Thanks very much, and thanks, everybody, for joining us for the half year. And, I hope I hope this'll be clear and unequivocal from the the way we present to you, again in light of what we started last year in the beginning of last in about March last year, that the CEOs will report on the on their various, cash-generating units, and and I and I and I'll refer to page 4 of the deck.

To and actually to point 4, where where the FY24 and '25 EBIT EBITAs have been restated in line with the way that now we're now reporting the, the CGUs. We're we're very proud of that that slide, but that the the bullet points down the side at the bottom of the notes will give you a bit of an indication.

If you move to page 5, this is what we're we're in business for. I'd like to show you the NPAT $127 million, yeah, puts us puts us up considerably over what we did last year.

Our underlying earnings, NPATA, up 6.3% to $161.5 million; NPAT up 7.3% to $137.5 million; and and EBITA up 12.6% to $293.6 million. Our diluted EPS NPAT is 12.4 cents CPS, up 7.2%.

On the right, the things to point out here is basically how we performed on our acquisitions. In the first half, we did $238 million, and they were all EPS accretive, and leaves us with $195 million acquisitions planned to be completed in the second half.

Hannah will give a lot more, color to that, I won't go down and and, try and spoil her thunder. We we still maintain a a discipline in our acquisitions.

That's that's an interesting time at the moment because of the re-rate that's just occurred over the past week. I don't think anybody knows what a real reasonable EBITA multiple will look like in the future at the moment.

We still we still, are able to, to to complete in Australia at around 10 times EBITA. Watch this space because I can tell you there's a there's a hiccup going on all around the financial services that we're working in with around the world.

We we we also continue to capitalize our, to optimize our capital allocation in a disciplined way, evaluating our portfolios. We'll look at potentially releasing capital, and to explain what that might look like.

If we If we've got an asset now that we we bought really well and and it's giving a return which is okay, but we think we could we could, turn that that existing hard asset into into cash and then deploy that deploy that cash in another way to get an uplift, then we'll certainly look at how we may realign our capital in our non-core assets. Our expense management, we we've talked about this and how we started doing it.

It's It's really, reaching fruition, and you can see the numbers there. We've We've been able to slice $7 million off our head office.

Interestingly, with the we way we're reporting now, head office costs are really clear and unequivocal. I think Hannah can elaborate on that further.

Our subsidiaries also have have been very diligent in trying to work with us. It's a little bit like the Titanic when you've got nearly 70 subsidiary companies sometimes to make them change, but I must say they're all they've all all taken on what what Tim's, implementing at the moment.

I think that we've we've got a a saving of about $4 million. I think in the second half, the the compounding effect of what we do will start to be realized all the way through, and again, a reaffirmation of our previous, FY26 guidance, and and scope for improvement over the medium with medium, to improve EBITA.

Medium for us, we we reflect as being a as being, 3 years. If you go to slide 6, the the dividend is up 5.1% to 8.

8.2 cents, and, that's up 5.1%, I should say. The dividend reinvestment plan plan will come into place.

There'll be no discount on that. I if I'm to be candid and frank about that, we're probably that we're probably trading at, at a at a very attractive rate for somebody at the moment if they want to take advantage of the DRP.

Our ex our ex-dividend date will be the 2nd of March. The the record date will will be the 3rd and the 4th of March.

And, and payment date will be the 25th of March. Just on the right, you can see the bar charts there reflecting how we've strived striven in this organization from 2013 to make sure the dividends, went up.

In line, sometimes we're criticized, particularly from international investors, as to why we actually do convert so much of our net profit into dividend, but we said we'd do it and we continue to do it along the line. On page If you go to slide 7, the reason we put this in here is is probably to explain to you how the premium rates vary.

We've taken a taken a look, from 2000 all the way through there, and you can see it looks like mountains and valleys, and mountains and valleys, and mountains and valleys. What what I'd like to point out to you, if you go to 2012 and 2014, you'll see that when we floated this business, it was on its way down.

The premium cycle had had been high, and it was on its way down. In fact, if you look at the valley, at around 2015, you'll see it went it went down to plus plus 1%.

If you then look at the way we climb up and down, up and down, up and down, and then and then realize that if you like put a line through our earnings and see how accretive they've been and how compounded we've done, we are we are able to handle, peaks and troughs in the premium cycle. Insurance brokers know how to do that.

There's there's some speculation about whether the market's the market's, continuing to go soft. hasn't been our experience at the moment.

If if you have have a look at 2023, it was not plus 9.2%. If you have a look at January 2026, and I know we're only reporting on the up to December, but it's important to reflect on January, that we're up 2.7%.

When you saw that that the cascade and the catastrophic, points of view that were put out, we went from 9.2% plus to 2.7% plus. Okay?

You can see there was a 7% differential over a period of time when people said that there'd be this free-in chaos and the pricing was chaotic and going to fall through. During all these times, we, as a as as a as as others in our sector in Australia, have been able to maintain our guidance, maintain what we're putting out and, continue running the business.

Just before we get on to our CGU CEOs, if you go to page 8, we've done a lot of work on developing the network. Okay?

Really the amount of professional development that Steadfast does is is outstanding. We we get we get on on our on our webinars sometimes we get 3,000, 3,400 people look at our webinars.

We get in our in situ, meetings that we have around Australia, we get great great attendances. The team of people that runs our professional development explains what's going on in the industry.

Our experts are absolutely long-standing industry industry stalwarts. That's part of the DNA that allows, us to grow the network.

Tim will talk more about that. Our, we're we're we're also looking at the New Zealand market because it's very low at the moment, struggling, everybody's struggling to get their numbers, but it's a great buying opportunity because it's a very stable market in terms of the consumers wanting to buy over there.

We'll look in that market. We're upgrading some equity that we've got in some of our businesses over there at the moment at a good price.

The development of Singa- Singapore and into Asia is also on our on our on our wavelength. Sam might speak to this.

We've We've We've, have, a very close eye on India at the moment, and, and the way that business has matured for insurance brokers, and other parts of Asia. We also continue to support our authorized net- network of authorized reps, and we we are we are the leading, network of authorized reps in Australia.

We've got I think 3,600 authorized reps operate under financial services licenses that that we control. Again, that's a that's a really different way of looking at how insurance broking has has has has developed.

If you think about 3,600 individual businesses that are operating under somebody else's license, in days gone by before the advent of of AR networks, they may have attempted to get their own licenses. And, the the consolidation of distribution into ours is is here, it's dynamic, and we're one of the major players in it.

Looking at the underwriting agencies, and Mark will reflect upon this, but our our focus is on retention, new business, and and all the time on on pricing adequacy. We, our our MGAs in Australia do about $2.5 billion, and that means somebody gives us $2.5 billion of their cash to deploy in the market and and and to give them a profit on it.

We we we are very cognizant of that responsibility, and we're very cognizant of maintaining long-term relationships we've been able to do. We do have a diverse portfolio in commercial and retail brands.

We've also been able to, step into a couple of areas. I think, with with the Sure purchase, it gave us the opportunity to expand around the market.

We With the advent of of Castle, that has been that has reached fruition, and Mark may talk a little bit more about that as we get there. Also, the the fact that we have consolidated and our our MGAs, and, certainly, that's been a really difficult but terrifically powerful job that's that's done.

I'll let Mark talk about that a little bit further when he talks to you. Also, new products, new markets.

