UBS Group AG

Ladies and gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to the first quarter 2022 results presentation. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. Should you need operator assistance, please press star and zero. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Sarah Mackey, UBS Investor Relations. Please go ahead, madam.

Good morning and welcome, everyone. Before we start, I would like to draw your attention to our cautionary statement slide at the back of today's results presentation. Please also refer to the risk factors in our 2021 annual report, together with additional disclosures in our SEC filings. On slide two, you can see our agenda for today. It's now my pleasure to hand over to Ralph Hammers, Group CEO.

Thank you, Sarah. Good morning, everyone. The first quarter of 22 was dominated by extraordinary geopolitical macro events as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And during these turbulent times, we've remained focused on three key priorities. Executing our strategic plans, serving our clients, and managing risk. We once again proved the benefits of our global scale and the power of our ecosystem for investing. And we're working hard to enhance them every day. Our clients had to navigate a challenging and complex environment, as you can well understand, so our focus was to really stay close to them and advise them on their portfolios and risk management. At the same time, we prudently manage our own risks. By working together across the businesses and the control functions, we further reduced our exposure to Russia. Our focus on clients and risk management resulted in another strong quarter financially, and it highlighted the resilience of our diversified business. We have and will continue to execute on our strategy regardless of the market's volatility. On slide four, you can see some of the milestones that we have achieved so far this year. In an environment of higher rates, higher inflation, higher volatility, it's more important than ever to ensure that portfolios are well diversified including exposure to alternatives. And during the last quarter, our wealth management clients committed $8 billion to private markets. Our US clients continue to value our seamless offering for separately managed accounts. And we saw another $7.5 billion of inflows in the first quarter. Sustainability, as you can well imagine, remains important for our clients, for us as well. And this quarter, we launched a number of sustainable finance products. For example, a new climate transition fund in collaboration with Aon. And in Switzerland, we now also offer mortgages with preferential interest rates if the proceeds are used to improve energy efficiency of buildings. Our clients are at the center of our strategy, so we're particularly proud to have been named number one in client satisfaction across U.S. wealth management firms in the J.D. Power Survey. But also in the latest Euromoney private banking survey, we received 192 awards, including best wealth manager in Asia Pacific, best wealth manager in Western Europe, as well as the best wealth manager in sustainable investing globally. And we were awarded currency derivatives house of the year in 22 risk awards. So accolades from many different institutions for how we're doing. We're also continuously evolving our mobile applications, making it even easier for our clients to stay connected with us. More than half of our personal clients in Switzerland are active on mobile banking now. We process more than three times as many mobile logins as we do desktop logins. So you see also that trend here moving away from desktop to mobile. To make us even better in delivering our client promise, we're driving cultural change across the firm. Early this month, 10,000 colleagues became part of Agile at UBS, our Agile way of working. We're removing silos and bringing different types of expertise together in teams. We continue also to support hybrid working. For example, in the US, we launched an industry-leading approach to flexible working that will provide employees in eligible roles with the opportunity to work 100% remotely. And that's in addition to the two-thirds of employees who we've already enabled to work in hybrid models. Now, in short, we're continuing to focus on our strategic imperatives, as you can see. One of those is also sustainability, core to our ecosystem, part of our purpose, a strategic focus as well, especially in these volatile times where we should not forget about this. And you see an update on this on slide five. On the people side, we're supporting the people in Ukraine and those who have fled the country. Clients and employees can donate towards relief efforts through the Optimist Foundation. Together with XCX Markets, we have committed to match those donations. So far, the total amount of around $30 million is raised, and with our goal to reach up to $50 million. So still going to a higher number here, but we have 30 million raised up to now We also advanced on our priority to address wealth inequality For example, we introduced an inclusive investing group in the US and that team specialized in helping clients promote diversity and inclusive growth through their investments on the planet side as you may well remember We had our AGM earlier this month. Our shareholders voted in favor of our client roadmap across the different scopes. We've also received valuable feedback there. So we'll stay engaged with shareholders as we further evolve our targets and methodologies that we apply. One way in which we'll evolve our climate reporting is by disclosing emissions based on the Partnership for Carbon Accounting Financials, PCAF in short. This standard should also help us expand our Scope 3 disclosures over time. We also became a founding member of Carbon Place, an innovative trading platform being developed to create a truly scalable voluntary carbon market. And we joined the Green Software Foundation as a steering member to help us achieve net zero emissions from our own operations. So you see it's been another important quarter also from a sustainability agenda perspective. As mentioned before, the market backdrop was dominated by the war in Ukraine and the subsequent sanctions against Russia. But even before the war, markets were volatile. Lower growth expectations dampened investor sentiment, especially in China. Inflation was already fueling fears of tighter monetary policy. And in this environment, our ecosystem continued to grow. And you can see that on slide six. Our clients turned to us for advice execution, and liquidity. And this is a true reflection of their confidence in our stability, our global reach, but also our knowledge, our local knowledge, our sector knowledge. And we intensified our client engagements and provided more insights through our Chief Investment Office research that covered topics ranging from the war to inflation to interest rates and more. And just to give you a bit of an idea as to how close we stayed to our clients, our CIO hosted over 1,000 dedicated events reaching more than 100,000 clients and prospects advising as to how to deal with the current situation. And that proactive outreach, research, and advice gave our clients guidance in their investment decisions. We saw 19 billion inflows into the fee-generating assets. And that's a 5% annualized growth rate. And the bulk of these were in mandates. In addition, we saw strong inflows in our asset management capabilities. We continued to see growth across our hedge fund business as well. The passive products, separately managed accounts, and sustainable investments with net new money excluding money market at $14 billion. Our personal banking clients in Switzerland also continued to put their money to work in investment products. Inflows were a billion in the quarter, and that's a 16% analyzed growth rate. And the majority of these inflows were also into mandates, where sustainable investing is a major driver of growth. Our institutional clients had many opportunities to trade as well. Volatile markets drove trading volumes, especially in EMEA. Our clients were particularly active in equity derivatives and foreign exchange. where we were able to facilitate high volumes, manage risk, provide access to liquidity, and all this resulted in the highest global market revenues on record. So to conclude, throughout these complex times, our clients continue to put their trust in us. And one of the reasons is that the value is being a source of stability, seeing our strong capital position and our strong control environment They see that as important assets to work with us. Slide seven, we give you an update on Russia. So being a strong partner for our clients also means managing our own risk proactively. And as you can see on the right-hand side here, we significantly reduced our already low exposure to Russia during this quarter. We're focused on complying with all applicable sanctions as the situation rapidly evolves. Now, this diligent risk management combined with our global diversification made us more resilient. Our clients turned, as indicated, for advice through these challenging times. These times give challenges, but also opportunities. We remained disciplined in cost, and this led to a strong firm-wide financial result, as you can see on slide eight. Operating income was up 8% versus a year ago, making this the seventh consecutive quarter of year-on-year growth. Positive operating leverage meant pre-tax profit was up 19% and net profit was up 17%. Return on CT1 capital reached 19%. Our cost-income ratio decreased over three percentage points to 70.7%. We also repurchased 1.7 billion of shares in the quarter, And we're well on track to buy back around $5 billion by the end of the year. So we captured the opportunities to drive the growth on both top and bottom lines. And as we do that, we're executing our strategic plans, as well as our vision to convene the global ecosystem for investing. And with that, I'll hand over to Kurt, who will take us through our numbers before we get into Q&A.

