Fiight Club: UK vs Europe - Richard Wilson - Introduction

Good afternoon. Can someone turn my mic on? OK, I'll speak louder. First of all, thank you very much for coming this blustery evening. My job is to say as little as possible and get off the stage, but I'd like to share a few words. How many here are Interactive Investor customers? Show of hands... many have been with us for over 10 years, thank you for trusting us. We've spent 25 years building a platform where the first job is to keep your assets safe. Our mission is to serve you with choice, value, and insight so you can take control of your financial assets. Those who were previously Alliance Trust savings customers – we migrated them on October 14. 100% are at least as well off, 98% are better off. We're here to listen and improve. In any relationship, there are two things: trust and confidence. We recently conducted a large retirement survey; most people want to avoid running out of money but lack confidence. Only 14% of women believe they won't suffer a reduction in quality of life. 70% of retirees don't have a power of attorney. So there's more for us to do. We are a self-directed direct-to-consumer platform with about 330,000 customers, nearly half a million accounts, 13% of the UK market, £30.5 billion in assets, and handle about 15% of all retail trades. We have a responsibility to serve you, not our own interests. Our model is a subscription fee, so we're incentivized to delight you, not extract more money. We make about £25 million profit annually and are reinvesting in scale. We've improved service – we answer the phone in 10 seconds on average. Our technology is improving; we're releasing a new app in Q1 2020. We'll continue to produce better content with personalization. In 2020, we'll introduce automation for guidance and back-end processes. Regular investing will move from 99 pence to zero for all products early next year, and we'll use our scale to reduce commissions. We're moving toward a straight subscription service with lower prices. Our pension service is growing 40% a year but needs better accumulation tools. Thank you for coming; I'll be here for the panel and Q&A. Please don't hold back – all feedback is welcome.