Finecobank Banca Fine Spa

Good afternoon. This is the Coral School Conference Operator. Welcome and thank you for joining the Fineco Bank Third Quarter 2021 Results Conference Call. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Alessandro Foti, CEO of Fineco. Please go ahead, sir.

Good afternoon, everyone, and thank you for joining our Third Quarter Results Conference Call. Before we start going through the details of the presentation, let me please underline that the last quarter once again confirmed our new dimension of structural growth. We are progressively delivering on our two strategic discontinuities in order to become more a platform fulfilling the financial needs of our clients than a bank. First, we are carrying on our initiatives that already are keeping under control the growth of our balance sheet, which will in turn progressively increase and improve our revenue mix, boosting fees and commissions. Second, Fineco Asset Management is already delivering in its strategic discontinuity and is taking more control on the value chain to further accelerate our investing revenues and margins. The strategic discontinuities are making Fineco more and more a fast-growing and capitalized business model with a structurally higher profitability thanks to the jump of investing revenues and a structurally higher room to dispose of it. This will allow us to distribute a higher level of dividends and at the same time to be in the position to invest more for our growth. Let me please add that already now with our initiatives that are not yet at full speed, our balance sheet growth is comfortably under control and our leverage ratio is not more a point of attention. Coming back to our results in the first nine months of the year, in the period we recorded a record high net profit, reaching $257 million and increasing by 4% year-on-year despite the increased contribution to systemic charges. This result is even more valuable considering that it has been achieved in a new normal world and beats the previous record set in the first nine months of 2020. Revenues stood at $597 million, increasing by 4% year-on-year, excluding no recurring items of 2020 and mainly supported by the growth of investing, thanks to the growth in asset under management and the operational efficiency by Fineco Asset Management. Brokerage confirmed a structurally higher flow, also in an environment characterized by a much lower volatility compared to the 2020. Operating costs were well under control, and the cost-to-income ratios to the 31.144%, confirming operating leverage as the key strength of the bank. Our capital position confirmed to be strong and safe with a common equity TR1 ratio at 18.4%. Let me please remind that after Finneco received the MRL requirements by Bank of Italy, we have successfully issued and allowing us to be already compliant with a fully loaded leverage ratio exposure requirement with two years in advance. Also, our commercial activity continued to strengthen compared to the impressive growth experienced in 2020 after the record net sales registered in the first nine months Figures for the month of October are around $900 million, increasing by 22% year-on-year. The mix confirmed to be stronger with about $500 million in asset under management, more than three times higher year-on-year. Brokerage revenues are estimated for October at around $16 million. This is very good news considering the unfavorable market conditions due to low volatility, which was below the average level of 2017-2019. Nevertheless, revenues are around 42% higher compared to the average monthly revenues in the same period, confirming once again that the floor of the business is now definitely higher. Let's now move on to slide five. As announced, we reached very strong industrial results also in the new normal world, with adjusted net profit standing at 257.2 million in the first nine months, plus 4.4% year-on-year on a like-for-like basis, despite the higher contribution for systemic challenges. Revenue stood at $596.9 million, up 4.1% year-on-year, as we have been able to catch the strong acceleration of the structural trends in place, mainly thanks to the contribution of investing. Operating costs stood at $187.6 million, increasing by 5.2% year-on-year, excluding costs strictly related to the growth of the business. Cost income confirmed to be very low at 31.4, despite the continuous expansion in assets and clients, thanks to our strong operating leverage and to the scalability of our platform. Let's now move on to the slide six and start to analyze more in detail the dynamics of our results. In this slide we show our net financial income amounting to $217 million and remaining flat in the first nine months of the year. Net interest income stood at $186 million despite the worsening of the interest rates environment and profit from treasury management stood at $31 million. Let's now move to slide seven. Season commissions stood at $324.4 million in the first nine months of 2021, growing by 13.1% year-on-year, mainly thanks to the positive contribution of investing. Brokerage, net commissions, and trading profits confirmed once again a floor structurally higher compared to the past. despite the unfavorable market conditions in terms of volatility compared to both the first nine months of 2020 and the second quarter of 2021. Let's jump to slide 26 to deep dive on our brokerage business. Brokerage confirmed once again that the floor of the business is structurally higher compared to the past and regardless to the level of volatility. As you can see in the chart on the top of the slide, in the third quarter of 2021, brokerage revenues reached $45.9 million in a period characterized by low volatility, also due to seasonality, resulting nevertheless in a monthly average 36% higher compared to the monthly average revenues in the period of 2017-2019. In October, estimated brokerage revenues were equal to $16 million, around 42% higher compared to the average monthly revenues in the period 2016-2019, and with a volatility that was lower than the average volatility of the same period. Let me remind you that the growth of the brokerage business is driven by the contribution of three structural components. the deep reshape of our brokerage business. In this regard, we are now live with our leveraged certificates platform, and we are starting the marketing campaign. As a reminder, our offer will be listed on the high MTF, the alternative venue of which we recently took a 20% stake, this allowing us to extract value from the vertical integration of the business as we are issuer, market maker and distributor. Let me also remind you that in the first half of 2022, we'll be live with a brand new brokerage platform, which will combine our state-of-the-art standard with top quality, easy to use. Second, the client base using our platform is widening with active investors that have grown significantly in absolute terms, standing around 35% above the average level of 2018-2019. Please note that our active investors have an average of four executed holders per month, are wealthy people in their 40s-50s with assets on average above €200,000 and the vast majority of them relationship with our financial advisors for their long-term planning and their financial wealth. Let me please add that in order to further position Fineco for its long-term growth and build up on its stake in high-quality client base, starting from January 2022, we will propose the most competitive offer in Italy. to catch the next generation of active investors. We will propose a very aggressive pricing for our investing and brokerage platform, giving them access to the global markets through shares, bonds, ETFs, and mutual funds, also through accumulation plan. Third, we are continuously increasing our retail market share.

Let's now move to the slide 8 for a focus on investing.

