Housed: The Shared Living Podcast
Sarah Canning and Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists have teamed up with Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy to discuss the latest news, views and insights in the shared living sector.
Each episode they will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions which aren't often asked.
This podcast is a must for anyone working in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-Living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living.
Housed: The Shared Living Podcast
Budgeting, Video Content for B2B Marketing and UG Data
In this episode we discuss:
☑️ Budgeting: Realistic vs. aggressive opex, the cookie-cutter approach, and in-house or outsourcing operations.
☑️ Video Content for B2B Marketing: Bold or just obvious?
☑️ UG Data: Isn’t it time it was all in one place?
Housed: The Shared Living Podcast aims to bring the latest news, views and insights to the shared living sector.
Each week, Sarah Canning, Deenie Lee of The Property Marketing Strategists and Daniel Smith of Student Housing Consultancy will be delving into a wide variety of subjects and asking the questions that aren't often asked. This podcast is for anyone who works in Student Accommodation, BTR, Co-living, Operational Real Estate or Shared Living.
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are the personal views of the individual hosts.
Hello everyone and welcome to the 19th episode of How's the Shared Living podcast. I'm Sarah Canning from the Property Marketing Strategists.
SPEAKER_00:I'm Dan Smith from Student Housing Consultancy.
SPEAKER_01:And I'm Dini Lee from the Property Marketing Strategists.
SPEAKER_02:Thank you all for getting in touch about sponsoring the podcast. We're now at almost 3,000 downloads. So if you want to hear your brand in this space, then get in touch and we're happy to have conversations about individual episodes or whole series. So without further ado, let's get on with the show. So what have we been all up to in the last few days?
SPEAKER_00:Just before we crack on, I wanted to just jump on my soapbox for a little bit. I've had a couple of messages from people, in particular from a couple of third party operators asking why I'm talking about a race to the bottom and what that really means. I'll cover that a bit more on LinkedIn at some point, hopefully this week, if I get time. But really, this is not about the fact that third party operators are doing a below par job or anything like that. I don't know of any third party operators that are doing a bad job. What I'm trying to do by talking about a race to the bottom is talk about the fact that the management fees that some investors are paying are not enough. And it's not incentivizing operators to deliver best practice. That's not to say that they don't then try and go above and beyond, but It costs a lot to run a property. And I think some operators aren't showing exactly how much it costs, which is a problem in itself, because we are going to need to move on to paying more, unfortunately, because students are requiring more. And I think that is something that we're going to need to confront at some point fairly soon. But if an operator is not incentivized well enough by an investor to deliver best practice or add value to the property by going above and beyond, then that is a significant problem to the levels of service that the students will receive and also to the returns that the investors will see as well. So it's an education piece that I'm trying to do with investors. I've got several investor clients that are asking me to look into this and I'm happy to speak to as many more as required. But this is not about poor quality operations from third-party operators. This is very much about educating investors. So just please make sure that you understand where I'm coming from on this. It is not about poor quality operations. It is about paying a fair management fee and incentivizing your operator if you are an investor.
SPEAKER_02:I think the other thing that that links into, and Dini and I are quite often involved in it from, I guess, from any budgeting perspective, really, is any budget that has been put together to serve a deal is quite often unrealistic. And Dini and I quite often get involved with marketing budgets. And the marketing budget that was put in to mobilize a property or to get a deal across the line when it becomes operational we then find it's actually wholly unrealistic and we quite often look like the bad guys because we're kind of getting going we need more marketing budget and it's just the classic old marketing asking for more money again and we're like well no it just wasn't realistic in the first place and it means that any budget that you do I guess after that initial deal phase whether it's to get a new management company in or whether it's for a new acquisition it then has to kind of revert to business as usual. But then anything after that looks like an overspend when actually it's a correction.
