs, if they bring flows and business that had good returns. So that will be the -- that will be that what we'll be striving to do from 2027 onwards.

Nasib Ahmed from UBS. Firstly, on operating surplus emergence, that's not growing 5%. It's not growing mid-single digits on cash. That's growing about 3% and also non-funds. The growth in on funds over the first half was 0.2%, last year it was 0.3%. So what -- given the business has grown 12 months, what's driving that? Secondly, on management actions, nonrecurring and recurring. Recurring you've done more than GBP 300 million, so double that, you're above the GBP 500 million. Is there any reason why we shouldn't be doubling? And on the nonrecurring, you've achieved the GBP 700 million but you're still doing the wood profits migration. So we should expect something more in the second half. Is that correct? And then finally, on U.K. GAAP earnings within the subsidiaries, can you give an update on what you've generated in the first half?