Thank you, Ralph. Good morning, everyone. At $2.1 billion, we delivered the best net profit for first quarter since 2007. This translates to a 19% return on CT1 capital and a 16% return on tangible equity. PBT was $2.7 billion, up 19%. Net credit loss expenses were $18 million. We made some updates to our scenarios and weightings to reflect the current environment, and we continue to apply a management overlay given ongoing macroeconomic uncertainty. As of March, the total overlay was $204 million, a $20 million reduction from 4Q21. Turning to expenses, we remain disciplined in the quarter, managing to keep our expenses, excluding variable and FA compensation, currency effects and litigation, in line with our full-year guidance of increasing around 2%. This helped us to deliver a cost-to-income ratio of 70.7%, which we achieved while continuing to invest for growth and while absorbing some inflationary pressure, notably on salaries. Moving to our businesses, GWM PBT was down 7% to $1.3 billion, Despite double-digit growth in EMEA and Switzerland, positive top-line contributions from all regions outside of APEC supported 1 percent higher operating income that was more than offset by higher operating expenses. Revenue growth in the U.S. led to higher financial advisory compensation, which, together with an increase in litigation provisions, drove costs higher by 5 percent. Net new fee generating assets were $19 billion in the quarter, an annualized growth rate of more than 5%. All regions contributed positively with the highest net inflows from the Americas. This quarter's net new fee generating assets were mostly driven by net mandate sales of $21 billion. We also continued strong momentum in private markets, where clients committed $8 billion in the first quarter, as Ralph mentioned earlier. Net new lending in the quarter was $0.5 billion. It's continued positive momentum in the Americas, Switzerland, and Switzerland, partially offset by deleveraging in APAC and EMEA. Moving to income. Recurring net fee income grew 7% year on year, mostly driven by net new fee generating asset momentum over the last year, notably from our SMA initiative in the U.S. and from discretionary mandates in other regions, along with inflows into alternatives. Sequentially, recurring fee income was down 3 percent as the effect of negative market performance and the lower day count more than offset revenue tailwind from an FGA. As a reminder, client billing on mandates is calculated based on average daily balances in the Americas and based on prior month-end balances in other regions. Net interest income increased 14% year-over-year, with higher deposit margins and volumes, as well as growth in lending balances. Sequentially, NII was up 2% in line with our guidance. Transaction-based income decreased 19% versus an exceptional 1Q21. These results reflective of the challenging geopolitical and macro backdrop that Ralph already described, which affected risk-taking, especially in APAC, where transaction revenues decreased by around 40%. Despite these factors, we saw continued very strong momentum in alternatives and private markets. Entering the second quarter, clients have generally remained cautious, with activity levels reflective of continuing geopolitical and macro uncertainty. Looking ahead, we anticipate this to persist, especially in Asia, given the added effects of COVID-related lockdowns. This will likely affect both transaction and recurring revenues. Given that markets is now factoring in additional rate hikes in the U.S., we expect to more than offset these headwinds, assuming markets remain flattish with higher NII over the course of the year. For the remainder of 2022, we anticipate an increase of around 1 billion NII year-on-year, based on current forward curves and quarter-end balance sheet. The majority of this increase will materialize in the second half of 2022. In the second quarter, we could see around 15 percent growth sequentially. We continue to see very strong business momentum in P&C in good cost control, driving PBT up 10% to 395 million Swiss francs. Operating income increased 3% with 112 million increase from transaction recurring in net interest income. This was partly offset by 16 million valuation loss compared with a 26 million gain in 1Q21, along with credit loss expenses of $21 million compared with the $22 million credit loss released in 1Q21. Costs were down 1%, benefiting from branch closures in 1Q21, partly offset by increased tech costs as we continue to execute our digital strategy. The cost-to-income ratio was 58%, a 5 percentage point improvement year-on-year. Transaction-based income increased 25% to a record level on higher revenues from credit card and foreign exchange transaction, also reflecting an increase in travel and leisure spending by clients. Recurring net fee income was up 15% to an all-time high, primarily on higher revenues from mandate custody, investment fund, and account fees. Continued momentum in recurring fees was held by $2.8 billion of net new investment product inflows over the past 12 months. NII increased by 5% year-on-year, mostly as a result of deposit optimization measures. For the quarter, personal banking net new investment product flows was a record $1 billion, an annualized growth rate of 16%. In asset management, PBT was down 23% from a particularly strong 1Q21. Net management fees were up 3%, as flows over the last 12 months supported continued net new run rate fee momentum. Performance fees were down against an exceptionally good 1Q21. Invested assets were 5% lower sequentially, reflecting lower market performance and adverse currency effects. Net new money excluding money markets was $14 billion from the quarter, including $2 billion in alternatives with inflows across all distribution channels. Costs were down 2%, helping to keep asset management's cost-to-income ratio just below 70% for the quarter. The IB's PBT increased to $929 million, delivering a return on attributed equity of 28%. Global markets delivered its highest quarter on record, up 59% year-on-year, Excluding the loss on the default of a prime brokerage client in 1Q21, global markets revenues increased by 4%, primarily driven by higher income from equity derivatives, rates, and foreign exchange products. Global banking revenues were down 30% to $550 million in the first quarter, outperforming the global feed pools across advisories, ECM, DCM, and LCM, Concerns about inflation in the monetary policy response, along with Russia's invasion of Ukraine, weighed on investor sentiment. Capital markets revenues decreased 41 percent on subdued issuance and deal flow, especially in equity capital markets. Advisory income was 3 percent lower versus a very strong 1Q21. Operating expenses were up 6 percent as variable compensation increased as a result of higher revenues. The cost-to-income ratio was 68%. As of end March, our CET1 capital ratio was 14.3%, and our CET1 leverage ratio was 4.16%. RWA increased by $10 billion sequentially. Credit and counterparty credit risk increased due to higher client activity and market-driven movements and derivatives in the IB and GWM, as well as higher lending activities in GWM and P&C. Market risk RWA increased by $3 billion on higher average regulatory and stress bar for market moves across asset classes. Operational risk RWA increased by $2.1 billion in the quarter, reflecting the court decision in the French cross-border matter in December last year. A further $2 billion will be reflected in the second quarter of 2022, bringing the risk RWA increase related to this matter to $4.1 billion. We continue to aim to buy back around $5 billion during 2022. As of the 22nd of April, we had repurchased $2.1 billion in shares, of which $1.7 billion in the first quarter. Together with around $400 million of dividend accruals, this represents almost 100% of our 1Q net profit. Before we move to Q&A, I would like to sincerely thank everyone here at UBS, our shareholders and analysts. my colleagues at the group executive board, and the board of directors. It has been a great privilege to be UBS's CFO for 26 quarters.