Let me remind you that over the last few months, we have experienced a strong acceleration towards asset under management, as we have been able to catch the structural trends in place in Italy. We are already seeing the first contribution coming from the strategic discontinuity in Finneco Asset Management. which is allowing us to improve the efficiency of the value chain and generate higher revenues and margins. Investing revenues amounted to 193.6 million in the first nine months of 2021, increasing by 25.1% year on year, thanks to volume effect and strong net sales into asset under management, driven by higher contribution by Finic Asset Management. More in detail, management fees increased by 27.6% year-on-year in the first nine months of the year, while in the third quarter of 2021 increased by 32.4% year-on-year and by 8.4% quarter-on-quarter. Let me please highlight that the management fees margins of the tax are increased to 47 basis points. Let's now move on to slide 9 for a focus on our cost. This slide confirms once again efficiency to be part of our DNA and core in our bank representing a clear and unique competitive advantage. Let me please underline that the first nine months of the year were characterized by costs directly related to the strong acceleration of our growth dynamics in the new normal world. On top of this, the yearly comparison is affected by the strict lockdown in the first nine months of 2020, driving other administrative expenses below the average level of period 2010 and 2019. Operating costs in the first nine months of 2021 stood at 187.6 million, growing by 5.2% year-on-year, excluding costs related to the growth of the business, mainly additional 2.7 million costs for financial management that are current with acceleration of the strategic discontinuity to further expand its business, allowing us to have a higher control of the investing value chain. Additional 0.6 million in marketing cost in UK. Staff expenses stood at 80.3 million in the period, increasing by 5.9% on yearly basis, net of the cost related to the expansion of the business of Finiac Asset Management. non-HR costs stood at 107.3 million, growing by 4.9% year-on-year. Let's now move on slide 12 for a focus on capital ratios. Fineco is confirming a rock-solid capital position on the wave of a safe balance sheet. Let me please remind that the shareholder meeting convened on October 2021 has approved the distribution for 2019 and 2020 of a dividend equal to 0.53 euros, which will be paid out on November 24, 2021. Common Equity Tier 1 ratio stood at 18.37%, including the 2019-2020 dividend payment. Leverage ratio stood at 4.04%, including the dividend payment. In line with the optionality allowed by ECB and Bank of Italy, our leverage ratio excluding the exposure towards the central banks is equal to 3.80%. Risk-weighted assets stood at 4.580 million, and the total capital ratio stood at 29.29% as of September 2021, including the dividend payments. Let's now move on to slide 13 for a brief comment on our MRL requirements and senior preferred issuance. As you know, at the end of August, Finneco announced the MRL requirements received by Bank of Italy, which will be binding starting from January 1, 2024. The risk-weighted assets MRL requirement is set at 20.83%. and already consistently met by Fineco with own funds. The leverage ratio exposure requirement is set at 5.18%, with an intermediate target at 4.11%, binding from January 1, 2022. Let me please underline that our MRN requirements are the lowest disclosed in the European market, thanks to our diversified and low-risk business model, together with our high level of liquid assets. As you know, different from the leverage ratio, which is calculated only based on the CT1 capital and 81, the MRM leverage ratio exposure also includes other eligible liabilities. In our case, such eligible liabilities are senior debt liabilities. because the regulators have not asked us to issue any subordinated instruments. Thus, in order to be immediately compliant with the fully loaded requirements of leverage ratio exposure with two years in advance, on October 14, 2021, the bank successfully issued 500 million senior preferred with a very negligible impact on our P&L. Let's now move on. As you know, 2020 has made it even clearer that Fineco is in the sweet spot for growth. In the first nine months of 2021, the bank has been able to deliver even stronger net sales, reaching $7.9 billion with a very strong asset mix. October net sales were only the latest confirmation of this big jump in the new dimension of growth. Let me now spend a few years on the recruiting. As you can see on slide 16, starting from last year, we have experienced a strong increase in the interest of financial advisors to join our bank, thanks to our business model, which proved to be the best position to grow in the new landscape, also thanks to our unique FinTech DNA. To this regard, please note that we have no need to overpay financial advisors with huge upfront fees and use the aggressive approach historically taken by the industry. As a matter of fact, in the new environment, Finuc emerged more clearly as the perfect bank for professionals looking to grow in their own business in a sustainable way. Those dynamics were confirmed in the first nine months of the year, resulting in an in a net increase of 146 personal financial advisors in our network as we recruited 88 senior and 119 junior with a net sales generated organically by the bank at 86% in the period. Let's now skip to slide 21. In this slide, we summarize our guidance which are all confirmed with some improvements related to banking fees and investing revenues. With regards to our banking revenues, we expect our net financial income to stabilize, to remain stable in 2021 and 2022 at the levels of 2020. Overall banking fees are now expected above 45 million in 2021 and to grow going forward thanks to the increase of our client base and to repricing actions. For investing, given the strong growth experience of the last few months, driven both by the acceleration in underlying trends and by the first effects of the strategic discontinuity in FAM, we are again increasing our 2021 guidance to revenues growing around 25% with higher margins Going forward, we confirmed the guidance of around $6 billion per year in asset under management, net sales, and $6 billion per year in retail net sales by Finneco Asset Management. We also confirmed the increase of the bank's management fees margins after tax up to around 55 basis points and the pre-tax margins up to around 75 basis points by 2024. Brokerage revenues are expected to remain strong with a floor in relative terms with respect to the volatility that is definitely higher than in the past. Operating costs are expected to grow around 5% here and here. Please note that we expect about 5 million of additional costs here and here related to FinEco asset management, of which 2.5 million in the in between $2 and $2.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2021, as we are introducing the strategic discontinuity to improve the efficiency of the investing value chain. Going forward, we expect a stabilization in running cost growth compared to 2021, around 5% year-on-year, not including the additional costs related to the expansion abroad and to Finic Asset Management On Finnecoset management, let me underline that in 2022, we expect around 6 million additional costs related to the strategic discontinuity. Cost income, we confirm our guidance on a continuous and declining cost income in the long run, thanks to the scalability of our platform and to the strong operating gearing we have. This excluding costs related to our expansion abroad. Systemic charges for 2021 are confirmed at around $38 million, which we already booked in the first nine months of 2021, within provisions for risk and charges. Please note that the more we will be effective in the deriving of the balance sheet, the more we can decrease the contribution of systemic charges. Tax rate for 2021, we expect heat stable year-on-year. While going forward, we expect a reduction of around 1 percentage point per year. On our capital ratio, we expect quarter-hour ratio to remain above the floor of 70%, and leverage ratio comfortably in the range between 3.5% and 4% currently, with a combination of both a strong acceleration in the growth of the bank and the distribution of generous dividends. As you can see in the slide 65 in the annex of our presentation, the point of attention related to the leverage ratio has been definitely fixed. On dividend per share, going forward we expect it constantly increasing, also thanks to the progressive delivery on our strategic discontinuities. Cost of risk was equal to seven basis points in the third quarter of 2021, thanks to the quality of our lending portfolio that is offered exclusively to our loyal customer base. For 2021, we expect a hit below 10 basis points, and in 2022, in a range between 10 and 15 basis points. Finally, we expect robust and high-quality net sales with a mix mainly skewed towards asset under management and with a lower component of deposits thanks to the whole new initiatives we are undertaking. Let's now move to slide 22. As you know, we have entered a new dimension of growth, and to take full advantage from it, we have undertaken a wide set of initiatives to keep the growth of our balance sheet under control. This will improve our revenues mix and evolve our business model to be more fee and commission driven, becoming more a platform to fulfill clients' financial needs than a bank. Let me please underline that already now, with our initiatives not yet at full speed, at the same time, we can sustain our strong long-term growth, distributing a higher level of dividends per share and comfortably remain well above our regulatory requirements. Let me now go briefly through the new initiatives. First, we changed the incentive scheme of our network of financial planners that is now wholly linked to net sales in asset under management. This has produced a strong acceleration in improving the quality of our net sales mix. Second, we will further increase the productivity of the network through new software developments leveraging on our deep internal IT know-how. Third, also thanks to Finneco's management efficiency and strong time to market, we can count on a wider product range in order to fully catch the whole spectrum of clients' financial needs and effectively convert their excess liquidity. For example, our FAM target offer fits virtually all investment needs, while the platform of third-party savings account, which is already live, is perfect for clients with no intention to invest in managed products. Finally, we are improving the quality of our client base, focusing our target market on the upper end, also thanks to the repricing of our banking services, in order to better control the acceleration of new clients from traditional banks and to be more selective in our client acquisition. All this set of new initiatives will allow us to be more selective in the growth we are pursuing, resulting in a better quality revenue mix. Let's now move to slide 23 to deep dive on our banking business. As you know, we have set a number of industrial initiatives to manage liquidity, improve the quality of our client base, and total financial asset mix. And in the end, the leverage are abolished. Among these, it is worth mentioning the more dynamic management of our treasury, the increase in the appetite for lending by our clients. We've not changed to our cautious and conservative approach. The new platform to distribute third parties' savings account, the new pricing of our banking services, And finally, the new platform to manage the tax credits towards the state under the ecobonus and superbonus, which we are progressively buying. This will help us to sustain the net interest income with an interesting yield and not use of capital, as the counterpart of a credit is the state. In this regard, the results of the first nine months already show the first contribution coming from the tax credits and going forward. We have a volume potential in the range between 1.5 and 2 billion. At the end of September, we bought around 400 million tax credit, which we expect around 800 million by the end of 2021. Let's now move on slide 24 for a deep dive on our investing business. As anticipated, going forward we expect an acceleration of our investing revenues and margins. This is due to a further increase in our network productivity leading to growing volumes and to the strategic discontinuity in FinEco asset management, which will extract additional operational efficiency and allow us to take more control of the investing value chain. In this slide, we summarize our actions to further improve both the volume effect and FinEQ Asset Management contribution. Our initiatives are already delivering, as you can see from our record asset under management, net sales, and by the strong retail net sales by FinEQ Asset Management. In particular, in slide 25, you can appreciate how FinEQ Asset Management is gaining commercial traction and increasingly contributing to the group net sales. With retail net sales, doubled year-on-year. On top of this, you can also see the acceleration in the internalization of the value chain, shown by the increase in the institutional classes. Let me remind you that the discontinuity in Finnecoset management will allow our Irish company to progressively and structurally decrease the cost of third parties through a number of initiatives, like, for example, the launch of the new flagship product range, fully managed in-house, new advisory services, or lower cost of mandates. I will now leave the floor to Paolo Di Grazia, our Deputy General Manager, for an update on the development of our UK business on slide 29.

