Steadfast Group Limited (1S6.F) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Welcome to Steadfast's Investor Update. [Operator Instructions] I'll now hand over to Robert Kelly.

Good morning, everybody, and thanks for putting a bit of time aside to join us today. The purpose of the call is just to give you an operating update before we actually go into blackout. We've been struggling to get around and see everybody and we thought this would be the easiest way to do this call now. I'll just refer you to Slide 4 of the pack. And that just gives you a little bit of a rundown of where we -- what we've been doing. We realized about 18 months ago that the market would eventually start to flatten. And so when we started to do this, we started to apply ourselves very much to have a look at our organic growth. This was enhanced by the fact that 60% of our turnover, that's the network's turnover and not just the equity brokers turnover, we have complete and other access to all of their information. So our data analytics is absolutely so nimble and so easy. And I'll show you a little bit of that on the next couple of slides. The interesting part about that is that you'll see and it will answer quite a few questions about how the flow of commission and in fact, what policies are going up and down. So in terms of cost savings, we continue to drive some of the initiatives that were started, I guess, by [ Rhiannon toohey ] and which has been pushed through by both Mark and Tim to make sure that we were well ahead of the game as we started to see a leveling of premium growth. So we've got approximately $3.6 million annualized savings so far but on a pro rata basis in FY '26. And this meant some rationalization across our operation. We made a couple of areas of our business redundant, basically because the way we have restructured these CGUs over the last 12 months meant that there was no necessity for head office to do a whole lot of work that was actually being done by the CEOs and the CFOs and contained within the CGU. So those cost savings, we will continue to push ahead with. We targeted mainly head office and some work on some nonrecurring things that we could cut out of it. But our acquisition pipeline, which we can confirm was $127.7 million that we have completed. And there's a slide that I'll go into it further from that point of view. Just to conclude on that, we're very confident in our guidance that we put out in 2025. So if you go to Slide 5, this is a fascinating slide. We're often asked about, and I mean there's been some trajectory running around the market that commission rates were falling. This is -- these slides are factual slides. They're not something put together out of here. They are actually based on our data analytics on 60% of the GWP of the network. That's a massive amount of GWP, somewhere between $6.5 billion, probably and $7 billion are contained within this quadrant. So we think it's an incredible position. Just to show, if you go at the top, if you look on the right-hand side, you can see the class of risk. And if you take the top one, which is the message and you go down to quarter 1 for 2023, which we think is probably about the inflection point where the market was going to start to flatten and move down. It was also coincidentally the time when we started to push the fact that we thought the commission structure that was in householders was actually out of kilter with what it should be. If you look at the -- if you go to the top one, which is the fee that we got, you'll see that our fee rate was about 6% in FY '23 quarter 4. Now if you then go across now to today, you'll see that, that fee rate has gone up to 8.8%. And if you go to the bottom quadrant, which is the fee and the commission, you'll see that we've maintained a very -- almost perfect line of getting around 21.2% commission even with the reduction over the last 12 months of dropping from 22% to 20% to 17.5% to 15%. So I think when people comment upon this is going to impact us, I mean, we're well aware of what's happening. And when we put out our guidance, we take into account exactly what commission structure we know we're going to get and what fee structure we're going to get. So interestingly, the next thing I'd point to is the casualty, which is the red line there. If you go back again to '23, and you'll see we were around 4% that sort of hovers around there and now it's at 4.2%. It shows there was a lot of stability in the casualty market and it wasn't impacted quite strongly from our point of view in the reduction that was going on. So again, if you drop to the bottom line, you'll see the fee and commission structure, it was about 18%, and it ends up being 17.5% over the 2-year period. And then if you go to commercial, which I guess is the number of -- what everybody is fearful of, then it's a fascinating situation because the fee on commercial was actually just under the 4% mark. And then at today's state, it's 3.6%. So if I was to be critical of us in any way, I'd say that we haven't reacted quickly enough to the differential in commission. But if you drop down to the bottom line, which is the fee and commission and you have a look at that, you'll still see we're at 15.4%. So that income was probably somewhere around 16.5%. It's not at 15.4%. But I think that slide demonstrates really effectively how we know how to manage the falling prices in the market, the commission differentiations, and we know how to see it. So if you then go to Page 6, this is something that I think we get asked all the time. Whenever we're traveling and people go, the market is collapsing, what's occurring? And this is a fantastic slide because that's the factual position as going back. And if you have to look at the left, as we've been saying for probably 3 years, the D&O fell by 8.4%, right? The ISR fell by 3%, Bloodstock by 3.5%, Construction by 3.8% and Cyber by 5.7%. And then some of the specialties fallen, but I mean that's a small