We're we're about to move. We we will start to write, cyber in North America in the next, 3 months.

So, that's just the start of what we may do into the into the US market. The The Novum platform gives us the opportunity to be able to bring MGAs in and get them out.

In some cases, to nearly 9,000 potential agencies who plug into that network. So, and I guess what we've done, and I think with Mark coming into the into the stewardship of the MGAs, is is to continue to build the relationships we've got with carriers all around the world at a very high level and on a sophisticated level where, when they talk about us distributing their product, they know our track record is one of consistency and profitability for them.

I'll leave that to Mark. On the technology side, I think this is this is this is this is interesting being advent of of of what we've done with, the SCTP, bringing on Insurebot, and some new products that has absolutely started to streamline quoting processes, and and then our investment in Steadfast Apps.

I'll let I'll let, David, talk more detail to that. It it has been our movement over the last couple of years into how we use AI contained within the business.

I and I think, the development of our reporting capabilities means that, not that we do every day, but we have access to our GWP and our profit lines basically on a daily basis. We're not looking at trends 6 months in arrears or 3 months in arrears, we're looking at trends of what's happening today, where movements are occurring, we know.

I guess the the involvement of the IT in our data analytics makes our gives us market-leading information. When I speak to you about numbers, they're not hypothetical numbers that we pull off a blackboard, they are actually factual numbers factual numbers baked based on tremendous data capabilities that we've got built up really over over the last decade, it's very exciting.

I think I think that the, the frighteners that came out of AI is it really is is knocked us for six, because what AI is going to do is the processing of of internal, business where where we have to move digital data around and give it to people, and where we've had FTEs doing that, now that will be replaced. David can talk a bit further on that, when he does.

It is It is astounding when you see the way the the markets reacted that about a small insurer in in in in a in Spain with a little product that couldn't really do anything like what we do now, and the whole market got put into a turmoil. Yes, AI is going to be a disruptor, and yes, there'll be people who will enjoy speaking to somebody that's been made out of out of digital analytics, as opposed to ringing up their local insurance broker and saying, 'Hello, Jack.

Hello, Jill. Can you fix my 18-year-old's car that that I can't get insured, or hey, our house is partly burnt down, am I in trouble?'

Data analytics and and the capability of AI are the DNA of growing insurance brokers, not not the fear about insurance brokers, but the facilitation of getting rid of and and streamlining a whole lot of processes. Then I guess just on our subsidiary performance, it's a it's a it's a long it's a long, a long-going process, it's not something new.

We we have done what not a lot of people have done, I guess, in our industry is to is to put put finite CEOs and CFOs in charge of our our main, CG cash-generating units to make sure that the accountability sits into certain pillars of of income that comes to us, and that we and that they report up to up to to Hannah, so that we that that there is there is several people working on on on the constant revenue that we are generating, and how we can save, and how we can improve. This This We've started implementing this, last year.

We thought we'd implement it for the FY27 year. We were encouraged by the market to actually be implement it clearly, and just because I'm I'm I'm difficult to deal with, I asked our finance team, could they actually do it for the half year, which made everybody work night and day to do it.

We did, we we put out a reaffirmation of what it'll look like, and now, yeah, there you you have a clear and unequivocal view of what our brokers, our underwriting agencies, our international, our technology, and head office costs and how and when you want to do a comparison, you don't have to guess, you can have a look. We're fully accountable for each one of those sectors at any one time.

I I think that the work that's been done, headed up by by by Tim and Mark, have been outstanding. I'll leave them to talk further about it.

I'll I'll I'll get I'll stop talking and push you over to the the the key people that make the business hum and run, so, Tim, thanks very much, Tim Mathieson.

Thanks, Robert, and good morning, everyone. We might start over on slide 10, if we can, please.

I'm really pleased to report the Australasian broker network continues to grow despite the softer premium cycle. In the first half, our network gross written premium increased 4.4% to $6.4 billion.

It's been a very active period for our M&A team, who completed 23 step-ups, 9 step-downs, and 17 new acquisitions, 16 of which will be bolted into existing equity brokers. At the same time, we have enhanced revenue with growth of our broker network fees and professional service fees in line with budget.

We continue to see strong engagement across the network, as mentioned by Robert, now with 414 brokers and over 3,000 authorized representatives, providing diversification for our group across products, industries, and geographic regions. It's important to recognize that 86% of our gross written premium is in commercial lines, which is much more resilient to direct online and potential AI offerings to the micro-SME and retail markets.

Along with our broker network, our technology platforms provide a clear, sustainable advantage to our business model. There are now 4- 247 brokers live on Insight with almost 8,000 users.

In addition, more than 13,000 individuals use our Steadfast Client Trading Platform, which uses API and automation to gather and present policy information and quotes more efficiently. AI will no doubt further enhance this, particularly with the significant amount of data and reporting we can provide to our network.

This is further evidenced by the significant increase in Insurebot transactions we are seeing since acquiring the business earlier this year. Continue to see great opportunity between broking and technology.

You'll have the opportunity to hear from David Gillespie, our Chief Technology Officer, shortly. Over to slide 11, please.

It's been good to see the network has achieved solid underlying earnings growth of 13%. Overall, EBITA has grown $21.5 million on the PCP.

11.7% of this growth is a result of our recent M&A activity, including the 17 acquisitions mentioned, providing a good run rate into the second half of this financial year. At the same time, we've increased effective ownership of EBITA from 79% to 83% with a number of step-ups into existing equity businesses.

Organic growth continues, albeit more moderately, in line with the expectations we communicated at the last investor update. We've implemented a number of cost-saving measures in the first half that will be fully realized in the second half.

We've also committed to increasing broker fees by 2.5% in the second half to support our organic growth target. Continue to remain focused on subsidiary performance, including hubbing to improve operational efficiency.

At the same time, our brokers remain focused on delivering sustainable organic growth and margin improvement, with a continued focus on top-line renewal retention and new business performance. Slide 12, please.

Talked just briefly about AI. With over 8,000 individual users on our Insight broking system and 13,000 individual users on the SCTP, we're extremely well placed to use AI to the broker's advantage.

We hold the data to make this possible. Having said that, our brokers are much better than AI at making judgments, building relationships, being accountable for service and advice, providing risk management, claims advocacy, and general insurance expertise.

This will only be enhanced as the surrounding workflows, data capture, and placement mechanics are increasingly automated with AI. Our Director of AI and Emerging Technologies, Steve Tufton, has recently published a report on AI chat-based insurance apps and the implications for Steadfast.

A summary of the strategic recommendations and our approach to AI is provided on this slide. To Steadfast, to summarize that, the path forward is not resistance, but adaptation, embracing AI as a channel, automating what we can, but strengthening the human connection that AI cannot replicate.

I will now hand over to Mark Senkevics, CEO of Steadfast Underwriting Agencies. Over to you, Mark.

Yeah. Thanks very much, Tim, and good morning, everyone.

Let me just start by saying that at a high level, the strategically important role of underwriting agencies in the Australian market continues. They continue to expand in terms of market footprint and in providing excellent service to clients, as well as, innovation.

It's there's no question, it's been, a challenging market for the first quarter of this year, and in particular in the strata and specialty sectors. Robert's spoken to, our actions in this regard, and I'll touch on those in a little more detail, later.