Paolo Di Grazia Thank you Alessandro and good afternoon everyone. First nine months, results confirmed once again that our one-stop solution offer in the UK is providing to be very well welcomed and our marketing campaign is providing a strong boost to quality client acquisition. New current accounts in the period have been almost 70% higher compared to the whole 2020 and we are now developing a brand new proprietary model to maximize the efficiency of our marketing campaign based on volatility and clients' behaviors. The acceleration of our customer acquisition dynamics and the quality of our client base have been confirmed in the last few months. For example, as you can see on the second graph on the left-hand side of the slide, the penetration of active clients on brokerages confirmed to be strong at around 70% on new current accounts in the first nine months of 2021, confirming that we are not attracting hits and run highly speculative and volatile customers, but we are attracting experienced traders, loyal and looking for quality offers. This is further evidence of the right position chosen by the bank in the U.K. This translates in a further boost of our revenue generation. On the right-hand side of the slide, you can see revenues in the first nine months of the year being higher compared to the whole 2020. On top of this, our cross-selling is working very well, and we are continuing to improve our revenue mix in favor of over-the-counter listed products, which are now the lion's share of the growth. In the slide 30, we sum up the next steps that are getting us closer to the full launch of our investing offer. In particular, we are now improving our ISA offer with multi-currency and focusing on the user experience by building up easy-to-use journeys and maps to help clients choose the best investment solution based on their goals. As a final note, as Alexandra already described, the two strategic discontinuities on the leverage and on the investing will allow us to further increase our growth plan abroad. In this regard, we are now planning a more robust marketing in the UK for 2022 with our usual gradual path while we're preparing the setup to launch our offering in Germany also by the first half of 2022. as we think that our model, just based on the features of the German market, can be very attractive for local German clients. Now, thank you for your attention, and I will hand it back to Alessandro.

Thank you. And thank you for your time.

Now we can open the call to questions.

