Retirement & Superannuation Solutions
RSS went from strength to strength in FY2022, proactively helping to create a stronger superannuation system. Our expanding ecosystem of experience-led, technology-enabled solutions and digital services are supporting the future of better member outcomes, globally.
“In what was a progressive year, our team has focussed on driving further digitisation of our business, building a strong pipeline of new opportunities and partnering with our clients to deliver the best outcomes for members in retirement.”
Dee McGrath,
CEO, Retirement & Superannuation Solutions
Supporting our clients to accelerate growth
Partnering with our clients to fortify their growth strategies has been a top priority. During FY2022, we enabled our clients to successfully complete 11 transitions, migrating approximately 600,000 members. The seamless integration experience has been a credit to our expert teams and clients, who have supported intensive growth opportunities while maintaining service excellence in fund operations and support for members. We strengthened existing partnerships through advanced capabilities, while accelerating a strong pipeline of new business opportunities. We are also pleased with our UK expansion, with the numbers of members administered outperforming expectations during FY2022.
Adapting solutions for operational agility
Digital transformation remains an area of focus, with the continued roll-out of the Member Online platform, alongside the build out of our API catalogue, which has led to increased adoption of our digital, data and security solutions. Increased investment in digitising and modernising our core platform has also supported the operationalisation of more flexible operating models. Moreover, the Retirement Income Covenant has triggered a refocus on leveraging our scale to build out a core platform infrastructure, which will see the launch of a suite of services in the first half of FY2023.
Our investment into embedding human-centred design through our CX co-Lab methodology has also increased the number of collaboration and co-design opportunities with our clients – ensuring the solutions we build are aligned closely to their strategies.
Strong strides forward
Digital, Data and Transformation has become an embedded capability within how we operate. We have made significant investments into building on our foundations for Data & Insights. The launch of our PROGRSS program in the first half of FY2022 is now delivering highly improved digital experiences such as evolving our automation and straight through processing capabilities, which has ultimately driven stronger outcomes for our clients, our people, members, employers and other partners. In FY2023, our strategic goals will centre on new market growth, further embedding solutions and operating model optimisation and a focussed shift to scaling outcomes. In one of the fastest evolving sectors, we believe we are in the best position to continue helping the industry create a better future for members.
Corporate Markets
We have a diversified business model offering a suite of services across Registry, Employee Share Plans, Investor Relations, Corporate Governance and Communications. We delivered a strong year of client retention, new business wins and organic growth.
“We combine our industry experience with technology capabilities to deliver innovative solutions for our clients and their investors. Our continual investment in developing technology-led solutions that drive efficiency for our clients is what differentiates us in the market. Our commitment to our clients is important to us and I am proud of the dedication from our teams to deliver unique, compelling value to our clients.”
Paul Gardiner,
CEO, Corporate Markets
Success in FY2022
Our client-first approach has led to renewed contracts with long-term clients including ITV in the UK, Tabcorp in Australia, and corporate actions such as Air New Zealand’s NZ$1.2bn capital raising. In FY2022, we expanded our Corporate Markets offering resulting in 252 products and services sold to 93 IPO clients across Australia, the UK and India. This includes seven of the ten largest IPOs in Australia, including GQG Partners. In India, we won 58% of IPOs in the market including Zomato, which had over 10 million applications. Since we launched Orient Capital in India in November 2020, we have doubled our client base and established ourselves as the fastest growing Investor Relations service provider in India. Orient Capital holds market leading positions in all our core markets for Shareholder Analytics, and in FY2022 provided 14,000 shareholder analyses and bondholder identifications.
LinkVote+
In the UK we launched our LinkVote+ app to facilitate wider engagement, a first in this market. The app allows shareholders to attend and participate at AGMs virtually, signalling the start of a suite of solutions providing paperless and digital journeys for shareholders and issuer companies.
Integrated solutions
Our miraqle platform has over 13,000 users across 1,600 companies worldwide. We are one of the only full-service providers globally that delivers an integrated solution. In FY2022, we refreshed our miraqle app to simplify the user experience and enhance modules including Registry. We will soon launch our Investor Centre platform to millions of new users in the UK and Ireland.
The investment we make in our technology capabilities is a testament to our purpose to connect people with their assets.