We're very much focused on our strategy, to diversify the portfolio and to improve efficiencies and foster both organic and acquisition growth. A few key points here.

Firstly, Robert's mentioned it, the success of the Castle brand, launched as part of Shore. We've launched a number of new products, within our MGAs and taken action in Q2 FY26 to address the moderating market that we observed in the first quarter of last year, of the finan- financial year.

Our ongoing, investment into tech, into data, and actuarial capability continues, including the addition of native AI solutions in a number of the tech platforms that we're implementing at this point. It also supports us, and Robert touched on this as well, in respect of our carrier relationships.

Our ability to deliver data is second to none. On the operational side, you'll see a case study where I've touched on the consolidation of a number of our businesses and the value that that brings to investors.

The challenging market sees GWP under some pressure, but on a like-for-like basis, we're seeing 3% growth in GWP. I do want to emphasize, this is very important, that the agency revenue footprint, including profit commissions and margin, tends to skew to the second half of the year.

Can't overemphasize that point, and I'll talk a little more to that a little, in later, a little bit later. We're really anticipating improved outcomes for half 2 and, by extension, for the full year.

Just a quick word on balance sheet activity. It's it's modest, but the sale of Blend, Sterling, and Steadfast Re allowed us to cycle capital into step-ups on higher-margin businesses.

Again, modest, but demonstrates our capability in doing that with, our assets. Just touching on a few operational highlights and focusing on the revenue side.

I mentioned Castle insurance, and when we purchased Shore in 2023, we flagged the opportunity to launch an Australasia-wide proposition. Since its go-live in October 2025, Castle has exceeded all of our expectations, including that of the Shore team, to the tune of about 50- 52% in first half, and that continues into the first months of the second half.

It offers brokers choice. This is not just about a price proposition, but a choice proposition for our brokers out there, and we've seen brokers flock to, the the Castle, offering.

Importantly, the Castle team also implemented a sh- a new tech stack, and that allows easy API access into third-party trading platforms and, of course, provides us with greater analytics and the opportunity to implement AI at a future date.

Mark, the Castle brand grew out of the opportunity we got from QBE, to do this renewal book on this broker business. How's the retention looking on that?

That's correct.

Both retention and new growth, actually. New business has exceeded the portfolio that we inherited from QBE, Robert.

It's interesting, then, when you reflect on when a focused distribution network gets hold of a product and has distribution, how quickly that product can grow. If you get the pricing right and the algorithms agreed between us and QBE, then it opens up an unbelievably cheap way for an insurer to get their capital into the market to a broad range of people.

I think this will be something that maybe the whole market will look at what it is.

I think the market's already looking at it.

You did look pretty hard, yeah.

I remain confident into the second half we'll continue to see the growth trajectory of Castle. Also I just want to comment briefly on some of our other MGAs.

In the slides I've captured a couple of examples for CHU. They've actually launched 5 new products, I've mentioned a couple there, but CHU have read the cycle very well and adjusted their go-to-market strategy.

Their December and January numbers, albeit that they're smaller months, are showing improved retention and new business growth. I think that's very important.

We anticipate that that trend will continue. Also, the increased capacity that we have now from QBE and from reinsurers offers an excellent opportunity to grow into an expanding market in strata, which is new over-station developments in capital cities.

I see some good growth opportunity there. Likewise, some of our other agencies, Mecon, Emergence, and Coast, all have new product offerings.

We've launched Unity Trade Credit, a new underwriter in the trade credit space, which is actually quite a narrow market.

That's aimed at the smaller end, isn't it, I think, Unity

Trade Credit?

Trade credit,

that's correct, yeah. Yeah.

Facilitates quotations almost instantaneously on an automated basis?

On an automated basis, yeah.

Yeah.

Finally, our acquisition pipeline continues to grow. We have 1 acquisition in the first half, and we have several other opportunities under discussion.

Then just moving to slide 15, some of the financial highlights. Revenue is up 2.7% to $240.9 million.

EBITA more or less flat year-on-year. Sorry, slide 15, thank you.

EBITA more or less flat year-on-year at $112.7 million. Again, I want to reinforce, the books skew to half 2.

Revenue is historically greater, as is the recognition of profit commission, which is actually only calculated after the end of the calendar year for many of our binders. I'll touch quickly on fee income.

It's increased as a number of our MGAs have sought to restructure their remuneration. It's not as big a mover for us as it is on the broker side, but nonetheless we've seen fee income increase for underwriting agencies overall.

We've maintained our expense discipline, which will continue into half 2. Equity ownership remains at 88%.

I mentioned some step-ups earlier. We've also had a couple of management buy-ins overall.

Then on to slide 16, this commercial agency consolidation case study really the headline here is that, aside from a more effective broker and client interaction, we anticipate this will create an uplift of over $5 million in annualized EBITA across the group following implementation from the fourth quarter of this year. The announcement on the commercial agency side is imminent.

We've already executed this initiative in consumer agencies, and the more ambitious project with commercial agencies brings 8 underwriting agencies into 1 and narrows the number of AFSLs from 5 to 2, just to give an example of the expense management that will come from this.

When will you get that in the second half?

It will come on board through May and then subsequently

into FY27.

It's going to hit in FY27, FY28. And, I touched on the underwriting platform investment, fits allows these businesses to operate on a single, modern tech stack with unified underwriting, claims, policy, admin, and as well as improved analytics, which of course lends itself to the native AI applications that come with this, platforms.

It's also provided us with, this consolidation has provided us with a unique opportunity to use our scale and leverage to consolidate our binder purchases in London with significant rationalization of binders, brokers, and this creates significant savings for us and improved commission outcomes. We're also in the process of transferring binders progressively to HWS, bringing revenues back in-house for the international division.

With that, little headline for Sam, I'll pass over to you.

Nice segue. Thank you, Mark.

If I could please move on to slide 18, and I'll run you through the first half '26 operational highlights, which have been significant in our continued development of the international expansion. For ISU Steadfast, it's performing strongly and has exceeded the first half '26 budgeted EBITDA.

We've had 22 new members, which is a record amount of numbers attracted to the group in any first half, and we've had 13 net of terminations. We've also piloted the new Advantage membership tier, which we had touched on in our December update, which is basically the ability to attract quality independent agents that were originally too small to qualify for our membership.

It is a gap in the US market with networks at the moment, and it's a very large and growing segment of the US insurance landscape, which will be a new opportunity for us to continue to grow our membership numbers and to create scale. Really pleasingly for ISU Steadfast, we've embarked on our first trapped capital scenario, with the first investment in a network member scheduled for completion on March 1, and we also have an intent signed for a second investment.

That's a super exciting development for international expansion to have gone down the trapped capital route. If I move on to HWS Specialty, again, another business performing strongly and exceeded the first half '26 budgeted EBITDA.

We've really had significant progress in this first half of diversifying the business into new and expanded specialty, to cater to our global network requirements in product lines. We've done this through some really strategic recruitment.

I would like to emphasize that we are building the business, but we are also incredibly conscious of cost containment. If you just look in CY25, we had 13 new starters, but we also had 12 leavers.

Some of those were intentional to bring new, exciting talent into the business and to continue to grow that business. We are conscious of the cost containment component of building our HWS Specialty.

We're also really focused on the organic growth of the existing specialties that we have with strong new business wins in marine cargo, and also a new specialty area growth in US transportation. Novum, which was our latest baby in the first half where we acquired in August 2025, and that's had incredibly strong performance in just the 4 months since post completion.

