XPS Pensions Group plc (XPS) Earnings Call Transcript & Summary

Well, good morning, everybody. Thank you very, very much for coming along to the presentation of our results for the year ending 31 March 2026. I'm going to pop up a brief agenda. We're going to follow the usual format. We're going to start with a brief overview of the year, just a couple of minutes, then Snehal will unpack the results in quite a bit more detail. I thought would be helpful to give an update on what's going on in our market and then how we're responding to that strategically and operationally. People are very important to us. We'll talk a little bit about that and our clients. And of course, the very hot topic of AI. We have got a couple of slides and we want to talk about that as well, and then we'll wrap it up and get on to Q&A. So in summary, we've had another fantastic year, and we're really, really proud of the results that we're announcing today. Headlines of revenue growth of 13% and growth in adjusted EBITDA of 9% and and we're just under 5% ahead of market expectations, EPS level. So these things are good, but actually, the underlying performance of the business is much better still -- and to explain that, you need to remember that the picture is a little bit muddied because of the effect of the very large and very profitable one-off project that we did last year on the [ McLeod ] remedy. If we normalize for that, -- and if we also adjust for the acquisition we did at Polaris, then we can see the performance of the underlying core business. And as you can see, this grew by 12%, with operational gearing coming through, we grew EBITDA by 15%. And that, of course, builds on a really sustained period of high growth in the previous 3 years as well. And the operational gearing we've achieved is especially good because don't forget we also have to absorb the increase in NII, which is a people business was pretty material for us. It's a great performance. And in terms of what drove that, well, we are operating in a good market, enter schemes have gone through a step change in recent years, some large deficits to a new age in which many are in surplus. They have more options than ever before and they need a lot of advice and support Regulations are changing as well. We're still working through new rules on scheme funding for clients, and we're now about to get more new rules on surplus release as well. So in this new world, many pension schemes are accessing insurance solutions. It's keeping us really busy. Our risk transfer team that helps clients to do this has just had another record year themselves. And the insurers taking on all these schemes, they need help as well. And that's why we're following a strategy that you could describe as follow the member where we provide all the support as needed for whatever institution is taking on a pension scheme and paying them in the long term safely and securely. Now that's working because along with the successful integration of Polaris -- we are expanding our addressable market, and we are seeing wider opportunities to open up. So on AI, we do see it as a big opportunity. We're going to talk about that a little bit more in a minute as well. One thing that will always be really important to us, of course, is brand and reputation, and that's why we're so pleased that hot off the press just last week we won no fewer than 4 major prices our annual industry awards in them. And these awards were across all the different business lines we have -- so again, our brand is really going from strength to strength, and we're delighted about that. And finally, from my introduction, as you know by now, we work really hard to be a fantastic place to work. And have a really healthy culture. And again, we won some really fantastic awards and got great recognition in that this year, too. So we think we're doing things in a really sustainable basis. So that's my brief introduction. We'll say more about that in a minute, but I shall hand over to Snehal, who will take us through the details of the financials.

