Earnings call transcript: Aberdeen’s Q1 2021 insights and future plans

Aberdeen Group PLC (ABDN) presented its Q1 2021 earnings, revealing a mixed performance with strategic initiatives aimed at long-term growth. Despite net outflows in certain areas, the company remains focused on cost savings and innovation. The stock price showed a modest increase of 0.29%, reflecting cautious investor optimism. According to InvestingPro analysis, Aberdeen currently appears undervalued, trading at just 0.52 times book value, suggesting potential upside for value investors.

Key Takeaways

• Total assets under management and administration (AUMA) reached £500 billion.
• Interactive Investor’s customer base grew by 9% year-on-year.
• The company is on track to achieve £150 million in annualized cost savings by year-end.
• Aberdeen targets £1 billion in net inflows in its Advisor segment next year.
• Projected a £100 million adjusted operating profit in Investments by 2026.

Company Performance

Aberdeen’s performance in Q1 2021 was marked by a strategic focus on efficiency and innovation. The company’s total AUMA stood at £500 billion, with notable growth in its Interactive Investor platform, which saw a 9% increase in customers. The company maintains a strong financial position with an impressive gross profit margin of 95.26% and offers an attractive dividend yield of 9.99%. While the Advisor and Investments segments experienced net outflows, attributed mainly to a significant mandate redemption, the company’s solid Altman Z-Score of 10.12 indicates strong financial stability.

Financial Highlights

• Total AUMA: £500 billion
• Interactive Investor AUMA: Nearly £78 billion
• Advisor AUMA: Just under £74 billion, a 2% decrease from year-end
• Investments AUMA: Just under £360 billion, a 3% decline in the period
• Net outflows: £600 million in Advisor, £6.4 billion in Investments

Outlook & Guidance

Aberdeen’s future guidance includes ambitious targets such as achieving £1 billion in net inflows in the Advisor segment next year and a £100 million adjusted operating profit in Investments by 2026. The company also plans to launch new products like the Managed SIP and II Advice, aiming to enhance its market position. InvestingPro data shows the company maintains a "GOOD" overall financial health score, supporting its growth initiatives. Get access to detailed financial analysis and 12+ additional ProTips about Aberdeen’s growth potential with an InvestingPro subscription.

Executive Commentary

Jason Windsor, CEO, emphasized Aberdeen’s long-term strategy, stating, "Our ambition is to be the UK’s leading wealth and investments group." He also highlighted the company’s commitment to maintaining a long-term focus: "We’re a long-term player with a long-term focus."

Risks and Challenges

• Market volatility could impact client investment decisions.
• Margin pressures are expected to continue, moving towards 20% by year-end.
• Emerging market and Asia fund challenges may persist, affecting performance.
• The competitive landscape in wealth management requires continuous innovation.
• Economic uncertainties could affect net inflows and revenue growth.

Aberdeen’s Q1 2021 earnings call highlighted its strategic focus on efficiency, innovation, and long-term growth. While facing challenges in some segments, the company remains optimistic about its future prospects and market positioning. For comprehensive insights into Aberdeen’s valuation and growth potential, including exclusive ProTips and detailed financial metrics, explore the full Pro Research Report available on InvestingPro.

Full transcript - Aberdeen Group PLC (ABDN) Q1 2025:

Call Moderator: Good morning, and welcome to the Aberdeen Q1 AUMA and flows trading update. I will now hand over to Chief Executive Officer, Jason Windsor. Please go ahead, sir.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Thank you, and good morning, everybody, and thank you very much for joining our Q1 trading call this morning. With me today is Iain Jenkins, our interim CFO. I’m going to focus on Q1, of course, but I’ll also make a few comments about April, not least to preempt some of your questions. First, starting with the highlights from the quarter. AUMA at the end of Q1 was £500,000,000,000 On the positives, we had strong inflows for Interactive Investor, but this was more than offset by market effects and outflows in Investments and Adviser.

Growth in Interactive Investor was strong once again, with total customers up 9% year on year, and this includes 29% annual growth in SIPs. Net outflows in adviser of £600,000,000 represent an improvement versus prior quarters, driven by restored service, enhanced platform functionality and repricing. In investments, the Q1 outflow of £6,400,000,000 largely reflects the redemption from the low margin mandate I mentioned at the full year results. And then I’d add that following a large quant mandate win in April, net flows within institutional and retail wealth are, in fact, now positive year to date. As we set out at the year end, our strategy is to become The UK’s leading wealth business and to reposition our investments business to areas of strength and market growth.