In the finished calendar 2025 year, GWP we had was $114 US million, which was 60% organic growth over the prior year. We're extremely pleased with that business, that acquisition, and we're excited by the possibilities that lay ahead.

We've had really strong engagement with the ISU Steadfast to focus on increasing that submission flow, and the strategic alignment and opportunities that will come by having a distribution network in the US market alongside an MGA in the US market. I'd like to draw your attention to the right-hand side of the screen, which is just basically a little snapshot of international since acquisition.

So 2 years ago since acquisition with ISU Steadfast network, we've had 13% net growth in members and 26% growth in profit sharing from carriers. For HWS Specialty, in the first year since acquisition, we've had strong organic growth, and we've also had 4 really significant recruits to build the capabilities we always said we needed in the product lines of property, casualty, and delegated authority, to really capitalize on the global market opportunity and also the London market opportunity.

That has now stabilized our business to really move it forward. Across Novum, only 4 months into the acquisition, we've had organic growth beyond acquisition expectations.

We've had 300-plus policy submissions from ISU Steadfast members into that MGA already in that first 4 months. I think this shows that we have a great track record of acquisitions to date.

All businesses are performing well, and capital has been spent well. If I could move to slide 19, please, and I'll take you through the financial highlights of the first half.

The financials demonstrate continued strength of Steadfast International. We've delivered underlying aggregate EBITA of $9.5 million, growth of $10.1 million over the prior corresponding period.

The strong organic performance is driven mainly by the growth in the ISU Steadfast network and the cost synergies we've realized from consolidating Steadfast London office into HWS Specialty. Acquisition growth has been driven by the acquisitions of HWS Specialty and Novum Underwriting Partners.

We've had really strong organic growth since acquisition of HWS, with the significant new business wins in marine cargo and US transportation, which has been represented under the acquisition growth, and the first 4 months of solid contribution from Novum, with 60% growth over the prior period, and submission flow from ISU also gaining traction. These results reflect the high-quality earnings, as well as our disciplined approach to scaling the business.

If I could move to slide 20, please. This slide is all about the strategic opportunity and the momentum ahead for the second half '26 and beyond.

We're looking forward with optimism for that period. If I look at ISU Steadfast and I look at our 4 strategic pillars there of network growth, market access, agency perpetuation, and technology, we're really looking forward with a lot of excitement and momentum behind those.

Even if I go back to network growth, our improved value proposition, plus the new membership tier we have, with marketing commencing in March this year to drive and attract retention to build on our network numbers.

In the market access, not only do we have the enhanced strategic carrier relationships, but we now have that ability to drive Novum and HW Specialty Solutions, cuz we now have those in a position where we can drive that forward and service the network. I truly believe we are just at the beginning of realizing this opportunity.

Agency perpetuation, the ball is rolling now. I just explained we had the first one signed, and an LOI with another, plus we have a pipeline there of other opportunities.

This has been a result of 2 years of building relationships and building trust. We're now realizing that, and that ball will continue to keep rolling, which we're really excited about.

Technology, data is key.

We have something that we have in the business at the moment with ISU to collect the data network, but it is not sound and to the point that we want it. We have now engaged with the third party, only signing up at the end of this month, to be able to capitalize on true data insights, which will build momentum in having discussions with carriers, improving consolidation of business that goes through them, creating new programs of work that can go into Novum and into HW Specialty.

We will be making business decisions on true live data insights, which will be fabulous for our opportunities moving forward. If I move to HWS Specialty, we will continue to leverage the strength of the existing specialty products, but we will also expand on our capabilities and solutions.

We now have the recruits in place to be able to do that. I'm really excited to also represent that our reputation now in the London market is really growing.

The recruits that we are attracting who want to be part of HWS Specialty are true quality, and I think that speaks volumes for what our strategic plans are and opportunities are in that market and our brand. If I move on to Novum Underwriting, we will continue to scale the existing programs and establish new programs.

There's a lot we can do in building out wholesale and eight E&S carrier appointments, but there's also a lot we can do with the Novum online tech system that we have, which is a true advantage in the market. We will continue to implement a lot of automation into the business and underwriting processes, saving time, allowing us to have more time to write more business.

I think we will continue to grow that agency distribution, especially through the ISU network, but also the external broader market by creating that brand awareness of not only Steadfast ownership, but the Novum brand and the opportunities and strengths that it has. If I look finally into, even with the scaling of the new programs, we're launching several new programs, including entry into the Canadian market with a surety offering, which has just occurred at the beginning of this year.

In conclusion, based on the strong momentum in the first half and significant opportunities in the second half, we continue to be excited about the future of Steadfast International. It's an important growth area for the group, and we are well positioned with complementary businesses and geographies to recognize the opportunity.

On that point, I'll hand over to our CTO, David Gillespie.

Thanks, Sam. Technology is at the core of our business, and we continue to invest in support of our networks.

Page 22, please. You've heard Tim, Mark, and Sam talk about their business units, and we work closely with them in ensuring that we are supporting their business strategy.

In the broker area under Tim, we have the market-leading Insurtech platforms with SCTP and Insight. Coming from one of the major insurers, I was aware of those platforms, but seeing in detail what capability they have and talking to brokers has made me even more impressed.

One of the reasons I was excited to join Steadfast was the opportunity to build out the next generation of those platforms with Steadfast Apps. I've undertaken similar programs at Fidelity in the UK with FundsNetwork and at TAL Life with CoverBuilder.

Now we have the opportunity to embed AI where appropriate, and equally, making sure we're more agile as insurers upgrade their platforms. I'll talk a little bit more about that in coming slides.

In parallel, we continue to onboard new brokers, new products, and new insurers. Last year, we acquired Insurebot, and that was for two reasons.

Firstly, to provide rapid automation of broker-to-insurer integration with Insight, but equally for their entrepreneurial approach to act as an incubator for innovation. Last week, I saw a showcase of new capability they've built for a broker in New Zealand, which will go live in the next couple of weeks and will deliver significant efficiencies for them.

It's an approach I've used in previous roles, and we're now replicating here in Steadfast. In the underwriting area, Mark spoke about the uplift that is underway there, and it's a great example of how we leverage partner products with AI embedded to improve and accelerate our capability.

For example, in our claims processing where AI agents will guide the claims staff with prompts and execute routine tasks. Within international business, you saw from Samantha's update how Novum fits in.

When we looked at it from a technology perspective, we saw a great platform with Novum Online, which in many ways is similar to Insight. One of the capabilities we really liked was their automation engine, which Sam talked about there.

Where we see opportunities to leverage, we'll use that. Lastly, we want to ensure our staff are fully literate on AI.

We actively encourage them. We have internal and external training available.

Where we've deployed AI, it's not just a set and forget, we track usage, and where it's not as high as we'd like, we support staff in leveraging it. How we use it is continuing to evolve as AI continues to evolve as well.

Moving on to page 23 on one platform. We tend to talk about Insurtech as just being about SCTP and Insight, but it's broader than that.

In the next couple of months, we'll start to deploy Steadfast ID, which serves two main purposes. One is around uplift in our security posture, and secondly, to start consolidating the entry point for brokers and insurers to a single storefront, which is a real enabler for future capabilities and uplift, and showcases the additional services that Steadfast can provide.

