Legacy income up but growth rate slows, Legacy Foresight figures show
Melanie May | 17 May 2018 | News
Legacy income saw a like-for-like growth of 4.6% in the year to 31 March, but the growth rate has stalled slightly, according to Legacy Foresight’s latest figures.
In the year to 31 March, Legacy Foresight’s 83 Legacy Monitor members received £1.5bn in legacy income. However, although income rose year-on-year, recent growth rates have slowed, with total income slightly lower than the figures reported in February’s Bulletin, which showed a 5.1% growth in the year to 31 December 2017.
According to Legacy Foresight, the most likely causes for the recent slowdown are a subdued economy and a slowdown in bequest numbers since the latter part of last year. It reports that in the year to March 2018 consortium members received a total of 52,981 bequests, down slightly (-1.2%) on the same period last year. This recent fall in bequest numbers is likely to suppress legacy income over the next few quarters, Legacy Foresight states.
Legacy Foresight also suggests that the subdued economy is likely to have a continued impact on two important drivers of average residual values house prices and share prices, Over the past 12 months average residual values were £59,700, compared to the record high of £60,600 reported three months ago.
However, there was another increase in the average value of cash gifts in the year to March, rising to £4,150, slightly up from the previous high of £4,100 back in Q3 2016. In addition, the long cold winter of 2017/18 resulted in a significant increase in deaths according to the latest mortality statistics, which in turn is likely to feed through to higher legacy notifications in the second part of this year.
This year’s programme benchmarks 83 of the UK’s charities, which together account for 51% of the legacy market. Legacy Foresight’s next quarterly data will be available in August 2018
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About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.