Key financial data

I’m pleased to see our strategy and focus on our priorities beginning to deliver results. With the momentum we are building I’m very positive about the future for HL, but even more positive about the impact we can have on people across the UK.

This year a key priority has been getting back to the fundamentals: continually striving for great client service, providing a great client experience and great client value. That means putting our clients at the heart of the organisation and serving them well, with the humility, expertise and passion that makes HL the company it is.

I’m pleased to see our strategy and focus on our priorities beginning to deliver results, with record assets under administration (AuA) of £155.3bn, up 16% on last year and 78,000 net new active clients joining the platform this year, underlining HL’s position as the UK’s largest and most trusted Investment Platform. Net new business for FY24 was down on FY23 at £4.2bn, with a slow H1 reflecting the long-term historic trend. However, in H2 we started to see the year-on-year trend level off from the historic slow decline as our work on client service levels, digital experience improvements and proposition enhancements started to come through.

This year also saw us start to accelerate our use of data to drive decision making and client insights. This led us to launch the UK’s only multi-bank cash ISA, allowing clients to maximise their FSCS coverage on a single platform, a life-styled Ready Made Pension fund and the recently launched Managed and Multi-Index Funds which accounted for 80% of our HL funds growth in Q4.

We delivered revenue of £764.9m up 4% vs. FY23. Our increased focus on cost discipline through the year has allowed us to slow cost growth, especially in H2, delivering an underlying profit of £456m, again up 4% YoY.

Looking forward, while we made solid progress last year, my business wide review has clearly shown that there is much more we have to do to deliver on our ambition to constantly delight our clients into the future, and through this accelerate our growth. Success requires navigating a complex and broad programme of change and there is no doubt that delivery of benefits will not be linear, but we know what needs to be done and are determined to achieve it by delivering steadily and surely keeping our focus on our clients and meeting our medium to longer-term objectives.