Mandatum Oyj

Good afternoon and welcome to Mandatum's Q2 audio cast. My name is Lotte Burström. I am in charge of investor relations here at Mandatum and I am pleased to be joined by our CEO, Petri Niemisvirta, as well as our CFO, Matti Ahokas. During this audio cast, Petri Niemisvirta and Matti Ahokas will initially take you through the highlights and key developments of today's report, after which we'll take the Q&A where you have the possibility to dial in for any questions. Also, please do not hesitate to contact us at Investor Relations should you have any further questions. With these remarks, I will hand over to Petri, please go ahead.

Thank you, Lotte, and welcome everyone to Mandatum's Q2 result presentation. Let me start with our Q2 numbers in a nutshell, after which I will make a deeper dive into our business. Matti will continue more closely with the numbers in his presentation. Mandatum's second quarter was very strong. The profit before taxes increased by 57% and all result areas contributed to the growth. The fee result increased by 18%, indicating steady performance in our capital-like business areas, such as institutional wealth management. The net flow during the quarter amounted to €232 million and contributed to the client asset under management that increased it by 16% to €13 billion. I'm very pleased with all these achievements. Mandatum's solvency position continued to be strong. The solvency ratio was 224%. Also, we succeeded in the organic capital generation during the quarter, ending up in €58 million. Client asset under management increased by 16% from last year, reaching €13 billion. The growth rates in all segments were good and showed steady growth, even if the client and asset mix varied a lot between the segments. One of our most important financial targets is the annual net flow. In medium term, Mandatum aims for a net flow of 5% of the client asset under management. The net flow of €232 million during the quarter equaled the annualised 8% of our asset under management, which is well above the target. I'm also content with the fact that all our segments reached positive net flow during the second quarter, led by our fastest growing area, institutional wealth management, with a 12% increase in net flow. A really good sales activity contributed to a strong inflow and the client outflow remained low, partly due to the consistently high level of customer satisfaction. The positive market movements contribution to the increase in client asset under management was €593 million from the year end. All in all, we haven't seen any softening in the market and product mix, and our product offering continues to work well in the current market environment. As mentioned before, the growth engine of our strategy is the institutional wealth management business. The highest growth in asset under management, as well as in the net flow, came from the institutional wealth management business. Within wealth management, all client segments grew rather evenly. The biggest growth in asset under management came from the subsegment ultra-high net worth clients, followed closely by our international institutional clients. I'm very pleased to see the double-digit growth percentage in our international business, implying that our sales efforts in Sweden and Denmark are paying off. International expansion is one of our strategic targets that we aim to focus on also going forward. Then over to different product areas. Mandatum's core competence is within credit products, where the growth was the strongest, 47% -to-year. The -to-market yields in our credit and fixed income products were still at a high level, and the good performance gave additional support to our sales. I'm also happy that the positive trend within our allocation products continued with strong growth numbers during the second quarter. The fee income was up 12% supported by increase in assets under management and stable fee margin levels. Despite the fact that most of our sales was related to credit and fixed income type of products, our fee income margin remained at the same level, meaning that we have had a good discipline in our pricing, which is also one of our financial targets. As I mentioned earlier, I'm very pleased with our net flow for the second quarter and for the first half year. The net flow has been very stable for many quarters in a row, and positive for over three consecutive years, even if the market conditions have varied during that time. No matter if one looks at the absolute numbers or the relative success compared to our peers, the performance has been very strong. The reason behind this is obvious and simple. Very high customer satisfaction, active sales, and market fit product mix with good performance are the reasons behind the success. All this together with positive market movements has led to steadily increasing client assets under management, now reaching a new all-time high of 13 billion euros. Finally, after many years of modest growth in the retail segment, which is mainly cooperation with Tanzke Bank, I'm really glad that we have now witnessed it improving sales during this year. An increase of 37 million euros in net flow year on year during the first half year is something that I'm really pleased with. Our efforts to improve our sustainability work has been a clear target since the listing, and joining the Net Zero Asset Manager's initiative in June marks the next phase in our approach to combat climate change. With the initiative, we commit to support the goal of Net Zero greenhouse gas emissions from our investments by 2050. More information on mandatum sustainability and principles for responsible investments you can find in our Responsible Investment Review available on our website. And now over to you, Matti.