Link Fund Solutions
Despite challenging market conditions, funds under management/ administration were over AU$800 billion as at 30 June 2022. Growth was driven by our stable existing client base, with 28 new fund launches and 9 new fund manager relationships as well as the acquisition of Casa4Funds.
“Link Fund Solutions has the bold ambition to become the leading independent Authorised Fund Manager / ManCo across the UK, Ireland and Luxembourg, whilst expanding our product offering in alternative fund administration and redefining digitalisation in transfer agency. In FY2022, we acquired and integrated Casa4Funds in Luxembourg, enhanced our investor-facing technology, rolled out consistent crossjurisdictional oversight and governance, and further simplified our operating model, all while supporting our fund manager partners and clients.”
Karl Midl,
CEO, Link Fund Solutions
Completed in August 2021, the acquisition gives us additional scale in Luxembourg, Europe’s largest fund domicile. We successfully integrated the business in FY2022, bringing in extensive experience across traditional and alternative assets, including private equity, real estate, infrastructure and debt. This complements our expertise in the UK and Ireland to allow us to deliver market-leading services for fund managers and financial institutions across all three of these key European fund domiciles.
We continue to simplify how we work through the integration of our oversight functions – both investment and operational – to utilise one framework across all locations, using the same systems and controls. This enables us to be more efficient and share best practice, and means clients receive a consistent experience wherever we support them.
We also continue to expand our product and service offering in all jurisdictions, including enhancing our investor-facing technology and leveraging our alternative fund expertise to support the global growth in private markets investments.
Finally, we were proud our UK Transfer Agency team was awarded the Asset Servicing Times Industry Excellence Award for Client Service for Fund Administration, and we were also shortlisted for the Funds Europe Outstanding Community Contribution of the Year award recognising our work supporting Young Enterprise – the UK’s largest entrepreneurial, enterprise and financial education charity.
Banking & Credit Management
“While FY2022 has been a period of significant change for BCMGlobal and the wider mortgage market, we are pleased to support the launch of new mortgage lenders in Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands, resulting in a material increase in our performing assets under management. This is testament to the strength of our service offering and team, and we look forward to the continued success in scaling our origination and primary servicing businesses.”
Antoinette Dunne
CEO, BCMGlobal
The current macro-economic environment has led to increases in inflation and rates of interest across all jurisdictions. We continue to proactively engage with all our clients, their customers and regulators to mitigate and manage potential increasing risk of customer payment default.
In FY2022 BCMGlobal was also subject to a potential divestment from Link Group, and we are proud of our ability to deliver a solid performance against the backdrop of this and the overall economic environment.
The challenging macro-economic environment and reduced activity levels in the wholesale loan market contributed to the business delivering a lower than expected EBITDA for FY2022. However, significant originations growth and continued enhancement of our technology platform position the business well to capitalise on new opportunities across all markets.
Highlights
In Ireland, we were selected as the preferred bidder to launch the First Home Scheme – a Government sponsored shared equity scheme to support first home buyers. Through our market leading origination services proposition, we supported Avant Money and Dilosk to exceed their growth targets and acquire substantive market share. Whilst the loan sale market was subdued, we helped customers resolve financial difficulties in non‑performing loan portfolios, with over 6,500 accounts redeemed or resolved in year.
In Italy, the complex work-out activity we undertake on non-performing loans, together with real estate (REOCO) asset management are in demand. We also successfully launched our first co-investment initiative in FY2022, acquiring a secured non-performing loan portfolio in partnership with a group of leading institutional investors.
In the Netherlands, we have continued to support the entry of new lenders and their funding partners into the fast growing “Buy to Let” mortgage market. Our clients have provided positive feedback on our market leading technology and service quality, enabling us to provide a highly efficient service compared to competitors. Alongside our mortgage origination services, we are pursuing our strategy to achieve a step change in scaling our servicing operations by securing a contract to service a portfolio of mortgages from a lender or investor in the sector.
In the UK, our most mature mortgage servicing market, we have added new mortgage lenders to our diversified client base, including clients who have developed transformational technology and are well funded to secure material market share. We continue to provide back-up servicing to capital providers that require enhanced operational risk mitigation as part of their funding structures for mortgage pools. Our Ipswich based mortgage business also won a coveted mortgage industry award for the quality of its services during FY2022.