Analysing performance data from groups of charities to provide a timely snapshot of the latest trends

In the 12 months to December 2019, our 82 Legacy Monitor consortium members received cash legacy income of £1.58bn.

Income was up 6.6% on 2018 – an impressive figure given a backdrop of subdued house price growth and falling bequest numbers.

We believe that some unusually large bequests bolstered income growth in early 2019. Meanwhile, total bequest numbers were 9% down on 2018, primarily due to the widely reported delays at probate courts.

These delays now appear to be abating, with a backlog of around 3,200 bequests to be processed over the coming months. Legacy notifications should return to ‘normal’ levels during 2020.

Keep in touch with our legacy monitor news, here.

We’re coming to the end of our first year of Legacy Journey.

It’s been fascinating to see the evolution of the supporter journeys from our founding members across their different legacy segments and, we’re delighted to welcome Macmillan to the consortium.

What’s been particularly interesting is how some members are focused on legacy communications while others incorporate pieces and messaging from across the organisation. We’ll be exploring the impact of this strategy at our end of year review in March.

Thanks to some technical development and desire from the group, we now collect response rates; It will be exciting to see how different creatives and journey’s influence results over the next year.

If you’d like to hear more about Legacy Journey, get in touch with Richard Hill.

Legacy Foresight is pleased to welcome four additional charities to our Legacy Monitor programme for 2020, taking the consortium to 82 members.

Confirmed joiners are Action on Hearing Loss, Maggie’s MSF UK and St Mungo’s.

Richard Hill, Programme Manager comments; “We are pleased to welcome four new charities to Legacy Monitor including MSF UK, who are re-joining after a year out, and Action on Hearing Loss, who were one of the original causes we worked with 25 years ago.

Last year, consortium members received £1.5bn in legacy income and 54,000 gifts in wills. 2019 was a year of considerable uncertainty; we’re excited to work with our charity clients to see what the coming year will bring.”

Last week, we released figures for 2019 Q3 Legacy Monitor, which shows that bequest numbers are down by 8% year on year, across the consortium of 80 member charities.

Our analysis shows 6% of this decline is due to the impact of delays at HMCTS, caused by the transition to the new probate service, once long-term trends and changes to the numbers of deaths have been taken into account.

Ongoing delays caused by the introduction of the new structure and processes at HMCTS have been affecting bequest figures for the past six months.

Chris Farmelo, Technical Director, says: “Once the backlog is cleared, charities can expect a significant boost to bequest numbers to compensate for the shortfall in bequests experienced this year. For Legacy Monitor consortium members specifically, who make up over 50% of the legacy market overall, this increase looks to be substantial; estimated at around 24% higher in October to December than would otherwise have been the case.”

Overall, legacy income has continued to hold up although there are signs that growth is slowing, with quarter-on-quarter growth of just 0.2% between 2019 Q2 and 2019 Q3.

For the news in full, download the Legacy Monitor bulletin.

Latest brexit arrangements will see a return to growth for legacy incomes

The UK legacy market will grow by nearly £600 million over the next five years, according to our latest market forecasts. This follows a 2% drop in income in 2018; the first decline in seven years. The new analysis is based on this week’s decisions to extend the Brexit deadline to 31st January 2020 and to hold a general election on 12th December 2019.

We predict that UK charity donations in wills will grow from £3.2 billion in 2019 to £3.8 billion in 2024. Growth rates over the five years will average 3.3% per year – similar to those seen in the aftermath of the Brexit referendum in June 2016, but slower than the pre-referendum period, when annual growth was 4.1% per year.

We expect 2020 to remain relatively subdued, with annual income growth of around 2%. However, the period 2021-2024 is expected to see stronger growth in key economic variables, which combined with an underlying rise in the number of deaths, will generate legacy income growth of nearly 4% per annum.

We should highlight that, although latest developments are in line with our core scenarios for legacy income, there still remains significant risks relating to the outcome of the general election, along with global trade tensions and geopolitical pressures. In today’s uncertain times, it is vital to continue to monitor developments in the wider economy and consider the impact that they could have on the value of gifts left to charity.

Our last quarterly report from Legacy Monitor showed that delays at HMCTS caused by the introduction of the new structure and processes had affected bequest figures.

Based on estimations by the Probate Registry that the backlog would be cleared by the end of August, we expected that bequest numbers would ‘return to normal’ for Q3 2019. However, this has not yet happened; we’ve analysed the latest bequest figures for 19 of our 20 largest Consortium charities, and they received 9% fewer bequests year on year.

The lower number of deaths in early 2019 compared to early 2018 is the one important reason for the anticipated year-on-year decline, but based on our modelling for Legacy Monitor, it shows that probate delays reduced bequest numbers by 6%.

Better news for Q4?

The Institute for Legacy Management (ILM) expect the situation to improve in Q4 2019. On 15th October commenting that “service levels [at the Probate Registry] are returning to (and in some cases improving on) the situation prior to April. … the backlog is starting to be cleared, and you should start to see notification numbers rise over the next few weeks. This information has come from third parties as well as HMCTS and leads us to believe that the backlog will be cleared by Christmas and quite possibly by the end of November.”
If this happens, charities can expect a significant boost to bequest numbers in Q4 2019, to compensate for the shortfall in bequests experienced this year. For Legacy Monitor Consortium members, this increase looks to be substantial; we estimate around 24% higher in October to December than would otherwise have been the case.
As ever, we’ll continue to monitor the situation closely. Keep in touch for updates.

The latest results from the Legacy Monitor are in!

Legacy income up…
Despite the acute uncertainty we face because of Brexit, our 80 Legacy Monitor members’ saw their legacy income grow by 4.3% to £1.54bn in the past 12 months. This strong growth is surprising given the recent slowdown in key economic variables; which saw house prices grow by just 1.5% p.a. in the first quarter of 2019 while share prices are lower than they were a year ago. We believe that some substantial bequests reported by some members have driven this growth.

…while bequest numbers fall
We’ve seen a fall in bequest notifications, which are down across the consortium by 7%. We believe that much of this drop is due to delays at the probate registries, caused by the introduction of new structure and processes. Providing that these delays are caught up, charities should see their bequest figures back to ‘normal’ by the time of our next bulletin, so watch this space.

For further analysis, you can download the Legacy Bulletin. You can also keep up to date with legacy market news and trends by subscribing to our newsletter.

It’s that time of the year again when we’re starting to think about next year’s Legacy Monitor consortium – how time flies! This year we’re starting the process earlier to coincide more effectively with everyone’s planning and budgeting cycles. We are pleased to be able to announce one new member for 2020; Action on Hearing Loss, who work on behalf of the UK’s 9 million people who are deaf or have hearing loss. Action on Hearing Loss (then RNID) were involved in our very first legacy forecasting project 25 years ago, so it’s great to have them back on board.

If you know any charity that would or should like to join the consortium, please let us know. For those of you that might be considering leaving the programme (perish the thought), please let us know by the end of September; we will, of course, send out a formal reminder beforehand.

We now have a date in the diary: 2nd October, for our annual market review presentation. This is a great time for all consortium members to come together for an afternoon to discuss economic, social and competitive factors driving the legacy sector. We will be sending out invites in due course and look forward to seeing as many of you as possible.