Thank you, Petri. Let's take a look at our financial performance in the second quarter. Our profit before tax was 76 million euros, and it was up 57% year on year. And as you can see, this was driven by an improvement on all of the P&L lines. Assets under management were up 16% compared to Q2, 23 to 13 billion euros. And our cost-income ratio of our client AUM improved further to 64% in line with our financial target. The return on equity in the quarter was 14.6%. The group... And if we then take a closer look at the result components, firstly, our fee result, which was up 18% year on year, with AUM up by 16%. And if we adjust for the one-off loss component recovery of 0.8 million euros in the comparison period, the underlying growth was 26%. Within this fee result, the fees from investment and asset management services were up 50%. At the same time, the other part of the fee result, or the insurance service result, was largely unchanged. And the reason for this was that during the quarter, we saw a larger than expected increase in AUM and fees from the retail and corporate unit link policies. These policies have an insurance component, so the fee increase is booked partly in the balance sheet CSM instead of directly in the P&L. The impact of this in the quarter was around 1.8 million euros. And remember that these fees will be released over time from the CSM. Our net finance result came in at 55 million euros. And as you all know, there was a lot of financial market volatility in Q2. And this quarter was not great in terms of investment return. On a positive side, we had a positive discount rate impact. And we also got a 12 million euro dividend from our holding in Saxo Bank in June. The result related to risk policies continued to develop positively as volumes continued to increase. And we also had a positive expense and claims variance. In addition, the result included a 5 million euro, one of CSM release related to the upcoming portfolio transfer to IFPNC. And as you all know, this was part of the agreement with Sambo in September 23. The group net finance result increased to 55 million euros, as I mentioned. And in the with-profit segment, it was unchanged at 42 million euros. The with-profit investment return in the quarter at .7% was lower than last year and also below normalized levels. With-profit fixed income assets continued to generate good returns with a -to-market yield of 5.3%. However, at the same time, the higher share of lower return money market instruments had an impact on the total yield during the quarter. Equities contribute negatively, but especially private equity and private debt had a more normal quarter with a .3% investment return. And as mentioned previously, the higher discount rate had a 28 million positive P&L impact. I think it's worth noting that Q2 is a good example on how the interest rate-related investment return and discount rate movements tend to have an opposite impact. They tend to mostly offset each other and also stabilize the reported net finance result. Organic capital generation, or as we call OCG, was 58 million euros in Q2. In addition to the reported profits, this measure takes into account also, for example, the own funds generation from income booked in the CSM, as well as potential capital release from a reduction in the Solvency Capital Requirement, or SCR. We think that the OCG is a much more relevant measure than the reported IFRS result when assessing our performance and dividend generation in particular. In the second quarter, actually, the with-profit SCR reduction was offset by an increase in the unit link SCR in the retail and corporate segments. This was due to higher than expected AUMs in these segments and also one of methodology adjustment. If we then look at only the own funds generation isolated, it was at all-time high at 67 million euros in Q2. And in a normal quarter, you should actually continue to expect that the OCG will be higher than the reported result. Nothing special really on the Solvency side. Our dividend adjustment Solvency margin increased by 8 percentage points, quarter on quarter, to 224%. Own funds increased and the SCR decreased during the quarter. And as you can see from the slide, our Solvency margin is robust in different stress scenarios as well. And now over to Petri for some closing remarks.

So, to conclude, I am very pleased with our Q2 result. We had a good start to the year 2024 in Q1 and a good momentum continued during the Q2. We have performed in line or even above our financial targets and our core competencies are still valid in the current business and market environment. In other words, we have laid an excellent groundwork for the latter part of the year 2024. This was the interaction. Now let's move on to questions and answers.

Thank you, Petri. And now let's move into the Q&A. Please dial in for any questions.

If you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key 5 on your telephone keypad to enter the queue. If you wish to withdraw your question, please dial pound key 6 on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Hans Rettigel-Christensen from Danske Bank. Please go ahead.