And maybe I can add to that, Kurt, on behalf of all the colleagues here at UBS and also the audience here today, I think still open for questions later, but I'd like to thank you for what you have done for UBS. as a CFO what you have done here in these quarterly result meetings as well, making sure that we were all very well prepared, that we could give the answers they can ask, and you'll be very disciplined. Make sure that there's a real discipline there. And thank you for your support over the last almost two years to me as a real wingman. So I'm sure there is a smooth transition in place already with Sarah. But we'll miss you. So thank you very much, Kurt.

Thank you, Ralph.

Over to the audience, and with Kian, I guess, is the first one.

We will now begin the question and answer session for analysts and investors. Participants are requested to use only handsets while asking a question. Anyone who has a question may press star and 1 at this time. The first question is from Kian Abu-Hussain from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you very much for taking my question. And first of all, thank you for all your support, Kurt, and all the best in your future endeavors. So coming to the question, the first question is regarding wealth management. In regarding, in respect to Asia Pacific, can you talk a little bit about the ongoing trends? You mentioned continuous slowdown with lockdown, etc., Can you talk a little bit about the trends that you're seeing on the revenue line, unwinding net new money flows, transactions? How should we think about that through the year? And in that context, you clearly talk about the offset through the billion in NII. Can you talk about the deposit beta and how we should think about that progression on a relative basis. You mentioned second half mainly, but also through the second quarter, if I may. The second question relates to more around the issue of cost. I just wanted to see if you could reiterate the guidance on cost, X variable, if that still stands considering the environment that you operate in terms of inflation. Thanks.

