Efg International Aktie

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to the full year 2025 results presentation of EFG International. As usual, we will be presenting our results with speeches from the management team. We have today with us our CEO, Giorgio Pradelli; and obviously, our CFO and Deputy CEO, Dimitris Politis. And after the presentations, we have enough time, obviously, for your questions. We will start with questions in the room first and then move to potential questions from the call. Otherwise, as usually, I point out the disclaimer in the presentation. And without holding up further, I hand over to Giorgio. Thank you.

Thank you, Jens, and good morning. Also from my side, a warm welcome to everyone who is here in the room with us in Zurich and to everyone who will follow the presentation via webcast. Today, I'm very pleased to be here with Dimitris to present to you the full year 2025 presentation. I think 2025 has been a very strong year for EFG. It has been a year of strong progress. The operating business is firing on all cylinders, and it has been basically a record year. We have been able to grow very strongly from organic growth.

Today, or actually in a few days is 10 years from the acquisition of BSI, and we are very pleased that we have started a new series of acquisitions. We have done 3 acquisitions in the last 12 months, and we were able to report the highest ever level of assets under management. We were able to translate this growth in record revenues, and we were able to -- despite the fact that actually we had to mitigate declining interest rates and a weak dollar that, as you know, there have been for us, headwinds in 2025 and most probably will remain headwinds in 2026, but this record operating income was translated in record operating profitability. And also, we made a lot of progress in dealing with our legacy matters, and we delivered a record IFRS net profit, and we are in a position to propose a record dividend per share to our shareholders.

Let us now move to Page 4 and just to give you some of the highlights of our results for 2025. As I said, it has been a year of strong organic growth, strong NNA complemented by M&A. The NNA has been CHF 11.3 billion. This is 6.8% growth year-on-year. And this is actually the second highest level of NNA growth, the highest since the global financial crisis. And I'm very pleased because we have had an acceleration in the fourth quarter. As I mentioned earlier, we were able to do 3 acquisitions in the last 12 months. Two acquisitions are already in the numbers. They amount to CHF 12 billion, and they basically are equivalent to 1-year NNA, if you wish.

As I mentioned earlier, our strong growth in terms of organic has been complemented by M&A, has been translated in the highest level ever of assets under management, CHF 185 billion. This growth has been translated in an impressive, I would say, operating performance, it's almost CHF 500 million, CHF 493 million. This is 26% year-on-year. And as I said, this strong operating growth has allowed us to absorb also dealing with some of the legacy matters that we know we have to derisk. All in all, at the end, as you know, we had a positive element in the first half of the year was CHF 45 million due to insurance recovery from a legacy matter that we closed in 2022. In the second half, we had a provision of CHF 59 million for another litigation that dates back to 15, 20 years back. All in all, it's CHF 14 million.

We had also another legacy topic is about insurance. Insurance, there is some volatility. Dimitris will go in more detail. But again, we have absorbed also this volatile topic, and we are able to deliver CHF 325 million IFRS net profit, which is the highest in record. And this will allow us to deliver or to propose the highest dividend ever, CHF 0.65 per share. What I think is remarkable is that this is the fifth consecutive increase in our dividend, and this obviously shows how strong our operating profit is.

Moving to the next slide. On Slide 6, we can see that 2025 has been a very strong year, but this is also the conclusion of our last cycle, the cycle 2023 to 2025. And what is remarkable here, we already discussed at length 3 months ago in this room during our Investors Day, is that we were able to deliver a consistent, sustainable and profitable growth over the last cycle, but also you can go back to 2019, and you see that this has been a continuous improvement of the operating performance.

Now with this, I would like to give the floor to Dimitris, our CFO and Deputy CEO.

Good morning from me, and thank you for attending the full year 2025 results presentation. I would like to start with, as usual, with the view of the performance of EFG over the cycle. Here on Page 8, you see the performance on the profits starting from 2019 up to 2025. It is fair to say that we are concluding this cycle, the '23-'25 business cycle, which is the last one, with record profits. The profits are at CHF 325 million. We are also posting the highest ever EPS with CHF 1.03 per share, and our return on tangible equity is above 18%.

One element to highlight, you'll see on the top right, is the fact that in this business cycle, what was really marked as very positive performance has been revenue performance. In the last 3 years, we've managed to increase our revenues by 31%. In contrast, in the previous cycle, the growth was only 8%. So our strategy of building volume, building AUM and defending or expanding the margin has been very successful through the cycle.

At the same time, you will see that efficiency has improved. Back in 2019, the cost-to-income ratio was about 84% or even higher. Now we are below 70%. And clearly, this has led to the expansion of EPS. We started with CHF 0.30 per share. Now we are above CHF 1, which allows also what Giorgio mentioned, which is the fifth consecutive increase in dividend per share in the last 5 years.

Now the next page is a bit more focusing simply on 2025, and these are the key highlights for this year. Clearly, our strong operating performance continues in 2025. Business development, 6.8% growth in net new assets. The revenue margin was at 98 basis points compared to 96 last year, and we hired or signed 79 CROs. I think what is very important is the figure at the bottom of the page, the AUM have now grown to CHF 185 billion, which is a very good starting point for this business cycle.

In terms of profitability, revenue growth was 11% in the year, or 8% excluding the exceptionals. Cost-to-income ratio improved compared to last year. The cost-to-income that we post as a headline is 69.8%. And the bottom line profit, again, is at a record CHF 325 million, or CHF 339 million if we were to exclude the exceptionals. Finally, in terms of the soundness of the balance sheet, core Tier 1 is at 14%. We had a fantastic capital generation of over 500 basis points during the course of the year. LCR is very strong at 270%, and the dividend is at CHF 0.65 per share.

Now zooming a bit even closer to the last 2 months, because we gave you a trading update in November, which included 10-month results. If you look at the chart, what we mentioned in November is the first bar, which is about CHF 320 million in the first 10 months. If you look at the performance in the last 2 months, we added more than CHF 60 million of bottom line in 2 months. The run rate of over CHF 30 million per month is the highest level in terms of run rate. So both in terms of profitability run rate and also in terms of revenue margin run rates, the figures are higher than what we communicated back in November of 2025. As Giorgio said, we also have 2 exceptionals in the year. On a net basis, they create a drag of CHF 14 million net in the P&L. So if we were to exclude the exceptionals, our bottom line number would have been CHF 339 million, which is a 6% increase year-on-year.

In terms of other elements in the profitability, I would say that we also had limited contribution from life insurance, which brings me to the next page, Page 11. And this page is important because on this page, we try to strip out the noise and make sure that we give you a clear indication of how the core private banking business is evolving. So what you see here in the chart is operating profit. It's simply revenues less costs, and we have indicated separately the contribution from life insurance. What you will notice is that in 2025, the core private banking business delivered CHF 425 million of operating profit, which is an increase of 18% compared to the last year.

This is the highest increase in core banking operating profit that we've seen in the last business cycle. What does that mean? That means that the investments that we made in the first part of this business cycle, and I remind you that there were investments that had to do with hiring in 2023 and 2024, also investment in technology that were made in that period. So all these investments are now paying off, and we're seeing the impact in P&L of those investments which were made 1 or 2 years ago.

In terms of the metrics that you would follow in order to figure out whether these investments are going well or not, what I can report is that -- and you see it also in the figures is we've seen consistent strong business development. The last 2 years, the NNA growth has been above the 4% to 6% range that we actually communicated as our target. And also what we've been managing to do is turning this growth into increased profits. In terms of how you do that is clearly we need revenues and the revenue margin to be resilient. I'll come back to that later. And you also need cost discipline, and I'll also come back to that later with specific pages on it, because we've also seen that on the cost side, our saving targets have been exceeding the initial targets that we have communicated.

Just to note that, as you know, we have concluded 2 acquisitions in 2025. These acquisitions had a small negative impact in P&L in 2025, simply because the acquisition costs were higher and they were only included in the P&L for a couple of months. Finally, life insurance, or the contribution from life insurance has been a lot more muted in 2025. This comes because we have also derisked our position. As you know, we have taken action already in previous years, but also in 2025 to reduce our exposure. And we also expect that going forward, the contribution from life insurance is going to be a lot lower than it used to be in previous years.

The next 2 pages are the summary of the financials, so I'll skip those 2. I'll go to Page 14. So Page 14 is the usual set of numbers that matches our financial targets. These are the financial targets for '23 to '25. As mentioned earlier, we had a 4% to 6% growth range for NNA. We've been beating that the last couple of years. The revenue margin has been very resilient against our target of 85 basis points. The cost-to-income ratio has been consistently coming down. The target was 69%, and the return on tangible equity in the last 3 years now has been above the 15% to 18% target that we have set ourselves back in 2022.