Excuse me, this is the Coruscant Conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. The first question is from Domenico Santoro from HSBC. Please go ahead.

Hello, hi, good afternoon. Thanks for the presentation. First of all, on the investing fees, I mean, your guidance for this year, which is around 25, suggests that the Q4 is going to be flattish vis-à-vis the third quarter. So I was just wondering whether there is any catch up in terms of expenses to a phase, the usual seasonality that we see in the last quarter of the year. Then there was quite an improvement of margins in the quarter. So I was just wondering how much this is due to your initiatives at FAM and how much was instead of a mixed effect. So at this point, whether you see any upside risk to these 75 bps that you have as a medium-term target on IOM. The other question is, again, on the expenses to FAs, given all the initiatives that you have in place in order to accelerate sales, and how shall we model this going forward? Do you see an increase? How the two things, you know, sales and the payout to a phase relate in a way. Then just a quick question on banking fees. This year, X, the one of last year, they grew by 5 million. I wonder whether this is the right rate we should include in our model in terms of increase. And then on the new rules regarding the patent box, I wonder whether you will apply and what that means in terms of your future tax rate, any changes. Thank you.

Thank you. Regarding the investing fees guidance, clearly, as you probably are familiar, all throughout the year we have been always, we prefer to be conservative in the guidance going through the year and progressively rising the guidance currently with the heaviness the big jump was stable. So clearly at the moment the momentum is extremely strong and so clearly there is clearly a seasonality in the first quarter that is related to the payments of the incentive scheme of the financial planners, but at the same time clearly there is if the run rate of the business is going to continue stronger than we were expecting, clearly there is room for also having some positive surprise. we are remaining consistent with the approach we used all the year long. So progressively, when we were sure that everything was extremely rock solid, we increased the margins, we increased the guidance. So at the moment, this is the same thing. The same approach used by when there are the states say, come on, the expected growth of the gross domestic product is this. This is what is in the pocket considering the situation, but clearly the momentum is extremely, extremely strong. If we don't have any unexpected surprise by the market, clearly we think that probably there is also room for doing even better. The increase of margins in the third queue is clearly a combination of mostly driven by the The beginning of the impact of the FinEQ asset management discontinuity and the mix clearly is continuously improving, slowly but steadily is improving. Just think to our decumulation products that are continuously increasing. the equity exposure of clients, and it's a little bit too early to give you an idea if there is or not an upside risk. regarding the 75 basis points of 2024. At the moment, we prefer to remain. We gave the guidance to the market just a few months ago. We prefer to remain consistent with this guidance. Regarding expenses related to financial plainness, it's clear that the higher the results, And clearly, the higher you have to expect the bonus we are going to pay to them. This is a matter of fact. But the incentive scheme is built in a way that clearly is not linear, the progression. Clearly, the more, if we have a higher than expected level of results, the increase, we are going to have an increase in the incentive for financial planners. but it's going to be in a much smaller scale respect. So regarding the increase of the higher than expected results. So in a few words, if we have a much higher clearly we are going to be very happy to pay to our threshold planning higher incentive schemes because at the same time what we are going to pocket is going to be massively higher. On the banking fees increase of 5 million year on year, your question is if this can be considered as the run rate. The bank is growing incredibly fast, and also what has taken us by surprise has been the fact that despite the introduction of two waves of repricing, our expectation was for an increase of the quality of the clients, but probably for at least a modest increase acceleration in the client acquisition this is and what we what we are experiencing is exactly the opposite so the quote of client is going up but also the client acquisition is going incredibly well and for this reason we at the moment is not on the is not on the table but we cannot rely to allow to introduce additional repricing on the for the for the new clients considering that In relative terms, the gap, if we are considering the customer experience we are providing to clients and respect to additional banks, is keeping on widening. So I think that it's a little bit to give a guidance of 5 million of euros as a run rate. I think it's like to have a static picture, but everything is moving incredibly fast and is moving definitely in our favor. On the patent box, I'm leaving the floor to our CFO to give you a little bit more visibility on what's going on there.

Thank you, Alessandro. Good afternoon to everybody. Regarding the new patent box regime introduced by the decree in October 2021, It's necessary to wait for more details by Italian tax authorities in order to evaluate the impact for the bank. The high level of uncertainty already existing on the research and development tax credit led us to consider the old regime more convenient for us. We have already applied for the renewal of the regime related to the software for the period 2020-2024. And as prescribed by law, the tax authority is now to officially validate the use of the same methodology that we agreed for the previous period. The previous period was 2015-2019. At the moment, and with reference to the period 2020-2024, we maintain the option for the old regime as tax authority has already accepted our renewal. And the patent box estimate contribution for 2021 is in line with the 2020-2024. and is around 4 million of euros, considering the same methodology agreed with tax authority for the previous period, 2015-2019.

So, Lorena, practically we can say that up to 2024, the market does not expect any significant change in terms of impact of the patent box. Yes, for FinEco, yes.

Thank you. All right.

The next question is from with Citi. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. A couple of questions for me. You have provided us a very detailed outlook, but the only one that I don't see is the net profit. So looking at the various movements with the strong investing, the banking stabilizing, and a bit of higher costs from the inflation and the growth, is it fair to say that over the next couple of years your net profit growth could be around mid-teens level? And if you can elaborate a little bit of that. The second one is on the AUM flows that you target for next year. You talk about net sales of around 6 million. This is a level that you have already achieved in the first 10 months of this year. So I wanted to know if you can give us a little bit more color on what are the assumptions that you have made to get to this $6 billion and if there is any potential for higher results next year if the conditions remain solid as they are. And if I can, a very quick thing. On your brokerage side, you would not have any impact from the ban on the payment for all the flows that has been announced today, right? Thank you.

