Lighthouse Group plc (LON:LGT) Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Streatfield caught up with DirectorsTalk to discuss their interim results, affinity groups, auto enrolment, Luceo Asset Management and positioning for the rest of the year
Q1: Now good news out on the results this morning for Lighthouse Group, can you talk us through the highlights?
A1: Yes, certainly. We’re very pleased to announce our interim results and the highlights of the 6 months for us has clearly been the increase in the EBIDTA by 40% to just over £1 million and an uplift in our pre-tax profits to £470,000 which is 131% increase on the half-year last year and as a result, we’re pleased that the interim dividend has been increased by 13%. So all in all a pretty successful results for us underlying a great deal of activity in the first half of the year.
Q2: You entered into agreements with 2 new affinity groups in the period, Foster Talk and the University and College Union, what is it you do for these affinity groups and how many do you now have a partnership with?
A2: Yes, we were delighted to secure arrangements with Foster Talk and the University and College Union, both these affinity groups provide great services to their memberships. In Terms of Foster Talk, the membership of that organisation clearly provides fostering arrangements for children and we’re very pleased to have a link there and we give, when called upon to do so, financial advice to the carers in that organisation and are very pleased to do so. The University and College Union is an extension of the inroads that we’re making into the teaching and university professions and adds to a growing number of affinity relationships we have in that sector and again a lot of these people are employed by the public sector in the universities and in the colleges and we’re there to give advice as required to any member of that union.
Q3: Now you talk about a slow take up in auto enrolment pension schemes which is a legal requirement, do you see a significant opportunity here?
A3: Yes, auto enrolment is an interesting sector particularly as we are now moving into the auto-enrolment requirements for the smaller enterprises. Our auto enrolment scheme, the Lighthouse Pensions Trust, was developed to provide a good answer to the auto enrolment requirements of particularly this smaller end of the corporate marketplace. The take up for that sector really takes place in the main, in the latter part of 2016 into 2017 and forward into 2018 when circa about a million small businesses have to fulfil their legal requirements. So we have a 5* Defaqto rated auto-enrolment solution which our advisers are actively using to promote a solution for the smaller business community so we still believe that auto enrolment is a good opportunity for us but we have to be a little bit patient because the majority of smaller businesses won’t auto enrol for the next 12-18 months.
Q4: Post-period you launched Luceo Asset Management, can you tell us a little bit more about that?
A4: Yes, Luceo Asset Management was designed really to provide a solution, an investment solution, to what we would describe as clients of Middle Britain, Middle Britain broadly being defined as all of the people that make Britain work; engineers, doctors, teachers, nurses and the like. A desire by us that our advice process is consistent throughout all of the 18 affinity relationships that we have and where that advice leads to a recommendation to invest in an investment solution covering the risk profiles 4, 5 and 6 on a scale of 1-10 the Luceo will fit the bill and do what it says on the tin. So Luceo Asset Management has been designed and created in conjunction with Octopus who are our investment partners in this arrangement to provide a solution that is fit for purpose and particularly suited to the clients that we’re seeking to deal with in Middle Britain.
Q5: Do you feel that Lighthouse Group are well positioned for the rest of the year?
A5: I think that the good work that the group has done in the first half of the year gives us confidence that the estimates that we have out in the marketplace for the rest of the year we’re on line to achieve. So we believe that we’ve positioned the group particularly well, particularly with the new initiatives that we’ve launched and our continuing drive into Middle Britain as evidence by our now 18 contracted affinity relationships that we have.