Finally, in terms of the targets, and this is probably the last time that we'll be seeing this page on this presentation. This is the conclusion of the '23 to '25. You will see that the performance against the targets has been very strong. I think one element that we also communicated was that we were targeting a 15% growth in profits on average during the period every year. The actual delivery has been 19%. So in terms of bottom line, which is clearly what we're aiming for, we have been doing better than what we have promised.

Now going a bit more into the growth on Page 16. The growth in AUM is 12%. So we went from CHF 165.5 billion to CHF 185 billion in 2025. More importantly, the net new asset growth was CHF 11.3 billion with pretty much all cylinders firing at very good rates, which is on the next page. CHF 11.3 billion is the highest nominal amount of NNA that we've had at EFG since the great financial crisis. So in the last 15 years or almost 20 years now, this is the highest NNA of CHF 11.3 billion that we have published. Markets were favorable. As we all know, currencies were completely against us with the dollar weakening significantly. And we also added CHF 11.7 billion coming from 2 acquisitions, Cite Gestion and ISG. And in January 2026, we also announced a third one, the acquisition of Quilvest, which will add another CHF 4 billion once it is concluded.

What really pleases me is the figures on the right. We've had a couple of periods where new CROs have been, call it, the sole almost contributors to NNA growth. In 2025, we've seen a reversal to a composition which looks more like what we've seen in previous years, so before 2023, about 65% of our NNA is coming from new CROs and about 35% of NNA is coming from existing CROs.

In terms of the geographical split of the business development, this is on the next page, Page 17. You'll see that every single region is posting a growth which is above 4%. So every single region is at least within the 4% to 6%. And we have 2 with Asia Pacific and the Americas, which are above the 6% growth range. So in reality, overall, it's a very good performance. It's all the regions firing at very good levels, and this is a testament to our diversified business model in terms of how we deliver growth.

We have also delivered growth by hiring CROs, and this is on the next page, on Page 18. Our total number of CROs at the end of 2025 was 763. This comes with 238 CROs in Shaw and Partners in Australia. And we also have 67 new CROs that joined through acquisitions in 2025. If you see in the middle, our hiring patterns, clearly, in 2023, the numbers were very high, and this came from a dislocation with Credit Suisse-UBS. Although we just hired about 1/4 of the people in that year from Credit Suisse. All the rest came from about 20 other banks. The numbers have gone down in '24 and '25. They are reverting pretty much to the levels that we have set out as our target gross hiring numbers of 50 to 70 CROs. So in 2025, we actually hired 51 CROs, and we also extended offers to sign to another 28 for a total of 79 CROs that have been hired or have been signed to hire.

In terms of the AUM to CRO, this is on the right-hand side. Why is this important? This is important because it's a very good measure of efficiency. And the more you can have a higher AUM per CRO, the more efficient we become. As you see, we've been growing throughout the years. On a like-for-like basis, we were at CHF 363 million per CRO at the end of 2025. If you were to include the acquisitions, you are at CHF 342 million, simply because the acquisitions come with smaller-sized CROs given the nature. At the same time, one of the reasons that we've managed to increase this is that we've been effective in performance managing our CROs, and you see that both on the load and also on the number of CROs.

Now moving a bit more to the P&L. As I mentioned earlier, we have a very specific strategy, which is about building scale, and it's also about defending or even expanding our margin. What does that mean? What is the result of that? That means that our top line has been growing, has been growing significantly throughout the last 3 years, but also our revenue mix is becoming of a high quality. If you look at what has happened in 2025, you'll notice that our commission income, which is our bread and butter, this is the highest quality revenue that we have, our commission income grew by 17%, and this is on the back of, firstly, AUMs expanding, but also us gaining 3 percentage points year-on-year on the commission margin. So we've been managing to expanding the margin on top of growing the volume.

On the other hand, we've discussed many times that interest income or interest-related income can be a source of vulnerability, because the rates have been going down. Actually, what we see in 2025 is that in the second half of 2025, interest-related income is marginally up compared to the first half, which probably means that we have reached close to the bottom of that phase of absorbing rate drops throughout the last couple of years. At the same time, we've seen a lot of client activity in currencies and metals. Of course, this is linked to the increased volatility, both in currencies and metals in the last couple of years. And this has helped net other income. And clearly, we've had a more limited contribution from life insurance in the net other income as well.

In terms of going back to our strategy of how we intend to grow going forward, clearly, we will have to defend margin. I'll come back to why we believe that our margin is resilient on the next page. But one thing to note is that in terms of the growth element, so the AUM, the starting point in 2026 is CHF 185 billion of AUM. The average AUM in 2025 were CHF 170 billion. So we have a 10% head start in nominal AUM as we start the year in 2026.

Next page, Page 20. It's about resilient revenue margin. You will see that the revenue margin that we have in the second half of the year is at 93 basis points. When we had the Investor Day in November of last year, that figure was 92 basis points. So we have actually seen an expansion of the revenue margin in the last 2 months of the year. In terms of our expectations going forward, look, the 2 key topics are interest rates and also can we continue expanding commission margin. On the interest rates, you see the sensitivity that we show on the top right. The sensitivity is CHF 36 million of drop in revenues if all 4 major currencies lose 100 basis points in the rates. Clearly, that scenario is not realistic at least for 2026, given the information that we have. So our expectation is that the sensitivity to interest rates is now a lot more muted. Maybe we lose a basis point in 2026, but clearly, it is marginal compared to our overall level of 93 basis points of revenue margin, which is way ahead of the 85 basis points, which is the average for the last 10 years.

At the bottom, you'll also see the fact and the efforts we have been making to expand our commission margin. Firstly, you see mandate penetration. It has reached 67% at the end of the year. This is against our target of 65% to 70% that we had for this business cycle. And also, you'll see that the breakdown between recurring commissions and nonrecurring commissions is also moving in the right direction. And we have now a 46% -- 46 basis point commission margin for the full year 2025.

Moving on to costs on Page 21. You'll see that we have operating expenses up 6%. This is the nominal growth. But this growth also masks the fact that we've done 2 acquisitions. These 2 acquisitions account for about 2.5% of that growth. So if you were to strip that out, the real growth is 3.7%. What is more important is that the FTEs in comparable terms have been going down. So we closed the year 2024 with 3,114. On a like-for-like basis, the year 2025 closed at 3,037. So we are about 80 FTEs down. Clearly, we have added more because we've done 2 acquisitions. And the salary costs have been going down at the same time. There is growth in the personnel side because of variable compensation, and this is something that is expected. Actually, in my view, the only cost that I can accept going up is variable compensation, because it means that we're making probably 5x that revenue when it comes to revenues. So the operating leverage is very high. We had stable other expenses. So general and admin expenses were pretty much flat compared to last year, and we still carry some legal and litigation fees.

Now moving to the next page, which is Page 22. This is a page on how we think about cost management. And several people in the room or on the phone call this self-help. We call it finding or creating room, so that we can grow our business. And you will see that because if you look at the chart in terms of the last bar of the chart where it's under cost management actions, you'll see that, again, in 2025, we've managed to reduce our cost by about 3% during the course of the year, and that created exactly the room to invest in hiring and other investments, which is the first bar in that chart. Actually, even the numbers like the investment is CHF 36 million and the cost saving is CHF 38 million. So that matches very well in terms of our strategy in cost and efficiency management. The only 2 reasons costs have gone up are variable compensation, the CHF 28 million that you see in the second bar. And in the fourth bar, it's also the costs that come from the acquisition of Cite Gestion and ISG.

Furthermore, at the bottom right, you'll see that as also communicated in November, we have exceeded our efficiency and cost management targets under the Simplicity project. The initial target was CHF 40 million. That target was up to CHF 60 million and the actual conclusion is CHF 66 million. There have been a number of actions included in this program. It's about rationalization. It's about automation. It's about reviewing processes end-to-end. And we already have a new program, which is running for the '26 to '28 cycle with a scope of CHF 70 million to CHF 80 million of efficiency and cost savings.

Moving on to the balance sheet. In terms of the balance sheet on the left, no big movements. We still have about CHF 18 billion or more than CHF 18 billion of very liquid assets on the balance sheet. Core capital ratio, CET1 capital ratio at 14%, total capital ratio of 17.3%. The loan-to-deposit ratio is at 58%, and both liquidity ratios are at very good levels, at where they were last year or even better. And finally, we bought 11.8 million of treasury shares throughout 2025. And there is a new action on the buyback. The Board decided that the buyback continues in '26 and '27 for a total of up to 9 million shares to be acquired until July 2027. In terms of the impact from acquisitions, the acquisitions cost 130 basis points on the core Tier 1 ratio.