SPEAKER_00:Now, this, however, is where operators can do better. And in the aggressive scale at all costs mentality that we've seen in the past, either five, 10 years ago, or now where it's right, we need to scale our third party operations because there is a level of profitability that comes at massive scale. I think there is a real aggressiveness in some of this budget setting. And I do think that that there are some overly optimistic revenue assumptions and OPEX assumptions. I've seen very high revenue assumptions and very low OPEX assumptions. And I can instantly pick that apart within, honestly, 10 seconds of looking at an OPEX and say, firstly, that marketing budget is way too low. You don't have any allocation for agents there unless that's sitting in another pot that I don't know about. But also then some of the FM or the planned protective maintenance or preventative maintenance or whatever it might be, I can see that there is definitely not enough of an allocation there. So I don't think that happens with every operator. I do think that there are some that are quite happy to focus on the business development at certain times and then will worry about the operations later on. But equally, I'm not as cynical as to say that that's happening with every single opportunity that comes across my desk. But there are plenty of times when I've looked at it and thought that's just never going to stack up. And I'm actually dealing with a couple now where I'm sitting between the investor and the third party operator. And I can see that actually that was an overly optimistic budget. Some of it is that you just can't tell what's going to happen with occupancy-wise with students. Some of it is that the investor maybe has got a little greedy at times and thought, yeah, I'm going to push the rents up. But ultimately, it does come down to the fact that when they're setting these budgets, there is a bit of a tendency to say, right, well, we need to show a low OPEX, a high revenue. Let's just make sure that we win this one. We'll also take a low management fee as well. That is the race to the bottom. And I think it's a race to the bottom in terms of the service that the investor will get. And it's a race to the bottom in terms of the management fees that everybody is getting as well.
SPEAKER_01:I think this comes down to When you're going through a procurement exercise, you need to have experts on both sides of the fence. And we do a lot of work with our clients to go through branding exercises where we work with creative agencies and we pull that brief together. And it's really hard for other people in the end is that a lot of people just want to do good work and get the job and do it at the right price and deliver the right job and role and service for the customer. But you've got to be able to have those honest conversations about actually what the reality is of what they're asking for and what's in that brief and you know there is going to be a lot of grey area in that scenario there's lots of grey area you don't know what you don't know about the building you don't know what you don't know about what's coming up that year you don't know what demand's going to be like so there's going to be a lot of assumptions and the same is when we're going through a website brief or a branding brief is that we work with the client to understand as much as possible but there's still going to be a lot of assumptions that we have to make to do that but we can have those honest conversations with that agency to to say well actually you need to make sure it includes this or you're going to need to include this or like one conversation I was having yesterday was around maps is that for that kind of budget you're not going to get an Airbnb style map on your website but you'll get a much better map than you've got so there's levels of what people can deliver and I just think that there needs to be an understanding when you're procuring stuff that you have to have a level of expertise to be able to get the best out of that procurement exercise otherwise you've just got to trust what you're being told and people are trying to win work so they're they want to be honest and transparent, but they still want to win the work. So I think there's, with everything in life, you've got to be honest and transparent and that's how you get the best from everything.
SPEAKER_00:It is that transparency. And I think that's what I'm trying to bring about as well. So, yes, I want fair management fees for third party operators because they deserve them and they're delivering a great service to investors and to the students. But I also want to make sure that the third party operators are very transparent in that beauty parade process where there's a tender process to see which third party manager is going to go in. I don't like seeing one line for fixed costs where it's, you know, 800 grand of fixed costs. I'd have no idea how to break that down. And I don't know where that money's going or what that's going to. And I think we do need to make sure that these assets are future-proof. So we are going to need to improve the service levels. And that is not going to be easy for investors to square off when they have no visibility ultimately. And it's pretty difficult for a consultant like me coming in to oversee a third-party operator or at least do a review into the performance to not have any visibility over that. So we definitely need more transparency and we more fairness in the management fees as well but that competitive tender process is always going to be tricky you're going to have homes for students up against project student and Grayson's and host and whoever else like there's there's a million different operators now that we could talk about but I think everyone is different you've got to focus on your USPs what can you actually do differently from someone else what are your systems how does that help who are your people and I think a lot of a lot of this comes down to people that's why like I said there's no third party where I would say, no, steer clear of them. They're absolute rubbish because all of the people I know who work in third party operations are great people. And I think that is something where we need to be focusing on the people on who's delivering it, who's that team. But I don't want this to sound like, you know, lots of people have been messaging me saying, hey, you know, that's not right. We're doing a great job in third party. I've had two people say, I think the assumption that there's a race to the bottom isn't right. I think it is. I think we are back in that stage where management fees are too low. There's a what I'm trying to make sure that there's a level playing field for all operators to compete for the properties or the portfolios at the right time with the right price or the right management fees and the right people and that the students are then going to benefit because that's ultimately what we're doing this for.
SPEAKER_02:So Dan just a little bit of insight into the process because it's not the side of the work that Deanie and I get involved in if you see something that's just a lump sum of fixed costs do you then encourage the investor to go back and challenge the third party operator you know what what happens with that?