I spoke about the uplift and replatforming we're seeing with our insurer partners, and our product configurator engine is a new middleware layer which will enable easier integration as they upgrade. This will be going live by June and will then allow us to reduce our onboarding time for insurers and new products from over 3 months to less than one.

We have regular meetings, as you would expect, with our insurers to make sure we've aligned road maps where it makes sense. You'll already have seen some examples of our reporting using the data platform.

That will only get better as we introduce a conversational AI overlay. Rather than configuring reports, we can just ask the questions.

The team have been testing it, and trust me, it's pretty impressive. Most companies spend 80% of their time getting data, 20% analyzing.

We are flipping that, the majority of time will be analyzing for insights. Steadfast Intelligence is for internal use for comparison and performance perspectives, for brokers' operational and analytics reporting, and equally for insurers and underwriters to undertake deep dives on their product performance across different segments.

In addition, having that rich data is fundamental to creating accurate, reliable AI systems. Steadfast Apps is where we bring much of this together, let me talk about that on the following page, page 24.

As I said, we have great broker platforms, but it's important not to be complacent. We're constantly in dialogue with our brokers.

In fact, many of the Insurtech team come from a broking background. Taking their inputs on where their pain points are, how we can optimize existing processes, how technology is evolving, and opportunities we have with AI, we have been developing Steadfast Apps, our next-generation platform.

We really believe in user-led design, we build working prototypes and test with brokers to make sure it delivers the benefits and improvements they need. We're using AI to augment the broker, not replace them.

At our convention next month, the Insurtech team will be showcasing some of the new features that we will be bringing to the platform, and, as I said earlier, through the year we'll continue to add new products and insurers. As well as making the brokers more efficient, one of our aims is to reduce the total cost of software ownership for them by embedding CRM, document management, etc., into the platform, which will have the benefit of removing handoffs and optimizing processes, and in some cases negate the need for additional software.

We want to widen the jaws with increased revenue as more brokers come on and have a more efficient platform. We're already seeing stronger financial discipline around our cloud costs, and that will increase next year as we complete the rollouts of the new platform.

Lastly, we also see AI as a new acquisition channel, and we are now embracing generative engine optimization as much as the traditional SEO. I will now hand over to Hannah, our CFO.

Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone, and thank you all for joining today.

I'll be guiding you through the group's financial performance for the first half of FY26 with a focus on our earnings delivery, balance sheet strength, and cash flow generation. Can we please move on to the next slide?

For the first half of FY26, the group has delivered a solid result, especially given the moderating pricing environment. This outcome reflects proactive expense discipline, subsidiary performance improvement initiatives, and a solid contribution from acquisitions.

Key highlights for the first half include: underlying revenue increased 14.6% to circa $1 billion; underlying EBITA increased 12.6% to $293.6 million; underlying NPAT increased 7.3% to $137.5 million with diluted EPS of 12.4 cents; and underlying NPATA was $161.5 million, up 6.3%, with diluted EPS of 14.6 cents. The reported statutory NPAT for the period was $127 million compared to $106.4 million in the prior corresponding period.

The seasonal distribution of NPAT in the first half of FY26 was originally guided to be circa 44 to 45%. However, as Robert has already addressed earlier, the material expense savings are expected to be realized in the second half, hence the earnings seasonality is now expected to be broadly in line with last year, closer to circa 43%.

Can we move on to the next slide, please? This page breaks down the drivers 12.

point behind the 12.6% growth in underlying EBITA. Growth was supported by a combination of 2% organic growth, reflecting a moderating pricing environment, and 5.7% acquisition growth, excluding the Rothbury step-up.

We have continued to be diligent on acquisitions, including transactions involving increased stakes in existing businesses. As a result, these transactions do not uplift EBITA directly, rather the benefit flows through to NPAT by reducing non-controlling interest, which is addressed on the next slide.

We have also shown the Rothbury impact separately. While Rothbury is consolidated at 100% basis at the EBITA level for accounting purposes, we have only stepped up circa 3%.

Accordingly, the uplift NPAT from Rothbury is modest at this stage from a financial perspective. Can we move on to the next slide, please?

This slide highlights the different mix of organic versus acquisition growth between EBITA and NPAT. As mentioned earlier, organic EBITA growth was 2%, closely aligning with organic NPAT growth of 2.3% shown here.

The further uplift in organic NPATA growth to 4.5% is primarily driven by two factors: first, savings from amortization expenses as certain acquired businesses reached the end of their accounting useful life of customer relationships, including CHU, UAA, and BCB; and second, reduced amortization following business asset impairments recorded in first in FY25. On the acquisition side, EBITA growth of 5.7%, excluding Rothbury, broadly aligns with 7.5% acquisition growth in NPAT.

However, higher amortization and borrowing costs means less of this growth flows through to NPAT, explaining why the mix differs from EBITA. Overall, the group delivered a solid underlying NPAT growth of 7.3% for the first half.

Next slide, please. The group continues to maintain a conservative balance sheet, providing capacity to fund future growth while preserving financial flexibility.

As of December 2025, total borrowings were circa $1.2 billion with a gearing ratio of 33.4%, comfortably below the board-approved maximum rate of 40%. This gives the group capacity to borrow further $382.2 million while remaining within the gearing limit.

During the period, the group also increased its corporate debt facilities to circa $1.3 billion. Including accordion and shared facilities, total potential debt capacity reaches at circa $1.7 billion.

This positions us well to fund our acquisition pipeline while maintaining balance sheet discipline. Next slide, please.

Finally, conversion of the profit to cash flows. The group has delivered adjusted net cash from operating activities to $164.7 million in first half of FY26, reflecting continued stable conversion of earnings into cash.

You will note that post-tax cash flow from operating activities was lower compared to the first half of FY25. This was primarily driven by higher financing costs, reflecting interest rate headwinds, and increased utilization of the facilities to support our acquisition pipeline, as well as redundancy costs paid during the period.

While this redundancy costs are a cash outflow, they are excluded from our underlying earnings. After dividends paid to shareholders and non-controlling interests, free cash flow was $34.7 million, up from $32.5 million in the prior period.

Together with the debt flexibility of $382 million, total available funding of $415 million provides ongoing capacity to fund dividends, support organic investments, and pursue disciplined acquisition opportunities. Thank you, and now I'll hand back to Robert to talk through on the FY26 guidance.

Thanks, Hannah. And, I'll I'll refer you to page 32 in the outlook.

Just that on behalf of the board, we want to I want to reconfirm guidance, yeah, our NPATA $365 to $375 million, NPAT $315 to $325 million, EBITA $650 to $665 million, and underlying EPS NPAT growth of between 6 and 10%. I think I think that, during this period of time, you saw us re- realign and restate our FY20 2024 and '25.

In In February, we advised the market of these changes to its segment disclosure and that and that they would be reflected in FY26, as I alluded to before. The final the calculation of the group's underlying EBITA and NPATA, these changes are presentational in nature, and they don't reflect any changes to the underlying performances of the business.

They're designed to give you clear, unequivocal view of how we make our money and spend our money. The guidance is subject just a few assumptions: we're achieving 2 to 3% increases in insurance premiums, the as I say, January '26 showed 2.7%.

In we we reviewed to 1 to 2 under abundance guidance before Christmas. The trend that came through for November, December, and January proved that that conservative 1 to 2 was was it was out, that we'll definitely do 2 to 3.