So another strong year, as Paul said, and even better when we look at the underlying organic growth, excluding the cloud. Total revenue grew 13% and adjusted EBITDA 9%, which include the impact of the increase in national insurance and continued investment in growing our insurance consulting capabilities. The top right-hand chart shows the increment components of the revenue growth. And you can see that the underlying business has performed very strongly. And that growth is continuing to deliver on further operational gearing. In the chart to the bottom right, we have normalized the FY '25 margin of 30.1% for the impact of McLeod and the increase in National Insurance, which are both worth about 1% each. It's showing that underlying EBITDA margins this year has improved by 70 basis points. Adjusted EBITDA was 2% ahead of consensus, strong operational performance and a lower share count has driven the adjusted diluted EPS of 22.3p, which is up 8% and also 4% ahead of consensus. In line with the progressive dividend policy, the Board has proposed a final dividend of 9.1p, which is up 11% year-on-year, making the full year dividend of 13.2p, up 11% and also 4% ahead of consensus, underscoring our continued confidence in the business model and growth prospects. So here, we've got the usual P&L with revenue broken down by division, and Paul and Ben will take you through the divisional highlights shortly. But just briefly, Advisory grew 20% year-on-year. And excluding the Polaris acquisition, growth was a healthy 8%. Administration grew 5% on a tough comparator, but excluding McLoud, the growth was 18%, and SiPs delivered another year of double-digit revenue growth. The adjusted EBITDA growth of 15% to the right includes the impact of higher employers NI, which is an additional GBP 2.5 million cost this year. The net finance costs are higher due to the higher net debt from the Polaris acquisition as well as the continued share purchase by the EBT. And as I said earlier, the lower share count from this and the strong operational performance has helped deliver adjusted EPS growth of 8%. On the nontrading and exceptional items, which are all consistent with previous treatment and largely noncash. The increase in the amortization of acquired intangibles reflects the Polaris acquisition and acquisition-related remuneration is the buildup of the Polaris contingent consideration. In terms of guidance for FY '27 in the medium term, we continue to target mid- to high single-digit percentage organic revenue growth and driving further improvements in underlying EBITDA. CapEx guidance for FY '27 is between GBP 12 million to GBP 13 million as we continue to invest in tech, including bolstering our AI capabilities. And it also includes the fit-out costs for our new London office where we will have the pleasure of hosting these briefings in the future. All of this is already reflected in the current consensus. Turning to costs. Despite the increase in NII and the full year impact of growing our insurance consulting team and capabilities, cost as a percentage of revenue have only gone up by 1%. Now if you exclude the impact of McLoud, you can see that cost as a percentage of revenue have actually improved year-on-year. Within the cost, staff costs are up 18%. Of that 18%, 9% is due to the increase in headcount, including from the Polaris acquisition, 2% is from the impact of higher employers NI and the remainder a combination of annual performance -- annual and promotional pay increases and the bonus commensurate with the performance of the group. The decrease in IT costs reflect the benefits from investment in Aurora coming through offsetting the effects of increases in head count and the continued investment in tech, particularly cybersecurity. Other costs are largely in line with prior year as we continue to maintain strong cost discipline. Turning to cash flow. OCF conversion was a healthy 91%, and guidance for future years remain between 90% to 95% as we continue to grow. Net debt at the end of March was GBP 46.2 million and a covenant leverage of 0.64x well within our target of 1 to 1.5x, giving us flexibility for pursuing M&A opportunities. Currently, we have GBP 63 million of undrawn facilities from the GBP 120 million total available, which we have also recently extended until March 2030. We've included the progression of return on invested capital as a KPI here. And you can see that there has been a steady improvement and returns are now 3x our weighted average cost of capital. Strong growth in returns reflect material growth in profits on a stable asset base, which is proof of our capital-light business model. And finally, just to remind you of the capital allocation priorities, which remain unchanged. The focus remains on capitalizing on the organic opportunity within our core and tangential markets. We want to continue to invest in creating market-leading proprietary tech that creates a competitive advantage but also drives efficiencies but relative to the size of the business, we will remain CapEx light. We will continue with our progressive dividend policy, and we'll continue to scan the horizon for earnings enhancing M&A opportunities, but we'll remain disciplined in that approach.

And so on to the market update. And to set a sin here, when we listed back in 2017, our ambition was to be the best place in our industry to work and the best firm for our clients. So a one-stop shop, a provide all of the support the pension schemes need to a really, really high standard. And if we could achieve that, we could become the leading mid-tier in our market. Now we're a long way off that back then. But this chart shows how the last 10 years have gone. So the growth here includes some acquisitions, the largest, obviously, in FY '19 but the majority of the growth has been organic and driven by us doing more work for clients as we've expanded our services. And in particular, the rapid increase in funding levels for defined benefit schemes over the period has created huge demand from clients. And what we've done really well is keep evolving in developing our services to meet those client needs. And today, I think we can say that we are now the leading mid-tier firm. So we are really proud of what we've achieved. So how do we see the market evolving? Well, today, over half of schemes now probably have enough money to pass their assets and liabilities to a bulk annuity provider if they wanted to, with no top-up needed. But at the same time, many companies are thinking that running their scheme on and getting some value back might be a better idea and the rules are being changed to make that all easier. So what does this all mean? Well, first, as you can see, the market is dominated by thousands of small schemes. And the fees for running each 1 are quite small. Now we expect that most of these schemes are simply too small to run on. And so they'll end up buying out and leaving the pensions ecosystem. So this will keep us busy as the schemes themselves will need lots of support to get ready and execute a transaction. And that typically takes years where multiples of the BAU fees are earned. On the right-hand side, we then have the large schemes. And these are 1 to explore run on in detail, and we actually expect many of them will then choose to run on. at least for a period as the economics are generally really compelling. So they'll continue to need all of the current BAU services plus a port around what to do with surplus. And finally, for those in the middle, we'll probably see a bit of both. Now it's also worth mentioning that the insurers taking on these schemes will also need help, and it's much harder for them to do lots of small deals to meet their business targets than doing it across a small number of larger deals. So all of this is going to play out over many years into the future, but it's a pretty positive backdrop for XPS.

