CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER'S REVIEW

2025 was a record-breaking year for Utmost, with our teams delivering £9.7bn of inflows, an increase of 43% on last year. The momentum we saw in the first half of the year was sustained into the second half, with the periods recording £5.3bn and £4.4bn of inflows respectively.

Performance across our markets was driven by Utmost’s strengthened franchise following the successful integration and rebrand of Lombard International and our ability to serve the rising demand for long-term wealth solutions globally. Our diversified global footprint supports resilience across market cycles and enables us to tailor our proposition to local client needs, adviser models and regulatory environments. This was reflected in our results with six of our seven sales regions delivering double-digit growth in the year.

The UK was a standout market in 2025 delivering +100% growth in gross flows year-on-year. The pervasive uncertainty from rumours on fiscal and tax policy ahead of the Autumn Budget reinforced demand for advice-led, long-term wealth solutions. As a result, we saw clients and advisers accelerate planning activity as they looked to mitigate against the impact of potential changes. Utmost’s long-term, multi-generational specialist solutions are well aligned to those needs, supporting the strong growth experienced in the UK throughout 2025.

This was the first full year with our new Luxembourg business, with the integration and rebrand completing in Q4 2025. We continue to align systems and processes, which we expect to deliver further operational and financial benefits over time. The acquisition has strengthened Utmost’s platform by broadening our geographic reach, enhancing technical expertise and extending our product suite for clients and partners.

At the end of 2025, we announced the sale of Utmost Life and Pensions to JAB Insurance, subject to regulatory approval. The business entered the bulk purchase annuity (“BPA”) market in late 2024, leveraging its deep expertise in closed book insurance management to build a competitive BPA franchise. ULP has completed 11 full buy-ins totalling £311m. As ULP joins JAB Insurance, I want to take this opportunity to thank the team for their efforts in building a competitive BPA business and wish them luck under their new ownership.

The sale of ULP is a defining step in Utmost’s evolution into a specialist, global wealth solutions provider. Our strategy has long been centred on capturing growth driven by demographic shifts, increasing cross border mobility and sustained demand for tax efficient, transparent and multi-jurisdictional savings products. By exiting the BPA market, we are able to sharpen our organisational focus and redeploy our capital and operational capacity on the opportunities where Utmost has a clear competitive advantage.

Following this divestment and to help strengthen the coherence of our Group identity, we have undertaken a brand refresh and are aligning our various entities under the single Utmost name. In parallel, we have unified our values across the organisation to WEALTH, reinforcing a consistent culture and a clear, shared set of expectations.

Together, these steps sharpen our positioning and simplify our story. Our message to the market is clear: we are a leading global provider of insurance-based wealth solutions that provides trusted, unit-linked offerings designed to help clients manage and preserve their wealth globally.

In December 2025, we announced the sale of Utmost Life and Pensions, our UK-focused life and pensions business which entered the BPA market in late 2024, to JAB Insurance. The sale, which is subject to regulatory approval, encompasses the entire ULP business, representing more than £5bn in assets and 175 employees.

The proceeds from the sale will be used to repay the outstanding bank debt issued to finance the acquisition of Lombard International. The remaining funds will be used for general corporate purposes, enabling Utmost to deliver even greater value for its clients, shareholders, employees and wider stakeholders. The sale is expected to complete by mid-2026.

We have a clear strategic intent – to build an enduring business that serves our clients both now and in the future. Utmost’s growth has been largely driven by acquisitions, resulting in a complicated legacy technology stack. Our digital strategy has long been rooted in improving client and adviser experience, strengthening operational resilience and supporting scalable growth. A core part of this is addressing these legacy systems and aligning our processes and systems across the organisation.

In 2025 we made progress with this ambition. Our IT teams completed major updates to our core systems, enhancing our efficiency as well as data migrations which have improved our document and data management processes. This ensures we deliver a more seamless and more efficient service to our clients.

We implemented a new contact system, Talkdesk, which simplifies how clients and advisers contact us. We now have a single contact number covering our Ireland, Isle of Man and Guernsey entities, reducing friction and improving accessibility.