Now as Giorgio mentioned, clearly, our primary focus is on expanding the core business. At the same time, we need to make sure that we successfully derisk the balance sheet from the legacy positions that come from pretty much 20 years ago. On the left-hand side, you see the actions that we have taken on the life insurance space. We've been quite active in 2025. Two major actions. One was to dispose of the entire synthetic portfolio and the second one was to unload about 1/4 of our physical holdings in life insurance policies. I'm very pleased to say that the carrying value of that portfolio now is about CHF 260 million as at the end of 2025. It was CHF 360 million at the end of 2024, and it was over CHF 500 million when we started this business cycle. So there's been continuous derisking and the numbers are going down. Hence, I expect some volatility coming from it. But overall, I don't expect big numbers to be coming through the P&L going forward.

On the right-hand side, we have the legacy litigation cases. Some are in the life insurance space. We've resolved 3 there. There's one more pending, probably end of 2026 or early 2027. And then you have the 2 exceptionals that also Giorgio described earlier. The positive one is the first one, which is the recovery from an insurance on an old matter. And the second one is the provision on a litigation case, which we took in December. On a combined basis, these 2 created a CHF 14 million drag on our reported P&L.

In terms of capital, which is on the next page, Page 25, we had one of the strongest capital generations in the last few years. In terms of gross levels, we were over 5 percentage points of capital generation. On a net basis, after risk-weighted assets and dividends, the net capital generation was 1.6% for the 12 months. This is part of the capital-light model, and we do expect that we'll be running at very strong organic capital generation going forward.

What you see after that is the buyback which, combined with the dividend, enhances the returns that we offer to our shareholder. And then quite a few one-off items. So the acquisitions cost 130 basis points. The provision for the litigation case was 100. And we have 2 currency impacts. One is, call it, the normal currency. And then the second one refers simply to the Tier 1 instrument that we hold. The reason we show it separately is that if we decide to call that instrument, that will come back. So although you see that the core Tier 1 ratio that we report at year-end is at 14%, effectively, if we were to call that instrument, it would have been 14.4% after we unwind.

With 14% or 14.4%, we are clearly very comfortably within our 12% to 15% capital ratio that we communicated back in November. And with the combination of the strong capital generation, we look forward to discussing even more M&A activity if it fits the plans and conditions that we hold. Which brings me nicely to Quilvest. This is the last M&A that we announced back in January. You see some of the figures here. I will not spend too much time on it. The only thing I'd like to say is that it looks small. It's CHF 4 billion AUM. But the beauty of Quilvest is the very high quality of its clients. And given the fact that it has been a small bank for many years, we believe that we can expand dramatically the offering to these clients. So it is an acquisition where we are looking to make sure that 1 plus 1 makes 3 and make sure that we create value for all the stakeholders.

And to close, and this is on Page 27. I think that we are at the juncture where we are officially closing '23 to '25, and we are officially opening '26 to '28. We are definitely closing 2025 on a very high note, record growth, record profitability, record momentum in the profitability that we are posting. So I think we have all the ingredients to feel very comfortable about the next cycle. The priorities for '26, unfortunately, in our business just remain pretty much the same. It's not that we're changing priorities. So it's going to be about business development. It's going to be about making sure that we maintain the high growth in the top line, preserve margin. And at the same time, that we maintain our cost discipline while we're doing all these things.

And the last part is, clearly, we did 2 acquisitions in 2025. Now we need to make sure we put them to work. These acquisitions, as I said earlier, had a negative impact in 2025. They have already started having a positive impact in 2026. But it's a matter of making sure that we exploit our investments to the full potential to make sure that we further expand profitability in 2026 and beyond.

In terms of the next cycle, these are the financial targets that you see on the right. And just to repeat, 4% to 6% growth in terms of net new assets, revenue margin in excess of 85 basis points, cost-to-income ratio of 68%, and a return on tangible equity of 20%.

On that note, I'd like to thank you very much, and I pass it back to Giorgio for priorities and outlook. Thank you.

Thank you, Dimitris. And let us now focus on the outlook, what we can see for 2026 and beyond and what are our priorities for 2026 to 2028. I would like to start with this page. You have seen this page during the Investors Day. This is our strategic framework. And 3 months ago, we basically said that we want to continue to build on our strength. We want to continue to focus on our clients. When I think about clients, I always think about net new assets, because if we do a good job with our clients, we can increase the share of wallet and we can attract new clients.

Obviously, we want to deliver the best possible content to our clients in order to increase the level of engagement and ultimately, the level of margin and operating income. And finally, we need to translate all this into a growing profitability via Simplicity and operating leverage. At the same time, we have identified 3 new areas for growth, opportunities of growth. And we spoke about branding and client experience. We spoke about commercial excellence, and we spoke about tech-enabled services and processes when we introduced the concept of the augmented CROs. Again, it's early days. We just started the new cycle and only 3 months past from the Investors Day, but we believe that we have done already quite good progress in all these 3 areas, and we would like to give you a quick update.

First of all, about branding, we stated in November 2025 that brand is important for us, it's important for our clients, and we wanted to strengthen our brand. Our ambition was to become or is to become one of the top 3 Swiss private banking brands by 2028. And in terms of brand finance, we have a ranking among the top 250 brands globally. We are very pleased because the brand finance report will come out at the beginning of March, I think the 4th of March, but we are allowed to present a preview of our results, and we are very pleased because the brand value has increased in excess of 50% to CHF 629 million. And what is also very important, we have gained more than 50 places, 50 positions, and we are now 262 in the ranking, which is obviously very close to the 250 that was our original objective for 2028. So I think this progress reflects our investments in an enhanced client experience and a higher brand recognition across markets where we invested quite a lot in the last few years.

Now the second area is about the technology and is about launching the augmented CRO. Obviously, these days, I'm very pleased that we brought this concept 3 months ago, because, as you know, these days, everybody talks about AI basically substituting asset managers. And in the U.S., there was also a debate whether AI will substitute players like Charles Schwab and others. We always said, and we said it 3 months ago, and we continue to believe that is that AI and technology and the human factor are complementary. And obviously, we believe that our client relationship officers are among the best in the industry, but we believe that we can improve further if we are able to give them not only great teams around them in the areas of investment solutions, wealth solutions, credit solutions and global markets, but also the best possible digital solutions.

We have announced 3 months ago that we have started a cooperation with BlackRock for the Aladdin system. We are pleased to report now that this has been rolled out in Switzerland, which is our biggest region, and our client relationship officers are very pleased. We have also launched the CRO Atlas, which is basically a tool that allows the CRO to have clear insights about their clients, the portfolio, the businesses, and we expect an increased ability for our client relationship officer to increase the share of wallet and the client engagement.

And again, we started to do our first steps regarding AI. We have rolled out Ally, which is our in-house AI platform to all the new locations, and we have seen that the adoption has been incredible, which obviously shows how people are interested in this tool. So we continue to go forward in this direction. It's a journey. But again, the progress in the first 3 months is very encouraging and the new CRO team, again, is very committed to make us one of the best firms also in this area.

The third point is about commercial excellence, and we start seeing some improvements in terms of client engagement and share of wallet. Dimitris already mentioned that our existing CROs are improving in terms of gathering assets, which is obviously a function of attracting new clients, but also a function of improving the share of wallet. And as I mentioned earlier, content for us is very important. Obviously, we have great teams in our investment and wealth solutions that provide solutions to our clients. But clearly, it is also important to create an ecosystem with top players in the market, and we have announced yesterday a cooperation, a partnership with Capital Group, one of the biggest active asset manager in the world. And we have been cooperating already for a long time, but we have decided to deepen our partnership, and I think this is a mean in a way to further enhance our personalized offering and impartial advice to our clients, which ultimately will support basically our business.

Now 3 months ago, at the end of November, we presented to you our operating model. Our operating model continues to deliver. In essence, we continue to focus on growth, translating both organic and via acquisition. We translate this growth in growing profitability. We use part of the profitability that we generate in investing in order to transform the bank for the better, and this generates attractive returns. As you have seen in 2025, we were able to deliver very attractive returns to our shareholders indeed.

Now looking at 2026, I must say that the year started as 2025 ended. This situation where there is a lot of volatility and uncertainty driven from geopolitics to financial markets, and we can debate for hours about the situation. But this volatility, coupled with the attitude of our investors, which is actually quite risk-on, is quite constructive and positive for our clients, because we see that the level of engagement and the level of transactions that our clients are doing with our CROs and with our dealing floors is at very high level. And we expect this to continue as long as the overall attitude is risk-on.

