Svenska Handelsbanken AB (publ)

Good morning and welcome to Handelsbanken and the presentation of Q3 2023. And we'll begin with Carina Åkerström, our CEO president. And this will be broadcast live and you'll find the link under investment relations.

In English, you will find the presentation simultaneously translated by choosing English in the menu.

After the presentation, we're going to have a short break, and then after that, a Q&A session in English. And information as to how to join, you will find on the website. Karina, please. Marina, thank you. Thank you, Louise. And well, good morning and welcome, everyone. And let's get started. One can say overall that in spite of the economic slowdown, we do see a quarter that can be summarized with stability, efficiency and profitability. Income is growing faster than expenses and together with, well, basically non-existent credit losses, this gives us a better profit and profitability. The interest rate situation and volume... growth at the beginning of the year. Well, that leads to an increase in NII and the savings business continues to grow. And the bank is attracting more than twice as much of the market share to our mutual funds compared to what we have in outstanding volumes. The CI ratio is improving to record low levels. and the credit loss ratio in our lending portfolio continues to stay good and the credit loss level, as said, was close to zero. Our financial position is strong and in times like these, they are still very uncertain. This is something that is obvious for us that we have to to safeguard those stable finances. Customers in all our home markets yet again have shown their appreciation for the bank in all our home markets in customer service and awards during this quarter, which is very gratifying. And last but not least, talking stability. No other privately owned bank in the world has better ratings than we from the leading rating institutes. To summarize, a very good stable position for the first nine months in this quarter. Then looking at Q3 compared to Q4. The second quarter 2023, we see that CI ratio is up, and we now have a record low level at 35%. ROE is up to 17.3%, and this in spite of the fact that we have a higher capital buffer than we've had for many years. The underlying operating profit adjusted for one-offs, including these FX fluctuations. It ends up at 13% and income is up 7% and in an I3. So we see a recovery in Q3 and we also see a slowdown in business volumes in the market as such and for the bank. Commission income is doing well in spite of the volatilities in our markets of 2% compared to the previous quarter. And the explanation is our savings business and asset management. And we also see new developments when it comes to payments and advisory services. Expenses underlying down 1%. And this is something that follows the usual seasonal patterns. And as I've already said, the credit losses have basically been non-existent in the quarter. Then looking at the first nine months compared to previous year, the key ratios are up here as well. CI ratio being 36.8% and ROE is up to 16.2%. The underlying profit is up to 48% and income is up to And as I've said already, this is a nice volume growth. And of course, we see this also in this last quarter with interest rates and recoveries in margins. Our expenses underlying are up 10 percent. And this is explained by and as has already been mentioned. that we have increases in the development capacity and also that we have the inflationary situation that has an impact on costs and salaries alike. And we also continue to invest more in preventive work, preventing financial crime and in cybersecurity. Credit losses, yet again, at a very low level, 0.01%. Then looking at net interest income in the quarter, We have, well, if you start to zoom out, of course, this is volume growth, but the bank is growing in a stable manner over time. And the last few quarters, we have seen a slowdown in the market with a dampening in growth in interest. Deposit and lending volumes amortizing levels remain at a high level for households and corporate alike. And that, of course, has an impact on deposit and lending volumes. However, we continue to do the business that we wanted to do. And we do that together with customers with strong cash flows that are resilient. Looking at the net interest income for the quarter compared to the previous quarter, it's up just over 4%, and the underlying adjusted for FX, 3%. And you see in the slide that the volume changes are neutral and volumes are more or less stable. But we see mainly recovery in margins, and that is what is driving the NII in the quarter. If we continue with net fee and commission income, We see that these are up and were up during the pandemic, and then we have seen a more balanced growth since then. The savings business payment and capital management, that is stable, and we see a trend with a stable growth since about a year, and that continues. We also see, looking at the payment fees and advisory services, that we continue to see a nice growth. And then looking at the savings business in Sweden.