So as Ben said, we have achieved our objective really of 10 years ago, we are arguably the leading independent pensions advisory and admin firm in the U.K. So the question is what next? Well, First, we will, of course, be focused on maximizing every opportunity that we have in the pensions market. Our clients need a huge amount of help and advice. We will be helping lots of schemes to buy out. But for every 1 of these trades, there is a counterparty, an insurance company or a super fund or even a fund manager like in the recent Aberdeen deal is taking them on. And this capital shift is huge. We're likely to see between GBP 0.5 trillion and GBP 1 trillion of assets move over the next 10 to 15 years. Now our observation here is a fundamentally simple one. Although over time, there will be fewer defined benefit schemes, many members of these schemes are still going to be getting benefits in 40 or 50 years from now, just potentially from a different place. And so we'll follow the members. We'll be a brilliant provider of services to these wider institutions taking these members on over time as well that creates lots of wider opportunities, too. Insurance companies and other institutions have many other challenges, and it's a short bridge from providing wider support than just where the pensions and insurance worlds collide. And that, of course, is what the Polaris acquisition was all about. We've been really pleased with how the integration has gone, and we're now seeing a very good pipeline of wider opportunities starting to emerge. As you can see in the graphic at the bottom, this opens up a much larger target addressable market. And ultimately, our ambition for the next 10 years is to become a market-leading financial services consulting and administration provider, serving pension schemes, serving life insurers, general insurers and more. Now we expect M&A to be a part of delivering on that strategy. There are broadly 2 types of opportunity. The first is in our traditional core market, which does remain quite fragmented. We could make an acquisition there and that's got some attractions. It would create truly the largest independent firm, clearly ahead of the rest of the mid-tier and there could, of course, be synergies that could be quite material. But ultimately, we'll be unlikely probably to gain capability. We're strong already in all of the services that our pension clients need. So perhaps more likely is the type of transaction on the right, that would accelerate the diversification strategy into a wider market. And that, of course, is what the Polaris acquisition did, and we would be very open to seeing more transactions like that if we can find bolt-on deals that are a good fit for our ambitions. So as we turn to the strategic and operational review, where we canter through each of the businesses. Here's a quick reminder of how we structure ourselves. So we have our advisory businesses, and this is where we provide advice to pension schemes and insurers on the big decisions they face to run themselves really well. We then have our administration businesses where we do the day-to-day recordkeeping and communication with members and ultimately, -- that's about paying the right benefits to the right people at the right time. And we do this for members of pension schemes. We also help insurers with the schemes that they've taken on. And we also do this for SIP and SaaS arrangements where we set them up and manage them, too. As a rough guide, we're not far off half advisory half administration, perhaps a little bit more advisory given the results this year. So how did the advisory business get on during the year? So I say, I mentioned the headline growth of 20%, but this is the part of the business where we include the revenues from the Polaris acquisition. So if we strip that out, the organic growth was 8% of this, just over 3% came from inflationary fee increases with the rest coming from an increase in volumes of work. So the things that kept us really busy were advised on strategy. So in particular, helping clients with their first valuations under the new funding regime and just in general, working with them in the new world of surpluses. [ Auris ] transporting had another really strong year. And in the background, we're still busy on GMP projects and have a few more years to go of this work. On the insurance consulting side of things, which is, of course, only a couple of years old, it's been a busy year, building the team and integrating the Polaris business, which has gone really well. So during the year, all of the existing Polaris preferred supplier arrangements were retained, and we also expanded the remit on several and got some new relationships in place, too, and that will provide a great opportunity for the future. So if we look ahead, we expect our pension clients to keep needing lots of support as new regulations work through the system. And actually, just last week, the government issued the draft regulations for consultation on surplus release. We also think there's going to be more new business opportunities opening up as when there's lots of change. It's a great chance to be able to differentiate yourself. And that's why we were so pleased to run on Adviser of the Year in the recent pension awards because this is a new area for the whole industry, and we want to make ourselves famous to bring brilliant at it. And finally, on the insurance side of things, we've been really pleased with how Polaris has opened up opportunities to help insurers with their bulk annuity businesses, and we think we'll be doing much more of that in the years ahead. And we also expect Polaris and our insurance consulting team to be busy more widely too. So turning to administration. And the performance in this area of the group was absolutely fantastic. This is, of course, the division where the McCloud project was delivered in the prior year. Growth this year, it was 5%. But if you exclude that one-off project, growth in administration this year was 18%. That was driven by a range of things. We took on new clients. Most notably, we had a full year of the John Lewis contract. We're doing lots of project work, again, lots of GMP work, but we still have a huge amount of that to get through. Operationally, we had a good year, too. We've got all of our public sector clients migrated onto our system Aurora and that meant leaving 1 more of our legacy third-party systems behind, which brings all sorts of benefits for us. We had more new business success in the year as well, perhaps most notably winning the mandate to provide administration to the metropolitan police and their 80,000 members. And that win was really helped, of course, by the strong reputation that we've built through the successful delivery of the cloud work the year before. So although that project was 1 up in nature, it's really helped to drive wider long-term opportunities as well. Now as we look to the future, I think we just see more of the same. -- first-time outsourcing opportunities are all around us. And there's opportunities where some of our competitors have struggled a little bit with client service. It's also an area where, again, there are wider opportunities, especially to help insurers with their admin both when they take schemes on and when they would then run them for the very long term. So the future looks really bright for admin. Our people are at the heart of absolutely everything that we do, and we invest a huge amount of time in having a great culture. We talk about this a lot. I know that we do it because we really think it drives business performance. Put simply, happy, motivated people look after each other well and then they look after their clients brilliantly, too. had another really good year on this front. We launched something new, our employee value proposition, setting out what it means to work at XPS, what we expect from you and what you can expect from us in return. This landed very well, and it's got -- it's very important in the future for both retention and of course, we're articulating the proposition to attract the right people to join us as we grow. Now we measure what we can. And in our annual employee survey, our Net Promoter Score bounced back into the 30s plus 32 and we're told this is exceptionally high for a professional services firm. And we've got external recognition as well. We actually won the best medium-sized firm in the U.K. at the U.K. business Culture awards which is amazing because that's not just a financial services award, that's across all employees across the whole of the U.K. So we're really, really pleased with that recognition. Our clients have given us great feedback as well. We won our annual client -- sorry, we ran a full client survey every 2 years. So we will have more facing figures for you next year. But once again, Client churn was extremely low, and you can see some of the great things that our clients have said about us on the slide here. And it is [indiscernible] of the press, but being recognized for client service at our annual industry awards is really important. As we mentioned, we won 4 awards in categories that span the whole of the business, including the outright winner of administration firm of the year. So that was a cracking evening for us just last week. That's fantastic. It really strengthens our brand, and it's really helpful in new business opportunities going forward. So on to AI, and we've got 2 slides to cover here. The first looks at how we think it will affect our industry. And the second looks at who we think the winners will be. So across advisory and administration, the work we do there, there's a lot of tasks that are quite manual, and quite repeat in nature. And these are often very technical and specialized tasks, so are quite time-consuming. So there's a clear opportunity for everyone in our market to use AI to increase automation, drive productivity and efficiency. Secondly, technology has already been a bit of a differentiator between firm, so RADAR and Aurora are key parts of our service offering. But the AI capabilities we now see mean there's a much bigger opportunity to use technology to create USPs. Finally, as we've often said, there's a high level of client stickiness in our market, which makes it difficult to win new clients. But if AI does lead to more differentiation between firms, we could see more client churn. -- and an opportunity for the first movers to win market share. So which firms do we think a best place to take advantage of this opportunity? Now probably the first thing to say is that we believe the winners are already in our market. So the pension consulting market has high barriers to entry. The buyers in the market, typically trustees of pension schemes are cautious and they naturally favor the established players. It's also a very relationship-driven market. There will always be a lot of person-to-person interaction in trustee meetings, helping clients negotiate complex deals and in administration trustees is critical that their members can speak to a person if they want to. More generally, training AI models requires data and domain knowledge. And generally, this information isn't widely available and ultimately compared to other opportunities that technology firms might have access to, we don't think the pensions consulting and administration market would be particularly attractive given the relatively small size compared to the high level of specialism. Now within our market, we think the specialist mid-tier firms like XPS are best place to benefit because a firm needs to have enough scale to be able to invest in AI tools. But equally, it takes focus and agility. And if you're too big and U.K. pensions is only a small amount of what you do globally, -- that will be a challenge, particularly because we think this is all about building really specialist capabilities. Now in terms of excess more specifically, we also have a strong record -- strong track record with technology. So RADAR and Aurora, are great examples of technology that we've built and we've deployed ourselves. We've also had already some real successes building and deploying AI. So with the right focus and investment, we are optimistic about how this will all unfold.