We’re a long term player with a long term focus. And despite the heightened market uncertainty of recent weeks, we’ve made good progress toward our objectives this year. In fact, we haven’t seen any significant client led effects in investments or Adviser. And in II, the only effect of note was higher trading volumes in the April. Now, turning to our businesses in a little more detail.

Starting with Interactive Investor, which has maintained the strong momentum seen in recent quarters. Total customer numbers are up to 450,000, which now includes 88,000 high value SIP customers. II achieved strong net flows of £1,600,000,000 with AUMA increasing slightly to just under 78,000,000,000 And as a reminder, II was number one in net flows in 2024. During the quarter, we saw record levels of engagement, with an average of 24,000 trades per day on the platform, which is an increase of 19% versus Q1 last year. These trends have continued into April, with II maintaining strong inflows, enhanced daily trading volumes and sustained its customer growth.

Earlier this month, we announced the acquisition of Jarvis Management’s direct to consumer retail book. This small acquisition is expected to complete in Q3 for a consideration of around £10,000,000 and is expected to bring approximately £1,000,000,000 of assets onto our platform. With impressive performance to date, II is on track to meet its 26 growth targets, supported by an enhanced customer offering with the launches of the managed SIP, II Advice and II three sixty all soon to come. Turning now to Advisor. AUMA was just under £74,000,000,000 at the end of the quarter, down 2% compared to the year end, primarily reflecting lower markets, but also net outflows of 600,000,000.0 Positively, this is a better quarter than achieved in any of the quarters in 2024.

But we aren’t where we need to be yet. Following our intense focus in recent months, Service is now working well. We had a really good performance through the latest tax year end. But of course, we have ambition to do even better. Taken together with our enhanced platform functionality and the recent repricing, our target is to have at least £1,000,000,000 of net inflows next year.

And in investments, which in spite of market headwinds, is delivering on its strategic priorities. AUM was down 3% in the period to just under £360,000,000,000 with movements in the quarter reflecting lower markets and net outflows. Most of the £6,400,000,000 net outflow was driven by the £4,200,000,000 mandate redemption I flagged you all at the year end. This has gone through both our IRW and Insurance Partners lines. On the positive side, quarterly gross inflows in IRW, excluding liquidity, were at the highest level for over two years, and 30% higher than in Q4 last year.

Within this, we saw a strong performance in fixed income, with net inflows of £1,500,000,000 in the quarter, benefiting from a significant European pension client mandate. However, equities have continued to see elevated net outflows in a challenging market. I’d mention that the £3,300,000,000 net outflow in the quarter included £700,000,000 in relation to a previously announced fund merger as well as £700,000,000 redemption that will have a negligible revenue impact. And following a GBP 6,000,000,000 quant mandate that funded earlier this week, net flows across IRW are now positive year to date. And looking ahead, we continue to target a material uplift in profitability, with a 2026 target of at least £100,000,000 of adjusted operating profit.

At a group level, we’ve seen encouraging trends since the end of the quarter, with the large quants mandates win and sustained momentum in II. And before you ask, group AUMA is slightly up compared to the March. Looking ahead, we’re on track to meet our transformation target of at least GBP150 million of annualized cost saving by the end of this year. Richard Wilson, our Group COO, is focused on driving further long term benefits of transformation across our business and for our clients and colleagues. As I said at the full year and at the start of this call, our ambition is to be The UK’s leading wealth and investments group.

Not only are we committed to delivering on our 26 targets, but also to transforming the group’s culture and our clients’ experience. And with that, Ian and I are very happy to take your questions.

Call Moderator: Thank you. And up first, we have a question from Enrico Bolzoni from JPMorgan. Please go ahead. Your line is now open.

Enrico Bolzoni, Analyst, JPMorgan: Yes, good morning and thank you for taking my questions. Starting with Advisor, you mentioned you made significant progresses. Can you just confirm that now all the clients have been migrated to the new pricing structure? And can you give us some color on how do you see that relative to the Street? You think you’re very competitive now or more expensive than others or cheaper than others?

So just some color there I also wanted to ask you with respect to the cash balances in AI that increased quite nicely. You are growing penetration in SiP. Is that a contributor of that? Can you remind us if clients that also have a pension typically have higher cash balances relative to clients that don’t have a pension, just have ISA and unwrapped accounts?