percentage of what we're doing. And then aviation and life risk fell. But then if you go to the right-hand side where the blue is, these are all of the GWP that actually went up in price during this period of time when everybody was saying the sky is falling, there's horrific things going to happen. And I mean we're getting really good things. Our Biz Pack sustained 6.1% growth, which I think is exactly what we've been talking about when we've said that all the Biz Pack insurers in Australia are striving to get more from that. So the live figures what it actually is. They're not in any way sanitized. And I think that's the first time we've actually put something out that says this is our portfolio, that's what's gone forward, and that's what hasn't. And then just if you go to Slide 7, this is, I think, one of the most fascinating slides. This is our renewal persistency. Again, you can see it starts from quarter 3 '24. And if you have a look at in quarter 3 '24, 17.59% of our renewals fell but 11.23% stayed exactly what they were the year before and 71.18% went up in price. Now that's probably the annuity side of insurance broking. So to say what stays with you, what renews and what goes forward. I won't read through but if you look at the Q2, October, November '25, that 17.59% that fell has gone up to 25.7%. Interestingly, the 11.23% that was a rollover has increased to 14.16% over rollover. And still 60.14% of our renewals went up in value. So when you hear that the sky is falling and you hear that things are going to be really difficult to go forward, we really, really want to just point to the fact that these are the facts. These are the facts about the commission. These are facts about how the portfolios are going. And it's the reason why insurance brokers can usually manage their cash flow. So just to go to Page 8 now. We've been a bit circumspect on this, but I think everybody is for it. We did -- we completed $127.7 million worth of acquisitions. We've got another in Australasia. We've got another $202 million that we will complete before the end of financial year '26. Now obviously, our share price has taken a bit of a downward trend recently. So we will now complete those acquisitions by using the full capacity that we've got in our balance sheet, which means that our banking covenants say we can trade at 40%. So we'll go up to 40%, and we'll do those acquisitions not out of our lines of credit from that point of view. Yes. Joan just pointed out to me, that $127.7 million meant we paid an average multiple of 9.8x for that. So when people start to analyze what we're doing and put through, there's the facts of what made were $3 million worth. So if you go to Slide 9, this is a bit of an analysis, I guess, of over the past year, we've strengthened our relationship with the regulator, and we've had a great engagement with them, and we've further enhanced our relationship with the ACCC. It's been an important part of how we operate by reinforcing our position as a trusted, I guess, transparent and well-governed market leader, particularly as our business continues to go to scale by way of acquisition activities. I was recently in a luncheon meeting with Gina Cass-Gottlieb, the Chair of the ACCC. It was a fantastic meeting. There was about 11 of us. It was a full and frank meeting. It wasn't Chatham House rules so it was open interaction. And I must say that the interesting part about that meeting was that the Chair of the ACCC said unequivocally, the ACCC is very keen that business in Australia is developed by merging and acquisitions, okay, as long as it stays within the guidelines. And I think to have that said publicly, it's very important. The key outcome, we've achieved a stronger regulatory relationship since over the last 12 months with the ACCC. They've got a clear insight into the way we operate and our operations, our M&A processes. And we've had really, really, I would say, a strong and interactive relationship for you with them from that point. We've got high confidence in how we're going about this. For FY '26 -- for financial year '25 and '26, we have done transactions between million up to $100 million. And by way of how that's gone with the ACCC, they've got to understand how we operate. They've got to understand what they need to look about our -- what we're doing. And we've now got to a way where we can actually provide things to them. And from that point of view, we had exceptional support and clearance on our acquisitions. We have put to the ACCC 20 acquisitions or mergers or what we've done. And I'm pleased to say that 18 of them have been passed. The 2 that haven't are only in the recent time, very recent times. And we've been able to, because we work so closely with them and so methodically answering and going forward what they need. I'm really pleased to say that initially, they were taking about 30-odd days to do them. And recently, in recent months, we've been able to get a turnaround within 10 days. And just on that, people are then saying, well, what is it going to be like after 1/1/26? Well, I'm pleased to tell you that we've been working on the rigors of what life is like for really most of '25 with the ACCC. In other words, we've been assuming that the rigors of 1/1/26 exists. And so we've been providing all that information there. So given our acquisition growth model and our regular and proactive engagement with the ACCC, we think it's now not an issue of dealing with them. I think we've got a great regulatory pathway with them. They're constructive, they're predictable. We're constructive, we provide what they want to know. And I guess as we roll into '26, we have no reason to fear that because I guess we've been operating under that for most of '25. So we look to continue to build our momentum and continue to go forward with them. So I guess that's a quick one for me. Okay. I'd like to now hand over to the Head of our Australasian network, Tim Mathieson. Thank you, Tim.