So regarding the net, clearly we're not giving a precise guidance on net profit because I think that considering the level of extremely precise details we provided in terms of volumes and evolution of cost, margins on investing and so on, clearly we think that there is a I think that it's possible to model what you can expect. Clearly, the increase in terms of profitability is going to be clearly progressively quite large, and so we think that clearly to think that a growth growth of the net profits that is going to be consistently double digits going through the periods. We think that, in my opinion, it makes a lot of sense that this is clearly what is emerging clearly if you put together all the information we are giving to you. Regarding asset under management net sales, we are clearly giving guidance. we on the six billions guidance on asset under management by definition we have to be I'm not saying a little bit conservative because we don't have the crystal ball and so we cannot we don't know what we can expect going forward but if your point is if we have market conditions remaining extremely favorable as they are now, there is clearly a potential upside, yes. And regarding the third point, the impact from the ban on payments for order, for everybody that is familiar with our brokerage business, Fineco is not running a business model based on payments for the order flow. Our trading profit is 100% driven by our internalization of the flows. So that means that thanks to the dimensional volumes we have and the quality of volumes that are extremely granular, we are able to match the client's orders directly and without sending them to the market and keeping for us the spread and providing and guaranteeing to our clients the best execution in terms of both pricing and size. So really it's absolutely a market practice that never has been part of our business model. We don't need to do that because we are in the privileged position that probably in terms internalizing all the flows, we are by far the best position in the European player.

The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. A couple of questions from my side. As far as the increase in the risk appetite by clients that you've mentioned, which has driven the increase in the fees. Can you share with us what's the exposure to equity? If you can give us an indication of how can we judge these increased risk appetite. And I was wondering whether you can also give us an indication of what is the backlog of potential money in the accumulation product that going forward may be invested into higher asset classes and whether this is going to also drive an increase in the management fee going forward. Second question related to the third-party savings accounts. I was wondering whether you can share with us what are the volumes there. I mean, the offer started quite recently, but I think that the ramp-up is quite significant. So if you can give us the figures there. And the last point, I may have missed the comment, but do you still plan to expand abroad in Europe, and if so, whether your guidance on the cost base, 5% growth in the long term, already captures this. Thank you.

Regarding the increasing risk paid by clients, at the moment we have an exposure of our clients to equity is slightly above 40%, but I'm asking my colleagues to confirm this number.

Yes, I confirm, I confirm, Alessandro, we are 40.4%.

Yes, and we expect a slow but steady and continuous increase of the exposure to the equity markets, driven by a combination of a growing risk capital by clients for the evident reason that is that if they want to protect their, on the long term, their wealth from, for example, inflation, they have to look to their, in any case, on the long run, on the equity market. Second, the accumulation product, and so we jump directly into the second questions, the accumulation products clearly are continuously, automatically bringing a contribution in the increase of the exposure to the equity markets. At the moment, which is the total amount of the accumulation of products that we sell to the clients, I don't know, I'm asking to make a list because I don't remember exactly that number. We have to return to you later on because I'm... Okay, thank you. If I remember correctly, you provided... Consider that it's a continuously... It's a moving picture because the accumulation product solutions are one of the flagship solutions we're providing to our clients. So practically every month there is a continuous increase of this solution. And so this is the potential of this is continuously building up. So clearly we are going to give you a kind of a photo of which is the existing situation, but keep in mind that clearly month by month the amount of this solution sold to clients is continuously to increase. This is probably the most powerful driver in moving clients into a more equity-exposed asset allocation. The expansion abroad, clearly we confirm that is in our plan. The guidance on cost clearly is, as Paolo has underlined before, we are going to keep an extremely rational and progressive approach. So clearly the more we get the right kind of feedback by the market and the more we are going to put money on the table. The example is on UK. UK now is... clearly showing a good signal that we are moving in the right direction. And so probably we are going to put a little bit more money on the table. But to give you a precise number is difficult because it depends, for example, by market conditions. So in UK, the largest part of the revenues generated by clients is related to brokerage. And the brokerage is a business in which it's worth the case to to push in terms of marketing if you have a decent market condition, so a decent level of volatility. For example, if you push too much in terms of market when the volatility is very low, the risk is to waste money. So it's difficult to give you a precise indication because we are going to be extremely, as usual, extremely progressive. The main goal is to be very effective in what we're going to spend. And we're going to remain extremely efficient on the operational cost point of view.

Thank you.

The next question is from Gianluca Ferrari with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Yes, hi, good afternoon. Three questions for me as well. The first one is on the guidance of net financial income for 21 and 22 in line with 2020. But I was wondering if you can give us the numbers without profits from treasury management, i.e. a number comparable with the 270.8 million of 2020, or in a different way, how much profits from treasury management do you expect for full year 21 and full year 22? The second question is on the 88 senior you recruited this year. If you can give us the average cost, if I recall properly, you are advertising over three years, right? And if these 88 are just coming from the competition or you're also poaching people from banks, just to have a bit of color about this. The final question is a more strategic one. You talked a lot about optimizing the value chain. I was wondering something around your life offer. You keep distributing products, multi-class products from Eurovita and Aviva. So I was wondering why you don't ask a life insurance license.

you don't take advantage from the fund offer which is now very wide to build your own multi-class products thank you now thank you so regarding the the financial income it's uh it's practically impossible to give you an uh and a precise split right now because means that we have to make a kind of a kind of guess of uh what's what's going what is expected to going on on interest rates because the The two components are two parts that are communicating together. For example, if we have a higher than expected rise in interest rates, you can expect clearly the component represented by the net interest income becoming higher than we were expecting at the beginning. At the same time, the contribution of the treasury managers going down. And exactly the opposite in the case you have a kind of moving in the opposite direction. So what we can say that the two components are thanks to the fact that we built an extremely smoothed portfolio. So the portfolio has been built in a very progressive way. So we don't have any So there is a continuously amount of bonds that are running off here by here in a very smooth way. So this is giving an extremely linear kind of linear approach that is making the bonds the linkage between the treasury management and the net interest income working extremely well. So this is the reason why we are guiding on the financial income. At the same time, clearly, the fact that we have perfectly now under control the balance sheet is giving us clearly more room for maneuvering. So this is the reason why we are not in the position to give such a precise split between net interest income and treasury management because it's a continuously moving situation. For example, 10 days ago when we had the big spike on the interest rates, clearly the new Assuming that that was to be considered the new scenario for 2022, the blend was more in the direction of a higher than expected net interest income and the lower than initially expected contribution by the treasury management. But putting everything together, considering that the portfolio is extremely very well balanced and distributed over the years, we are extremely relaxed in saying that we expect a stable financial income. On the requirements of the 88 senior financial planners, before leaving the floor to Lorena, as usual for the cost, I'm asking that the most part of them are coming from banks and not coming from other financial plans. The big trend there is the reason and probably the growing awareness among the skilled bankers working in traditional banks that we are moving incredibly fast in integration and completely kind of different world. in which if you want to keep on doing your job in a very efficient and effective way, you have to keep on working in a completely different environment that is going to free you from any constraints from a temporal and physical point of view. And so clearly they are looking more and more in direction to a player like Finneco that is characterized by an unmatched level of efficiency from the infrastructure point of view, at the same time an extremely broad and fair proposition. But regarding the cost, I don't know, Lorraine, if you want to give to...