SPEAKER_00:It depends on the model, because quite often if the management model is just a base fee, which is very low, and it can be as low as I've actually seen 1.5% of NOI previously. Every management company is different. But if that base management fee is low, then typically there's that fixed cost line where there are areas where you could definitely say, well, If I invoice from a different entity, if I just say that there's a fixed fee and its staffing is included within that, maybe I could either pay a little bit less on staffing. That's not to say that I think that third-party operators that do that are shortchanging their staff, just to put that out there. But I think that there are plenty of ways that you could make money on that fixed cost line. And that's just another revenue generator for a third-party operator. I don't know exactly how much that would enable them to generate. I would say that there's probably at least a 15 percent uplift that you could make on some of those fixed cost lines. But an investor should be looking at multiple different operators at any given time during that beauty parade. Now, beauty parades are really painful processes for investors to run. I know that firsthand. And I think it's really important that it's run fairly properly and quickly. This doesn't have to be a really prolonged, laborious process. It can be as simple as a matrix where you can see what the ESG strategy and policy is of each operator, what systems they use, what people they've got, review scores, credit ratings. And I've compiled that into a matrix already. So it should simplify that process. But then you have to think about the micro location. And then, you know, all important, what's that budget looking like? You know, what are the returns that that operator can deliver for this asset or this portfolio? And that's the primary focus that everybody has. Like when I put this into my spreadsheet, what does it look like in three years, five years, 10 years time? when I want to realize the value in the asset or portfolio. And I think there's a bit of a focus on that rather than drilling down heavily into an OPEX or saying, no, look, we think this is a bit light on marketing, which probably probably would never happen. But I think there's a real, not a lack of due diligence, because there's some investors out there and developers out there going through really thorough processes and using consultants to do that or doing it themselves, whatever. But I just think there needs to be, again, much more transparency. How can you do that? It's by talking about it. It's by people like us talking about it as well, bringing that to the fore. Because every conversation I have with people, there's a lot of talk about, and when I say that, every conversation I have with people about third-party management tender processes there's a lot of talk about introducer fees and how is a certain company getting in there above someone else. And that's always been the case. There's always been a company or different companies that has got really early into the process. And there's always a question of how they've done that. Has there been a beauty parade? And I think what I want investors to do is to make sure that they have checked out other operators. They have looked across multiple different third-party operators rather than, well, so-and-so said that they might help me with the design side of things for free and therefore they'll then do the management. I don't think it should work like that. I think there's definitely value add in those services very early on, but I think we need to make sure that it's not just about, well, so-and-so paid an introducer fee to a developer or to a planning agent or to whoever else to make sure that that management company is in there, or that it's just about, oh, hey, they're going to do free design work. There is a value in that, but I think we need to make sure that the company that is taking taking on this operator is going to be right for that property. And that is a really difficult thing to fully understand if you haven't got experience of it or if you haven't consulted enough operators. And that's, I think, where, again, I think investors just need to be aware that there is an opportunity to then either change or to really go and do that beauty parade. And I think that's where we just need to see a bit more of that. But we do also need to give consistency to those third-party operators that in there. I think there could be more changing of the guard at each property or portfolio, but I think we do need to show consistency. And so if you sign a three, five-year contract, you stick to that five-year contract and you give them the time and the space. But obviously you're going to need some break clauses in there in case they do breach contracts. But I would say that would be a real rare occasion. So yeah, the whole space is, it's quite a tricky landscape at the moment all round, but all I'm trying to do is bring about more transparency and fairer fees.
