Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ)

Good morning and a warm welcome to the Handelsbanken presentation for the Q1 result. Our president and CEO, Carina Åkerström, will begin by giving a presentation which is broadcast live. The link can be found under handelsbanken.com under investor relations.

You will find the presentation simultaneously translated by choosing English in the menu.

After the presentation, there will be a short break, and then we will have an English language Q&A session via the phone link service. And you will find the link with instructions in the same place on our website. Over to you, Carina. Thank you very much. And once again, good morning and a warm welcome to this Q1 results presentation for Handelsbanken Q1 2023. We continue to show a performance where income is up on all the important lines. They're also up more rapidly than our costs. We have good cost control, and the costs which are rising are good ones, development costs in particular. And the basis, as you can see in the report, which you would have seen, are strong and resilient finances. Let's start by having a look at the quarter and comparing overall with Q1 2022. We have a good capital and liquidity situation. This lays the basis for long-term flexibility required to support our customers as well as long-term stability. We support our customers and grow our business and we make investments to strengthen the profitability and our customer offering regardless of what's happening in the world around us. Liquidity risks are managed with well-conceived liquidity buffers, and as always, these are evaluated by the market, and we're interested risks exist. They are limited. Using derivatives funding risks are dealt with by ensuring that lending is funded with a surplus of stable and long-term financing sources, and their capital position is good. CET1 ratio during the quarter amounted to 19.4, which means a buffer of 4% above regulatory requirement, including the pre-announced raises of contracyclical buffer requirements. Asset quality remains stable. And we're once again showing low levels of credit losses. The customers in the bank have good order in their finances and resilient cash flows also in periods of stress. Lending, as you know, is always based on the customer cash flow and as an extra stimulus. The overwhelming majority of the bank's lending, as much as 92%, is secured with the setup of LTV ratios that are secured. And the rising interest rate environment has created some turbulence in the market on increasing funding costs in the real estate sector when it's time to refinance outstanding assets. loans. In the current and ongoing review in the Bank of Exposures to property companies, we see that credit quality remains solid. The income over the first quarter reached the highest level seen so far also in all of our home markets, in fact. The CI ratio improved and is now at the lowest level we've seen in decades, at least as far back as we are able to identify. We have good asset quality and costs are stable overall, whilst At the same time, we're investing at a higher pace, as I mentioned, for growth and stability, generating IT and business development. The underlying profit is up by 57% compared to last year, and the ROE is at a level of 15%. Let's have a look then at the first quarter compared to the fourth quarter of 2022. We see an improvement of the CI ratio. It's now at 38.5% and the credit loss ratio is still at low level. We're currently at 0.01%. Profitability, 15%, as I mentioned. Underlying total income up by 4%, net interest income. up by 5%, and this is driven by continued recovered margins. The net fee and commission income also rose during the quarter by 3%. The increase is explained mainly by increased market values in our savings business, but also continued strengthening of the bank's position in the savings During the first quarter, as much as 45% of our entire net inflow in the Swedish mutual funds market went to the Handelsbank and mutual funds. Expenses were down by 1%, and at the same time, the development level is maintained at a higher level than one year ago, and it's entirely in line with what we communicated during the fourth quarter. All in all, the underlying operating performance was up by 8%, adjusted for items earlier. which impact comparability. And then if we take the quarter and compare it to the same quarter, 2022, the result was up by 57% adjusted for items affecting comparability. Underlying income up by 34% and expenses by 10%. Revenue is driven by a rise and increase in business volume and recovering interest rate margins. The cost increase, on the one hand, explained by our increased pace in investing in IT and business development, but also by inflation, which has had an impact on both wages and costs generally. And we are a number of countries. A number more employees than used to be in the Swedish operation. CI ratio was improved to below 30% and operating performance up by 49%. As previously mentioned, we're moving our positions forward both in lending and savings in our Swedish business. In the UK, we've seen a very considerable improvement of our performance with a result which is up by 167% compared to last year. Income up by 56%. At the same time, costs are up by 6%. So the CI ratio has improved steadily during the quarter. It's now at 46%. This is the lowest so far. It has to be compared with 68%. The CI ratio one year ago in Norway, costs were up as a result of our increased spending in IT and business development. But nevertheless, we still saw an improvement of our performance by 21%. And in the Netherlands as well, we saw a considerable increase of our performance up by 69%. Hello, Ms.