If we are going to have another risk-off situation like in April last year, then we will have to see and obviously react. But for the time being, the year started very, very well. And for us, the priorities, as Dimitris said, do not change quarter after quarter, but I would like to emphasize them again. Number one obviously is about maintaining our growth momentum. So net new assets and client engagement remains our top priority. Second, after NNA, we have now M&A. M&A is important. As mentioned already, we have done 3 acquisitions in the last 12 months. This is CHF 16 billion, not dollars. I think maybe earlier, I mentioned dollars. No, no, we continue to report in Swiss francs. And obviously, it is important that these acquisitions start basically being integrated and start delivering in terms of profit contribution starting in 2026.

The third priority after NNA and M&A remains to defend our margin. Margin resilience is very, very important. And again, we have managed very well, I believe, in 2025 to mitigate the headwinds in terms of declining interest rates and a weaker U.S. dollar. As Dimitris says, I think that by now, the declining interest rate is like when you sail, the wind is becoming softer. So it's not really an issue anymore. I think we will be able to absorb the 1 basis point that Dimitris has indicated. The weaker dollar, this is a bit more complicated, because as we see these days, it's very difficult to predict the direction. I think there was, at the end of the year and beginning of this year, some wishful thinking by many market participants that we could see a rebound. We have not seen that yet. And so we will have to continue to focus on what we can control. And what we can control is, for sure, the net commission income and all the advisory activity in terms of investment solutions, wealth solutions, credit solutions and global markets.

Next priority remains obviously to generate operating leverage. We discussed 3 months ago about the golden rule to try to grow revenues at a double rate of cost. Last year, depending on how you look at it, we were very, very close to that. I think we will continue this year and technology, for sure, will allow us to improve productivity and efficiency. And finally, we are obviously very committed to deliver for 2026, and we are very confident to meet the 2028 financial targets.

Now we are entering a new cycle. We are closing, I think, today -- well, we have still the general assembly in a month. But after that, we will close the 2023, 2025 cycle once and for all. But again, it has been a fantastic ride, and we are starting the new cycle in a position of strength. And so all the initiatives -- just to be very clear, all the initiatives that I was mentioning before at the end of the day are geared in ensuring that we deliver a consistent performance, and we unlock the power of compounding, as you can see on the right-hand side of Slide 34. And again, our objective at the end of the day is to generate a double-digit net profit growth at around 15% and to achieve a return on tangible equity of 20%.

So in closing and looking ahead, first of all, I would like to mention that our aspiration, our vision is to be the private bank of choice for generations of clients. I think that the momentum of the last years shows that we are already, for many clients, the private banking of choice for generations of clients. Obviously, we want to become for a bigger number of clients and to be really recognized for delivering fully personalized service and impartial advice.

To close, I would like to say that 2025 has shown that we are closing the cycle with a strong momentum. And as I said, we were able to translate this in record profit and very attractive returns for our shareholders. We also made 3 acquisitions in our key markets in the last 12 months. And this, in my view, is important to be emphasized how we can successfully complement organic growth with strategic M&A acquisitions. So overall, our business model is not only, I would say, resilient, but is also geared towards profitable and sustainable growth. And this is the case today and will remain the case in the next cycle.

Obviously, as a management team and all our teams at EFG that I thank here for the commitment and the dedication to EFG are fully focused on the execution of the budget, first of all, for 2026, and the 2028 strategic plan. And clearly, we are very confident to deliver value for all our shareholders.

And with this, I thank you for your attention. I close here the formal presentation and hand over back to Jens to open the Q&A session. Jens, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Giorgio. Thank you, Dimitris, for your presentations. As just said, we're starting the Q&A session in the room. So if we have a question, please let's start with Máté over there, so first question.

Máté Nemes from UBS. I have a couple of questions. The first one would be on your comments that run rates in a number of areas were better versus what you expected at the time of the CMD that relates to the last 2 months of the year. Could you talk about what surprised positively? What are the areas that perhaps you are more positive about versus the November CMD? That's the first question.

The next one would be on the litigation provision that you booked in December. Could you share more details around this? What led to this provision? What triggered this? And how do you see the case unfold from here? And the last question would be on capital and the FX impact specifically. Can you talk about your capital hedging approach? Does the 60 basis point negative impact mean that you're not applying FX hedges and there's a considerable mismatch between CET1 capital and RWAs?

Let me start with the run rate. So I think there are two points on the run rate. The one is the actual bottom, bottom line, and we tried to show this on Page -- hold on a second. This is on Page 9 of the presentation, where you see that in the period between July and October 2025, we actually had CHF 100 million for those 4 months. And then that number went close to CHF 165 million for the 6 months. So clearly, the last 2 months have been very strong in terms of profit generation. So this is, for us, very positive. And as Giorgio said, we also see continued strength in the delivery of the profits also in the month of January of 2026.

Now the second point is on the revenue margin, which is described on Page 19 of the presentation. For the second half of the year, we were at 93 basis points. Back in November, we reported that for the 10 months, we were -- or for the 4 months, which were the last 4 months at the time, we were at 92. So there, we also see an uptick, which makes us feel more positive.

In terms of why things are better than what we're expecting, there are three reasons. One is the mandate penetration effort continues, and we see that translating into commission income and commission margin. The second one is that we had good client activity in the last 2 months and in January of 2026. And the third one is the pressure on interest-related income seems to be coming down. So a combination of all three is what helps us feel more comfortable and more confident that, okay, maybe we do not stay at 93 going forward, we -- it is certain that we'll have some erosion from the 93, but the starting point is a very solid starting point from which to work on.

And clearly, as you mentioned, the fact that our AUM is now 10% higher than the average of previous year is another element of support to our business.

Now the second question was about the litigation and bear with me because there is -- I am somewhat limited in terms of the information I can disclose on that, as you can understand. Just to remind everybody, this is legacy litigation. It pertains to events that happened approximately 20 years ago and it was first disclosed in the financial statements back in 2019 in the contingent liability section. It is a complicated case. It is a case, which is now the trial is happening in London in the U.K. The plaintiff is PIFSS, which is the Kuwait state pension fund. And we have about 30 defendants in that case, including EFG and some other banks.

Now in terms of more specifically about where we are in the case, the court proceedings, the court hearings started in March 2025, and they are still running. So we are in month 11 of court hearings. We do expect that the court hearing will last probably another couple of months. And we expect the verdict to come out in around the summer of 2026. Clearly, we continue to defend the case. We have very strong defenses, and we will continue arguing our case over the next 2 months still. But given the fact that we've gone through 11 months of trial means that we have gathered more information about the possible outcomes of the case. And we have now reached the stage where under the IFRS accounting rules, we can reliably estimate, and this is the reason why we posted -- we recorded this provision in our P&L and in our balance sheet in December 2025. Again, timing-wise, verdict is expected at the -- somewhere around summer of this year.

And Máté, you had a question about capital, the capital impact and the currency. The way we work on currencies is that we try to match the composition of our equity with our composition of risk-weighted assets, which is a bit of a natural hedge, if you wish, which means that if currencies are moving one way, than I would expect -- so if you have an adverse effect in your equity, I expect that you get a positive effect in your risk-weighted assets and you try to match the two. So you're not managing the equity as a number, you're not managing risk-weighted assets as a number, you're managing core Tier 1 ratio as a number. This is how we think of it. But clearly, we disclosed the movement in the currency translation adjustment here because in 2025, it's a more significant number.

And on the other element, which pertains to the Tier 1, it's a bit of a nod way that IFRS deals with it. Although the impact is only on the Tier 1 instrument, you cannot change that, the holding value of that instrument, you need to impact core Tier 1. That's the reason we're saying that if it gets called, that 40 basis points gets released. So our effective core Tier 1 ratio is now 14.4%, the way we think about it. Sorry for the detailed explanation.

Great. And we have here the next question, please.

This is Daniel Regli from Zürcher KB. I have two follow-up questions. One is on the gross margins and the development there, particularly, obviously, in H2, we saw kind of an uptick in the recurring commission margin. If you can just maybe reiterate a bit your explanations there and how far this is sustainable into the next years?