Thank you, Robert, and good morning, everyone. Really pleased to report that our network continues to grow throughout Australasia. This financial year, we've already welcomed 19 new brokers, taking us with a total of 421 network brokers. Key reason for brokers joining our group, of course, is our market-leading technology, which remains a sustainable advantage. 60% of our network brokers, as mentioned by Robert, have adopted our inside broking system, which provides us with incredible access to data, data that's processed by around 8,000 users on the platform. Demonstrated by Robert earlier, we have a unique view across the industry of products, insurers showing us policy and premium movements over time. We just move over to Slide 11, please. Insight broker system enables us to make smarter, data-driven decisions to support organic growth. For example, our brokers can now track fee and commission movement across their individual portfolios to remain nimble in the moderating market. They can also use our data to identify new business opportunities to drive revenue growth. They offset this also through greater treasury management using data to make informed decisions about term deposits to uplift interest income. So we're seeing some good organic growth occurring across the network. In November, we engaged all of our subsidiaries in a planning session to address the need for organic growth and stronger expense management in the second half. All of these businesses have a plan that focuses on margin improvement, and this plan is reviewed monthly with our subsidiary performance team. With almost 50% of our brokers' operating expenses relate to employment costs, we've asked our subsidiaries to hold off replacing all noncritical roles in the second half. We need to start realizing the efficiency of our recent technology investments that enables more productivity across the group. On to Slide 12, please. Pleased to report Australasian broking team are well on track with delivering their operational business plan. So far, the team have executed plans to attract new brokers into the network, so new brokers up nearly 5% year-to-date. We've also executed plans to increase broker network member fees by 25%, as we said we would, generating new revenue. In addition, we've executed plans to secure an uplift in our professional services fees from our key partners, taking the total PSF to over $80 million for FY '26. These are all initiatives that we reported earlier that we said we'd do and we've now delivered. Despite the moderating market, it's pleasing to see that nearly 80% of our broker subsidiaries continue to achieve revenue growth year-on-year. So an important point to make that brokers in the main are still growing year-on-year. Furthermore, 3 of our largest broking subsidiaries across a wide geography, that's GSA here in Sydney, Fenchurch over in Perth, and Taswide in Hobart, 3 of our top 10 largest businesses have seen combined revenue growth exceeding 15% year-to-date. These businesses have a really strong sales culture and are taking advantage of the current market conditions and increased competition in the market to write more new business and achieve volume growth. We spoke earlier about inorganic growth in our Trapped Capital pipeline, but I just wanted to also call out CBN's strategic expansion into the New Zealand market. This acquisition of Folio brings with more than $20 million of gross written premium and the opportunity for us to build a new -- a brand-new authorized representative network beyond Australia. Slide 13, please. To help support our growth outlook, our broking CFO, Rhiannon Toohey and I have led 6 hubbing integrations in FY '26. And this was all levers that we indicated we had the ability to pull and we've since done so. This includes a strategic realignment and support of Coverforce by specialized fast-growing businesses, including GSA, BCB and CBN. Also Network Insurance Group and Insurance House, making it now the largest broking subsidiary in our Australian network. Movement of Whitbread Insurance Broking into the mid-market broker. Edgewise has allowed Whitbread to become a specialist strata insurance broker. Meanwhile, the corporate AR and House of Brands model that's been successfully operated by QIB Group, Ausure and CBN continues to bolt on brokers and authorized representative from across the network. As I previously mentioned, the consolidation of businesses is always beneficial to our stakeholders. That is clients have greater access to a larger team of experts, particularly those specialized in their industry and their location. Brokers benefit from operating within a larger group, with wider expertise and career opportunities to progress. Shareholders benefit from a reduction to back office costs and margin improvement. And ultimately, everyone benefits from combining strengths and adopting best practice that boost productivity and also professional standards of our industry. I'll hand over to Mark Senkevics to provide an update on the Steadfast underwriting agencies. Over to you, Mark.