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Sure. Well, on the second question first, I mean, yes, SIP growth does contribute to part of that. People tend to have or what we see on our platform tend to have slightly higher cash balances in SIPs. We have seen a little bit, as you point out, a little bit of a step up around that level. If you take out the Planning business, which we report in II, you’re around sort of nine ish percent of cash in the area, and that’s ticked up a little bit as we’ve grown slightly more in SIPs.

So we expect that to be continue just to tick up just slightly in line with the growth in the platform as we will look forward. On Advisor, yes, the repricing on Wrap went through, which is the major platform earlier this year. We did the new business repricing about a year ago, And now the whole thing has been washed through. So that’s that was in sort of January time. So that’s that is now in effect.

Where does it position us relative to others? I think we are now very competitive. The repricing that has gone through, it’s not one price for every customer. There’s tiering and there’s obviously some degree of commercial deals that we would enter into. So across the piece, I think with an enhanced level of service, improved functionality and an attractive price point, it’s a very competitive proposition.

Call Moderator: Thank you. And we now take our next question, which comes from Oliver Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Oliver Krautis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: Hi, Morning. Oliver Krautis from Goldman Sachs. Just one question for me on the trading revenues in Richard

Nicolas Herrmann, Analyst, Citi: has flagged in

Oliver Krautis, Analyst, Goldman Sachs: the past that FX activity increases with trading volumes and pushes up the average revenue per trade year. There’s also been quite a bit of industry narrative of non U. S. Investors repatriating some of their U. S.

Exposure in the last few weeks. So is it fair to assume that your trading revenues line in NII is actually running a bit higher than the plus 19% year over year we’re seeing in daily average retail trades?

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: I think okay. Thanks, Ollie. I mean, trading in Q1, so the number that we report there is the number of transactions. Yes, FX is a corollary of trading. People would make in it more some overseas as a percentage of what we see.

We did see a step up, a further step up in trading volumes in early April, you know, around some of that heightened volatility. I think we had four of our highest trading days ever in the April. That will settle down pretty quickly, but that’s, you know and that that wasn’t just, you know, tilted to sell. There was there’s quite a lot of buying opportunistic buying going on as retail saw some pretty pretty interesting deals. UK banks, for example, or some of the high quality names in The UK equity market did see a pickup in interest.

That’s settled down a little bit, as you might imagine, as markets have returned to whatever normal might look like, who knows. But the FX would have been equally a bit higher during that period. That’s right.

Stephen Haywood, Analyst, HSBC: Thank you.

Call Moderator: Hubert Lam from Bank of America has our next question. Please go ahead.

Hubert Lam, Analyst, Bank of America: Hi, guys. Good morning. I’ve just got three quick questions. Firstly, can you give us an update on fund performance? I’m just wondering how much of this could be driving the equity outflows you saw in the quarter?

Second question is on fee margin. Any update on that, just given the mix appears to be more negative with the larger equity outflows and also the quant win that you had in coming in April. Just wondering what your guidance is around that. And lastly, on II, yes, you mentioned that you did a small deal with for Jarvis. Just wondering if you think you’ll probably do more within the II space going forward?

Thank you.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Okay. Thanks, Hubert. On the deals, I mean, look, we’ve got some appetite to add clean books of business. We don’t want complex integrations in II, and that was an attractive deal. Jarvis needed a solution, and we have got the muscle to do that in a very attractive way to us, and it provides a solution to the Jarvis customers.

So that was a pretty straightforward one. I think if there’s more of the same, we certainly would be keen to allocate more capital to growing II. So wherever there’s a value opportunity, we would look at that very hard. On fee margins, look, the redemption that we had and the win that we had in quant broadly offset each other. So there’s not a huge impact of the two there.

The you know, as the book continues to move away from more active equities just on balance and more toward fixed income and quantum liquidity, you are seeing margin fall. We’re still creating value, but it’s a lower headline figure. So I think at the full year, we said below 21% overall for investments. I think I can reiterate that we’ll probably be by the end of the year, we’ll probably be closer to 20. We’ll continue to see a little bit of margin pressure in the book overall.

The fund performance, I think overall, our total performance in the quarter was 69% of our funds outperforming. I think obviously, I’m not going to go through each one of them, but there is some better than others. We had a better April actually than we had Q1, which I think plays well to our style. So we’ve you know, we continue to be vigilant on that and Peter Branner and the whole of the investments team are continuing to look for opportunities to improve performance. But there’s such a we know we have so many different funds, can’t generalize.