Okay. Thank you, Kian. I'm sure Kurt is going to fill in on a couple of things. I'll take the first one on cost there as your last question. But it is an important factor that you all feel comfortable around that. So on the cost side, clearly there is inflation. There is some upward pressure that we see as well coming through. More in the U.S., a bit in Asia, and across the investment bank we see cost pressure coming up around salaries. But, you know, I think one of the good things about UBS is that we are globally very well diversified with a large part of our cost base actually here in Switzerland, which for once helps us from that perspective. It's probably not the cheapest place to operate a bank from, but it is certainly a place where inflation is low and is manageable at this moment in time as well, and that's what we expect to continue. So that helps us in terms of managing our costs globally. Secondly, as you know, we launched a year and a half ago already a cost savings program of a billion. We delivered 200 million of it last year. We are planning and on our way to execute to deliver 400 million here as well. So we feel comfortable with still guiding a 2% cost increase, X litigation, X foreign exchange, and X variable comp, depending on the market, how the market is developed. And we are committed to the cost-income ratio of 70% to 73% there. So that's the one on cost. On Asia Pacific, on the numbers side, Kurt can give you more. What we see is actually a similar sentiment with clients from last quarter. So muted appetite to invest, a bit of a wait and see pattern in terms of active investments. Positive net new fee generating assets, also this quarter. So basically UBS as a firm, the stability, the quality of our advice does attract money, also with Asian clients. So we still see the inflows. We have seen certainly also continuous deleveraging. as well, a third quarter in a row. So those are kind of the patterns. And clearly, there's so many factors in the world at this moment that make investors sideline some of the ammunition for it to come back quickly into the market. So that I truly think that the moment China opens up and there is less strict lockdowns, that there is going to be more confidence and money of that will come back. For the more, for the numbers, specific numbers, maybe, Kurt, you can add.

Yeah, thank you, Ralph. So, Kian, I would just add, apart from the transaction revenue just related to client sentiment, I'll also just recall that overall Asian markets, of course, have performed poorly relative to other regions. And we started to see, of course, declines, particularly in China equities last year in the third quarter with the launch of common prosperity. So, also, we're seeing impacts on recurring revenue. And clearly, that's going to continue depending on movements that we see going forward overall in Asian markets. Regarding the $1 billion NII progression, in terms of the pattern of beta, it wouldn't be surprising to you. What we expect is betas overall Our beta overall will be lower as we see the front end of the increases in interest rates. And as this progresses and we start to get into particularly 2023, we would expect our beta to rise. And we've obviously built that into the outlook, around the $1 billion that we mentioned that we expect in the upcoming three quarters. I would also highlight, since it was part of your Asian question, Clearly, we will see that benefit in Asia Pacific, although, as well, that will be partly offset by the fact that we've now seen deleveraging three-quarters in a row. So, clearly, that impacts our lending revenue in APAC.

Thank you.

The next question is from Andrew Coombs from Citi. Please go ahead.

Good morning. Two questions just staying on the same themes, I guess, and also I echo the comments to Kurt as well, best for the future. First question just on Asia deleveraging. I know you talked about Asia investors still being a bit in wait-and-see mode, but do you think the bulk of the deleveraging is now done? So from here, would you expect the Asia part of GWM to return back to loan growth? And then the second question on interest rate sensitivity. Previously, you gave guidance based on the NII uplift on the forward curve. Forward curve obviously continues to steepen, so any additional commentary you can provide there both on 2022 and also 2023 in terms of implication for net interest income?

Thank you. Okay. Maybe on deal averaging. So what we see in the leveraging in Asia is basically actively managing together with our clients the lending facilities that we have in order to support their investments. So how the market develops with the development of the markets, you may either see maybe more leverage again going forward or less leverage. It's more or less determined by the markets and how we ensure that the loan-to-values in our facilities stay managed. On top of that, I do think that if you look at our strategy for growth in Asia, one of those initiatives called the Global Family and Institutional Wealth approach is one that is certainly also focused on the real higher end of the wealth band, family offices, in Asia, so you could expect some more leverage being extended in that segment, but in small steps because clearly I think we should also make sure that we stay prudent in what we do. So leverage is more driven by markets and our prudent risk management together with our clients. And clearly, if the markets go back up, you could see the leverage going back up as well. And on top of that, then the global family and institutional wealth initiative that over time will provide, is expected to provide more leverage also into the Asian region. Kurt?

Yeah, thank you. Just one other comment related to lending APAC. I think, as you know, that's the region where we have the highest leverage penetration. So our Asian clients do tend to like to use leverage as part of their investment strategy. But also you see actually, therefore, sharper deleveraging when they turn negative, but you also see sharper pickup when they turn positive. And that's the pattern we would expect to see going forward. Overall, in interest, I'm not sure I got completely to your question, but just we guided last quarter that we expected around 750, 700 actually pertaining to GWM, 50 million to P&C. We indicated now that we're at just around a billion. There's another roughly around 100 million in P&C. So you also have seen, of course, an increase in the P&C effects as forward curves have moved on from when we last guided. And also, as we mentioned, this is based on static balance sheets. So any movements you might see in terms of balance sheet inflows or outflows, both of the lending and the deposit side, of course, will have an impact overall on what we expect. You mentioned guidance around 2023. We haven't provided any, but I think just if rates hold, obviously what you would expect is quarter on quarter as we get into the first quarter next year and the second quarter, you should see increases just because of the pattern of rates and what we expect to see through the course of this year.

Very good. Thank you both.

The next question is from Magdalena Stoklosa from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much and good morning. Of course, before the questions, Kurt, also from us, thank you very much for our partnership over the years and for bearing with us at times and all the best of luck in whatever the future brings. And I've got two questions for you this morning. One is about the net new money, because of course, net new fee generating assets have got a very strong inflows this quarter. And I just wondered if you could give us a sense of kind of what's driving the inflows. I assume they are kind of much more advisor led from the perspective of the channel. you know, whether they're existing accounts or new accounts, could you just kind of give us a sense, you know, where the, how the 19 kind of billion got generated? And my second question, I suppose, is on the, you know, going back to the NII, because you've given us the one billion guidance. And you can slightly avoid the topic of the deposit betas and whether by any chance that number or what would have to happen for that number to be slightly higher, particularly when we look at your kind of 100 basis points kind of parallel shift disclosure. Thanks very much.