SPEAKER_01:Is there, but there's going to be a lot of stand I'm guessing across people's proposals that are going to be similar kind of costs. You know, yes, you might have different energy tariffs, but by and large, there's going to be a lot of costs that are just going to be what the costs are. And the changing things are going to be things like staffing structures, potentially systems, potentially marketing. So it kind of feels that there's some key questions around, well, how are you going to staff it? What's going to happen in this scenario? You know, you haven't got much of a marketing budget. So how are you going to fill the beds? Like, what's your plan? So it's just some pertinent questions that... those bits that can really be a marker of change on what that delivery price is. It's just understanding that because there are just some key questions that will give you those answers to those questions that will really challenge whether it's going to be the right service and the right process to look after and maximise the output for your building.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I mean, there's always a variation between the cost per bed and the operating cost ultimately that different operators are putting forward. Some of them may go a little bit staff heavy and then an investor may push back and say, I don't think we need a leasing and marketing specialist at the property or whatever it might be. And that can be fine-tuned. What you tend to find is that each operator has their own loyalties to specific suppliers, whether that be an energy supplier or broadband or an FM provider, for example. And that is something that can kind of hamper costs. I think there's those relationships there. are quite often very strong. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it to a certain extent. So they don't tend to shop around too much. I think there should be a bit more shopping around, to be completely honest. And those relationships can work very, very well. But I do think that there should be more of a focus on actually what's that delivering from a monetary perspective compared to the service levels, et cetera, and the relationship that we've built up over a long period of time. And that's the trouble. When there's no transparency in the fixed fee line or a fixed cost It just means that you've got no visibility over where savings could be made and what the issue is with a certain supplier. So they're all running to reasonably similar cost per beds to a certain extent. Some of them will want bigger incentives or would want some kind of exit bonus. And some of them are just more than happy to take a base management fee or a flat fee ultimately on a per bed basis. It's just a very mixed picture at the moment. And I think investors are finding it quite difficult to cut through some very complicated and long-winded pitch decks. And actually what they want to really understand is that can they call this person at any given time and make sure that they're speaking to the right person and they've got senior management's ear within the operator. And I think that is where there are several companies out there that are doing a great job. And I do think that the third party space is definitely about to go through quite a lot of change, both in housing of property and portfolios from some major investors and also some transitions, some moving around. We've already seen that this year. There's been quite a few thousand beds that have changed hands. I can see that happening more, but we do also need to give that continuity and that consistency to the operators that are running those buildings as well. It's an interesting landscape at the moment. Lots of change ahead. I think third party definitely needs to do a better job on the likes of ESG and various other areas. Even though they don't control the building, you can still set the tone but I do think overall there are some really good people working in third party there are some great companies out there as well we just need to be more transparent more open and then you know the management fees will increase and we will be able to improve the student satisfaction ratings all around.
SPEAKER_02:Well it does sound like you've been been really busy. Deanie what's been keeping you occupied the last week or so?
SPEAKER_01:We're helping with a few budgets so it's budget season at the moment so we are deep in lots of numbers and quotes and understanding what we need strategically to support our clients through that budget process. We're working with a lot of clients on awards. So we've been writing up a lot of awards over the past few weeks. And I guess just connected to budgeting, we do have obviously quite a lot of proposals out there. And the message we're getting back is that we just need to finalise our budgets. We just need to finalise budgets. So I think lots of people across the sector have got their heads down dealing with numbers, working out plans for next year, which obviously includes pricing and as well which I know we have a constant debate about whether we can understand what the price should be now or not but it's obviously obviously not going the way everyone expected this year too so it'll be interesting to see what those discussions are behind those closed doors about where people are with pricing for next year but yeah it's kind of we're in the midst of that planning prepping strategy understanding finishing off this year making sure everything's full for this year but working towards the next year
SPEAKER_00:did you do an awards video the other day because it In my experience, awards are literally just about a word document or some kind of online form. It sounds like it's gone way beyond that now.
SPEAKER_02:You basically have freedom to add supporting documents and the feedback that we've got from speaking to various judges and kind of our own experience is sometimes the videos can cut through. If you think about a judge reading through pages and pages and pages of written documents, you still need to have the facts in there because everybody digests content in a different way. So I think the benefit of having a supporting video is that you're kind of appealing to different types of people that digest information in different ways. We would never advise that people do a video just for an award. It should, you know, you maximise the day and create loads and loads of content that can be available for awards, but also B2C, B2B and have real longevity as well.
SPEAKER_00:Just quickly, while we're on videos, have you seen the Harris Studios video for the collection portfolio? It's totally different than anything I've ever seen. I've never seen anything like it. I mean, don't get me wrong, everyone's bored of the standard PDFs for a portfolio. This was a real curveball. But it got everyone talking on my WhatsApp. When it dropped, my WhatsApp was going mental with people saying, have you seen this? And that's not me saying it's amazing or it's terrible or anything like that. It's just so totally different from anything that I've seen before in terms of trying to sell a PBSA portfolio. Using what's effectively a movie trailer is a very, very new concept.