But overall, there’s still further work that we can do to improve performance. And we’re continuing to focus on that, because we think that’s this is the right thing to be doing.

Hubert Lam, Analyst, Bank of America: Thanks. Any improvement on the equity funds performance? And it’s just a quarter?

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: I think overall, Q1 had some challenges for some of the bigger emerging market Asia funds. I think it had some very strong performance of some of the smaller company and dividend income funds. I can’t generalize, but in April, they actually reversed quite materially and performed much better. So I haven’t got the latest stats in front of me, but overall, we continue to be confident in our style, confident in what we’re doing. And we do, as you say, not just look at one quarter.

Hubert Lam, Analyst, Bank of America: Cool, thanks.

Call Moderator: And up next, we have Greg Simpsons from BNP. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Greg Simpson, Analyst, BNP: Hi, there. Morning. Thanks for taking my questions. Two quick ones. Firstly, just on the adviser business.

It’s good to see some improvement in the outflows, but I’m aware it’s tax year end period and a number of peers had strong inflows in the quarter. So what are you looking for to kind of get flows positive by 2026? And how do you see the path from here? Is it linear improvement? Is it quite skewed towards next year?

And then secondly, just on the investments, pounds 100,000,000 operating profit target, how kind of comfortable are you feeling with that given markets have maybe been a bit weaker relative to your business plan? Do you think there’s a lot more you could do on the cost save if markets remain quite soft?

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Okay. Well, thanks, Greg. On Advisor, I don’t want to be celebrating an outflow, but it is better than we saw throughout the last, frankly, six quarters or so. So there is a shift in momentum. We are seeing much better pipeline and much better inflows.

And I think it’s about rebuilding confidence in IFAs to come back to the platform. And we now, as I said a moment ago, we’ve got the proposition there. You know, we’re where we want to be in terms of service and platform functionality, but we want to do better. So, you know, I’m pushing our guys to improve timeliness, improve adviser experience, because that’s the source of competitive advantage. And we are going to continue to push ourselves to do better.

In terms of the flow outlook, will it be linear? I think we’ve seen improvement, you know, throughout Q1, we’ve seen actually pretty decent April, you know, which you would expect, you know, because of some of the seasonal effects. So, April’s probably our best month in two years. I don’t know what it was like before then. So again, I’m not celebrating this, but signs are better and we are improving.

But we, you know, the pressure is on us to continue to get that to positive flows, which we are targeting for next year. On the advice I’m sorry, on the investments profit forecast, yeah, look, some headwinds from markets, not huge. You know, AUMA, as I just said, is actually up now in April compared to where we were at the March. March was, of course, down. We saw a bit of FX and market movements, particularly in the March, everybody knows.

That’s the ’26 target for a reason. It wasn’t this year. We’re still going through a transition and we’re taking out some costs this year. We do see ’26 as being a bit of a clearer air as we look to trade through that. That we probably lost a little bit of the headroom that we had.

And certainly, but we’re continuing to work very much towards that target, and that’s the one that we’ve got.

Greg Simpson, Analyst, BNP: Thank you.

Call Moderator: Thank you. And from Citi, we have Nicolas Herrmann with our next question. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Nicolas Herrmann, Analyst, Citi: Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. So very good to be by the way to call UK banks high quality these days. Just on two questions, please. One on Firstly, just in terms of institutional retail wealth flows or to the institutional, I guess your April guidance suggests that institutional clients didn’t really react to the recent market volatility.

Guess my question is why is it that it’s what are institutional clients telling you? What made them just kind of just sit on their hands and kind of see how this played out? Is this just a delayed reaction or is

Mandeep Jagpal, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: this kind

Nicolas Herrmann, Analyst, Citi: of just people just ridden this out and then the pipeline looks pretty good from here? Secondly actually, sorry, three then. The second one is on equity flows. Did those outflows come before or after the full year update? I suspect they came towards the end of the first quarter.

And then just a follow-up on the investments targets. I don’t want to get into the usual analyst trap of getting overly carried away by a quarter, and I appreciate there’s still a way to go to the end of twenty twenty six. But while it’s great to see you today, flows being positive, equally the mix shift towards low margin assets is pretty significant. So I guess what level of mix shift or market drawdown would you need to see that will also be kind of incrementally more cautious in your targets? Do they as I guess, as the prior question kind of intimated, what level of additional cost flex do you have to kind of offset that?