And then secondly, obviously, again, on the net interest margin or the margin outlook on interest income. Just maybe help me understand a bit more how you exactly come to, let's say, 1 basis point pressure? What do you do? I think markets still expect some rate cuts in U.S. dollars as well. And then lastly, on the net new assets development, obviously, congratulations to the strong net new assets development, particularly Asia Pacific and Americas, but obviously also in Continental Europe. Can you maybe elaborate a bit more what drove the strong asset flows? And maybe also explain a bit what extent was driven by maybe some releveraging, particularly in Asia?

So let me start with the margin question. I'll start with the interest margin or interest-related margin, and I'll point you to Page 19 of the presentation. So on Page 19 of the presentation, we show the sensitivity to rates. And what you see at the top right part of the page is that if we lose 100 basis points on all 4 key currencies, the net impact for us is a reduction in revenue by CHF 36 million. Clearly, the majority is coming from the dollar. Clearly, we don't expect that all 4 currencies will lose 100 basis points in 2026. By the way, CHF 36 million is 2 basis points.

So we don't expect to lose on all currencies and even on the dollar, maybe the 4 cuts is a bit too aggressive. So we estimate that, roughly speaking, it's not going to be a 2 basis point hit but a 1 basis hit in terms of the interest-related margin in 2026.

Now to your other question about commission margin, the 2 reasons why the commission margin has increased is mandate penetration, which you see at the bottom right, going to 67%. And the second part is client activity. And so we are -- we have an even higher target for mandate penetration for the next business cycle, so the one that we currently just started, '26 to '28. And we see client activity continuing. Now again, if client activity pulls back, then especially in the nonrecurring side, you will see a drop, while the recurring side should be a lot more resilient going forward.

Giorgio, if you want to take the growth?

Yes. In terms of NNA, as you know, first of all, this has been our 14th consecutive semester of NNA growth. So basically, this is 7 consecutive years. And clearly, we have a methodology and a focus on growing our business, which goes beyond 2025 and will continue in the next cycle. As you have seen on Page 16, I think that what is remarkable is that the growth has been basically very strong across regions. If you see basically all the regions are within our targets. Even more mature markets like Switzerland and the U.K. are within our margin. It is a combination, as Dimitris was saying, between new CROs, but also existing CROs, existing CROs have improved their performance.

It is correct what you say in the sense that we did not have, like in previous years, deleveraging. We have seen back leveraging coming in. Obviously, we believe that the fact that interest rates are coming down at the short end and the curve is steepening. This allows clients to play the carry trade and obviously, they engage much more in terms of Lombard lending. But -- and this is on Page 40 and 41. If you look at our dynamics, basically our total NNA has been CHF 11.3 billion. The increase in lending is CHF 1.5 billion. This is about 13% of the total AUM. And if you go to the following page, on Page 41, you see that at the level of the stock, if you can go on Page 41, please, you see that the level of the stock is 11%. So the growth in lending is clearly 13% of the total NNA and is in line with our normal lending penetration. So I would say, yes, we are pleased that the deleveraging has stopped. But our growth is not lending-led.

Asia has been -- just to make the points of Asia and the Americas, obviously, Asia Pacific is in excess of our margin, 8.5%. And we have had growth also in terms of hiring CROs. They've been all very successful and they're doing extremely well. And the Americas also there has been a growth in all the areas. We have opened in Panama. We have focused on Brazil. So it has been across the region.

Great. Do we have another question in the room at this stage? Nothing -- the gentleman there, please?

[indiscernible]. You see the strong negative reaction on the stock market today with minus 9% due to your litigation case in the U.K. You had 36% of growth in the net benefit in the first half year 2025. Now you announced only 1% of growth. Why the benefits slowed down so much? You spoke about the litigation case in the U.K., which cost you CHF 60 million, but combined to the other positive litigation case in Korea, it only was CHF 40 million? So are there other reasons for the slowing down of the net benefit? And why did you communicate only now and not in December about this litigation case?

And second question about the U.S. dollar exposure in your assets. I think you have 60% of exposure in assets. Is there any trend at your clients that they want to reduce that U.S. dollar exposure due to geopolitical reasons?

Maybe I can start on the stock price. And it's the first time I hear how the stock is doing because we have, the 3 of us, a pact that before going to the presentation, we never look at the stock price. So I was not aware, but let me tell you that our job is to manage the operating business of the company. And we have been told very young, not to focus on the stock price. And if the operating company and the operating performance of the company works very well, then the stock price will follow.

I cannot comment -- I will not comment about today's stock price. Clearly, as you said, the overall drag for the exceptional is CHF 14 million. It is unfortunate that the positive was in the first half and the negative in the second half, but these are one-offs and have no impact, as we discussed on the operating performance of the company.

You want to mention about the timing?

Well, the timing comes with the ability to reliably estimate and that ability and the full estimate came very recently. So the appropriate timing to release that was with the full year results today.

Maybe the other element why this exception was CHF 14 million and the fact that the net profit if you look -- I think that the question was about the difference between the operating profit and the net profit is also due to the volatility of life insurance that it was mentioned on Page 10, I think. Page 10. If you go to Page 10. You can see here the difference in terms of performance of the life insurance that in 2024 was quite strong at CHF 32 million. And obviously, in 2025 was positive, but much less strong. And clearly, again, here, these are legacy matters. We cannot influence them directly with management actions.

So the combination of the drag due to the exceptionals and the fact that life insurance was lower than the previous year, this is one of the explanations. Otherwise, the operating profit, as we said, is at record level, almost at CHF 500 million.

Second question about the U.S. dollar.

U.S. dollar.

Question on the U.S. dollar. Look, we see some clients that are moving away from the U.S. dollar. So we see some clients that now are also considering other currencies. If you look at the composition of our AUM, which is at the back of the presentation, clearly, this has not moved substantially. I'm trying to get the page.

Page 41.

Page 41. So like the U.S. dollar was 47% last year. It's still 47% of currency this year. So it is more anecdotal than actually us seeing a significant trend in terms of the currencies that our clients wish to use.

Okay. If we have no follow-up, then we move to the question on the phone, please.

The first question from the phone comes from the line of Hannah Leivdal from Citi.

I have two, please, if I may. So the first one is on your balance sheet and capital position is strong. But equally, your annual report outlines the number of legal cases outstanding. So what gives you confidence that you won't have to take more provisions for those? And how do you think about the amount of capital you're keeping aside feeding into this versus what is available for M&A and other growth initiatives?

And my second question is on the...

Sorry to interrupt. We have a hard time understanding you. Maybe can you move your microphone a bit?

Is that better?

No, that's worse.

Oh, it's worse. How about now? Is this any better? Or this is worse?

A bit, yes, better.

A bit better?

Yes, let's try.

I'll try again and then interrupt me. So I was asking on the balance sheet and capital position being very strong, but equally your annual report outlines a number of legal cases outstanding. So I was wanting to ask what gives you confidence that you won't have to take more provisions for those? And how do you think about the amount of capital you're keeping aside paving into this versus what is available for M&A and other growth initiatives?

So I think I heard the question. So I'll try to answer to the best that I can. So the -- as you say, our current CET1 position is effectively 14.4%. And I guide you to Page 24 of the presentation because through the latest provision that we took, we have derisked the largest single risk item we had in our -- on our balance sheet. It was the -- it is the largest contingent liability that we actually have on the balance sheet. So in terms of risk profile, now I believe that we are a lot sounder than we were before.

At 14.4% of core Tier 1, we have about CHF 260 million of excess capital from our own management floor of 12%. And even more importantly, I would guide you to the capital generation that we have every year. So this year, it was over 5 percentage points of gross and 1.6% on net capital, which is the result of a capital-light model, clearly for a private bank like us. So I think that given where we are, we are very comfortable with our capital position. We are generating capital which we can use for new acquisitions. And we do have also a capital buffer of CHF 260 million, which we can also use for other acquisition if we wish to do so.

By the way, if you want to discuss acquisitions, it is not that the acquisitions are simply done in cash. There's always -- or usually, there is a share element included in the acquisitions that gives us even more firepower. Hopefully, I've answered the question because I could not hear you very, very well.

Yes, that's very clear. I have another one, but I don't know if you can hear me. If it's any better?

Just go ahead.

Okay. Yes. So on the treasury swap margin, I just wanted to ask why did this increase in the second half despite narrowing spreads versus Swiss rates? And what was the swap volume in 2025, please?

The reason that the treasury swap activities, the revenues from that increased in the second half is because the volume of our swaps increased. As you say -- as you rightly say, maybe the margin between the 2 currencies has not moved that much or even has narrowed a bit in the period, but it was through higher volumes of currency swaps that, that increased. And clearly, what also happened is that the NII element decreased because it's the other side of the same equation.

Thank you for your question. I think we have another question on the phone, can we get that one, please?

