I'm just being conservative assuming the cost to income stays...

I'm just being conservative assuming the cost to income stays constant. I agree it should keep ticking down over time

When FID buys FUA, they can't just transfer all those funds straight on to their administration platform and into their funds. They must satisfy the clients best interest first and demonstrate a value proposition that the client will be better off moving across and that's why it can take 2-3 years before the acquired FUA really hits its full earnings potential.

This all forms part of FID's due diligence, some books are unsuitable based on the client mix etc and FID may make the judgment they won't be able to move enough clients across to make the numbers stack up. Hence, why it's not just a case of FID going out and buying as much FUA as possible, which is only marginally profitable if you only get the FUA part. As FID highlights in the presentations, the key to the business being highly profitable is earning the 3 layers of fees (thank you vertical integration).

A key point is it's not quite true vertical integration as FID is not a fund manger, their funds are fund of funds, so FID's role is to simply select the underlying fund managers for its funds. The fee is smaller but they do less work