Okay. So to wrap things up for the formal part of the presentation before we go to Q&A. For the last 10 years have been fantastic. We've executed really, really well. You could see that from the chart on 1 of our earlier slides. And we're really proud that it's been another year of really good organic growth, building on that really strong run that we've been on for some years now. We are in a good market. There's a lot of regulatory change and changes caused by movement to this higher interest rate environment. These are multiyear changes. We are going to be helping our clients through them for a long time to come. We're seeing a gradual merging of the pensions and insurance world opening up opportunities. We're doing ever more with insurers, helping them to onboard and run pension schemes. And with the acquisition of Polaris having integrated well, we're getting access to wider opportunities at insurers too, which is helping us to expand our target addressable market. We do think further M&A could accelerate that journey for us as well. Everything that we do is based on our people and our strong culture. We're really proud of those awards that we want to gain this year. Our people do share in our success, and that means that we're achieving our results in a truly sustainable manner. As Ben said, we see AI as an opportunity. It is going to change what we do in some areas for the better, and we are quite certain that the winners from AI in our market are already in our market. And we think we're perfectly placed as a firm, big enough to make good investments, but not so big that the focus needed can be a challenge. Everything that's going on in our markets, ultimately, we're very, very excited about the future, and we see lots of opportunities for further growth. So thank you very much indeed for listening, and we'll now open the floor for some questions.

