IG Group Holdings (LSE: IGG) grabbed attention last month with record revenue of £1.12 billion and a board-led strategic review that may result in a New York relisting. But the full annual report for the seven-month period ended December 31, 2025, published this week, runs to 166 pages, and several of the most interesting disclosures sit well below the headline numbers.

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IG Is Deliberately Taking on More Trading Risk

Buried in the principal risks section, the company stated that it "increased our risk appetite in respect of market risk," supported by improvements to its risk measurement capabilities, according to the filing.

The numbers confirm the shift. Average daily market risk exposure, measured by Value at Risk at a 99% confidence level, rose from £3.5 million in the year to May 2025 to £4.5 million in the seven months to December 2025, the report showed. The maximum single-day exposure hit £7.6 million, up from £5.9 million in the prior period.

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For a company whose core OTC derivatives business is built on internalizing client trades and hedging excess exposure, a deliberate increase in the amount of unhedged risk it is willing to carry is a notable change in posture. IG has historically positioned itself as running a low-risk market-making model, the kind of framing that helped it earn a BBB credit rating from Fitch.

The elevated risk appetite comes at the same time IG is expanding into crypto products, where volatility and liquidity gaps are materially different from its traditional FX and equity index markets.

£55.4 Million in Illiquid Kraken Parent Shares

When IG sold Small Exchange to Kraken for $101.5 million in October 2025, $67.5 million of the consideration came not in cash but in shares of Payward Inc., Kraken's parent company. Those shares now sit on IG's balance sheet at £55.4 million and are classified as Level 3 in the fair value hierarchy, the least liquid and hardest-to-value category, according to the financial statements.

The fair value is determined using "a market approach based on recent equity funding transactions," the report stated, meaning IG is marking the position to Kraken's most recent private funding round . The company already booked a £4.1 million gain on the holding during the period.

If Kraken's valuation declines, or if an IPO prices below the most recent round, IG would need to write down the position. The report also disclosed that IG retained a "contingent revenue participation arrangement entitling the Group to a share of future revenues for a two-year period" from the Small Exchange sale, essentially a royalty on Kraken's derivatives volumes. Neither of these details featured in IG's March results announcement.

Separately, the notes reveal that IG holds a board seat at Zero Hash, a cryptocurrency trading platform accounted for as an associate, giving it influence over yet another piece of crypto infrastructure.

Employee Sentiment Has Turned Negative

IG's employee Net Promoter Score fell to -0.3 for the period ended December 2025, the report disclosed, down from +0.2 in the prior year. The financial services industry benchmark is +29, according to the filing.

The company acknowledged the figure is "below where we'd like it" and attributed the decline to "the significant cultural change we've been driving." That cultural change has included a decentralized operating model introduced in 2024, workforce reductions from operational exits, and what the report called a "stronger focus on meritocracy."

Over 300 new employees have joined since June 2025 from external organizations. Average headcount excluding Freetrade fell 12% year-on-year. IG said it would introduce monthly pulse surveys from January 2026 to get "real-time insights into colleague sentiment."

For a company that repeatedly describes a "high-performance culture" as a competitive advantage, and where CEO Breon Corcoran earned a bonus at 89.7% of maximum, the gap between management's self-assessment and staff sentiment is worth watching.

LTIP Targets Imply Ambitions Well Above Public Guidance

The remuneration section contains long-term incentive plan targets for the three years ending December 2028 that appear to go well beyond what IG has communicated publicly. CEO Corcoran and CFO Clifford Abrahams were granted fixed share awards in September 2025, with vesting tied to revenue and earnings per share performance.

For maximum payout, IG would need to reach £1.51 billion in revenue by 2028, the report showed. That implies a compound annual growth rate of 11.4%, roughly double the "mid-to-high single-digit" organic revenue growth that management has guided for 2026.

These are stretch targets by design, and the threshold for any vesting at all is £1,226 million, still a 9% jump from the CY25 base. But they reveal how aggressively the board has calibrated executive incentives, and they put a concrete number on what "step change in value creation," a phrase used repeatedly in the report, actually means in IG's internal planning.

Independent Reserve: 88% Goodwill on an Unproven Acquisition

The financial notes disclosed that IG's acquisition of Independent Reserve, the Australian crypto exchange, generated provisional goodwill of £59.7 million on total consideration of £67.7 million. That means roughly 88% of the purchase price was allocated to goodwill rather than identifiable assets, the report showed.

The identifiable intangible assets included customer relationships valued at £18.5 million, a trade name at £6.3 million, internally developed software at £7.9 million and cryptocurrency holdings at £7.9 million, all provisional. The remaining 30% equity interest held by Independent Reserve's management is subject to a put-call arrangement based on performance in FY27 and FY28, with a separate contingent payment of A$15 million tied to FY26 revenue.

If crypto trading volumes in Asia-Pacific decline or the exchange fails to scale as IG expects, the goodwill position would face impairment testing. IG plans to launch crypto products in Singapore, Australia and the UAE through Independent Reserve in the second half of 2026, but those products are still subject to regulatory approval.