Yes, hello and thank you for taking my question. You obviously this quarter again have very strong net flows. And so I was just wondering on the contribution from the international institutional clients that you have, could you just kind of explain what sort of clients this is that you're gaining mandates from? And the second part of that question is also of the net flow. What is the actual nominal contribution from the international part, not just the percentual?

OK, yes, Petri Niemis-Fyrta here answering the question. So outside of Finland, we are currently doing only asset management business. And we are only selling our products to professional investors, so institutional investors. So we don't have any wealth management customers or private customers outside of Finland. So basically, what we are selling outside of Finland to our international institutions is our credit and fixed income products. And it looks like there's quite a unique position what we have gained, especially in Sweden during this year, when it comes to fixed income and credit products.

Yeah, hi Hans. And if you look at the absolute contribution, we don't provide the figure, but it was a substantial amount of the institutional and wealth management net flow figure altogether in Sweden and Denmark.

OK, thank you. And then I also had two questions on, I guess, it's page 18, where you show the sensitivities on the liability discounting. Just for the reported figure that you had this quarter of $28 million in positive effect from the liability discounting, I guess it's a little bit higher than I would have assumed going into the quarter. So could you just explain what is the sort of size of the increase in discount rate for Q2 that you're using to arrive at that figure?

Well, actually, if you look at the chart overall, I think it actually matches quite well the development. The only thing is, of course, that you cannot observe the exact discount rate that we're using. But I think if you look at the change in the respective swap rates in the different buckets, you would end up very close to the respective figure altogether. And as you can see, also, the hedging ratio is very different in the different buckets. But we also look at this and fact check this during the quarter. And I think it's been quite accurate in forecasting. But don't use the exact swap rate. Use the delta to the previous quarter. So I think then you will end up in the right magnitude.

OK, thank you. And then the second part of that question is just looking forwards. Your hedging ratio has improved somewhat to 76% in Q2. It's mainly in the 10 to 15 year bucket. And so your sort of liability sensitivity to fall in rates going forward has decreased. Can you just talk a little bit about that? And what we should expect there going forwards?

Well, actually, the underlying hedging ratio is pretty much intact. But there's been a kind of change in the liabilities, which has been bigger than the assets. So that kind of changes the overall hedging ratio. So I think the kind of roughly 70% level is what you should expect going forward. And as we've said before, firstly, it's very difficult to hedge the really long maturities. And then we also want to keep open the opportunity of management actions also to decrease the liabilities in this segment. So I don't think the underlying ratio has changed. And I think you should not expect that to change going forward either.

OK, that's very clear. Thank you very much. That was all from my side. Thank you.

The next question comes from Antisori from OP Markets. Please go ahead.

Hello, thanks for taking my question. Firstly, if you look at the result-related risk policies, even though we exclude the 5 million, it seems quite high to me considering the level of DSM. So is there other sort of one of related issues that explain the high level?

Yeah, hi, Antti. Look, actually, yeah, it's true that it was even adjusting for the 5 million CSM release. The figure was slightly higher than normal. We had positive both expense and claims variance in the quarter. But over time, I could think that probably this maybe 3, 4 million a quarter, 4 million a quarter is probably a good run rate. But of course, we try to. There's always hopefully positive variances as well. But the kind of underlying level, if you took at only the CSM and the RA release, is probably closer to 4 million euros per quarter.

OK, then if I may continue. In other time, the management development, you have pretty nice net inflows. But the retail segment still doesn't seem to grow. So what do you think? What are the reasons behind this and are there ways to fix this? Do you see any?