Thank you, Magda. Yeah, so on the net new fee generating assets, I think that's actually it's more or less existing clients where we do see a further demand for mandates. So you see that a large part of the net new fee generating assets is moving into the mandates business, which is what we advise. So that's good. If you look at the more geographic developments, we still saw positive net new fee generating assets in in Asia Pacific, but the largest growth continues to be in the Americas there. And then maybe as to specific products, as we have indicated, the alternative product is a very important product there. There's still demand for sustainability with clients coming through as well. So those are basically the flavors that do quite well at this moment in time.

Yeah, and maybe I could add a couple comments. I think within that you saw the continued momentum in SMAs. And there we do believe that we're certainly taking a share overall in SMAs since we implemented and executed that initiative. And also in terms of some of the patterns, like if you look at alternatives, there's been movement into credit as well as real estate. And as you might expect, there's also been more movement into fixed income versus equities overall, if you look at the patterns of investment across mandates, funds, and alternatives. On the NII side, I'm not exactly sure. You did mention our 100 basis points math that we put out in our report. I would just highlight, of course, you've seen that number come down, and that'll continue to come down. is interest rates go up because you do see a compression in the upside as we see higher interest rates. And so that should give you a little bit of an idea of incremental sensitivity if we were to see interest rates increase. There, I think there's a couple of facts. The higher the interest rates, the more the time. Of course, we generally see higher betas, but we also see outflows from deposits and movements into money markets and into other opportunities with at least some level of interest.

Thanks very much for that, actually. Thank you. And can I just follow up on the alternative side? When you see, because of course you've also kind of shown almost 8 billion of the commitments. How do you assess your kind of capabilities internal versus partnerships within your broad alternatives business?

Yeah, it's a good question. Clearly, we have our own capabilities as well within asset management. We have O'Connor developing specific funds. We have real estate capabilities and asset management as well, multi-asset capabilities as well. But for more private equity-like businesses, we clearly also look at external partners. That's the whole concept of the ecosystem, right? So it's very important that the market sees that we are the largest market for private money globally, and that we are very attractive as an ecosystem for also third parties to come to and distribute their product. And therefore, we're open. We're open to third party products there as well. So whoever is a player that we can curate onto the platform and have attractive opportunities for us to advise to our clients, we do so. And on the private equity side, there is many steps to be taken there also to join forces with actual parties.

Great. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Stefan Stahlmann from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. And also from my side, Kurt, thank you very much for the help over the years and all the best going forward. I have two questions, please. The first relates to Russia and Russian clients. I was wondering if you could tell us how much of your invested assets actually relate to Russian clients. I saw what you write on page four of the Q1 report, the 0.7%, but I'm not sure if that captures all Russian clients or only a subset. And the second question on the investment bank. So 2.7 billion, almost 2.7 billion of global markets revenue. It's obviously quite impressive. I was wondering if you can give us a rough sense of how that was distributed month by month. In particular, how much of it is actually come in March. And maybe also whether the month on month spread during the first quarter this year was very different from what it would have been typically in a normal first quarter. Thank you very much.

Yeah, so just maybe the Russian client question. And so we did, and you're right, Stefan, I think there's a lot of confusion around scope of Russian clients when people come out with disclosures. And so we wanted to ensure that we were very, very clear in how we derive this. Firstly, what we did is we took the total clients that are in scope of the European and the Swiss ordinance regarding maximum overall deposit and outflows and inflows of 100,000. We actually think that that is a very, very broad scope to start with. And on that basis, we looked at the total invested assets that those clients hold with us, and that led to the 0.7%. And, of course, the conclusion there is, well, as the largest global wealth manager, naturally we have a Russian business, but if you think about this in the context of our overall wealth management business, It is not significant at all. It doesn't impact at all our ability to generate growth momentum and also to meet the targets that we've laid out, what we see going forward. Then turning to the IB overall and the market's revenue, I would say that this quarter was a bit unusual. Usually in a typical first quarter, seasonality would actually drive January as substantially the the best month of the quarter and often one of our best months of the year. We saw some of that play in, but it was unusual because we actually more broader geopolitical and market factors were in play. So we went throughout the quarter. And I would say we saw pretty good even distribution throughout the three months in terms of overall generation of markets revenue. And as we've highlighted, certainly equities, equities derivatives in particular, along with rates and FX were what drove the very good quarter that we had.

Great. Could I maybe just follow up on the Russian aspect, please? So if I understand you correctly, you're saying that the EEA and Swiss rules are very all-encompassing. So that would also include sanctions imposed by the U.S. and the U.K.?

Absolutely. It would include... far greater population than just where sanctions were imposed. In fact, when you look at that population, and we would identify within that, there still are certain client segments that might be susceptible to further sanctions, but also there's a large part of that population where we don't believe that there's any likely sanction exposure. So it's a pretty broad definition.

It's a small part of our total invested assets, and we've been pretty conservative at applying the definitions here. And the EU and the Swiss are the most strict in their approach to this.

And we've also been very proactive in how we've actually looked to reduce our overall business, not just with clients already sanctioned, but also we've looked at populations that have higher risk. We've been proactive with those populations.

Thank you very much.

The next question is from Jeremy Siggy from BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.