Thanks very much, Tim. Please turn to Slide 15. Thank you. So thanks, Tim, and thanks, everyone, for joining. Today, I'll give an update on our underwriting agencies and focus on how we can drive both subsidiary performance and our strategic growth. At a high level, like the brokers, we're focused on a few key areas and largely expense management, but a few other things that I'll raise here. So we're concentrating on growth, both organic and acquisitive. There's quite an initiative in terms of consolidating our 30 agencies and brands into fewer and more substantial businesses. And also, as I mentioned, maintaining tight expense control with strong oversight of our subsidiary performance. On the fee income side, while there is an opportunity for us to optimize fee income in the agency space, we are doing so where it's possible, but it's a little bit more limited in the underwriting space. And that means our focus needs to be on business retention, strengthening our distribution and developing new revenue streams. I'll take you through these in a bit more detail over the next couple of slides. So if we can move to Slide 16, please. So firstly, on the organic side, it's clear we're seeing a moderating pricing environment, and this is more pronounced in some lines of business. But Strata, in particular, in certain specialty segments are facing increased competition, and this is partly driven by Lloyd's capacity entering into the market. To offset this, we're pursuing organic growth opportunities aggressively, and we have several projects underway. I'll highlight a few of those. Firstly, a great success is Sure Insurance. We acquired Sure in 2023 and during last year's investor presentations, we outlined our strategy to expand its offering nationally. You might have seen the announcement that Castle Insurance went live on the 1st of October 2025. Now this business, part of Sure and backed by QBE leverages Sure's leading claims management and risk selection capabilities. As of the end of November, the team had written already 14,000 policies in just 2 months, already surpassing what we thought was an ambitious FY '26 target. And we expect this trajectory to continue and Castle's announcement has also resulted in an uplift in Sure's original Queensland portfolio. Beyond Sure, our agency teams have been active in launching new products. CHU has introduced its Flex Complex product for hard-to-place strata risks. Mecon has a new mid-market offering in the construction space. And Emergence, our cyber agency has now offers a theft liability cover. In addition, Coast has entered into the life sciences space, which is a new one for our portfolio overall. And I anticipate we'll have a number of additional announcements in the second half of FY 2026 around new product offerings. We've also identified a gap in the credit insurance market and launched Unity Trade Credit underwriting agency with the support of Mark Hill as capacity. That business is now live and writing policies, and we anticipate great outcomes for that business. I'll come back to Prevail in a moment for a deep dive. On the inorganic growth side, our stated strategy, which I shared at our convention in March, is to acquire bolt-on businesses for our mid-scale agencies. Scale equals margin when it comes to underwriting agencies. And in July, we executed on that strategy with the acquisition of Xenon underwriting into ProRisk. This move adds both geographic and product diversity, and we've already seen some synergy benefits. It's early days, but we've seen a couple of hundred thousand dollars of saving in the expense line and 23% increase in GWP on the Xenon property and liability business due to improved marketing, business development and cross-selling. We also anticipate improvements in our binder commissions, which will result in a 20-plus percent increase in commission income from January this year. And the tech migration for this business is underway, which I imagine we will see additional synergy benefits. Our acquisition pipeline remains strong. We are in discussions with a number of agencies across the region. And the focus is consistent for us, diversifying our product offerings and expanding our geographic reach. And on the final column there, our strategic integration and alignment. So over the past year, we've been consolidating agencies with natural adjacencies and product cross-sell potential. And the first to deliver is Prevail, my case study on the next slide, but which brings together our high net worth offering and consumer businesses. Similar work is taking place across our commercial agencies, which we'll announce in the second half of FY '26. And the consolidation also extends to our binder arrangements. And we envisage seeing a larger, more diversified risk pool and therefore, improving commission terms from our insurers, a benefit... [Technical Difficulty] Okay. And just finishing off on the end of Slide 16 there. We're investing in technology. Several of our agencies are replacing underwriting platforms, which will deliver significant efficiencies in underwriting, claims management and portfolio oversight. These upgrades include AI capabilities for example, broker submission ingestion and claims handling as well as strengthening our value proposition with brokers and our insurance partners. If I can jump to Slide 17, please. So we have a great case study here with Prevail. I touched on this a little earlier. It combines 3 of our high net worth brands, Dawes for prestige motor, Mansions for high-value homes and Argis for farms into a single brand and platform. The segment has shown growth, but in our view, remains somewhat underserviced. So we think there's a great opportunity here. Over the last 5 years, we've seen 50% growth in GWP for this business and [ 74% ] growth in EBITA for that same period. And the trajectory hasn't stopped. Over the last year, we've seen 20% year-on-year growth. And the CEO of that business, David McMurdo, has told me that he feels they're just warming up. Launch has generated strong engagement with more than 50,000 website hits to the Prevail website and more than 9,000 brokers now registered on the Simplafy portal. And cross-selling is already happening, and we plan to offer further products and keep an eye out in the end of FY '26 for new launches, which I think will continue to see the trajectory of this business. So in closing, our underwriting agencies are focused on subsidiary performance through disciplined expense management and strategic growth, both organic and inorganic. These actions, combined with technology investment, product innovation and group distribution will see us deliver sustainable returns. So thanks for listening. And over to Samantha Hollman, our CEO of International, who joins us, I think, in the middle of the night in London. No, it's only 11:00.