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Okay. Hi, Nicholas. The I think institutionally, we set ourselves up, people would invest typically with us for three years, and that would be the minimum time horizon. You know, it would be very reactive in a in in a cons in the constructs of what happened in early April for major institutions to start to redeem. We we’ve seen a few little things around the edges.

I don’t you know, people aren’t inert to events. And we saw, you know, a few of the wealth players, you know, redeem a little bit. It’s not like there’s no activity at all, but we certainly didn’t see any major redemptions from institutional clients. I think it’s, you know, part and part of their process and their investment objectives and what, you know, the market that we seek to serve. You know, and I don’t see a queue of redemptions.

But I do see, you know, uncertainty on the horizon as well. So it’s it’s it’s hard to be hugely forward thinking about that. But there’s certainly no there’s no distress signals that we’re flagging at this point. On the equity, I actually can’t remember when when they were. I mean, the the fund merger we knew because it happened in September, and it just took time for it to process.

So that was that was a known. I think there was some before and some after the results, can’t remember precisely. And on the I don’t answer the third question. I think we do have cost levers And we’ve pressed a number of those and we’ve continued to seek efficiency and opportunities for us to be more automated, to provide better service and to cut through some of the structural costs that we have, whether it’s in platforms or whether it’s with third party providers or frankly, in some of the functional areas. We’ve made good progress on that.

We were over 100,000,000 of run rate saves last year. That’s obviously ticking up. We’ll give a more formal update that at the half year. We are very much on track for our 150,000,000 of run rate of costs out in the group, of which 120 at least will be an investment. So that’s the, but there’s further we can go.

I sort of touched on that briefly, you know, and with Richard’s appointment as COO, you know, we are continuing to seek that reengineering of the organisation to just be more automated and to find more efficiency. At the same time, we want to grow the place. And hence, we’ve got the strategy and we’ve got the product mix. And Xavier’s leadership, you know, we do believe that we can grow the organization. It will take time as we tilt towards our go forward, go to market product suite, but that’s also part and parcel of the way that we see the business and hence the financials progressing.

Nicolas Herrmann, Analyst, Citi: Got it. So I guess to paraphrase it, you kind of need to see a lot significant deterioration a much greater significant deterioration in order to kind of therefore become more cautious because you have further levers, basically the answer.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Yes, I think that’s sort of fair. Mean, your words, not mine, but I’ll leave it there.

Nicolas Herrmann, Analyst, Citi: Got it. Thank you.

Call Moderator: Thank you. And up next now, we move on to a question from Mandeep Jagpal from RBC Capital Markets. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Mandeep Jagpal, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Hey, good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. A couple from me, please. The first one, just on the insurance mandate loss, only €4,200,000,000 redeemed compared to the guidance of 5,000,000,000 Is there any details of when the balance will be redeemed and which asset classes it will come from? And then the second question is on the pension scheme.

Obviously, significant market volatility in April, and I wondered what kind of hedging and other protections you have in place that underpin that £35,000,000 per annum cash flow that comes out of the scheme? And is there a realistic economic scenario where the scheme is unable to support that payment? Thank you.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Yes. So on the first one, I think there’s a little bit of catch up. The £5,000,000,000 was an estimate anyway. There might be a little bit of catch up through Q2, but nothing major. I think anything residual, I think, would go through insurance.

But it might be a few hundred million. It’s not huge. In in the context of what Phoenix do, it wouldn’t it probably wouldn’t spot it. On the pension scheme, it’s pretty well protected. You know, from a it’s quite conservatively invested.

I think we will probably increase the investment risk a little bit. We’ve done anything of late to do that. And it’s still likely to be more credit than more volatile sources. But the benefit I talked about at the full year results is a relatively small percentage of the economic surplus. And I think it’s very well protected from market events.

And it’s a combination of the total level of surplus and also the quality of the assets and some of the interest rate hedging that’s in place on the scheme.

Mandeep Jagpal, Analyst, RBC Capital Markets: Thank you.

Call Moderator: Thank you. And from HSBC, we now have Stephen Haywood with our next question. Please go ahead.

Stephen Haywood, Analyst, HSBC: Thank you. Good morning. I think you may have already answered one of

Enrico Bolzoni, Analyst, JPMorgan: these

Stephen Haywood, Analyst, HSBC: questions, but do you foresee any large mandates coming up for redemption in the next quarter or rest of the year? I think you may have already flagged that you didn’t see anything in the pipeline here. And then secondly, on II, can you give us the number of gross new customers added in the quarter? I think you have previously given that figure. And then it would be helpful in terms of mark to marketing, II, if you give us some sort of asset mix split as well between sort of US equities, other equities, fixed income, etcetera?