At the moment, it's trending more towards 3, but it's a volatile period in insurance at the moment, we're still again, sort of staying 2 to 3. Also the the the key risks that, exist on page 50 and 52 of the pack here.

The the waterfall chart there shows you FY26 FY25, it's, 26.7, and if you look at the 6 to 7 guidance on the right, that's the that's the increase we expect to get. Net acquisitions we're showing you, and net organic we're showing you there.

So, it's a it's a it's a pretty solid, position to be in. At a at a time when the market was guessing what would occur, we we put out we put out a strong guidance, and we're confirming that guidance at this stage.

On page 33, we're we're resilient, we're adaptive, our business model works. We had challenges in the FY FY26.

I think the first the first half of, of, of '26 was a bit of a gestation period. Cha- The The The waterfall in pricing from June to July and August was unpredicted predicted.

I think we took a little while to react to it. We have reacted to it, and that those reactions will be presented in the second half.

We continue to execute our growth, and and we continue to look at underlying strong earnings versus a period versus period. First half, we adapted to market conditions, the expense reductions, will come through, and and we completed the $240 million in acquisitions.

Technology, David's just spoken much more more eloquently than like what I can do about it. All I can say is that we were ahead of the pack when we introduced Insight and the Client Trading Platform.

And, 5 or 6 years ago, we brought, Steve Tufton into this organization with a Masters of AI on a predicted basis that we were going to have to move in that area very quickly. We've been looking at that, and David's entree into this business has been sensational with his international experience and the vast amount of major companies that he's worked with.

We, as I say, we reaffirm our guidance, we'll continue to prior- prioritize our capital, we will look at rearranging our capital. We've been around 13 years, we've we've been diligent what we've bought, and I I won't be frightened to look at assets that we've got and see whether, they're worth more money in cash and being applied somewhere else.

Don't don't get fearful that we're going to do something silly. We're going to Every thing we do on our capital management is is well thought out.

We'll we'll make sure that we keep our discipline on our acquisitions and and continue to do the portfolio rationalizations, as Tim and Mark have have eloquently stated before. And, over the midterm, we see continued margin improvement.

What I'm saying to you, it was a it was a tough first half. We we we accepted it, we worked on it, and we executed on it, and the second half will be better.

Thank you, everyone. I'll hand you back to the...

Good afternoon. I think we've just gone into the afternoon.

Can you talk a little bit more about the second half earnings bridge? What some of the things that should support second half growth, I think the cost-outs seasonality, some of the recent acquisitions.

Can you help a little bit the second half earnings bridge?

Okay. I think probably the best way to do that is to start with you, Tim, in terms of the time lag it takes by the time you start doing something and the success you're having in that area.

Yeah.

On the top line, firstly, we've started plans to review the fees across the business, and we'll look to implement some changes to those over the second half. Looking more to the operational costs, we had met late last year with our subsidiary principals, there's 63 of those now, with some guidance around the need to use natural attrition where possible to improve on employment expense costs.

They've put those into play before Christmas, and so they'll start to wash through into the second half as well. We'll see some real improvement in the employment expense rate there.

I think both of those two factors combined will get us to where we need to be.

I think also we were a little slow off the mark of looking at the fee structure that we had in, and I think people got a bit complacent. I think the second half will reflect on the fact of the increased fees that you've been able to push through from that point of view.

Mark, I guess you and Steve Ward turned the underwriting agencies upside down when you said, 'We're going to consolidate these. We're going to move more into HWS Wood.

We're going to employ some people to do some stuff. We're going to shuffle them around.'

Are you ready to produce a better second half than the first half?

I emphasized that in my opening remarks, and I'll continue to do so. Andrei, thanks for the question.

For us, we have a footprint of revenue which is biased to the second half, that's because of the weighting of renewals into that period. Secondly, we've got the growth initiatives underway.

I spoke to Castle, CHU, looking at their pricing and product, and a number of our other agencies have really taken on board this sudden shift in pricing in the first quarter of the financial year and are reacting to that. I touched on profit commission, that has a second half footprint to it, very much biased towards that.

While it is an at-risk component simply because of weather, it does have a longer time duration footprint to it. We're seeing profit commissions emerge from 5 years earlier.

Then, as Robert just alluded, the operational changes that are playing through, we'll start to see those emerge in the final couple of months of the year and into FY27.

Hannah, you've got the responsibility of the second half. What's your view in what Andrei said?

Yeah.

Improvements from both broking and underwriting agencies segments on the revenue line, and in conjunction with the savings that we have mentioned, Andrei, $7 million from the head office and $4 million from subsidiaries, that will bridge the gap between where we are today to the guidance.

We're pretty confident, Andrei.

Thank you. Just a double check, did you imply the acquisitions in the first half was skewed towards the end of the first half?

I guess that's true. I guess we did a lot in finalizing towards November and December.

To answer that, absolutely correctly. I don't know whether it was because of the fear of the ACCC, people will probably think it, it just happened to be, the ACCC had agreed all our acquisitions.

It was just I think a bit of a time constraint of getting through and making sure we got them completed. There's nobody from the M&A department here at the moment, they were probably lazy and didn't get them done quicker.

Yes, it was skewed. Sometimes people think we do this deliberately, but the ramifications of getting documentation done, getting people agreed, and getting it absolutely compounds sometimes.

We struggle to get it all done by Christmas, I think everybody could go away. Yes, it was weighted towards that.

The impact of that, of course, means you're not getting the revenue uplift, because in most cases, December is a non-period anyway, it's not the most exciting period. January's not the most exciting period.

You won't feel that impact on those acquisitions till more or less in the February, March, April, May, June period.

Thank you. If I can ask just one more question.

Just around the gearing target, I think it went up from 30 35% a year ago, and it's gone up to 40%. Can you explain a little bit about the reason and why you're comfortable with that?

In theory, we do have bank covenants requirement up to 40%, we always had the flexibility. We thought it's a great time to leverage our balance sheet to fund for the acquisition, hence that was an increase there.

Yeah. We always ran at 40%, all our covenants were at 40%.

Okay? In fact, we could have had covenants at 50% if we wanted to because of the nature of our balance sheet and the perspective and the long-term relationship we've got with the Australian banks.

They've seen the growth of this business be very strong. With the market the way it was, we've just reloaded and used more of our capacity.

Did that answer it? Thank you.

Good afternoon, all. Just a first question for me in terms of just the acquisition multiples.

Just want to understand exactly where you're at at the moment across the different jurisdictions. If I look at your half-year report, I think you've flagged what, 11.5 times EBITA on acquisitions over the period.

Then, Rob, on the call, you mentioned 10 times. Just want to understand if it was driven by Novum and ISU, that lifted up the higher multiple.

Just understanding where the multiples are at at the moment and your expectations from here. Thanks.

Yeah.

Yes, in Australia, we're mostly around 10 10 times. Okay?

That's a mixture of what we've bought overseas and with Australia, bring it back to about 11.7. In most cases, though, we believe we have the ability to bring in savings.

Historically, it's proved when we've paid a little bit more for it, we think there are savings and we've achieved those savings. I think that, as long as you don't ask me to predict what the multiples will be next week, because I have no idea what the international share prices will do.