Thank you, and thanks and best wishes to Kurt from me as well. Two questions, please. One on capital. Thank you for slide 23, which is very helpful. I just wanted to ask how some of those factors play forward. You've obviously told us that there's more op risk coming. I just wondered if you expect more RWA inflation in sort of the near term from some of the other drivers, from market risk or from credit risk modeling. I don't know how your models work, whether there's a lag effect and there's more inflation still to come through. And I guess sort of wrapping that up as well, whether you're, I guess, still comfortable with the $370 billion 2024 RWA guidance. So any help on that would be great. And then my second question was really just a very small question just on the timing of flows. The net new money flows in the quarter was at a fairly steady pace. And I guess what I'm really asking is kind of the exit rate. You know, are we in an environment where that kind of flow run rate continues or are we in something more subdued given the uncertainties in the world?

Yep. Thank you, Jeremy. In terms of RWA, yes, we already guided on operas also for the remainder of the year for the additional three quarters. We do expect further increases that are known in terms of model changes that have been encouraged by FEMA, shall we say. And we expect those to be around 8 billion for the remainder of the year. Away from that, obviously, it's going to be driven by business volumes. If you look at the market risk RWA increase we saw because of Reagan's stress bar, certainly if market volatility subsides, we would expect to see a reduction in that $3 billion that I referenced. Now, I wasn't sure about your 2024 question, but what we did, we updated our guidance in the fourth quarter, so perhaps you're referring to the impact of adopting Basel III finalization of $20 billion. There's no effect there. That still would be our estimate, that $20 billion is still what we would expect, subject, of course, very importantly, to any FIMA discretion.

The 24 number is a combination of the strategy and the growth we anticipated plus puzzle.

Plus puzzle. So we would still be in line with the guidance. No change there. There's no change there.

No change there. So the 370 is fine. That's really all I was asking. Yep.

Yep. Yeah. Oh, and then your second question on flows. Actually, the overall net new fee generating asset flows over the three months were we're pretty well equally distributed. And so we continue to see good positive flows in March.

Okay, thank you for that.

The next question is from Amit Goel from Barclays. Please go ahead.

Hi, thank you. And also to echo my thoughts and thanks, Kurt, for the help you've provided. And good luck for the future. So two questions. One, a further follow-up on Russia, the other on lending. On Russia, I just wanted to get a sense on the 100 million kind of firm-wide P&L impact, just how to think about that in terms of what drives that. And I guess I noticed it seemed like about 5 billion of reclassification of fee-generating assets relating to Russia, but just trying to get a sense of how to think about that going forward. And then secondly, with regards to the lending, I'm also just curious in terms of the lending margins, so what you're seeing there, and whether the margins have been stable or steady, or whether there has been a little bit of contraction, in particular in APAC, with the declining volumes.

Thank you. Yes, Ahmed, thank you. So, the 100 million there, and this is a little bit of a line, which you see with the 0.6 and the 0.4 billion. The 100 million overall is mostly related to derivative and settlements that were impacted and interfered with from the sanctions. And where we have either taken wind down costs or we've taken provisions in terms remaining exposures and receivables we might have, for example, with our nostro banks. There's a very small portion of that that was CLE related, and therefore the vast majority is in the IB. I think in terms of the net new fee generating assets, what we mentioned is that $19.4 billion excludes some outflow that we saw with Russian clients as a consequence of the sanctions. We haven't mentioned what that number is. But you could just to ensure that you're aware that there was some adjustments. And we can't say what that impact might be going forward. It's a bit unknown. It really just depends on, of course, the direction of any future new sanctions that we might see. Now, regarding lending margins, our margins overall and our wealth management business have held up reasonably well. And I think that you see in Asia Pacific with the deleveraging, there's really not There's not any pressure on margins just because of the supply-demand dynamics. Now, there is an exception. We are seeing pressure on mortgage margins in Switzerland, and particularly from the cantonal banks, where there's an awful lot of pressure to continue to lend and get exposure, particularly to long-duration interest rates, given the fact that deposits have grown quite a bit. So that is an area that we're monitoring closely. And you've seen this in the past where we will actually give up market share and volume in favor of margin. And so we'll continue to manage that in a responsible way, but that's an area we're watching closely.

The pressure in Switzerland, which is the new production pressure, it is not tainting our book, the margin in the book. from a revenue projection perspective, it is not meaningful.

Yeah, absolutely. And it didn't affect first quarter.

Got it. Thank you. Just to check, I mean, on the kind of Russia-related outflow, the derivation I did was just the $68 billion AUM change, the 19.4 net new money, and the $82.3 billion outflow. other reduction, which is how I got that net. Is there potentially other changes as well?

Yeah, so I think in addition to that, you also have market moves, you have foreign currency translation, which also was adverse during the quarter. And then you had the net new fee generating assets. And away from that, there's also a net new money impact, which you can assume was greater than net new fee generating. So you have to factor that in as well. and then you have the request.

Thank you. Thank you.

The next question is from Adam Terak from Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Morning. Thank you for the questions and all the best to Kurt. I want to return to NII. On the guidance, the 1 billion, I just want to make sure we've got apples with apples here because in the full year guide, I think you were talking about some balance sheet impacts. Clearly, I think SX has reduced the loan book So are we saying that sensitivity is probably, or the delta on sensitivity to rates is probably slightly higher than the difference between the two numbers given and that the balance sheet is slightly smaller and we have to adjust for that? And then on top of that 1 billion, do we then have to layer through any additional balance sheet growth? So it's static as a Q1 balance sheet. And then on the other side of that, on deposits and the cost of deposits, I hear what you're saying on deposit repricing and the pass-throughs. Is there a threat now, or is the threat from turning out and clients moving to term deposits increased given the sudden move we've had in rates? Clearly, one-year dollar rates are up above 2%. I think that's the level when, in previous cycles, we saw a bit of turning out holding back NIA sensitivity. So could you talk to, rather than the pass-through that you can control, whether clients are thinking about shifting to term and whether that can threaten the NIA development, not this quarter, but in the next few quarters? Thank you.