That's correct, Mark, at 11:30 at night. So lucky, everybody can't see me and my very jetlagged eyes. But I'm very pleased to be able to give an update on international since our meeting in last August. It's actually been a very busy and productive time over that period. So I'll start with ISU Steadfast in the U.S. One of our strategic initiatives there is to continue to have that membership number growth. I'm really pleased to report that we've experienced the highest number of new members in this calendar year '25 with 37 new members joining and 12 leaving. But another real positive is that the earn of the members that have joined is higher than the members that have left. So the members that have joined are a higher quality, a better sized and really utilizing our carrier partnerships and growing that earn through to ISU Steadfast. And speaking on that earn, we get a profit share growth from the carriers, which is really the main source of revenue that comes through to ISU Steadfast. And currently, we're projecting that to be the highest in the calendar year '25 than the previous year, but that won't be finalized until the end of December, but it is tracking well today. This signals really great growing support of our carriers amongst the membership and aligns our members supporting the carriers and the products that we have. So with that continuing to grow, that also grows our value proposition and attracts more members to want to be part of the ISU Steadfast network. Another really key strategic initiative is to deliver on market access for those members. And we've not only introduced HWS Specialty in London earlier in the year, but we've also introduced Novum, the MGA, which you'll recall, we only acquired and announced the week of our last meeting and discussions back in August. So they are 2 really incredible initiatives that, that network did not have prior to Steadfast acquiring them. Another really great initiative that's occurred is on the Trapped Capital front, addressing out the perpetuation for ISU Steadfast members. We're currently in due diligence with 2 potential members who will create regional hubs for us in 2 distinct areas of the states. We're expecting those deals to be finalized in Q1 of 2026. We're also in discussions with another few members also currently to also become regional hubs in that area. So that's really great progression of the continued work that's been done in that area and the trust that we've been building in what we can offer there. And of course, we held the regional meetings in October. Every year, we hold 2 weeks of regional meetings in all 4 regions of the U.S. to update members on the initiatives of everything that we're doing. It's really exciting to receive and see the support that Steadfast has from that network. There's incredibly strong sentiment on the strategic direction that we're taking that network and the way we've built that network and the offerings that we've put through. So that's really positive. We're really happy with everything that is going through ISU Steadfast at the moment. The other update clearly is on Novum. I mentioned at our last update, we'd only just purchased Novum that week. So there's been a lot of work done in the last 3 months to integrate that business seamlessly and successfully into the Steadfast family and really alert our membership on what the possibilities are for them to now do business with them. Novum have had incredibly strong business performance in the 3 months post completion. We're really thrilled with how that business is operating. It's a great team. They are driven, they are entrepreneurial, but they are also really considered in the risks that they write. They've really hit the ground running. With this acquisition, there is actually no downtime for us to stabilize the business or restructure the business for changes required. They are ready to roll from Day 1. So we are progressing really strongly with them, which is super pleasing. They also attended and presented at that regional meetings with ISU Steadfast to educate them on who Novum are and to market to the members what those specialty 5 lines of products are. It was received really well by the network. And there's been 105 ISU Steadfast members now sign up to look into Novum and use that platform. So that's just under 50% of the network. And considering Novum write quite niche areas that would suit all of the membership, that's really pleasing interest. So it's a great start. The other item for Novum is that we had always mentioned that this would act as our platform to be able to launch any potential Steadfast underwriting agencies into the U.S., really expediting that opportunity and making it incredibly cost efficient. We have 3 agencies that we're put in contact with Novum that we're continuing to work with to explore the opportunities of entering the U.S. market via them. So that's another really great progression of our strategy that's been happening in the last 3 months. The other one is to touch on is London, where I am at the moment. with HWS Specialty. We've had significant progress in the build-out of the capability of talent in that organization. You'll recall me referring to when we purchased Novum -- sorry, HWS Specialty. It was a great opportunity, but the business wasn't necessarily fit for purpose at the time of purchasing. We knew we needed to build the capability in the product lines that our members really needed in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand and Singapore. And that generally is the property and casualty lines of business. But we also saw a great opportunity to build out a delegated underwriting authority team to be able to move the outsourcing of our buying business, supporting our underwriting agencies, bringing that in-house, bringing us control of that, service of that, but most importantly, revenue back into our own business rather than outsourcing. So we've had significant progress in that, in particular, in the last couple of months. We've filled 6 roles, 2 have commenced. So we now have a Head of North America Property, who specializes in the American market and a supporting broker who actually came over with a book of business as well, a GBP 500,000 book of business. So they have now started and hit the ground running. But we also have another 4 roles that are going to start in Q1 of 2026. This is a Director of Delegated Underwriting, where we can bring those binders in-house, and it's a very well-known person in the London market, and we'll be in a position to announce that in January. We've also recruited a property broker on the Australia and New Zealand side. And this position already deals with several Steadfast members in another capacity. So already has relationships, which is ground great and should also hit the ground running. We've also recruited a Head of Casualty, and we've recruited a Head of People & Culture to replace an outgoing retired position. So that's really strong to have built that capability. But we're not just there building, building, building and investing. We are reviewing the entire business and making sure we're keeping expense under control. And as a result of that, we have retrenched 4 roles that we did not see we required any longer, and we will continue that due diligence. But by doing that and adding the new positions, we really are raising ambition in that business, and that's what we wanted to do. So we're excited about moving forward. And we've had incredibly strong new business opportunity wins in the U.S. cargo space. So that's also been excellent. And I can advise that the EBITDA of international is performing ahead of budget across all 4 businesses. So to finish, we will continue to build the international businesses, looking to add scale and capabilities to our U.S. network to continue to source trapped capital investments in selected U.S. members to form regional hubs. We'll continue with the expansion of specialty product capabilities in both the U.S. and the U.K., and we'll continue to drive the collaboration amongst our 4 international businesses for all of the businesses to benefit and operate in an international ecosystem because that's where not only will our international businesses benefit, Steadfast will benefit and the clients of our brokers and agents will benefit. So I'll hand back to you now, Robert, for Q&A.