Unfortunately, we don't have the split for the 88 senior FEAs acquired in 2021. If you don't mind, we will come back with a precise answer on this point.

As usual, we are what we can confirm that we are remaining coherent with our approach that is to pay what is the what we think is something that is sustainable and fair. So we are not interested in entering in the game of overpaying the new bankers in order to get them on board because never has been our strategy and clearly we are not starting that now and we don't need to do that. And regarding the life insurance, this is a very good point you are raising because At the moment, we think that in the insurance business, clearly the production we have is quite large because at the same time, we are still operating in a way that is... Because at the moment, when you look to the large life insurance producer, you have in front of you typically two kind of players. Or you have players characterized by having their own internal factory. Or you have players that have entered in a kind of a little bit longer term and binding arrangements with insurance players. Both of them, both the two solutions have the the advantage that they are providing to you, higher margins. At the moment, we are in a kind of unique situation because we are, for sure, a very large producer, but at the same time, we are not, nor we have an internal factory, and at the same time, we don't have any kind of little bit long-term agreement with a life insurance producer. So the results, clearly, our margins on the life insurance business, there is room for improving them. And clearly, we are probably going to start on thinking about that.

Interesting. Thank you. Thank you very much.

The next question is from Alberto Villa with Intermonte. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon, Alessandro and team. Thanks for the presentation. I have three questions. The first one is on the tax credit. You kept your target of $1.52 billion in terms of potential for tax credit. The government now is pushing forward the expansion of the ECO bonus and so on. So I was wondering if, given that you are targeting to reach $800 million by the end of this year, this guidance could be conservative or if you see there are caps that it's difficult to go much beyond this figure and the second one excuse me go ahead go ahead and also if you can confirm the margins on the tax credit and the contribution we are expecting on the net interest margin for 2022 from this

On tax credit at the moment we don't think that it's the case to change the guidance because clearly we are extremely accurate and conservative in order to be sure that everything is done in the proper way. It's an extremely complex and granular business and so we are not in a rush. We want to keep on doing that. And this is related to the second question, margins on tax credit. It's clear that at the moment we are in an environment that is characterized by a growing and a higher supply than was expected before, considering that clearly the possibility to get this bonus has been prolonged. And second, that we are in any case in an environment characterized by expectation of a higher interest rates. And so clearly we think that there are the possibilities, there are clearly evidence that we have the possibility to improve the conditions in our favor going forward. There is no reason to rush because there is, we think, quite a high probability that going forward it's going to be possible to buy fiscal credits to more convenient conditions for us for the two reasons I explained. And then a higher supply that is flowing in the market. And second, that clearly interest rates are higher than at the beginning. For this reason, we cannot rule out that the margins of this business can go higher going forward.

Okay, thanks. And the last two questions I have is one on the ISA products margins on a normalized basis, how we should think about the profitability of these products. And finally, a sort of curiosity, we have seen a bank which recently presented the target for 2024, including the fact that the single resolution fund will be abolished. So I was thinking if you consider that this is the scenario we are going to face and what would be the positive impact on 2024 early from this.

On ISA, I would say that we are talking about something that is just the beginning in case the margins on ISA products are extremely, are very, very low. So it's a product that is mostly co-oriented with the concept of giving to our clients a one-stop solution, but it's not expected to become a large contribute in the revenues. Honestly speaking, for me, it's a brand new solution. is something that is completely brand new because I didn't know that there is a proposal for abolishing the single resolution fund. I don't know, Lorena, did you? Did you hear something about that? For me, it's a complete surprise.

I think that it's a good idea, a very good idea, but I don't hear about that.

If you want to get my personal point of view, it's probably a good idea, but exactly for this reason, I think that the probability that we are going to go there is very, very low.

okay thank you now it should expire in 2023 that that would be the mechanism but we'll see thank you the next question is from elena perini with intesa san paolo please go ahead yes good afternoon i've got a few few questions well um actually You are going abroad with your offer while other banks like BBVR are coming to Italy with digital offers. Do you see it as a fierce competition and do you see it as a potential challenge for you? Then on recruitment costs, you mentioned that your slide 16, a stock of 35.4 million to be amortized. Can you remind us about the methodology of this amortization? And then it is not clear to me if... We have to expect some one-off costs related to incentive scheme in the fourth quarter. Finally, on the dividend, you talked about growth in dividend. I was wondering what kind of base um can we can we take because uh the 53 uh sense is accumulated amount uh 2019 2020 so i don't know if a to 26 27 per year level referring to to the past can be considered as a starting point thank you

Regarding the first question, the fact that we have such a large traditional European banks deciding of entering the Italian market through a digital offer instead of considering buying branches and so on is great news because it's pretty clear that when you have a bank like that that is giving up completely on any strategy based on the branches is pretty clear that now the world has completely changed in the direction that is our world. And considering that the opportunity that there is on the table is so huge, so large, so big, that honestly speaking, the last concern we have is to have someone else that is entering the market. It's exactly the content. the more you have established and large banks, the traditional established banks that they are pushing in the direction of a digital world. And this clearly is going to accelerate the process of making clear to everybody in the country that the digital is the new world. And so probably this means that we that the pie is going to become much bigger than we were expecting. And so for us, this is absolutely a great news and I'm very pleased by this because this is going to help in accelerating the process of transformation of the banking landscape and clearly considering that Fineco is still, despite the huge success, the very fast growth, still our market share is very small. And so clearly we can have just benefits by such a kind of revolution. And regarding the recruitment cost methodology for amortization, I don't know, Lorraine, if you want to elaborate on the point.