Yeah, so maybe just to restate what the $1 billion is, and this is exactly consistent with how we always guide. We basically take the forwards as close to our disclosures as possible, and then we take the balance sheet as of the end of the quarter. And we did the same when we mentioned the $750 around fourth quarter, and we apply the forwards. And so you're And within that, of course, we determine our view on beta and what we expect, and we apply the math. But you're exactly right. It does not include any effect, positive or negative, of any flow generation over the remainder of the year. And as I said, that's apples to apples to compare the 750 that we guided at the end of 750 million. And it is for... 2Q through 4Q, so it's for the remainder of the year. Naturally, there was some positive impact that we saw in the first quarter. It's roughly around $170 million. And as we said before, we expect, of course, the impact to continue to increase fairly significantly quarter-for-quarter, hence the 15% guidance quarter-and-quarter in the second quarter, and then you can expect to see larger impacts as we go third and fourth quarter. Now, in terms of deposit repricing, you're exactly right in terms of the dynamics. And as we manage our overall book, and, of course, noting that versus a very large consumer franchise, our clients do tend to be more rate sensitive. And so, therefore, we manage that accordingly. So we, of course, have current accounts, but we also have savings accounts. And the savings accounts for us are a stable source of funding. We want to make sure that We price that in a way that we manage that funding source. And as well, we will look at clients as they think about terming out, and we will think about CD and term deposit programs accordingly. And also, as I mentioned, there was some outflows into money markets, and we would expect that to continue as well.

And in terms of the assumption on terming out, is that similar to previous cycles or any kind of comment on the speed we might see that this time around?

Well, I would just say as the interest rate increases, it's steepened. Obviously, you would expect to see clients more prone to looking to term out. And we would adjust our modeling accordingly.

Great. Thank you.

The next question is from Anke Reingen from RBC. Please go ahead.

Thank you very much for taking my question, and as well, thank you, Kurt, and all the best. Two questions, please. The first is a follow-up question on capital. The 10 BIP hit you saw in Q1 in the OCI. Should we expect, I mean, corresponding to your NII guidance, a further hit to capital in Q2 based on the current forward curve? And then secondly, on the fee-generating asset margin, that hold up quite well in Q1 versus Q4. And I just wanted to understand ex-NII moves, should we expect some more margin pressure given you talk about shift into more fixed income versus equities? Or do you think that trend underlying sees that pressure given also the strong goals in SMA? Thank you very much.

Yes, in terms of the capital impact, so where that's derived from, it's high-quality liquid assets, by and large, that we're holding in the U.S. in our banking subsidiary. It's around $9 billion, and it's a mix of treasuries and mortgage-backed securities. And it impacts capital to the extent that we have life-to-date overall losses that flow through to CET1. Having said that, if we were to reduce that portfolio or we saw interest rates reverse, we actually would see that impact also reverse. So, going forward, we continue to be exposed to interest rate increases. So, if we saw further moves in the curves, and this is mostly longer-dated curves, just because of the structure, our weighted average maturity is around five years. And just to note as well that the average overall rating of those assets are the upper end of AA, so they're very, very high quality. Now, in terms of feed generating assets margins overall, I think as you observe, you have seen some stability in that margin over the last couple of quarters. But just to note that going forward, that margin is going to continue to be impacted by overall mix of products. in investments that we place with our clients, as well as the trends that we've talked about before in terms of any further move into more ultra-mix versus high net worth. And then we have our SMA initiative, which is also at an impact on margin. But importantly, we don't manage the business for margin. We manage the business for PVT growth. So for us, what's critical is we continue to see very positive run rate momentum from all the net new fee generating asset inflows that we see.

Okay, thank you. The next question is from Flora Bocahut from Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. Good morning. First of all, all the best, of course, to Kurt for the future from my side as well. Two questions I wanted to ask you. The first is regarding the RWA move that we saw this quarter, so going back to capital here. The slide you provide at the end of the presentation is very useful. I just wanted to get back to the $7.7 billion increase in RWA this quarter from asset size and other movements. This is obviously a lot more than what we normally see. So just wanted to see if you could elaborate on this. What's been the driver? Is it mainly business growth? And how much of this do you think could be reversed in the coming quarter, say if volatility reduced in market, for example. The second question is regarding the client behavior, excluding APAC. So really focusing here on the US and Europe, what you saw in April, you know, whatever you can tell us, whether you are seeing also some kind of slowdown in the willingness of your US and European customers to invest, to borrow, but I mean, post Q1, so in the month that just finished, if that's possible. Thank you.

Maybe I can start with the last one, Flora, which is it's really hard to comment on a month that we're still running, honestly. So let's not get ahead of ourselves because that would only be kind of two and a half weeks or three weeks in a month, which you can't extrapolate anyway. So I don't think there is a lot of value in commenting on what we have seen the last two or three weeks. I think the most important thing here is what we see and what we can indicate to you is that Our most recent checks in terms of investor sentiment globally has not really changed from a quarter ago. It's a mix of positivism of coming out of the COVID situation and combined with the cautiousness around inflation, news this year around the war, and that is basically muting the investor demand specifically, but that is not different from the numbers that we saw at the end of the fourth quarter. And that is basically those are the recent numbers that we have where we see actually in all regions, including Asia, by the way, similar sentiments around our clients and investors. So it's similar from a quarter ago. in terms of the balance between being optimistic or neutral or pessimistic. We haven't seen that. Only Switzerland is a little bit more pessimistic around this sentiment. But globally, it's the same numbers like a quarter ago.