Next question from the phone comes from the line of Andreas Venditti from Vontobel.

I hope you can hear me better than my colleague just now. On M&A, you mentioned the negative profit...

We can't understand you. That is even worse than before. Can we try to get the sound regulator or try again?

Can you hear me?

No, not really.

Okay. Never mind. I'll come back to you, Jens.

Now it's good. Now it's better.

It's better. Okay. I don't move, so I hope it's better. On M&A, you mentioned a negative impact on profits from the two small acquisitions. I guess it's a small number, but still to ask on this. Can you maybe quantify the negative impact, I guess, on the cost side, mainly from this on 2025 numbers?

As you expect, Andreas, the overall contribution is a small single-digit negative number. And the reason it is negative is that we included the profits of Cite Gestion and ISG for a few months, like Cite Gestion was 2, 3 months. And we had some acquisition costs, which are the one-off part of doing M&A. And the balance of those 2 was negative. Clearly, both companies were profitable with actually profits growing significantly compared to the last year in 2025. It's just the timing of the acquisition and the amount of the M&A-related one-off costs that get us to this small negative result in 2025.

Okay, does that answer the question? Do you have another one or it's good?

I think we lost him. Is there another question in the room or not at this moment. Máté has another follow-up. Okay, let's take that one.

Yes. Just one question. I wanted to ask you about the Lia AI platform that you rolled out in 2025. Could you talk about the capabilities and the exact use cases of that platform?

Yes, thank you. I think there are several use cases that we are using, in particular in the Investment Solutions area. Then there is the general, let's say, use cases that you have with a normal ChatGPT like chatbox. And clearly, the areas where we are trying to develop much more is everything related to compliance and risk. I've always been saying that right tech for us is more important at times than fintech. But these are the key areas where we are expanding.

And the next level, but we are not there yet, will be how to improve the client experience because all the use cases I mentioned were more about efficiency on the backstage, and that will be the next area where we're going to focus on.

Okay. I think there's no further questions on the phone. If there's nothing in the room, then I hand that back to Giorgio for the final remarks.

No. First of all, thank you for attending. Again, I would like to reiterate that 2025 has been a very strong year where we have achieved a record AUM, record profitability and record top line. Clearly, it's also a year where we have done progress in dealing with the legacy matters, and we closed successfully our 2023 and 2025 strategic cycle, and we are very confident starting in a position of strength, the 2026-2028 cycle. And as a management team, we are committed in executing our sustainable and profitable growth strategy as we have done in the previous period.

With this, thank you very much for your attention.

Warm welcome to our Investor Day 2025, which we host today in Zurich with an increasingly improving weather. So that's very nice. I'm obviously joined as you have seen today by the whole management of EFG International. Obviously, Giorgio Pradelli, our CEO; Dimitris Politis, our CFO and Deputy CEO; and the rest of the team across the whole stage.

So I hope you have seen the program. We're looking forward to some interesting presentations, insightful information. And obviously, afterwards, we will have enough time for Q&A.

So I will no longer hold off pointing out, obviously, the disclaimer in the presentation, and I hand over to Giorgio for the start of the event. Thank you.

Thank you, Jens. Good morning, everyone, and also from my side, a warm welcome to our 2025 Investors Day. Thank you for joining us in person here in Zurich and also via webcast and telephone. Let me start by saying that our business is doing extremely well. This morning, we posted a record net profit of approximately CHF 320 million for the first 10 months of the year, and our assets under management are at the highest level at CHF 184 billion.

Today, we will present to you our strategy, our priorities and our targets for the next strategic cycle. Consistency and the power of compounding, the title of our presentation already unveils the essence of our strategy for the next cycle and beyond.

Looking back at the past 10 years, we have delivered a consistent performance through 3 different cycles amid the times highly volatile market conditions. In the next strategic cycle, we want to continue on this trajectory. We want to deliver a consistent performance and unlock the magic of compounding in order to create value for the benefit of all our stakeholders, for our clients, for our shareholders, for our colleagues and for the communities where we operate.

In the next few years, we want to become the private bank of choice for generation of clients, and we want the ambition, and we have the ambition for every client to be better off banking with us than with any other institution.

In the next couple of hours, we will present to you how we intend to achieve these ambitious objectives. But now, before we go into the how, let me introduce to you who is committed to continuing this exciting journey and to deliver a consistent performance creating value for all our stakeholders.

I am very pleased to have with me here on stage, all the members of EFG Executive Committee and Global Business Committee. They represent our 5 regions and all the key functions of our firm. Many of us have been working together for many years, actually, some decades. Some of us have joined more recently and brought valuable new perspectives. Together, we have created strong teams across geographies and functions with an incredible team spirit and a desire to perform and excel.

As you can see, we come from different countries and backgrounds, but we all share an ambition to have impact and to make EFG one of the best players in our industry. And I might also say that we're having a lot of fun in working together while we bring EFG to the next level. This drive and ambition have been in our DNA from the beginning, even when the prospects for EFG were arguably more difficult. And today, our drive and ambition are even stronger now that EFG is much more competitive. Stating the obvious, we enjoy much more competing in the top league and winning than playing in the second league and struggling. We have a super strong team, and guys, I'm very grateful.

Now, I would also like to welcome our Chair, Alex Classen, and the other members of the Board that are with us here today. The strategy of EFG is ultimately defined by the Board, and we, as executive management team, are grateful for the constant guidance and support we receive from the Board.

Let me now turn to the next slide and present the agenda of the day. As you can see, I will spend in the next section. For the next 20 minutes or so, we will talk about the 2028 ambition, our outlook and our strategic framework. And then, we are going to deep dive on the value drivers of our strategic framework in the following hour. Finally, Dimitris, our CFO and Deputy CEO, will wrap everything up and present the 2028 financial plan. After the closing, there will be, as Jens already mentioned, a Q&A section.

Now, 2028 ambition, outlook and the strategic framework. I would like in this section to do 3 things. First of all, I would like to put the next cycle in the context of the last 10-year journey that we started with the acquisition of BSI in 2016. Actually, to be fair, 10 years ago, these days, we were drafting the binding offer to acquire BSI. And also, we are going to give you the targets for the next 3 years.

Second, I would like to give you a retrospective overview of our performance figures focusing mainly on how we have achieved the strong performance over the last 7 years.

And third, we would like to give you an outlook for the next cycle, for the next 3 years, and we will present to you the strategic framework. This helps us to visualize the strategic plan and defines the areas that we will focus on and invest on.

Now, as you can see from this slide, I'm on Slide 8. We have a strong track record of delivering sustainable and profitable growth. We are now closing the third strategic cycle since the acquisition of BSI in 2016. Over the last 7 years, we delivered sustainable and profitable growth under completely different market conditions. So it is obvious that our performance has not been driven by markets and not has been accidental. And this shows also that our business model is very well diversified and resilient. Two, that we have the agility, the levers and the mindset to adjust swiftly to changing market conditions when and where necessary and that we are strong as a management team to execute against a sound plan and an ambition targets.

Looking at the 3 cycles, actually, they are very different. The first one was all about integration. The second, 2019 to '22, was all about turnaround, and the current cycle, which is about to close, was about achieving scale. Looking at the current cycle alone, we delivered double-digit net profit growth in excess of 20%, as you can see here. And we have been beating our target and our guidance of 15% CAGR. We have also achieved a return on tangible equity of 19%, again, exceeding our target of 15% to 18%.

Now, we are entering the new chapter of growth, of sustainable and profitable growth, and we want to deliver a consistent performance, and as I mentioned earlier, to unlock the power of compounding. We will do so continuing growth by focusing on excellence and generating operating leverage. We believe that we still have potential to generate a double-digit net profit growth in the tune of 15%, and we believe that we can achieve a return on tangible equity of 20%.

Now, besides the financial targets, we have defined and distilled the vision for 2030, and I'm very pleased that this was an exercise that was done by the old firm. So everyone in the organization stands behind it, and we aspire to be the private bank of choice for generation of clients, delivering truly personalized service and impartial advice. In line with this vision, we have updated our financial targets, as you can see in the following slide on Page 10.

As you can see on this slide, you have the targets that were relevant for the current cycle, what we have achieved and the new targets for the next cycle into '28. Now, out of the 6 targets, we have upgraded and improved 4 targets, and we have maintained 2 targets. We have maintained the NNA growth target, 4% to 6%, although we have been always running at the high end of the range in the last cycle.