Yeah, thank you. So these costs are amortized in five years or six years. It depends on the contract that we made at the time in which we recruit each PFA. And this is the residual, and maybe there is one year, two years, three years, and so on, because it's the residual at today. But when we recruit a PFA, we start an amortization that has a duration of generally five years. The average is five years.

On the third question, no, we don't expect a one-off cost. I'm not sure that I got perfectly your point because, I don't know, Lorena, you want to, again, also at this point to elaborate the ways working the payments of the incentive scheme.

No, no, we don't expect one-off cost. Do you refer to the incentive scheme to PFAs?

Yes, I suppose, yes.

No, we don't expect one-off cost. We expect to double more or less the cost that we have accrued in the third quarter.

It's clear that... currently with the answer we gave to the previous question. For example, if we have results that they are definitely very well above what we were expecting, clearly we can expect a higher cost on the incentive scheme, but we are going to be extremely pleased by this because as I explained, the structure in a way that what we are going to pay on the incentive scheme is going to be much, much lower than what we are going to get in terms of rewards by the extra performance by our financial planners. On the dividend, clearly there is, I don't know, Lorena, if you want.

Yeah, so the 53 basis points, 53 cents, sorry, the 53 cents, we are calculating, considering 70% payout in 2019 and 2020, retaining 100 million euros.

So clearly the base and the 100 million has been retained in terms of a kind of conservative approach. You can see that we were operating in a little bit, we were sailing in a little bit uncharted water. But clearly the base on which we made the calculation has been more or less in the region of a 70% payout. But as we explained, we are not pleased, don't use this as we are not giving guidance on the dividend payout, but for a very simple reason that Fineco is a fast-growing company and to give precise binding dividend payout guidance on a company like Fineco doesn't make any sense because clearly this can make sense for someone that has a kind of relatively stable and predictable pace of growth. Fineco we expect our expectation that is going to be a company that is keeping on surprising in terms of what we are going to able to achieve in terms of growth and so on. And so to give to the market a precise guidance on the dividend payout, we don't think that, and this is the reason why we are using the concept of continuously growing earning pressures and growing dividend pressures. At the same time, if your question is, which base is used for the calculation, we use the 70% payout base.

In 2021. So the base for considering the increased dividends per share is 2021. And in 2021, as we already said, we are assuming a dividend payout at 70%, retaining the 32 million related to the fiscal realignment of goodwill. that we realized in the first half of 2021.

Okay. Thank you very much. Very clear. Okay.

The next question is from Angeliki Bairactari with Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.

Good afternoon. Thanks for taking my questions. You mentioned during the presentation that you're planning to launch a brokerage offer to customers under 30 years old in Italy, which is going to be more aggressive in terms of pricing and will also include free current accounts. Can you give us a bit more information on how this offer is going to work? And in particular, what gives you confidence that there is not going to be any pushback from the existing clients or any sort of cannibalization with your existing client base? Also considering that, you know, if we look at your strategy over the past year, you are really repricing your current accounts upwards and you're trying to limit deposit growth, especially in Italy. Second question, could you please give us an indication of the incremental revenue from leveraged certificates for 2022? And third question, we saw that deposit flows were quite strong in October. Have you been able to shift any deposits yet into the third-party savings platform? And what should we expect sort of for the rest of the year and 2022 as well in terms of deposit inflows? Thank you.

Yes. Regarding the The planning to launch a brokerage offer for clients at 30 years old, first of all, is a strategy based on the concept of targeting a cluster of clients that is not a particularly large cluster of clients for us. Second is a cluster of clients that is starting on approaching the investing world. And so your question, if we expect any kind of pushback by the existing clients, clearly the answer is no. There is absolutely no risk of cannibalization and so on because, as I was saying, in terms of contribution of the overall margins of the bank, the contribution of this cluster of clients on brokerage investing is incredibly low. So it's a kind of strategy, the strategy is to start on investing on the on the on the clients of the future so exactly the same we are doing with our financial planners network because we had we recruited 88 88 senior but then we we had we had another more or less more than 65 junior that clearly are going to be productive really productive in a five-year time horizon. The rationale behind this is exactly the same. There is very clear evidence that the digitalization of the society, the growing awareness that you have to take care more seriously of your money is increasing the level of participation of the young clients. Clearly, we are going to approach this cluster of clients in a way that is going to be current with extremely solid, sustainable, and transparent approach we are using on all our base of clients. So we are not going to We are going to be extremely focused on the target market. We are going to be extremely focused on the concept that the client has to be aware of what they are doing. We are not interested in approaching these clients in the same way that they are approached by some high-flying brokers all around the world. We have no interest in in approaching these clients with making a proposal that is closer to the concept of gaming than investing. We are going to approach these clients in order to start on giving to them the opportunity to take part to the financial world to become good investors going forward. So this is the, and clearly there is absolutely no risk of, it's perfectly correct with the the overall strategy, there is no risk of cannibalization and clearly there are absolutely no risk of any kind of pushback from the existing clients. Regarding the indication of incremental revenue from Level Certificate 2022, the business has just started. We started with the marketing right now and we can confirm that We have to be patient. We are going to need some months in order to start on getting traction on the business, but clearly we remain convinced that there is a very sizable opportunity there considering that the market share we have on leverage certificates is, in terms of revenues generated by the businesses, is much, much smaller in respect to the natural market share we have in the brokerage business. So the room for extracting a quite interesting amount of revenues, we think. I don't know, Paolo, if you want to add some more comments on this point.