Steve from [indiscernible] the opportunities you mentioned on the pension surplus work that's about to kick off. is when do you think the bulk of the work happens? I think you've mentioned before in a prior presentation, distributions can happen from April next year. So do you expect sort of a flurry of activity from those larger companies that might be interested in that? Secondly, just thinking about all the work and the opportunities you've got, how well resourced you are to take on board some of that work. And then thirdly, you mentioned M&A likely thoughts on where -- how about in the insurance consulting market you might go after Polaris if that's sort of an issue.

Great. Thank you, Steve. I'll take the first and the third and then Ben might take the second. So in terms of surplus regulations, I would describe this as just a nice gentle tailwind there isn't a sort of big bang moment for this. The draft regulations on surplus release are available. People have a good understanding of what it means they're likely to be finalized in probably the first quarter but positive first half of 2027. The point though is that our clients are thinking on an ongoing basis about this. And it fills up the agenda of things to talk about and things that we need to do analysis on and help them with. And then there will be a sort of smooth -- some clients will want to be releasing surplus as soon as 2027, the really well-funded ones that are really advanced. Others haven't got that far in their thinking yet, and we'll get there. As probably they follow what happens in the wider market even into 2028 and 2029. So the better way of thinking about it really is that this is just a gentle tailwind all the time, that there's lots of stuff to talk about, and it's going to evolve and keep developing. And that's just a good thing. We like to have lots of good and it's fun because it's new and it's value add for them. As we said, human-capital Markets event recently, it's so much fun talking about this the last 20 years of talking about big black holes and deficits that never seem to go away. So it's -- yes, we're enjoying it and I think our clients are as well.

I think the second question was around resourcing and kind of what the recruitment market I think is like. So staff turnover is just over 10% across the group and that's very similar to the last 3 years or so. It includes, I guess, in voluntary and retirement as well. So actually, it's at pretty low levels. in terms of voluntary turnover. We -- our model is now that we largely recruit into the more entry-level roles and we've been expanding the different channels we have, school levers apprenticeships and also graduates. So we don't see that as being a particularly barrier to kind of us achieving what we hope to. And on M&A, yes, we steered in the presentation to be interested in acquisitions that would accelerate just further into those wider adjacent markets. It's 1 observation about where we are in insurance at the moment. is we have -- it would benefit us to that a little bit more scale in terms of the permanent team that we have at XPS it's still relatively small. And of course, we use the flexible delivery model that Polaris had of using contractors to deliver big projects that we win. We do think it would be helpful just simply to have more scale, higher head count in the market, if there's a firm out there with great quality, that we could bring on board that boosted that. I think it would boost our credibility and market footprint and just further help us to go and win more opportunities. So we're certainly interested in opportunity further.

[indiscernible] more of the pensions active and healthy.

No, no. So to be clear, this would be helping insurance companies with the whole range of challenges they face and you can think of the Ven diagram that where pensions and insurance overlap is in the bulk annuity space, insurers have all sorts of wider challenges, their own financial reporting, wrestling with legacy systems, trying to adopt new technology all sorts of regulatory changes and market changes that affect them, too. And we'd very much like to help them across that wider range of activity. Prior to Polaris, we didn't have that capability with Polaris, we do -- but as I say, we'd probably like to enhance the scale that we've got to really build that credibility. I mean a great statistic for you after the Polaris acquisition and more generally in combination with XPS. But if you went back 2 years, XPS fundamentally, we had 1 insurance company client. Today, we have 20. And it's a different market to pentice. That's 20 clients that each have typically multimillion pounds often multi-multimillion pound budgets for transformation and change and support. So to have access to that wide range of clients. It really is almost all of the U.K. life insurers that we now have a relationship with and a master services agreement contractually with to be able to go and support. And that's the big step change. And if you feed a bit more scale into that we think we've got great opportunities to go and take more market share from there's still only 1% to 2% of market share that we've got in that space. So it's a cracking opportunity. Next question. Sorry, behind, James.

I am [ Ben Cohen ] from RBC. I have 2 questions, if I may. Firstly, thinking about your margins going forward, I just wonder if you could talk to the sort of the headwinds and tailwinds that you see in the business and in the market for any sort of margin improvement. And the second question, excuse me, was on the sort of available firepower that you see that you have for for M&A in your context, I guess, the leverage ratio, what you might like to do from a share point of view to give a sense in terms of the size of things you could look to buy? Sure.

In terms of the margin, so the Aurora development that we did was to replace legacy third-party providers, and that is going to sort of lead to a OpEx. I think most of that has already come through. There is some more, but it's also going to increase our -- the efficiency of our administration business. So over time, that will start to feed through more -- in terms of the mix of the business, this could -- I mean, it's not going to be will classify as a tailwind but it would be a good thing. If, for example, administration were to grow a lot faster because there are lots of public sector opportunities following the success of McCloud and appointment with Met Police then that mix of business could lead to a sort of a small margin contraction. But that's not what we're guiding to. If you look at the consensus, there is improvements in margin year-on-year from here until FY '28 and soon to be FY '29 numbers as well. In terms of the financial firepower, so we've done 7 acquisitions so far, 6 of those are bolt-ons and have driven IRR in excess of 20%. And those have been sort of focused on to Paul's slide, infilling capabilities or expanding our capabilities into markets that we're not currently in. And that model suits us really well because it's very easy to integrate, very quick to access additional markets. And as we've sort of talked about, there are lots of adjacencies within Life Insurance Consulting and general insurance consulting. It's a fragmented market and there are opportunities within those. So we would look to do mainly from debt, our sort of stated target is sort of 1x to 1.5x leverage. But if we were to go above that, the returns will have to show that we can deleverage very quickly within that range. But that gives us a lot of financial firepower to go after opportunities. James?