We have not changed this target since 2019, and it has served us well, and so, we decided to keep it. We have upgraded the revenue margin targets. Now, the 85 basis points is de facto a floor. We have improved the cost-to-income ratio to 68%. We have improved the return on tangible equity to 20%. We have maintained the management floor in terms of capital equity Tier 1, and we have improved the dividend payout from 50% to 60%.

Now, the key question is -- that we want to answer today is how can we realize our vision, how can we continue to consistently perform and how we can continue to achieve our targets. I believe that when we do planning, strategic planning, it's always good to go back, see what we have delivered, learn from what we have done in the past and then look forward and see what we have to do given the new market environment to deliver the plan that we have decided.

So in the next section or so, I will look back, and I will show to you this journey of sustainable and profitable growth with the focus not so much to talk about the numbers because you know the numbers very well. We have presented them every single year, every single semester, but to focus more on how we have achieved these numbers. And I think that is important because it gives you how we drive the business, and this gives you insights on how we will drive the business forward in the next cycle.

On the next page, we are on Page 12. You can see that our delivery over the past 2 strategic cycle was very consistent. We have been able to meet or beat all our targets, and we have been able to outperform the industry. Here, you see the 4 key performance indicators that are also our targets. And this is how we drive our business.

If I look at this page, I must say that I'm extremely proud of what we have achieved in terms of business development and NNA growth. You can see, I mentioned it earlier, 7 consecutive years of positive NNA growth, 14 consecutive semesters. We are at the top end of our range, and we have done better than the market. I'm also very proud of what we have achieved in terms of realizing synergies, realizing efficiency and productivity, and we have brought down our cost-to-income ratio target from 92% to 69%, again, in line with the industry.

We have improved, and I would say that our margin have been very resilient, and this allowed us to actually quadruple a return on tangible equity from about 5% in excess to 20%. Again, the question is more how we have achieved this performance and what can we learn from the past that will guide us in the future. We have a very clear approach. We call it our proven operating model. At the end, if you distill it, it's relatively simple. To project in a slide, it's a bit more difficult to do it month in, month out, year in, year out. But you see it on Page 11 -- 13, sorry. Apologies, 14.

And basically, this approach says that we need to start with growth. Growth is in our DNA. We want to deliver sustainable growth. We want to translate this growth into growing profitability. While we increase the profitability, we want to use some of the profit generation to transform the bank for the better and for the future. Clearly, when we grow and we transform the bank, we do not want to compromise with our risk appetite. We want to maintain a low-risk profile and further derisk our balance sheet. If we manage to do all this, we are able to generate attractive returns for all our shareholders.

Looking at just the last 3 years, we were able to grow at the top end of our target range at around 6%. We were able to translate this growth into a profitability growth, double the pace of the industry, and we were able, since 2023, to deliver a total return to our shareholders in excess of 100%.

Now, I would like to go a bit area by area, again, not to focus on the numbers, but to explain how we try to drive these different components. So in the next couple of slides, I will talk about growth and NNA. Again, on this Slide 14, you can see our trajectory over the last 3 cycles. So I think the first thing that comes up in this slide is that during the integration of BSI, actually, we were bleeding assets under management. Every single year, we lost assets. And for us, it was imperative to reignite growth, and this is what we did since 2019.

Now, the key question -- there are actually -- apologies, I will mention 3 numbers. I cannot avoid to mention 3 numbers here. The first number I'd like to mention is the CHF 9.3 billion NNA that we have achieved in the first 10 months of this year. I think this has been communicated in the press release this morning before 7:00. I'm pleased to say that, as of today, we have already crossed the 10 billion mark. So touchwood, this should be another record year in terms of NNA.

The other number, I already mentioned, is the all-time high assets under management at CHF 184 billion. But I always like to compare that with the beginning of the cycle. On the 1st of January 2016, there were CHF 83 billion assets under management. And clearly, if I look at that, the last 10 years have been a period of very strong growth. Now the question -- again, the numbers are very good. I'm sure you would agree with me. The question is how can we achieve this growth? And how can this growth be sustainable in the next cycle and beyond?

In a nutshell, our growth strategy is predicated mainly on organic growth. And organic growth at the end of the day boils down to 2 things. First of all, we need to continue, and we have been very successful in attracting high-quality CROs throughout the cycle, and we will continue to do that. Now, obviously, quantity in hiring is important, but even more important is the ability to ensure that the new CROs that join us can be successful in a very short period of time after they've joined EFG.

The second element is about existing CROs. How can we make sure that our existing CRO year in, year out become more productive? I think we have achieved significant improvement. Here, I will not go through the numbers. Now, we have a more deep dive later on. So again, for us, organic growth is the focus of our growth strategy. The simple reason is that there, we believe we can control most of the levers that can deliver this performance.

Having said that, in the tradition of EFG, we like inorganic growth. We like M&A, and we like to complement our organic growth with inorganic growth. If you look at the right-hand side of this chart, you can see that gross we have added in excess of CHF 80 billion assets under management through acquisitions, starting from the acquisition of BSI.

It is fair also to say that we had a bit of a dry season from the years 2020 to 2024. Also, there were not easy years with COVID in 2022, which was the annus horribilis in financial markets, but I am very pleased to say that this year, we managed to close already 2 transactions. And obviously, we believe that the market will consolidate further and will allow us to do additional acquisitions.

I must also say that we are very proactive in managing our portfolio of businesses, and we do not hesitate to divest the businesses that either are not strategic or do not perform in line with our expectations. Now, again, growth is great. We love it. It is in our DNA, but growth that doesn't translate in profitability is a bit sterile. So the key question is how can we translate our growth into profitability?

I'm now on Page 16, and as you can see, again, here, during the integration years, the integration costs were quite high, and actually, we were loss making. So for us, it was very important to reignite growth, and again, to translate this growth into profitability. And actually, since the last 2 cycles, we have done quite well.

The question is, again, how can we sustain this growth in operating profit and ultimately in net profit? I would say that -- if you ask me this question, usually, I come down with this answer, which is that we have a continuous focus on generating operating leverage throughout the cycle. What we always intend to do is to translate our NNA growth in consistent revenue growth, actively managing operating expenses.

Internally, we talk about the golden rule. The golden rule is about driving the revenue growth at twice the speed or the pace of cost growth. If you are able to do that or if we are able to do that, we can generate double-digit operating profit growth and ultimately net profit growth. And this is what we have done in the last 2 cycles. In the first cycle, the IFRS net profit growth over the 4 years was around 30%, in the current cycle is around 20%. In both cycles, we are outperforming the industry in terms of profit growth.

Now, the beauty of generating profit is that you can use some of the profits to transform the bank, to transform the firm for the better and for the future. We will deep dive on many of these topics that I have in the next 2 slides later on with my colleagues, but let me give you the headlines. First of all, we always try to transform the bank for the better, for the future and for the benefit of our clients. Ultimately, what we want to do is to deliver the best possible service and the best possible content to our clients, and I think that we have done pretty well over the last 2 cycles. But as I will say later, we can do even better going forward.

Now, we don't focus only on the front -- on the client-facing areas in terms of transformation, simplicity is part of the DNA. We always want to reduce complexity and transform the bank in order to become more efficient and more productive. But ultimately, our change agents are people, and we are committing in developing our people, and we are committed in attracting talent to further grow our business and make our business better.

Now, I am -- I realize that I used the adjective proud a couple of times, but I'm afraid I'll have to use it again. I'm very proud to the fact that we have been able to grow our business at a good pace, and we have been able to transform our business in a quite profound way, and yet, we have never compromised with our risk appetite. And we have managed to maintain a low risk profile, and we have further derisked the balance sheet, and we are very pleased that this progress has been recognized by the rating agencies and the regulators around the world.

Now, if we are able to maintain this performance and this consistency, this will lead to a fantastic and attractive returns to shareholders. As you can see on the Slide 21, we have delivered a total shareholders' return, almost 300% over the last 7 years taking into account the dividends, the buybacks and the appreciation of the stock.

In turn, the appreciation of the stock is due to improving earnings per share, but also rerating of our multiples. And again, for us, this is a great encouragement and is the sign that the market believes that our progress is sustainable and can go to the next cycle and beyond.

We also believe that our performance -- our consistent and strong performance is due to a clear strategic direction, which is rooted in EFG ownership structure and governance. I think in this respect, EFG is quite unique because, on one hand, we are a family business. We have a founding family, who is the anchor shareholders that set the long-term targets, the long-term perspective and defines also the prudent risk appetite.