Yeah, basically, we just started now to spend money on the product. We have good evidence in the first days We basically created a brand new platform with brand new user experience, both on the mobile and on the laptop. So I think it's going to be something interesting in the future. And you have to keep on advertising, but also keep on adding new features.

uh underlying and i think it's going to be quite interesting we'll see in the next few months and as usual the approach is not going to be in a product approach but it's going to be a platform approach so clearly we are going to we are going to propose to our clients a kind of a and a platform solution for the certificate that is much more than just giving to the clients and a single product The biggest reason behind the Finneco success has been always the capability to give to our clients a great experience in terms of the way the clients are interacting with us. And the same is going to be done with the leverage certificates. we're going to create an environment extremely easy to use, but extremely broad that is related to the leverage certificates, making the experience for clients using leverage certificates absolutely unique. And on the strong deposits in October, and clearly when you are observing what's going on on deposits, you have to be extremely, you have to consider that there is seasonality, technical components, and so, for example, in October, there has been, we had the, at the end of the month, there is the payments by clients of their utilities, and considering that the end of the month was in the weekend period, the payments of utilities has been postponed in November. And so clearly this has produced a higher than expected increase of the deposits, but just for technical reasons. And then we had also some activity on the brokerage platforms that has produced a little bit more of liquidity. And so we are absolutely, for example, November is going to be a month characterized by, and also we have to consider that usually the clients, when they have very important tax payments to make, they tend to build up liquidity in advance. So November is the most important. important tax month in Italy. And so clients are expected to pay a huge amount of tax during the month of November. So for this reason, and so we think that on that number, it's not in current with what we are doing. On the deposits, on third-part deposits, I don't know, Paolo, if you want to mix, because the business is up and running by practically one month and a half. We have just one bank that is on the platform, and we expect over the last few months to add more banks and to give to clients a little bit more sophisticated solution. But I don't know, Paolo, if you want to elaborate a little bit more on this on this platform?

Yeah, basically we started with just the first one and now we are running the marketing campaign through the customer base eligible. We focus on this cluster. Of course, we don't offer this kind of products to the whole customer base. We just choose the one where we need to... We want them to decrease the liquidity on their account and... is um is building up and here also takes time because people they have to be uh you know they they had to they had to know that the products they had to see the products on the on the website every day and eventually subscribe for uh for for the deposit but in the next six months we realized we also had another two providers with probably also more interesting interest rates, we think. And, yeah, I think it's going to be to see some, you know, evidence, some results we have to deploy the marketing campaign and also add the two providers I was talking about. Probably in the next six months we will see some good results on this.

So, practically, so if your question is is going to be within the year end an important contributor in reducing the liquidity? The answer is not yet. But if you question what you expect for 2022, the answer is yes, it's going to be an absolutely decent solution that is going to give an absolutely very interesting contribution in absorbing

liquidity that is not uh is not going to be is not it's not addressable by the investing solutions thank you very much if i may just follow up on the on the offer on the younger um cluster of customers uh in italy is there going to be a time limit on this offer and is the expectation that over time and as these customers you know approach the average customer age at Fineco, which is closer to 50 years old, effectively they will be paying higher fees on their current accounts or investing products. So they will have to see some price inflation over time, assuming they stay on the platform.

It's clear that at the moment this is a proposal that, for example, You start that you are 30 years old today, and then next year you are going to be 31 years old. At the moment you are becoming 31 years old, you return to the old pricing. So clearly this is the scheme.

Thank you very much. The next question is from Roberta De Luca with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.

Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for taking my question. I would just like a bit more color if possible on the international expansion. So maybe starting from the UK, you put 18,000 clients as of October 21. Obviously, that is somewhat aligned with your initial guidance, but clearly looking at the size of the market, it would be difficult to ignore the fact that the opportunity is in theory much larger than that. So I guess the initial, the first question is, What do you think Fineco can do to take advantage of the opportunity, given that you clearly came to the market with a very attractive offering? On the marketing specifically, you've mentioned, for example, that you're developing a new model to maximize the marketing efficiency. Maybe can you give us a bit more color of what that is and what you're expecting to get from there? and then the second leg to the same topic would be what lessons you've learned from the UK that could ensure faster penetration in Germany or in other words what are you planning to do differently when you enter the German market which I believe you said would be the first half of next year versus what you have done from an operating perspective in the UK a few years ago and then finally Overall, obviously, your cost guidance excludes marketing, so can you give us maybe a bit of a guidance on what we should expect on the step up of marketing costs, both from the new marketing activities in the UK, but also the potential launch in Germany next year? Thank you.

I don't know. On the first question, Paolo, if you want to give a little bit more visibility, please

Yes, yes, basically we know we are aware of the fact that there is a great potential in the UK, but not also in the UK, the entire European nations, countries. So what can we do to make all this much larger? We have to do smart marketing. That's the way we have to proceed. So basically we have a As you said, a great platform, great products, one of the best pricing lists in the country. So we have to be known by the potential clients. So we are getting better and better in understanding how to acquire clients. Customer, the cost of acquisition is lower and lower every single month, every campaign. So I think it's crucial to, of course, you have to adapt the platform, the products. In some countries, you have to use some products, some other different products. But I think it's crucial to understand how to market the platform and the offering in the UK. So it took some time for us. to understand exactly what to do, where to spend, how to spend, because every country is different. So in Italy, of course, we have the financial planners that are a great channel to acquire clients. More than 95% of our clients in Italy are acquired by the financial planner. And so we took some time. Now we have a clear idea how to proceed with the marketing campaigns to acquire clients. So we are, as we said in the presentation, we plan to spend more on the UK market and we will be also present on TV ads, for example, and we didn't do it before. We will be much more present in the affiliation programs and all this stuff. Of course, digital is going to be a lion's share But I think we quite well understood how to spend this money to be much more efficient and to grab a bigger market share.

Basically, this is the picture. The experience we made in the UK is going to become extremely powerful in making even more precise and effective what we are going to do in Germany, because clearly we made experience. The general market is different, but for sure it's going to help. In terms of marketing expenses, as we were saying before, It depends on the market conditions, the kind of feedback we are receiving. So we are not saying we are going to spend. For sure, we are going to spend more, but it's going to be perfectly in line with our extremely progressive approach. So the more we get the right answer and feedback by the market, the more we are going to spend.

Just a clarification, Alessandro, I believe during the call you mentioned that the majority of your UK earnings are derived from the broking activities. What other earnings do you get from the UK business?

The UK business, the other companies are presented by the e-payments, so the multi-currency account, and the beginning of something coming from the investing business. Perfect. Thank you very much.

Mr. Foti, there are no more questions registered at this time.

Thank you for the questions. And as usual, if you need to make some more deep dive, please make us a call and we can arrange a follow-up. Thank you again for your attention.