SWC Community: MORE thoughts… I’ve spent the week speculating at length (sorry) on which different groups might eventually find #SWC’s proposed MORE Preference Share interesting, and what potential market they may tap into (either naturally, or as attractive substitutes, if institutional mandates allow, or where retail interest is more flexible) Overnight I pulled down some stats whilst looking, on a tangent, at Fixed Income investors in the UK…. According to the latest Investment Association data, UK funds currently hold around £295 billion in fixed-income assets. And in Q2 2026, UK retail investors put a net £4.14 billion into fixed-income funds. Then another £863 million flowed in during July - the fourth consecutive month of inflows. Meanwhile, equity funds saw £2.1 billion flow out during July. And where was some of that fixed-income money going? Into Government Bond funds: +£333m Strategic Bond funds: +£319m Mixed Bond funds: +£181m And Specialist Bond funds: +£122m So there’s clearly plenty of retail money actively moving towards investments where somewhat predictable income, yield and the relationship between risk and return matter. The Investment Association’s explanation for the recent flows? Investors were seeking potentially less volatile exposure than equities. And that feels on point when thinking about what #SWC is trying to create with MORE. A pref stock that seeks to have reduced volatility, and a stable (albeit variable) dividend yield. Because MORE won’t exist in a vacuum. Investors will be able to compare its eventual yield and risk against government bonds, corporate bonds, bond funds, other Preference Shares, cash, equities… So perhaps some percentage of those investors will, in future, ask the simple question: “Am I being paid enough for the risk I’m taking?” A fixed-income investor can already find yield elsewhere. The question is what extra yield they might require to accept MORE’s very different issuer, concentration, liquidity and capital risks. With that £295 BILLION sitting in UK fixed-income funds, and with billions MORE of fresh retail money flowing into them this year, there’s clearly no shortage of UK investors actively looking for income and weighing up risk against return. The question that remains is how much MORE income does it take to persuade someone to move further along the risk curve? We hopefully won’t have to wait much longer to find out. 👀

SWC Community: New day, MORE thoughts… Which other large UK investment pool to consider next, for those who may potentially find their way to look into #SWC’s proposed MORE Preference Share? How about ... SIPPs? (our tax-advantages Self-Invested Personal Pensions in the UK) 👀 According to data issued by the FCA last year, there were around 5.3 million people holding a SIPP in 2024, with approx £567 billion of assets under administration. The equivalent figure was just £330bn in 2022 - and pension industry commentators predict that the SIPP market will comfortably exceed £750bn by 2030. More and more often it seems, people are exercising autonomy in their pension affairs (partly by necessity when seeing their existing workplace schemes underperforming perhaps) Many of us in the SWC Community of investors already have some allocation to SWC in our SIPPs (🙌) - but might some small % of that wider group of 5.3m people be interested in the prospects of MORE too? The nature of SIPP investors makes them interesting - the millions of people who have proactively chosen to invest in a pension that gives them greater control over where their retirement money is invested, as opposed to solely relying on less flexible workplace defined contribution pension plans. And depending on the provider (Hargreaves Lansdown is by far the largest SIPP provider), SIPPs can include funds, company shares, government bonds and other eligible investments. Which brings us to MORE… We don’t yet know the precise final terms, the eventual yield or exactly how widely available and how quickly MORE might become through SIPP providers. But if it does become readily accessible to SIPPs, I can't help wonder where a weekly-paying Preference Share might fit for some of these investors? Take a purely hypothetical 10% yield on a £100K pot: £10,000 annual income. Paid as approx £192 every week. Obviously the £100,000 remains invested and at risk. And total returns and diversification matters in pension planning of course. Young pension investors and those closer to retirement will have different perspectives too. But I keep coming back to the same standout feature of MORE: those 52 potential income payments a year, at likely double-digit yield. For someone building a pension pot, perhaps they simply reinvest them. Or for someone already drawing a pension income, perhaps they'd withdraw them. So when MORE’s eventual yield and final terms land, perhaps there’s another question worth asking for the next phase; Could MORE find a place in some of those 5.3 million SIPPs, helping to add growth to the £567bn in those portfolios? It’s yet one MORE pool of potential investors to add to the list. 👀

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SWC Community: More MORE thoughts… So far this week, we’ve looked at who might be most interested in #SWC’s proposed MORE Preference Share. Looking beyond the UK’s £420bn love affair with Cash ISAs. And besides the 22 million people with the weird obsession of hanging onto £137bn in Premium Bonds. What about a completely different group, who already invest specifically for income in the UK?🤔 After seeing @nimacheeps’ Tube ad for the “reassuringly boring” City of London Investment Trust this week, I dug into the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) website, and there are some pretty interesting numbers on who invests in those types of investments companies. It’s a sector that makes up over a third of the UK’s FTSE 250, and manages £270bn in assets. Unlike our Cash ISA/Premium Bond crowd, those that choose investment companies - in the main, institutions, then private investors & wealth managers - don’t need convincing to cross the bridge from Saving to Investing. They’re already there. One particular subset of the most successful Investment Companies stands out for attention too; those the AIC calls its “Dividend Heroes”. There are currently 21 such heroes (hey, how Bitcoiny!). The hero definition is an investment company that’s increased its dividend every year at least 20 years consecutively. And some of their track records are bonkers. The City of London Investment Trust for example, has now increased its dividend payment for… 60 years in a row. 9 others of the 21 have likewise increased their divs every single year for the last 50+years. If you look at just the headline figures of what sort of yields these established income investments actually offer today, across the 21 Dividend Heroes… The Average dividend yield =3.23% The median is 3.40% The highest is 7.10% And the lowest is 0.31% But there’s an important distinction here. Investors in those aren’t just accepting an average 3.23% return. The dividend yield is only the ‘income’ part of the equation; across the wider investment company sector, the AIC says the average company has returned about 10% a year over the past decade, taking into account share price appreciation from Net Asset Value being increased etc. And there’s that other aspect that the AIC can point to… Across those 21 Dividend Heroes, the actual dividend per share - the pennies or pounds paid out usually each quarter - has grown at an average annualised rate of 5.11% over the past 5 years. So their proposition can be thought of as: Income today + potentially growing income tomorrow + potential capital growth. They are different investments to MORE, with completely different risk/reward profiles. But perhaps that’s why this group of investors is more intrigued when thinking about MORE. The Cash ISA saver in comparison might ask “Why should I risk my capital?” The Premium Bond holder may ask “Why would I give up my Government backed guarantee on the capital of my savings?” But the established income investor? They’ve already accepted investment risk in pursuit of income AND the possibility of capital returns. They’ll see & measure MORE as having different risk - a very different issuer, concentration, liquidity, capital and growth characteristics - than what they’re used to. But their question might simply be: “What income yield are you going to pay me to accept this particular risk/reward proposition?” 👀 For an already established population of investors deliberately buying investments yielding 2%, 3%, 4%, 5% etc as part of a broader total-return strategy… at what point does a cumulative Preference Share, paying its dividend out weekly, make at least some of them look twice? 8%? 10%? 12%? At what dividend rate does MORE become interesting to that entirely new group of investors for SWC? This class of UK investors don’t need persuading that taking investment risk in pursuit of income is a thing. Some of them have been doing it for 60 flipping years straight. 👀👀

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