Thanks, Sam. Thanks very much, and thanks, guys. It was a really great presentation. I hope that gives you a feeling for the strength and depth of this contained in this organization, particularly with our 3 main CGUs, 2 well-established ones in underwriting and broking and also the new frontier we started a few years ago of North America. So thanks, Sam. Are you taking back for Q&A at the moment?

[Operator Instructions]

Can we just keep the questions to 2, maximum of 2, because we're in a short timeline?

We can. Our first question comes from Julian Braganza at Goldman Sachs.

Just a first question. In terms of FY '26, just the guidance you've previously provided in terms of EPS growth. Originally, it was more skewed towards organic growth of about 3% to 7% and acquisitive growth of about 3%. How does that now look like post all the changes that you're making just for FY '26 in terms of capital, in terms of improved performance cost out? How does that look like post all the changes that you're making?

Julian, we've confirmed guidance. There's no overarching this guidance.

Okay. So in terms of the split between organic versus acquisition for '26, no change in that view?

Well, I think it's in the frame of what we've actually given you. So if there was any need to walk through it, we would have certainly informed the market.

Okay. So still consistent with that split. Okay. That makes sense. Can I ask the second question? Just in terms of the premium rates, I just want to be super clear on the definition of the premium rates. So your guidance is for rate increases of 1% to 2%. So I just want to be clear because in your presentations, you talk about premium increases of about 2.4%. So I just want to make sure it's like for like.