Yeah, in terms of the RWA question, there's a combination of factors that I already highlighted. It is partly due to increased lending that we were doing during the quarter. Obviously, all of that is positive for us and consistent with our strategy and also consistent with our plan when we reference where we expect to be by 2024. In addition to that, there was also an increase due to derivatives activities. And so, when you reflect on our markets revenue and the fact that we were up, and a lot of that increase was from our equities derivatives, our FX derivatives, and are rates-derived as businesses. All of that resulted in higher overall asset levels that correspond, of course, with the very good performance we saw from the deployment of those assets. Then there's a bit there related to model and updates, which we highlight as $1.6 billion, and we reference that we expect some more of that going forward. As to the increases or the reductions going forward, a lot of that will depend on on the business environment and also the continued execution of our strategy.

Okay, very useful. Thank you.

The next question is from Nicholas Payne from Kepler Chevrolet. Please go ahead.

Yes, good morning. Thanks for taking my question, and Kurt, thank you very much, and good luck for the future. I have two questions first. The first one, just in follow-up on Russia, and just wanted to make sure I understood that well. that the 100 million impact for the P&L was for Q1, and if it was the case, do you expect further impacts for the rest of the year? And the second question would be on the payout and capital distribution. As you said, you reached 100% payout ratio for the quarter, and I wanted to ask if it is something that we should keep in mind for the rest of the year, and in parallel to that, Could we expect you to increase the share buyback above 5 billion at some point if the capital development is positive or earnings or development is positive? Or is it a hard selling? Thank you very much.

Nicolas, on the first one, nobody knows how the world will develop. But what we can say is that when we manage this situation, In the beginning, and we were pretty early in de-risking, even before the war actually started, clearly the risk costs are generally coming from, as Kurt has already indicated, some counterparty risks as well as some failed settlements, basically, or blocked settlements or frozen settlements, whatever you want to call it, because counterparties can perform money-wise, but sanctions forbid us to collect the money or them to pay the money. And that's where we have taken a view as to how to provision for that. And this is basically in a period in which we did a lot of de-risking, a lot of de-risking. And as you've also seen that the direct risk exposure to Russia has decreased to 400 million, which basically now constitutes of a bit of nostril, some counterparty, but a lot of trade exposure, which is basically exposure that will self-liquidate with the trades being performing. Again, nobody knows where the world is going, but I think and you should expect from us that we have prudently taken a look at what is the provision or the risk cost that we should take for the quarter on the total.

Yes. And Nicholas, in terms of payout, so we'll just go back. And as you know, we don't guide on payout. So what we've indicated is progressive cash dividend. You saw we highlighted the $400 million in the first quarter. We also indicated we're going to repurchase, we said before, up to, now we said around $5 billion. And so that is stronger, more confident language. And so when you look at the remainder of the year, you can assume that we're going to stick with the progressive dividend and that we're going to follow through on repurchasing up to $5 billion. And then the payout ratio will be what it will be.

Thank you very much.

Thank you. The next question is from Andrew Lim from Societation Nepal. Please go ahead.

Hi, good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. So I've got two questions. Firstly, on GWM, if we look regionally, the US sticks out a bit in terms of having strong revenues like some of the other regions except for Asia. But also for the US, more than offset by cost inflation. So I guess we're seeing pre-tax profit fall. And I'm wondering whether that's symptomatic of structural inflation that we're seeing in the U.S. or whether there's more of a one-off element to that. And then secondly, on litigation, I know you can't talk about this in too much detail, but I was wondering if you could confirm or not whether U.S. regulators have made inquiries to yourself about your block trading activities. And then finally, best wishes from myself, Kurt, and good luck for the future.

Yeah, so in terms of the Americas and GWM, so what happened in the quarter, as you said, we had 6% top-line growth, but then also we highlighted the fact that we also had litigation, of course, increase year-on-year, plus we had FACOMP increase year-on-year. And also I would note, last year in the first quarter, we had a one-time overall compensation effect that caused for lower levels of variable compensation. So all of that went into the increase in cost. So it's not something that we would certainly expect going forward, except for obviously FACOMP. FACOMP will depend on compensable revenue. But having said that, also I would note that if you think about increases in NII, in general, payout ratio on NII is far lower than other revenue sources. And so that should be positive and accretive to pre-tax margin.

And then the last question. As you can well understand, we never actually comment on our interactions with authorities or regulators. So also in this case, we won't do that, Andrew. Thank you.

Okay, that's great. Thanks. Okay.

Good. Hey, thanks. That gets us to the end of this session. As you know, our Investor Relations team is always ready to pick up the phone and answer further questions that you may have while diving into the numbers. At this moment, I just want to conclude saying that focusing on delivering a strategy, staying close to your clients, managing risk adequately led to a very strong quarter for us, a strong quarter in terms of continuous commercial momentum with clients, a strong quarter in terms of P&L, also a quarter in which we feel that the share buyback is showing confidence in terms of our capital position as well. With that, I would maybe reiterate my thanks to Kurt. Thanks a lot, Kurt, for all you've done. And let's close the call. Thank you. Thank you.

Ladies and gentlemen, the webcast and Q&A session for analysts and investors is over. You may disconnect your lines. We will now take a short break and continue at 10.45 with media Q&A session.