When you watch $4.5 billion get knocked off the market cap of the biggest insurance broker in the world because of somebody gets frightened about some AI implication, then I can't tell you what the multiples will be going forward. I can tell you the multiples we'll be paying going forward will reflect our capacity and will reflect our view of getting EPS accretion for doing that acquisition.

Got it. That's clear.

Then maybe just touching on just the broking organic revenue, it was about 1% this half.

Actually, it's actually about 2%. Julian, it's about 2%.

Okay. No, thanks.

So 2%, is it? For is that across the group or is that

organic broking

isolated? Organic broking, yeah.

If we unpack organic broking and take away a couple of things that we threw in there, yes. We're predicting 2% for the second half.

All right,

2% for the second half. That's driven by that fee increases that you're planning to put through into the second half?

Yeah. Here, Julian, it's Tim.

Just to provide some more context around that. The core broking business has performed really well, so far to budget.

I think the biggest variance that we've seen is in the New Zealand market. We've called that out already with some of the underperformance there, and the other one was in the professional lines businesses that's really has some challenges.

If we look at those two parts of the business separate from the core Australian broking business, we're performing much better and closer to the 2%.

As we said before, we're still very interested in the New Zealand market. It's a great market, it's just in a bit of free fall at the moment.

It's interesting when you think about it, that professional lines is one of the ones that has taking hits in competition at the moment. If you've got a professional lines broker that's, at D&O, premium fell period to period 8.4% alone.

It's very difficult to if you're a specialist in that area, to not struggle to get organic growth when your product line is being discounted around. That will come back eventually.

Got it. Just to understand a little bit better the levers here around that organic growth from both commissions and fees, one of your peers is talking to some fairly material upside potential that could come through if they were to sort of maximize these levers.

I just want to understand into the second half and into next year more holistically, have you had a bit more of a look and a sort of quantification around how meaningful this could be in terms of upside for organic growth on the commissions and revenues? Thanks.

I won't put a dollar number on it, but just to give some clarity around that, commission rates remained very stable throughout the first half. We did see a slight improvement to the fee rate, about up 0.5%, but moving at even at that rate has a significant dollar-value increase, and so we're now targeting to increase that further by 2.5%, and that'll, yeah, achieve further organic growth for us.

Okay. That's clear.

Then maybe just margins, last question on margins. It's not very clear expectations for margins here for both broking and agency versus PCP.

Just into the second half versus PCP and into '27. I think in agency, for example, you're flagging continued investment there on your platforms, but you've also got cost-outs coming through.

It's not very clear on the margin trajectory into the second half and into FY27 as well. Thanks.

Should I

start with

the margin? Yeah.

For broking, and agencies both, I think for agencies, we've started including profit share into the segment of agencies. Excluding that, both of the margin seems to be quite stable, broadly in a line between FY25 and '26 based on the new segment disclosure.

For FY27, we will be able to give you an update as we speak FY26 results.

We used to take profit shares into head office. Okay?

In reality, what we've done with the realigning of the revenue, as Hannah's just said, if an underwriting agency has a profit share, it goes into the underwriting agency's income.

Got it. Just to clarify, the only cost-out that goes through the FY27 numbers is that $5 million of savings that was flagged in agency, and is that the only one?

The 7 and 4 is all this year, in the second half? Just to make sure I got that.

Sorry, are you referring to the $7 million head office and $4 million savings from the subsidiaries?

That's right, that's second half. The $5 million in the agency from combining businesses, that's flowing through to FY20 FY27.

Yes, Julian, we'll start to see that emerge in the last couple of months, but it won't be a significantly impactful shift, however, in FY26, FY27, rather, I think we'll start to see the full emergence of that.

If I add on to that, Julian, the $7 million from head office and $4 million from subsidiaries, we're expecting circa half of that to fall into FY27 as a run-rate savings.

Got it, that's clear. No, thanks so much for that.

Much appreciated.

Hi, team. Thanks for taking my questions.

Just a couple from me, please. The first one, you're obviously running a cost-out program at the moment.

It'd be useful to get some color on what your intention for these sorts of programs are going forward. Is this a one-off or is this business as usual?

Thanks.

Hannah, you can handle that. I think the restructuring that we've done, okay, is a one-off, but...

Certainly, I completely agree with Robert. Any restructure that we have done is certainly one-off.

When it comes to continuous margin improvements, that's BAU for us.

Excellent. The next one, are there any businesses in your group that you would consider to be non-core?

The new disclosures have obviously given investors a lot better visibility into how much is going on in the group. Would you consider anything to be non-core?

Thanks.

Sarah Thompson from the AFR considers IQumulate to be non-core and not really germane to our income, I guess I'll reflect on that statement and see whether she's right or not. In reality, what I'm looking at is businesses that we've got and developed that are making profit, and if we think there are other businesses that we could buy that would make more profit, then I was going to say liquidate, but I say with a KPMG valuation partner and he calls it restructuring rather than liquidation.

We'd probably look to consider restructuring those businesses by amalgamating them, or indeed ultimately maybe sell them, and say what we could do with the capital in another area. I think we're pretty clever about knowing where businesses we can invest that give us the best return.

If we're not getting as good a return from a slice of capital we've got somewhere, and we think we can turn that business into liquid cash and apply that liquid cash elsewhere for a better return, then we will endeavor to do that over this next 6 months period. I guess always we'll look at recycling our capital anyway.

We look at that all the time. Technically, we look at that before we do an acquisition.

We get shown a lot of acquisitions and we look at it and go, 'Well, if we did put our capital into that, what are we going to get back out of it?' There's one that we've just rejected, which somebody else will buy, but we just couldn't make it work on the numbers that they put forward and the asking price that they wanted to have.

We're not afraid to turn away and not do that.

Great. Then just the final one from me, please, in relation to international, maybe for Sam as well as you, Robert.

You're going into Canada, you're talking about India, you're investing more in the US, there's a lot of stuff going on for you overseas. With how quickly technology is changing globally, let alone in the insurance space, is this the right time to be pursuing so many different offshore opportunities?

Thanks.

Andrew, pretty easy answer to this. Our focus is the US and the UK, without a doubt.

We are exploring opportunities in India just because it would not be prudent for us to do so, it's such a huge part of the world and the economy, and we've had interest reach out to us rather than us to them. We will, like our ethos of everything we've done in Steadfast, we will keep our eyes and ears open to everything, and look at everything before a decision is made, but our clear focus is the US and UK market.

Good morning, everybody. I just had a question just on your acquisition strategy from here.

I think, Robert, you've been quite clear that any acquisitions you do have to be EPS accretive. I was just keen, given where your share price is, whether it makes sense more to deploy the capital into your own shares rather than new acquisitions, particularly overseas where the multiples tend to be higher.

I think, Sid, that it's a good question and it's not something that we don't look at. In reality, every time we look at it, we think, you know what?

We can deploy this money much better than what we can buying our own shares. I think that's an easy thing for a company to do is to buy its shares back if it's in the doldrums a little bit or if it's what.

We're not. We're very happy with what we're doing, and we're extremely keen to deploy capital because we think we know how to deploy capital, our track record would support that.

To answer you honestly, we do look at that, and part of prudent capital management is to actually make that evaluation. At all such time as the pendulum turns and we don't think we can put capital out at a better rate than buying our shares back, then we won't buy our shares back.

Can I just add one?

Go on, yeah, well, you did all the work on it, I'm stealing your glory, go on.