We're running at 2.4% at the moment. And when we get through December, I think if we can see the trend the way it's going at the moment, and this is a big -- this is a really big statement that there may be some flattening in the dropping of the premiums at the moment. But what we're seeing is we're not seeing a deterioration at the moment. We're seeing a flattening in the pricing mechanism. But this is a very funny time, so I wouldn't but certainly, if we have a good December, then that might indicate that the initial impact of the dropping of prices is actually starting to flatten out.

The next question is from Andrei Stadnik at Morgan Stanley.

Can I ask my first question on ISU? Am I right in seeing that ISU now has $6 billion of P&C premiums from 250 members? Because I think last time you gave some numbers back in March, it had $5.1 billion in P&C premiums from 235 members. Is that the right growth metric?

Yes. I think we quoted last time it was $5.7 billion in P&C premium, and we've rounded that up to $6 billion.

Good. And what about the number of members growth? That seems to be rising?

Yes, it is. The 250 is the correct number.

And look, for my second question, can I ask around the pricing? You've given us data on pricing through insight, which is 60% of Australia. But based on your prior experience, the other 40% that might come through later, how does the other 40% behave in terms of pricing based on your prior experience?

Look, we think that the 60% is absolutely representative of the 100%. They're all very similar businesses. They operate in similar demographics. They've got the same sort of way that they deal with people. So I'm very confident to say that, that would be the same across the whole of the network. Even though we only have 60%, but that's not a bad demographic to be able to know intimately what's going on with 60%. So yes, I don't think it's too grand a statement to say that would be representative of the whole network.

The next question comes from Andrew Buncombe at Macquarie.

Just the first one, how are you going to account for the costs related to the redundancy programs at head office? Will they be put above the line and absorbed within guidance? Or will that be put below the line?

It depends. I guess at this stage of the game, we're probably not looking at how we're going to account for it in the full year, Andrew. But I look at some of our competitors around the world, and they usually put them below the line if they're conducive to increasing net profit.

Okay. And then the second one, recent newspaper articles have suggested that Steadfast may have been an M&A target. Can you please advise if Steadfast has recently been approached for a potential takeover?

We have not been approached. Unless you got something in mind, Andrew, that you want to share with us.

Our next question is a text question from Siddharth Parameswaran from JPMorgan. They write, I understand that you are operating as though new ACCC process was live. Does that mean no additional risk from 1st of January as ACCC providing feedback in line with new powers? Or is it just that you are operating in the new rhythm, but you won't know how the ACCC will rule with their new powers? Also, with a pushback on a couple of acquisitions we saw from the ACCC, what did their concerns relate to? And how will that limit size and geographic range of new acquisitions?

Well, I don't think we had -- we're not in the same position as what IAG was where they were trying to move into a market and I can't go on what we said in the paper, where they would have maybe between 55% and 60% of the market. We are not in that same position. So anything that we're doing doesn't put us anywhere near the levels of interest of the ACCC we think from being able to control a market. In fact, we've been -- over the last 12 months, they have a detailed and intimate knowledge of our position in various jurisdictions, our notice operand, our way that we do not direct business to anybody. So I don't think you compare somebody that's trying to get an acquisition where they will control 50% or 60% of a market with somebody like us where we control roughly 30-odd percent of the market over a huge geography. And if you look at the IAG, that was a definitive area in Western Australia, which although it's a very large state and according to them, support the rest of Australia. I don't know whether to that. But a large state, we have a very small population. And so if you were going to put something in, in the consumer area that was going to make 50% to 60%, then I can understand why that may present some, I guess, queries from the ACCC.

The next question comes from Jason Palmer at Taylor Collison. What are your assumptions around agency binder renewal GWP placed through H.W. Wood in FY '26 and FY '27?

Firstly, we probably wouldn't give you any guidance on FY '27, okay, because we're not doing the guidance at the moment. But thank you for trying. It's very good to see that. Secondly, the process of integrating is well and truly, I guess, started. And I think Mark is probably better to give you a view of how long that may take to do and certainly will run into '26 and '27 and probably '28, I think.