Thank you, Antti. It's Petri Niemisvirta here. So personally, I'm very pleased. We haven't seen. So first to start, our retail operation is really cooperation with Danske Bank in Finland. So it's all depending on how our cooperation goes with the Danske Bank. And what we have seen in the last years, we haven't seen any positive net flow since 2016. And it has been dramatic change during this year in Danske cooperation. And this is the first time we are brave enough to talk about that. It seems to be that it's the last in chains. And it's very strong momentum on the inside, even though the numbers are still quite small. Also having in mind that we have been extremely good in some point of our cooperation. So the stock is quite big. It's quite old. And the modest growth and sales during many, many years has put us in a position that there's a certain amount of outflow because of pension payments, debt covers, because these are endowment policies. So even though the customers are happy and want to stay with us, there's a natural outflow which we can't really do anything. And that means that sales must pick up quite a lot in order that we can achieve positive net flow. And that's something we have reached now. So we are in positive side. And especially the chains, like I mentioned, 37 million year to year in the first six months this year. It's very positive trend, to be honest, and especially compared to what we have seen in last eight years.

OK, thanks. This is all from my side. Thank you.

The next question comes from Johan Strom from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. First, can you elaborate a little bit more around what you're seeing in your fee margin? I can see it's flat year over year at 1.2%. How does it look if we were to add a decimal place? Are there any trends that could change the margins, such as the mix in your growth with more fixed income, for example? And then secondly, I was wondering if you have made any changes in your risk appetite in the investment portfolio, in particular with regards to equities. Thank you.

Well, if we start with the equity portfolio first, and then Petri can take probably the fee development. No. And as you know, Johan, we have a kind of long-term strategy to bring down the equity weight in the portfolio and also the private equity weight. So no change here. Just probably worth reminding that the portfolio is like 50% Finland, Scandinavia, and 50% rest of Europe. So we don't have any, for example, any US equities or the like. So this is a very concentrated legacy portfolio. And the long-term plan is to decrease the equity weight going further.

So yeah, Petri here. So to your question about the fee margins, if we look at the wealth management side, which we are doing in Finland, we haven't seen any, let's say, softening in the market on that side. And traditionally, mandatum hasn't been the cheap layer in the market or selling cheap. We rely on our expertise and the customers as well and a capability to create added value to our customers. So on the wealth management side, which we are selling really well now, especially during Q2, our mandates, we haven't seen any dramatic change in pricing. As we have stated, we are disciplined in our pricing, which means that we are not trying to get market shares or new customers with any price. Of course, if we look at our mix, what we are selling, especially the institutional wealth management segment, which is the fastest growing area of our business, and we have released that there our fee margin is 0.8. And because it's Q2, it was 81% share of all our net flow. That means, of course, that the more we sell on that side, 0.8, ultimately, in a certain period of time, the combined margin will come down if we don't manage to sell, for example, a lot of alternative real estate in the future. But in different asset classes and among the different customer segments, we are really disciplined and we haven't seen any dramatic change in pricing or pressure to put our pricing down in different segments. But of course, the segments varies. And the fastest growing segment is the segment where we have the lowest margins. So the retail and corporate, we have highest, but they are not growing that fast than our institutional wealth management. Hopefully, this answers to your question. If it don't, so you can ask more.

Fair enough. Thank you for that. But if I can follow up just on the net flows, is it possible for you to give any comments on what you've seen in terms of flows during this recent market turmoil?

When it's to come customer side, business side, of course, we had a very busy day on last Monday and we were very active towards our customers. And of course, we got a lot of calls from our customers. But we have been always very active in these kind of situations. And as we all know, the market recovered very fast. So basically, we haven't seen any changes or problems in our business because of that day or any changes in the market or turmoil on the market.

Thank you very much. That's all from me. I'll hand it back.

The next question comes from Joko Turvenen from SEB. Please go ahead.

Yes, good afternoon. Joko here from SEB. Actually, most of my questions have already been asked and answered, but I could continue with a couple of technical ones. Firstly, regarding the CSM releases related to this portfolio that is being translated. And then the transfer to EVE, which we have quite hefty now in Q2. Should we still expect something to come up in Q3?

Yeah, hi, Joko. Absolutely. So if you look at the agreement, there's still roughly 3 million euros left in Q3 and then it's over with. So the deal expected to close in the beginning of October.

OK, good, thanks. Then looking a bit further down to Q25, with the current rate levels, what kind of an iron winding course should we expect in the with profit book for Q25?