James Fletcher from Berenberg. Just a couple on AI, if I may. Just kind of in your conversations with clients and in particular, pension trustees. To what extent does AI come up? And is there a kind of knock-on impact on pricing kind of expectations to date? And then just kind of with regards to kind of big 3 players in your market, if you have sight on to what extent they've been investing in AI and are you kind of ahead of the pack, ahead of those guys? Or are they kind of slower to update?

Sure, okay. So I guess at the moment, most of the conversations we have with clients around AI are -- if you go back to the 1 of the comments made in our presentation is that they're quite cautious in nature. Most of the conversations are around how are you using it -- where is the data being held? Where is it being processed and how are you still compliant with GDPR. And in fact, 20th of May, so just last [indiscernible] pensions regulator issued a statement about AI and that I guess you all acknowledge that there were potential opportunities to, for example, give members better service through AI, but a large part of it was reminding trustees that they're altering responsible and they need to be governing this properly and making sure people are doing it safely. So I would describe most of the questions we get are around how we're doing it safely. We haven't really had much conversations yet around the impact on pricing. So we'll have to see in that, I guess, really will be driven by what our competitors also do. It is true that in the past, though, where more automations come into services -- tick on things like administration, delivering better member outcomes. That hasn't put pressure on prices. People have seen automation as a real positive and actually a higher value service than 1 that doesn't have automation. But as I said, we'll see how that plays out, but we're not seeing that pressure today. In terms of the big 3, I guess we don't say much about exactly what we're doing on AI in this forum because we know our competitors watch it and listen to it and they know that we scour their websites to. So people are all a little bit coy. So probably a good anecdote had is with 1 of the insurers I was speaking to. So we went into a session about sort of AI that we've got and the tools that we've built to help them and their feedback was you're the only firm we've seen has actually got something tangible about how they can use AI to help us. So that's an example of one. But I don't believe that other firms out there are ahead of us.

Three, I suppose the usual number please from [indiscernible] . I wanted to ask first about Polaris. So if you could just talk about the revenue that you achieved in FY '26. What do you expect at the beginning of the year? I appreciate that some of that has also fallen into the core business. If you could just sort of unpack that. And you talked briefly about the pipeline for insurance consulting revenue. Just if you could talk a little bit more about that? Are you expecting some improvement in the Polaris revenue line. The next question was about -- so if you -- your sort of underlying organic growth in '26 was really good if you strip out McCloud. And on the base of consensus that assumes a slowdown in that path -- or sorry, that rate of growth. So -- what's in there? I mean, what's exciting you about '27? And what are you a little bit more cautious about compared to what you achieved last year? And the last thing, just if you could help us now on share count, what we should expect for this year? And if I could just throw in there potentially with the firepower or the balance sheet strength you have, what you thought about in terms of a buyback?

Do you want to take the first one on Polaris?