We also recognise the significant power of AI to better serve our clients, drive efficiencies and extend the productivity of our teams. It will redefine how we serve our clients and advisers, as well as how we operate our back-end processes. Given this, we continue to grow our AI capabilities to ensure we leverage this technology appropriately and effectively.

This includes:

• Agentic Voice Agents: deploying AI voice agents onto our Talkdesk contact platform to speed up call resolution.
• Intelligent Document Processing: using machine learning to automate data extraction from customer documents.
• Translations: leveraging cognitive AI to translate documentation used in our international markets.
• Identity Verification: with AI-powered, secure client due diligence using biometrics for a simplified user experience.
• Anti Money Laundering (“AML”): using AI to simplify and automate the AML process for Utmost and its clients.

These current and future AI-led enhancements will unlock benefits for our organisation, and we will leverage AI to support our teams by giving them better tools, sharper insight and more time to focus on the customer. We however remain focused on a people led approach to business. Our success is built on the strength of personalised advice. The relationships and understanding that our team have cultivated with our clients, partners and wider stakeholders will remain core to our offering. We know the power of face-to-face advice and will continue to be market champions of it.

The uncertainty from the wider macroeconomic environment lessened slightly in 2025, with moderate growth and easing of inflation. However, policy divergence, regulatory change and ongoing geopolitical and trade tensions continued to shape client behaviour.

We are able to capitalise on these dynamics. Through our market-leading position as a specialist provider of wealth solutions to HNW and UHNW individuals, we are able to meet the growing demand for compliant solutions that can navigate evolving regulatory requirements. As wealth continues to globalise, we expect our clients will continue to seek stability, clarity and the ability to manage their affairs across multiple jurisdictions. This is an area in which Utmost is well positioned.

We are committed to being a partner to our clients for current and future generations. This means we must remain agile and respond to emerging trends to ensure that we continue to serve our policyholders effectively.

As we look ahead, there are clear long-term demand drivers underpinning the HNW and UHNW savings market. These drivers, supported by strong structural tailwinds, are contributing to a resilient growth outlook across the mid and long-term horizons.

From our market research conducted with NMG, a global financial services advisory business, an estimated €83 trillion of intergenerational wealth transfer is expected to take place over the next 20 to 25 years. This, alongside a growing global HNW population, is helping to drive an additional £92 billion of new business flows into our sector over the next five years. These dynamics are driving sustained demand for flexible, transparent and multi-jurisdictional solutions and we are well positioned to capture a meaningful share of this opportunity.

We are also attuned to the changing investment universe. Clients are increasingly demanding access to alternative assets and we are committed to responding to this need through appropriate product design and partnerships with distributors.

As always, our people remain at the heart of everything we do at Utmost. This year, we welcomed our new Luxembourg colleagues to the organisation and navigated a significant period of change as we aligned the structures of our two companies. I was proud of all our colleagues for their resilience, dedication and positivity at this time. Our record sales and sustained market position is a testament to their drive and hard work.

We continue to invest in our learning and development programmes across the organisation to ensure that all of our employees are equipped with the tools and resources to excel in their careers.

Our employee engagement scores are a testament to that with 85% positive scores in our annual groupwide engagement survey. This is the first year that our Luxembourg colleagues participated and it was encouraging to see similarly strong engagement scores. Our leadership teams in our jurisdictions are now working to address the feedback and ensure that we continue to be a workplace where our people thrive.

We also continue to pursue our charity and volunteering efforts. This year, we raised over £92,000. It is always inspiring to see the endeavours of our employees, and we will continue to support their charitable giving efforts going forward.

As we enter 2026, we remain focused on fostering an inclusive, supportive and high-performing workplace. Our people are our greatest strength, and we want to ensure that they all have an opportunity to grow and thrive.

Looking ahead, our focus is on accelerating our leading position as a global provider of insurance based wealth solutions. Our priorities are to deepen and broaden our distribution partnerships, grow our position in our markets, and to continue investing in operational excellence, digital capability and a consistently high-quality client and adviser experience.

2026 marks 10 years of the Utmost brand and as we turn our focus to the next decade, we do so with a more focused strategy, a simplified profile and a strengthened platform. We look ahead with confidence, ambition, and the discipline to convert the growing momentum in the wealth market into sustainable long-term value for shareholders.