SPEAKER_02:I guess that's the benefit of different types of content and video is that it enables you to do something different that really brings your brand to life, which is much harder to do in a written format. And a lot of these awards entries have got really, really low word count. It's very, very difficult to write awards with 750 words, basically. So you have to kind of look at what supporting documents you can add to it. bring it to life in a different way. But I think, yeah, people don't, you know, we always talk about Gen Z and that they've got low attention spans and that Gen Alpha are going to be even more so that way. And that, you know, you can't have a website, for example, with reams and reams and reams and reams of copy, you know, brochures are outdated. But don't forget, like a lot of the people that Harris Associates deal with are will be kind of veering towards potentially that gen z the people that work
SPEAKER_00:yeah
SPEAKER_02:for these you know for these investors so that kind of initial thing has got to grab the attention of actually you know an increasingly younger audience anyway so those kind of lines i think that people kind of think well b2b it has to be written brochures and it has to be like really formal well actually that's kind of changing because the demographic of people you know b2b people are they're still humans and that age you know it's depressing as it is we get older and a lot of the you know that generation feels like it gets younger so you've got to you know continue change up the content
SPEAKER_00:So we'll be selling PBSA blocks on TikTok soon enough.
SPEAKER_01:But I also think you've got to go back to how these things came about. Like most things is done on pen and paper because that's the tools that we had when we started doing these things. We didn't have access to video or social media or an easy way to record a video. You know, it cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds with a whole film crew. And I think if you had your time again and you said, this is a completely new idea and we need to get some information from people and tell them about this property this portfolio what's the best way to do it you're not going to say take a bunch of pictures and put it in a brochure you're going to say let's make a video and I think it's just challenging those perceptions of we don't have to always do it the way that we should do it. And I liken this to, as most people know, Sarah and I are vegan. I liken this a lot to kind of vegan food that people always go, oh, you can't have macaroni cheese without cheese. And it's like, I can make a really lovely macaroni cheese with like cauliflower and almonds and oat milk. And it's the idea that because it's always with cheese, it always has to be with cheese. It's kind of, let's just forget what we knew and just open our minds and use what technology and resources we have available to us now.
SPEAKER_02:I was just going to say, I think it goes hand in hand a little bit with what we were talking about before, what Dan was talking about with budgets, really. I think as well, it's like, we see so many marketing budgets that has just been repeated year on year. It's just, they just keep putting in the same one. And it's like, hold on a minute. Everything is changing around us. And I know it's a lot of work and we're doing a lot of the work, but every year you have to look at what tools are out there. What are the new prices? What's the new technology? What are the new suppliers? And create a whole new budget again and come up with new ideas and that does take a lot of resource it takes a lot of time and it takes a lot of money and it takes a lot of people but that's how we innovate and move forward otherwise you just end up with the same marketing budget and the same suppliers and the same tools that you probably had in your budget five years ago.
SPEAKER_01:And that's one of the frustrations when you have low marketing budgets is you can't test new media because you just don't have the wiggle room to do it and I think that's That's really stopping... pbsa as a sector move forward because they just don't have the budget to test and try things because they've got to make every penny count and there's probably loads of places that we should be as a sector advertising but no one has got the budget to try it and test it and see whether it works
SPEAKER_00:investment is reasonably simple in terms of effects costs you can just add an inflationary uplift every year say three percent so just create a new tab in your excel sheet on your business plan and just auto set the formula to uplift to three percent each year if you think that's what inflation is going to be. And your rental uplift might be 3% to 5% to 10% to 20%, whatever, depending on how it is. The key with the investment is the nuance in between. It's not quite the cookie cutter approach. Let me just say that. But yeah, I think it is very much changing. But yeah, good to see that you are thinking outside the box when it comes to those awards entries in particular. I hate doing them. I hate the fact that there's a word count. I really do, as and when I do them. I've only actually done one in my time, but I felt like I was obliged to get to the 750 word limit on that. But yeah, I think I'll be getting you to write a few more when I've got something to shout about.