Thanks for the question, Jason. So this is an initiative that's already started. HWS are already benefiting from some revenue that's coming from our agencies, and we've identified the leakage into third-party brokers and see an enormous opportunity to bring it back in-house here. So it's already started. Sam mentioned that we'll have a new head of binder for delegated underwriting starting with HWS in January. This is an individual we know very well and who knows our portfolio very well. So we anticipate that, that person will hit the ground running. That person will also be part of a project that is underway to consolidate our Lloyd's binders, starting with Miramar and we'll look further afield. This will be bringing together all of our lines of business to build a very diversified portfolio, which we anticipate will see much, much better outcomes from a commission standpoint, but also, frankly, from a brokerage pay way standpoint as well. And I'd also add that right now with HWS, they're working on new business opportunities for us and new binders for us. They've done one for Coast already, and we have a number of others already in play based on the existing capability, which starts with marine and into fin art and species space, and we see an enormous opportunity to profit from that capability already. So it's coming back in-house, and it will, over the next couple of years, I think, largely, Robert, yes, back inside.

And I think the point you made, Mark, very wise, the person that's coming in to head up that broker is a fairly substantial name in the London market.

Absolutely.

Another text question from Jason Palmer. What are your assumptions around U.S.A. E&S premium in ISU Steadfast that could be placed through H.W. Wood? What is the upside in economics to H.W. Wood and ISU Steadfast plus members of ISU Steadfast?

I think that's a difficult one for you to answer, Sam, is I think at this stage. I mean you had lots of queries.

The thing we can say there is that at the moment, there was -- in the U.S. market, there is an incredible amount of business going into the E&S market. We have clearly identified that and identified the need to recapture some of that business coming back. We have noticed a change in the market where more recently, the service has been going back into the traditional carriers, not quite as much going into the E&S market. But what we are doing is we're making sure that when we set up Novum that we make sure we set up a program where we are starting to be able to capture that E&S scenario. We will create a placement desk within ISU Steadfast, and we will start to funnel the opportunity of putting that business through our own family.

Next question comes from Olivier Coulon at E&P Financial Group. What do you expect first half, second half split to be like relative to history? Will cost out program mean it's more skewed to second half than normal?

The answer to that is yes. Yes, it is skewed more to the second half and yes, around the half.

The next question is from Andrew Adams at Barrenjoey. Original guidance at end of August assumed 3% to 5% rate increase. This was lowered to 1% to 2% at the AGM. Hence, the sky is falling concerns, tracking at 2.4% for the first 5 months, are you now saying that the 1% to 2% may be too conservative? Or do you still expect negative rates in the second half of 2026?

Andrew, you may be one of the analysts who thought we'll just change the percentage of GWP and put it out. The really smart ones actually sat down and said, well, maybe we should look at what they're doing to rectify that. This Board works under abundant caution in everything it does. Okay, the 1% to 2% was to make sure that you weren't -- that at a time of uncertainty, right, because we were only running into basically 60 days at that stage, and we didn't have the full accounts for the one, then that did create a sky sing effect. But in reality, we're holding a very strong 2.4% at the moment. Would we alter it? I guess I would look at the December result. And if, in fact, we keep trending towards that, then it's going to be more like 2% to 3%, okay? My gut feeling, okay, is it will be head towards more like 3%. But this market, as you know, we've been in a long time, is very unpredictable, incredibly unpredictable. I was talking to one of the insurers, a major player who said they couldn't believe the drop that they saw in July and August compared to the May, June time. So yes, abundant caution, 1.2% overreaction by the market. yes, okay. 2% to 4% we're tracking for at the moment. Maybe I think it's definitely going to be more like 3%, but I wouldn't like to guarantee it. That's why the abundant caution, 1.2% exists. I'm not suggesting you're one of the lazy analysts.

Our next question is an audio question from Jeff Cai at Citi.

Just a similar vein in terms of rates. Can you give a bit more color in terms of what you're seeing to give you a bit more confidence why the average rates are sort of flattening out in the latest quarter?

Yes. Based on those predictions, the actual facts of what we're getting period-to-period, policy volume to policy volume and what we've actually achieved, yes. So we've got factual to say it's the 2.4%.

Got it. And then a follow-up question on the topic of succession. To what extent has that sort of changed your mind given what happened in the last few weeks in terms of staying on as the CEO for much longer? What's your latest thinking?

I think I've told the market for the last 2.5 years that towards the end of '26 is when I wanted to get out of my executive role. And I don't think that's changed at this particular time.

There are no further questions. I'll now hand the meeting back to Robert Kelly.

Okay. Thanks, everybody. I appreciate your time. I hope that helped to give you some color over and have a happy Christmas and a healthy New Year and look forward to seeing you at the half year. Thanks very much.