Yes, yes, most definitely. So Polaris in the year, if you unpick the inorganic figures, you'll see a number for Polaris revenue of about GBP 16 million, something like that. In the year before, we acquired -- we expectation -- we probably expect it to about 15%. So it's probably a little bit better than we ultimately expected. It did do 17 in the year we bought it but there was a big tailwind, loads of insurance projects on implementation of IFRS 17, which were coming to an end. So overall, really pleased with that performance. But you're right, there's a little bit of nuance in the performance. And it's quite I think it's worth unpacking it a little bit because it demonstrates another nice feature of the transaction that we've been really pleased about. One of the big contracts that we won and delivered mostly in H2 that was a Polaris contract is providing support to 1 of the bulk annuity providers who are struggling a little bit to cope with a number of schemes that they're taking on, having won them over the last few years in a sense, victims of their own success. -- needed to scale up their internal team to handle that quite quickly and ultimately also probably need to adapt and change their systems and modernize the way that they do things. That was a very good project for us. And the phone call for that project came into Polaris, part of XPS Now, of course, but it came into 1 of the Polaris founders. We had an MSA with this insurer, a contract that you could just go and start work on the next day because of Polaris where XPS didn't have that previously. So we mobilized at 1 point, as many as 30 of our people in the helping and making this right. And they were very successful in doing so, and I'm pleased to say that some insurers continuing to provide a really good service with the help of XPS. So we did a good job. And we're still there today doing it. The run rate for that contract this year is likely to be pretty material and pretty significant. You characterize that certainly as a Polaris deal, but it's in Polaris contract, but it is interesting that Polaris would not have been able to deliver that without being part of XPS. The first phone call they made was to say, well, this is fundamentally pensions work, that's not their expertise. They probably would have turned it down if they hadn't been part of XPS, but instead, we mobilize people and send them in. But that's fantastic because that's what the deal was about is bringing the best of both, and you could call out a revenue synergy. To your point, [indiscernible], which is a subtle one, but important one, it is fair that the 30 people that we deployed were already busy somewhere -- so there is a sort of substitution effect that you don't see a net revenue growth for the business, the group as a whole because we just did a little bit less of other projects that weren't say, time critical within the pensions business because we threw resource over to insurance. But no, it's a nice problem to have that because as you then recruit more people because there's just more demand because you're having such success with insurers you ultimately can get to the point where that is revenue accretive for the group this year, it arguably wasn't, but there's every reason to think that it certainly can be because we continue providing that support. We should say we've had called some other insurers with very, very similar challenges. The insurance industry is genuinely creaking with taking on the pension schemes at the pace at which that's happening. And we are delighted to help and 1 of the small number of firms who can genuinely help in the example I've given by the way, before -- alongside calling us, if you like, a big 4 accounting firms called, they also sent in a bunch of bodies but they couldn't deliver the project because their expertise just isn't the right expertise, whereas for XPS. It absolutely is because of our heritage and history. The pipeline for Polaris to unpack it, we think insurers had a relatively fallow year off the back of IFRS 17. And what we saw last year was a lot of reviews of preferred supplier list and master services agreements. And it was a great year for us in the sense that we renewed every 1 that we were on, and we added more. And I won't give you client names, but FTSE 100 level insurers where we have been added to wider services that we can now provide and preferred supplier agreements and so on, which is fantastic and really sets us up. And what we're seeing is the volume of support that insurers need definitely looks like it's ramping back up and our sort of weighted pipeline of opportunities for 2027 for FY '27, the rest of this year into '27 is really healthy. And importantly, a bunch of things that are not going to need resourcing from the pensions world, but instead are truly going to be Polaris engagements. So a bit of all of that going on makes us genuinely really excited about what we might achieve. It leads into your second question about what we're really excited about for FY '27, which that is a part of it. But yes, more widely, really excited about the opportunities that there are around this emerging world of surplus and run on. There's a lot happening. There's new providers, there's transactions like we have a de deal that might be replicated. There's super funds beginning to appear into the market. We're in detailed discussions with some of those and so on and just the range of advice that our clients in general need. So yes, we're excited about opportunities to keep the momentum going in terms of that sort of the organic growth rate moderating from 12% this year and the consensus sort of mid- to high single digits, inflation does play a part in that. Inflation is coming down. Secondly, some of the sort of the high-margin businesses, which have grown from a standing start, such as risk transfer, 3 or 4 years ago, generating about 1 million. Last year, we delivered about GBP 20 million from that. to compound at that rate is not possible. So there's sort of a slowdown within that growth rate. It will still continue to be very strong -- just this year, we've been involved in writing 46 deals. And obviously, as you know, these are multiyear projects that aren't just complete in 1 year. So yes, look, I think it's -- it certainly doesn't reflect the ambition of the management, as you know. So -- and in terms of the capital allocation, -- the share count, yes, we have -- we don't try and call the market on this, but when we spot the opportunity to sort of top up the EBT which is used to satisfy the vesting of awards and therefore, protecting shareholders against dilution. That's what we've done. In terms of formal sort of buybacks, we see plenty of other opportunities of more effective capital deployment, and you can see that from our track record of M&A and also the pipeline that Paul talked about in terms of what's available, so that would be our sort of first option in terms of capital deployment. But of course, the Board will consider all options if we're sitting on a pile of cash.

It's Rahim Karim from Cavendish. A couple of questions, if I may. Just on the medium-term outlook, a 5-year ahead slide, I think, Paul, that you presented, -- the right-hand side didn't include the word U.K., whereas the left-hand side did. And I was just wondering if that points to some international as I'll leave the smiles maybe to answer that question.

Yes, I'm filing a little bit certainly wasn't some kind of intentional subliminal signaling. I think the answer is probably in the pensions world, in our heritage, the U.K. is a unique market. And there isn't -- while there are defined benefit schemes and complexities around other parts of the world in Germany, the U.S., we're not going to enter that market to be better than the people on the ground locally. So we're not going to go international probably in the pensions world. But in the wider financial services consulting world, absolutely, there is a broader international market. London is a true center actually for excellence in things like insurance company regulation solvency, et cetera. There is various -- the regulations are much more universal and much more similar in other parts of the world. So if you do an acquisition in the future, it's possible that you will get a business that already has an office in New York or an office in Paris or Milan or somewhere in which -- and we'd be very open to that but it would be more into that diversification play into the future, I think, than in what's been historically our heritage, our core.