It's actually good that you asked the question because obviously if you look at our kind of with profit book and the net finance result there, the level of interest rates is not really high. It's not relevant as such. So if rates come down, it doesn't really matter in the in the outer years. The impact is shown directly in the current quarter when the rates change. The relevant thing is the difference between the investment return and the discount rate. So the unwinding rate should come down at the same rate as the interest rate. So the impact of purely interest rate changes is almost zero. It would be zero if we would 100% hedged. But actually the kind of outer year impact of rate changes is very minor. What matters is the kind of spread that we can generate over the discount rate. And if that doesn't change and it really hasn't changed, so then the impact is very small.

Right, good, I understand. That's all from my side. Thank you.

As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please dial pound key five on your telephone keypad. The next question comes from Michelle Ballator from KBW. Please go ahead.

Yes, thank you. First of all, I wanted to say that I totally agree with you in terms of the significance of capital generation, especially when it comes to the structural development of the business and the sustainability of dividends. And related to that, I mean, any more information that you can give on capital generation, especially in the quarterly development, will be more than very appreciated, I think. My first question is about the sensitivity to interest rates of the capital generation. I don't know if you disclose anything like that. Of course, you have sensitivity for the solvency. But if we talk about the capital generation and considering what the market is expecting in terms of rate of development, how should we think about the sensitivity? The second question is about the composition of the capital generation because I see that the contribution from the capital line part in the second quarter is low and I just wanted to know if there are elements of seasonality here or what am I missing? And then there is another third question, going back to the IFRS results, to the financial result, the net financial result. Can you remind me the unwinding cost is pretty much constant quarterly? Is there any impact from interest rates? Thank you.

Great, thanks. If we first look at the kind of sensitivity to interest rates of the OCG, of course, that comes partly from the reported results. So that is the sensitivity. Apart from that, the own funds generation is pretty clear. You have the CSM development, which is not related to interest rates as such. So the sensitivity is coming from the current quarter. And as I mentioned, if you look at the longer-term impact and this also kind of goes to the IFRS result sensitivity that the sensitivity is actually quite small because what is relevant is the spread between the investment return and the discount rate. And as mentioned, when the reinvestment rates come down, the unwinding cost also comes down. So basically, the impact is really small on that side altogether. Now I forget your second question. What was that, Michele? The light contribution. You're absolutely correct. That was actually kind of 5 million negative in the quarter. And if you look at our AUM of 13 billion, we have roughly 3 billion of assets, older unit-linked capital light assets which carry the insurance component. We haven't sold these products since the end of 22. So basically, older products, which actually the AUM developed very positively in this quarter. So that is consuming some SCR and the impact of that in the quarter was around 9 million euros in the OCG. So it was a kind of mix effect related to this, but the rest of the 10 billion euros is basically something that would not have these characteristics altogether. So this was a bit of a special quarter, largely because the retail and corporate segment, the AUM has a fairly high equity weight, and that is the kind of reason why that kind of distorted the development a bit. So you have part of the product which are fees booked directly in the fee result and then you have part of the products which go to the CSM. And this quarter, the share of the CSM fee result product was bigger and as I mentioned, the impact was around 1.8 million euros.

So sorry to follow up on this. So do you expect still a positive quarterly development when it comes to the contribution from the capital light on capital generation? I mean, thinking about the next quarters or

so. No, I think if you look at the, one of the things we mentioned as well that we made a kind of methodological change that we booked some of the things previously and other which now we believe is actually more relevant in the OCG and this is exactly these items I mentioned altogether. And if you look at the, sorry about coming back also to your question on the unwinding costs, so we looked at once a year, so it's for one year at a time, but then.

Okay.

Thank you.

The next question comes from Johan Strom from Carnegie. Please go ahead.

Try again. The Saxo bank dividend. Can you remind me what the bank dividend policy is?

I don't think they actually have a stated dividend policy in terms of that and as said, I think it's all these Saxo bank questions are probably more relevant to ask from Saxo bank rather than us. We have our chairman of the board is a board member in Saxo, but we have an arms length relationship in terms of that.

All right, fair enough. Thank you very much.

Okay, that was all for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Goodbye.