Sid, I think, share buyback is certainly an option, from a capital management perspective, but we, management, strongly believe the selective M&A opportunities that we've got and long-term margin improvement initiatives that we have will definitely provide a better long-term value creations for the shareholders. In a short term, that could be an option, but we want to focus on a long term.

Yep. That makes sense.

Okay. If I could just ask a second question just around AI and just your strategy, it seems very much that you're being a little bit more cautious than your peer in terms of how you think the customer may seek to adopt these tools.

I was just keen to get your perspective on whether you've also considered a ChatGPT marketplace, and what do you think this will mean to broking and in individualised advice models? Look,

I'll let David answer this, but in reality, in a broker's business, 30% of his business is usually comes under pressure each year, they want to change it. Okay.

Of that 30%, my experience is, and I think I've just completed my 57th year, I speak with authority over many, many cycles, is that the true broker client will come back and say, 'I've got a good deal. Can you match it?'

Probably 10 to 15% of the broker's clients will take the view, 'Well, you should have given me the best price and I've been screwed,' and they move out. If AI is going to answer that question, then I think, definitely, from being disrupted, a percentage of our business could be.

Our businesses are advice businesses. Our businesses are where people want to be able to talk to somebody, and I can't see that AI is going to interrupt that.

What it may do for us is, internally, and David will speak more authority on it, is absolutely allow us to expand our businesses without expanding our FTE cost base. David, I don't know

what you... I think it was interesting the night before that app was released, I was actually doing my own car insurance, and you go through a form and basically that app was a front end to the form.

At the back end, you still had to have a core platform, and that's why we talk about our moats, that you need a highly available, secure and compliant core platform. We've got those integrations, deep insurer integrations with our partners that we talk to on a regular basis.

With that multi-product hub with SCTP, could that be replicated? It could, but it's those relationships we've got with the insurers.

It may well be that we put a chat bot onto the front end to support our brokers to be able to do that quicker, and we talked about that innovation hub, that's one of the things that they're looking at. At the moment, that front end is basically a chat bot compared to a form.

We see that evolving over time, but we're adapting to that. I think we've got, as Robert says, a broker is much more about relationships.

We will support them to make them much more efficient in using AI. Within those sort of core platforms which we have with Insight, we'll embed AI agents to make them much more efficient for the brokers as well.

I think it's about making us and our broker partners much more efficient.

I listened to Mike's call yesterday. I always do in case I can steal some ideas that are better than mine, right?

I'm not fearful to do that. I thought that was logical, what they were talking about and know what they were going to investigate and go forward.

I don't think we'd be any more different to them in how we've been investigating and we know what we want to do, so...

Yep. Great.

Just one final question. I think you've flagged a couple of hundred million dollars of acquisitions in the second half.

I was just keen to understand just the new ACCC regime, whether any of them have actually already been lodged under that, and just where has anything been approved so far? Maybe just give us some idea how that's going.

I guess I can answer that we did 20 transactions with the ACCC of step-ups and acquisitions, and they approved every one of them. In fact, the timelines went down dramatically.

They went from sort of 6 weeks initially down to basically 2 weeks and 3 weeks to get them done. Anything that we've got signed term sheets on at the moment have been through the ACCC, so, Sid.

We've found them to be cooperative, we've found them to understand the sector we're in now, we've found them to want to see Australian businesses grow by acquisition, and we know the dictum they put down about emerging or acquiring businesses, and it's pretty simple: if you're going to restrict access to the consumer for a product or a service, or you're going to increase the cost of that product or service by doing the merger or the acquisition, well, you'll be in trouble with us. Luckily, I think they understand our plans, they understand the way we go about doing it, the independence we give our assets to operate, and as I say, we've done 20 transactions with them in the last 12 months successfully.

Okay. No price, no non-binding offers, nobody's knocked on the door, and we're not in discussions with anybody to sell.

However, if somebody came at $7.50 or $7.80, I certainly would return their phone call.

Hi, good afternoon. Thanks for taking my question.

I just got a clarification question regarding the covenants. I'm referring specifically to the total leverage covenant, net debt not to exceed 2.5 times EBITA.

Can you confirm if that EBITA number is in reference to consolidated entities or if that's after taking in the share from associates? I've got a net debt figure for the end of the half of about $1.4 billion, I'm just trying to confirm that you're reasonably close to that covenant and what the implications are for that.

Nowhere near it.

We're nowhere near it.

Nowhere near. Go on, Hannah.

It's calculated based on the underlying EBITA, and we monitor that covenants every single month. I can guarantee it's nowhere close to 2.5.

If I'm looking at, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I've got trailing 12-month EBITA of around 600 mil.

3 to a

2 to a 2.9 for the...

Did you, by any chance,

included

premium funding? Premium funding is ring-fenced from the bank covenants requirement.

Okay.

Okay. I might take it offline if you guys are very comfortable, that's fine.

I can see clarification offline. Thank you.

No worries.

I guess we have a position that we don't buy non-EPS accretive businesses. Okay?

With the re-rating, I guess, I'll just take the brokers, not the insurers, because they also got re-rated, then that puts a different perspective across everybody who wants to buy in the market. At the moment, we are not in a position where there's anything that we've got in our sights that would not be EPS accretive right at the very moment.

the only thing we can say is that we we chart carefully the the main product all our product lines. If you look at, our product lines, that that were in the red over the first half: D&O was in the red, ISR was in the red, okay, bloodstock was in the red, construction was in the red, cyber was in the red, travel was in the red, accident and health was in the red, aviation was in the red, and life risks were in the red.

All of those are a very small percentage of the For instance, if you if you look at our the other side of the chart, then liability management, management liability, professional risks, bizpack, strata, contractors plant machinery, rural, farm, motor commercial, statutory risks, business financial, machinery breakdown, marine, marine cargo, information technology, and, and business property, and home and contents, landlords, motor private, motor commercial, and strata residential, and, parametrics were all positively period to period. They all went up.

When we manage our portfolio and we see what happened, that we move from plus 3.7% in in June of of '25, and you see it dropped to 2.4 in July, and then going to 2.1 in August, and then flattened in September to 2, and flat and stayed flat in in October to around 2, and then in November you see it go to 2.1, and then in December you see it go up to 2.4, and then you see it in January go to 2.7, then if you then if you look historically trends, then you'd have to say that there's potentially that the market has bottomed, and and now is starting to go back to what is realistic in other words, what I would call inflationary increases. Maybe I would I would expect 2 to 3% set over this next few few months, and maybe even potentially go past it if the trend continues.

Then if we sit into settle into a a cycle where the the total GWP that we handle is is inflationary baked every year at between 3 and 4%, then that would be that would be a static way of doing business that would be very accretive to our bottom line. Yes, Daniel, I think there's a potential to say that the that the cycle's not going to drop, because we're not seeing any fresh other than what's coming out of London, and, and in some in some lines, that that, we've been impeded.

I think I think statistically the potential is there that the that the cycle has bottomed and will flip back into a more, rational way of pricing, which which means that it'll cover inflation.

Okay. Thank you, everybody.

I'm not going to do a summary of what we said because I think everybody here has given you a really fair and clear understanding. I hope you like the new way we report, where the CGUs are responsible, gives you the ability to now do like-for-like, and I welcome any one-to-ones we're having, look forward to meeting you there at the team.

Have a good day, everybody, and thank you for participating.