And maybe if I can just build on to that a little bit. It also feels like there's a slight -- not away from actuarial services, but consulting more generally. Is that fair as well?

Not quite because the services we're talking about to insurance companies, a lot of them are just -- are actuarial services and support. That's Polaris heritage as well. There's a broadening here but wider finance transformation programs, implementation of technology, the way insurers consolidate and handle big data, safely, securely, all things we do for pension schemes apply very well across the board. But now an awful lot of it is still actuarial consulting work just for a different end user rather than a pension scheme.

I promise to ask my questions. together now -- just on the -- I think it was on James' question earlier around pricing. I mean if you have time and material pricing agreements with your clients, how do you think about that? And how are they thinking about that? And I'm going to throw you talk now, you talked about capital allocation and use of capital, it's a pleasant surprise that the dividend is up 11%. But -- to that point, isn't there something better that you could do with that extra few percentage if there's attractive M&A delivering 20% plus returns.

Just on the pricing one. The -- so yes, with our clients, we've got a mix of fixed fee contracts and time costs and probably up until now we're pretty neutral. They roughly come out with the same answer, and it's just a phasing of when we get paid versus when we do the work. Going forward, we see ourselves moving far more to fixed fees or fixed pricing for contracts. Now often a project kind of -- you don't see an advance, you wouldn't cover that in a fixed fee. But I think rather than say we'll do that work on time cost. We'll be looking to quote pretty fixed fees for more of the work than we currently do. And I think that's probably going to happen across all professional services businesses.

On the dividend, as I said, the dividend was about 4% ahead of market expectations. In cash terms, it and leverage terms, it doesn't sort of move the dial a lot, but obviously, for the future, you would have seen in the consensus, the guidance is about a 5% growth. So it would be more in line with profits continuing with the sort of progressive policy. But yes, I do take your point about sort of -- if there is capital deployment opportunities available elsewhere, then yes, that would get reflected in what we do, but we will continue with a progressive policy.

Yes. Thomas from Davy here. Just 2 questions, if I may. Firstly, on the insurance business. I noticed that you added the general insurance to be tangible addressable markets and total addressable market. I was wondering, do you see more growth opportunity there? Or where is the more growth in life or general or what the split is for the insurance business specifically? And then secondly, on AI, if it continues to drive efficiencies, do you think there's any scope that it could change hiring practices in the future of XPS.

Great. I'll take the first one, maybe Ben take the second. So your first question about the insurance market, yes, the general insurance market and the life insurance market are also on diagram overlap but they do have quite different characteristics as well. The life market is dominated by a smaller number of very large institutions and the general market is a much wider market of even a few hundred much smaller institutions the Ven diagram lapse with somebody like [indiscernible] and so on. But actually, they are fundamentally quite different markets. And yes, the model that we've successfully deployed that Polaris historically success deployed that we've acquired works into the general insurance market as well, and we've begun to deploy contractors into that market where there's XPS capability to understand the needs of the client and to fulfill it in that manner. And so that's a little start, and it's only a very small start. But we definitely see big opportunity in that market. And again, in looking for an acquisition target, an acquisition target that would enable us to bridge that gap from life into general would be really, really interesting to us. There's a lot of technological change there. And because they're smaller, it's a different market, but you generally are probably going to find it slightly easier to just get access to the very senior people and just deliver them value. it isn't gigantic procurement-led processes that it can be at the Giant life companies. It's rather more agile than that and a market that we feel that you could penetrate therefore, reasonably quickly if you've got something genuinely interesting to say.

So the second question was on AI and efficiency and hiring practices. Yes, we're spending a lot of time and effort looking at how we can roll out AI in a really agile way, but make sure we've got the governance around it. And part of that is looking further ahead how it might change kind of exactly what's done in the business by the kind of automation versus people. So absolutely, that will kind of change, I guess, the way we look at resourcing in the future probably, we see this as being -- we'll have more capacity. We have clients that would love us to do work for them. They love to do it more quickly for them. So actually, -- we think that's probably the outcome. Having kind of similar size workforce or it growing a little bit more slowly than otherwise would have done, but us being able to effectively provide more services than we probably currently can.

It's [indiscernible] from Bank of America. Just 1 for me. Going back to that margin point, would you consider compromising on margins to go after those larger public sector schemes you're talking about earlier? Or can we really consider margin expansion to persist regardless of client type?

I mean, I think it sort of boils down to and forgive me for this analogy, but would shareholders prefer more profit. And if some of those public sector opportunities are very big public sector pension schemes are obviously still open, and therefore, they can't persist sort of evergreen schemes and our reputation in public sector is very strong, enhanced by the timely delivery of the McLeod Remedy project, et cetera. So absolutely, we would go after those big opportunities because ultimately, we believe that that's going to be in the interest of the shareholders. Any more questions? The online -- thank you Thanks, everyone. Thank you.