IRESS has published its half year results for the six months to 30 June 2015, including for the UK.
UK operations contributed £28.9 million to IRESS’ group revenue of £86.6 million. Operating revenue (excluding enterprise lending) was up 4.1%.
The UK contributed £6.5 million to IRESS’ £29.4 million segment profit, with UK segment profit down 1.7% (excluding enterprise lending).
Enterprise lending operating revenue up 82.5% on the prior period, down 28.6% on the previous corresponding period.
Andrew Walsh, IRESS chief executive officer, said: “The UK is an important strategic market for IRESS and we are making pleasing progress. We are investing heavily in our UK business for our clients, both in terms of people and solutions, and we expect to continue to see the benefit from this, particularly over the medium and long term.
“In wealth management, we are focused on achieving sustained growth by delivering to small, medium and large advice and retail wealth management businesses. We have seen a range of successful XPLAN implementations delivered to these businesses in the first half. Adviser Office continues to receive strong support with a very positive reception to releases delivered.
“We have a strong pipeline, and expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future. Increased regulation and the need for scale has increased consolidation of advice firms and technology is increasingly at the centre of advisory businesses. We have continued to invest in growing our capacity in wealth management as a result.
“We have continued to observe and respond to increased demand from integrated wealth management firms where requirements spanning the entire IRESS product suite bring together capability from financial markets and wealth management.”
XPLAN Mortgage launched during the half, part of a strategic mortgage solution offering across advice, research and loan application.
Walsh added: “The Enterprise Lending business has achieved pleasing strategic goals following the re-positioning of this business from being wholly-services based to one that is more scalable. Over time, this allows us to increase the range of clients we can provide this solution to.
“For example, immediately prior to these results we announced a long-term, strategic partnership with the United Kingdom’s first digital-only bank, Atom. Atom will be the first IRESS client to implement the latest version of IRESS’ Mortgage Sales & Origination (MSO) solution. We are also well advanced with discussions with other prospects and have a good pipeline of quality opportunities.”