Thank you.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Okay. I think I did answer the first question, and the answer is no. There’s nothing looming on the horizon in that regard. I mean, we we we expect about 15% of the book to redeem each year. So we’re a bit above trends in Q1 because of the insurance mandate, which I mentioned.

But I think we’d that’s broadly the guidance that I would give you. Do I have to hand the gross customer growth in II? He says We think it’s £16,000 Just backing it out. So I think it was £11,000 growth net, 16,000 gross. On the asset split within II, that might be after one that we get back to you with.

I don’t think we have got that at hand. That’s something we can provide in due course, if that’s okay.

Stephen Haywood, Analyst, HSBC: Thanks very much.

Call Moderator: Thank you. Our next question now comes from Bruce Hamilton from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Your line is open.

Bruce Hamilton, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. In terms of the just to clarify, the April being slightly up on March, I assume that’s including the quant win, just to check. And then secondly, on the sort of equities, I wondered is there any indication of client sentiment perhaps actually improving as people get a bit less keen on The U. S?

I suspect you’re not seeing that, but I just wanted to check whether you’re seeing anything on that side. And then on the service improvements in adviser, can you be a bit more precise, what’s the key change that you’ve made that’s really sort of driving that improvement just to help us understand? And then final one, just on the, I guess, sort of market and FX moves were a bit more negative in Q1 than I expected. Is that mainly FX, I’m assuming? Or is there a big FX component, I’m guessing?

Okay.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: So yes, the number I gave you for AUMA for April did include the quant win. So we saw there’s a little bit of negativity from markets, not huge. Some of that’s FX. The dollar and the Asian currencies are weaker relative to sterling. Euro is a tiny bit stronger.

So a bit of a mixed bag there, but that’s, you know, we’re we’re we’re up, just slightly up, you know, across the across the month. On sentiment to equities, look, we we we’ve got the same sort of, guess, we got the same question, know, as to what what should be the move. And we have seen more interest in global emerging markets in the last month. We do see, it’s been out of favor for some period of time. And I think there’s the logical answer that you see the valuation opportunity there, see the quality of the companies and you see the absolute opportunity in the market.

We’ve not seen that. We do anticipate with significant change to the way markets have been configured, a more balanced approach you know, to invest across different geographies and different sectors. So I’m not calling that we’re seeing a pipeline building, but I’m certainly saying that we’re seeing increased interest in those areas. On the third question, service improvement. I think the key the key thing is is my, you know, the amount of time it takes for you to get their money.

So there’s there’s answering calls, hygiene factor, that’s that’s sorted, you know, it’s it’s working really well. Frankly, you know, we spend, you know, significant amount of time on phones, but we we the call answering time is actually is excellent. The the amount of time it takes for people to get their money, it’s not all within our control, but the because often involves in specie transfers from third parties, we’ve sorted out that process, it’s everything that was within our control and within the control of FNZ, there are no gaps in that process. So it’s as automated as it can be. There were some glitches, frankly, requiring manual interventions.

We’ve tried to get those to engineer those out. There’s still a little bit to do. It’s not completely I’m not saying it’s perfect in all regards, but we’re continuing to seek just a better service experience for all those. We continue whilst we’ll always present the averages, and it’s important that the problems are in the tail. So it’s to try and maintain that everybody gets a good experience.

The averages are probably where we want them to be. I want everybody to be at the average, if that makes any sense. So that’s continuing to push harder to be better across the board there. On the Q1, yes, there was some FX jumping around, both in terms of the Asia currencies and, I think FX, there was a market movement of 6.1, I think FX was about 20% of that markets, you know, with with the rest of that. So that might have been the slight where we’re slightly below, but there’s there’s nothing else that we can signal to you, but the slight weakness in some of the Asian currencies perhaps we didn’t pick up.

Bruce Hamilton, Analyst, Morgan Stanley: Great, very helpful. Thank you.

Call Moderator: And as there are currently no further questions in the queue, I’d like to hand the call back over to you, Mr. Windsor, for any additional or closing remarks.

Jason Windsor, Chief Executive Officer, Aberdeen: Great. Well, look, Saskia, thank you so much. Thank you all very much for your questions. Really appreciate it. IR and myself are here if you’ve any follow-up questions during the course of the day.

But thank you for dialing in.

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