SPEAKER_02:That's interesting, though, because we're dealing with a client who contacted us who wanted to enter an award that was associated with investors in people. And the supporting documents said it needed to be the wow factor. They kept reiterating, you know, they're not looking for a bog standard kind of award. award and we had a conversation an open and honest conversation and you know the advice that we gave them was you either go for it and you put money and budget behind it including a video which again could be repurposed but otherwise it doesn't feel worth paying us to write it and that all the time that it takes for the client to come up with all of these amazing initiatives and successes that they've had over the past year if you haven't really got enough substance behind it and you're not gonna kind of go for it so actually that's kind of what what they decided was they think that they've done a good job over the last year, but they just think that the things that they could talk about probably wouldn't warrant like a video and that kind of wow factor. So, you know, we've discussed awards before on the podcast, but you don't have to enter them and it takes time and effort and money. So if you haven't really got the substance in it, then don't bother and wait for the following year when maybe, you know, you can really add some substance to it. We're nearly out of time. I guess I just wanted to mention that I was really, really privileged to be invited to the UCAS accommodation round table this week. And I really, really enjoyed the layout. It was, I quite often get invited to round tables and sometimes they're kind of like an hour and a half over lunch, but actually this was kind of spread over a longer period of time. It was three key discussion points on international and political outlook, accessibility and disability, and also student sentiment. And as you would expect from the guys at UCAS, the day was full of really fun insight and data they kept emphasizing that you know they have so much data that they can only give certain bits that are relevant to specific conversations but because they have it if you ever want anything else you want to delve into different things that they can cut it however you know however you want really they've got their insight tools they've got uni ai and you know i think if you're a client of ucas and you're trying to build say a marketing campaign then there's a lot that they will give you in a for it to enable you to build the fantastic marketing campaign because you need that data in order to do it. Things like forecasting tools, for example, they've got that. I really enjoyed it. It was a good group. It was a lot of interactive and lively discussions. Actually, one point, Matt Burton from UPP was there and I promised that I would correct something we said on the last podcast that he pulled me up on. I don't think we got it wrong, but I don't think we made it clear enough. And that was that we were talking before about maintenance loads And he was keen for us to point out that it's not that maintenance loans haven't gone up in the past. It's just that they haven't gone up in line with inflation and with rental growth. So I just wanted to make it clear to Matt, because I promised that we didn't make it clear enough last time. And actually, we've discussed the stats yesterday at the UCAS accommodation roundtable. And it actually looks like in the last two years, the student maintenance loan in England has gone up 5.2%. And rent has gone up 14.6%. So that really, really clearly shows you the divide because apparently they look at projected inflation, not actual.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's madness. The whole system needs completely looking at. We could spend an entire series going through the political conundrum that university funding and student funding is going to give to a, you know, potentially... or probably on hopefully Labour government come July the 5th. That's a mess. With just quick, I know we're out of time, but with UCAS, what is the reason that all university applications, whether it's postgrads, undergrads, internationals, domestics, why don't they all go through UCAS? because that would give us one source of truth. That's all that we need. And that's why I ask, do you have to buy the data from UCAS? I know that some of you do and some, they're very generous with their reports. And we're all very grateful when they do put the information out there. They are a commercial entity as well as being the body that oversees the applications for UK undergrads. But what I really want to understand is why we don't just have that one source of truth and that one application process. Thoughts on that?
SPEAKER_02:We did discuss it yesterday. So UK UGs, they have the data. International UGs, only 60% go through UCAS. They would love it to be 100%. Some universities use different pathways directly. Some of them, I guess, have relationships with other parties that go directly through the university. So, I mean, 60% of international UGs is a significant number, but it's not the whole number. And their focus very much is on undergraduate applicants and you know they're I think they'll be working on trying to increase that 60% up to 100% or as near to as possible. As we know, a lot of universities have a lot of history, a lot of relationships and a lot of red tape. So anything that kind of shifts that probably won't happen very, very quickly.
SPEAKER_00:I don't see that that should be such a massive problem. I think that, yes, the legacy issue does create a bit of a problem there. But I think that every university is accepting applications either through UCAS or direct or potentially through pathway providers, it's have it all through UCAS. Or just give us one source of truth for undergrads and for postgrads. I just don't understand why that wouldn't be the case. If I was Universities UK, or if I was at UCAS, or if I was leading the Russell Group of universities, that is what I would be pushing for. Because right now, we don't have all of the data. We have data in bits all over the place. We've also got HESA, and the HESA data is two years out of date now, and is always at least 18 months out of date. There's absolutely no point in using that, to be completely honest, because it doesn't show a real-time picture, UCAS could do that. So, yeah, I'm sure that conversations have happened at a much higher level than this right now, but I just don't understand it. I'd love Stephen or anyone to get in touch to explain why that can't just be the process. And hopefully maybe the government could get involved and look to mandate that. I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:Is it our classic problem across most things, though, that we have all the systems and the abilities and the technology to make our lives simpler? But there's so much legacy and bureaucracy and I guess lack of willingness to change that we don't make our lives simple. All of that. Yes.
SPEAKER_02:So yeah, I'm sure there will be future UCAS roundtables, their first one. And so if anyone is invited to one in future, then I very much suggest that they go for a day of really interesting conversation, networking and insight. So we will wrap up there. Thank you all so much for listening. We love to hear your feedback and we get that via emails, via WhatsApps and when we go to events as well. So do keep that kind of line of communication going because we make this podcast for you guys and for the sector. Thank you again and we will catch you next week for episode 20, can you believe? We will see you soon.