On the other hand, we are also listed. And clearly, we have a shorter-term perspective and a much more, I would say, stringent focus on performance and targets. And here, the professional management, so us and our teams, we have to balance between these 2 perspectives, long-term perspectives and short-term perspectives. I always say that if you want to have the right to be successful in the long term, you need to hit first the short-term targets, and this is a bit of a mantra that we have in our firm. Now, this is about the past, and I hope that you got some insights on how we drive our business forward. And for sure, we will continue to use this approach also for the next cycle and beyond.

Let us look now at the strategic outlook. Now, this is for several of us the third Investors Day that we have done, for me is -- in my capacity as CEO, is also my third Investors Day. And when I was preparing for this day, I was reflecting of what we were seeing in March 2019 and in October 2022, and ultimately -- this was the environment at the time. And ultimately, as you can see at the bottom of the slide, where we focused on and what we have delivered.

And clearly, things were completely different. 2019 was, in general, a benign year. Nobody had an understanding that in a few months after, we would be all in a lockdown. And -- but for us, we were coming from -- out from a painful and complicated integration. And for us, it was all about reigniting growth, start hiring and turnaround Switzerland. 2022 was a very complicated time, October 2022, some -- China and Asia were still under COVID lockdown. We had the carnage in the market, very, very complicated, yet we were doing well. And actually, the stock started rerated in 2022. And we felt that for us what was critical was to continue to maintain the growth and to go to the next level of sophistications in terms of content innovation, digital acceleration and invest of our people.

The point that I'm trying to make here is that what we are trying to do pretty well is, on one hand, to navigate the market environment. This is something that affects all the industry. It doesn't affect only EFG. But on the other hand, to have a very clear strategic direction, strategic course, that is in line with our cycle, with EFG cycle and have clear objectives and drive towards that.

Now, today, what do I see? I see that actually the environment is, for sure, much better than 3 years ago. The visibility is not great. I come back to that. But overall, for us, the key -- the core value drivers are about going to the next level of sophistication and in certain areas to the level of excellence.

Now, looking ahead, we always try to understand what is the market developments, the short-term trends and to distinguish them from the underlying long-term trends. Our Chief Investment Officer, who is here with us today, Moz Afzal, published last week our outlook for 2026. And the key message here is that are clearly -- there are clearly opportunities in the market, but they might be tempered by external headwinds.

I will mention only a couple. One is related to interest rates. We will see what the Fed will do in December. And the second is, obviously, to do with the dollar. Dimitris will elaborate on the sensitivities later. But, again, the visibility is not great. And in any event, all of this market developments will have an impact on all the industry, not only on EFG. And we -- as always, we try to anticipate and to navigate as best as we can.

On the other hand, if I look at the underlying long-term trends, I become extremely positive for our industry, I become extremely positive for EFG. I believe that for private banking and wealth management, there are 2 key questions that really matter. The first question is, are we going to have wealth creation in the next years? I believe that the answer here is absolutely yes. We believe that across geographies, across continent, entrepreneurs will continue to create wealth. As you can see here, the global growth of financial wealth will be at around 6%. By the way, this is double nominal GDP growth for the foreseeable future. And you can see that cross-border wealth will grow even faster at around 9%.

The second question is, will we be able to intercept and attract this wealth? And the point here that we want to make is that wealth is on the move. Wealth is on the move across geographies, but wealth is also on the move across generations. Now, we believe that we are very well positioned to benefit from these trends, because on one hand, we are very close to the entrepreneurs in the countries, where they generate the wealth. And on the other hand, as I said, cross-border wealth will grow faster, and cross-border wealth will come into the international financial centers, where EFG is very well positioned. And by the way, in this day and age, Swiss private banking sales, Swiss private banking is a positive.

And finally, we will see the biggest wealth transfer in history of humanity only in the next 5 years is $11 trillion. This is the estimate. But if you look at the next 20 years, it is in excess of 80 -- 25 years in excess of $80 trillion. We believe that our CRO model is well positioned to cater for entrepreneurs and the next generation. If the underlying long-term trends are positive, we believe that there is further potential to grow and realize the operating leverage following the approach that I described earlier. And we believe that we can continue to deliver a double-digit net profit growth of around 15%.

Now, let me now introduce what we call our 2026-2028 strategic framework. We are confident that we can continue to create value in the long term for all our stakeholders, and in particular, for our shareholders, we believe that we continue to create NNA growth, EPS growth and attractive returns on capital. We will do so building on our strengths, client, content and simplicity. This has served us well in the last 2 cycles, but we also believe that we can capture new opportunities for growth going forward.

Now, if I look horizontally at the chart in the middle, I think that our CRO model is extremely competitive and attractive, and we have done very well in serving our clients and growing our business, yet, we believe we can do even better in terms of delivering a better client experience and positioning our brand even better. We have done, and we -- and Andre is going to talk about that. We have done a lot of progress in terms of content and improving our client solution and advice. As I said earlier, we need to deliver service to our clients and content to our clients, but we also believe we can do even better in terms of commercial excellence.

Again, simplicity is in our DNA. We always try to reduce complexity and to use technology to improve both client experience and the efficiency and productivity of our firm, but we believe we can do even better. We believe that we can have tech-enabled services and processes front to back across the bank. This is basically our organic growth strategy. And again, I'll make it very clear, we will never compromise with our foundation. We will never compromise with our risk appetite. Compliance and risk management are prerequisite to growth, operational and financial resilience are more important than ever.

And at the end, the EFG people are the ones that are going to drive all this process. And here, I always like to mention the quote of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan said that talent win games, but teams win championships. And we need both. We need talent, and we need teams because we want to win games and championships. Clearly, as I already mentioned, we believe that M&A can have a bigger role in this cycle in fueling growth depending on how the market will consolidate, and this will complement and strengthen our growth trajectory.

Now, in the next hour, my colleagues and I, we will deep dive on the key elements that we have just described on our strategic frameworks. I'll cover clients and commercial excellence, Andre will cover the content, Alain will cover branding and client experience and Demis cover simplicity and technology. And then, we will hear from our colleagues about the core foundations later.

Now, talking about clients and CRO, I would like to start from the client-centric CRO model and talk about the next level of sophistication in client servicing. Now, to be fair, we have debated a lot whether we had to have this chapter, this section in our presentation because we believe that everybody knows what is the CRO model in EFG. But then we were actually told that it was not bad to have a recap. So I'll try to be brief and only focus on the key elements. Clearly, I'm happy during the Q&A to answer any question about the CRO model. I'm very passionate, and I could talk -- and I can talk about -- for hours about it.

Now, the key point of this slide is twofold. First of all, the client-centric CRO -- and by the way, CRO, just for any avoidance of doubt, stands from client relationship officer. So our client CRO model is the engine, has been the engine and will be the engine of our growth. And this is why we have dedicated the chapter for that. Now, this model has been introduced from the beginning around 30 years ago, and the spirit, the philosophy of this model has never changed. It has remained the same, although clearly, over time, and you can see here on this slide some adaptation, obviously, we need to adjust it to the new challenges and the new priorities.

In the next cycle, we are going to introduce the augmented CROs, and we are going to introduce the next-gen CRO. I will come back in a minute. The other point that I would like to make here is that our clients and CROs are at the core of our value proposition. We are very client-centric because we are very CRO-centric. And as I said earlier, we want to be close to our clients. So proximity is very important. We want to deliver the best possible service to our clients and the best possible content to our clients.

Now, what are the key features of our CRO models? We believe, and you have seen the numbers, so clearly, it's not only a belief, it's also a fact that the CRO model enables long-term partnership with clients delivering truly personalized and impartial advice. So long term is extremely important across generation of clients. Truly personalized and impartial advice is very important. We are open architecture.

And obviously, what is very important is that the CRO is together in a team of investment counselors, wealth planners and asset class specialists to build the best possible team in order to deliver the best possible service and content to our clients. Obviously, our values, that you can see on the right-hand side, drive the conduct and the behavior of our people across the organization and across geographies.

Now, the CROs, I'm now on Page 35, are at the epicenter of our model, and they connect our clients with our offering. Andre later will deep dive on the dedicated offering. The only key point that I would like here is that we do not believe in one size fits all. We do not believe that all clients should get the same product or the same service. We give choice to our clients. And obviously, we want to ensure that our clients get the most relevant service and product for their needs. You can see on the right-hand side, and you can see that actually, I would say almost 90% of our clients are high-net-worth individuals and ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

Now, the key point that I made earlier is that to continue this growth trajectory, we have to do 2 things. We need to continue to hire high-quality CROs and making sure that they deliver. And second, we need to improve the productivity of existing CROs. And in this slide, Slide 36, which is a bit busy, we tried to show that we have been doing this year in, year out through the last cycles.

Clearly, for us, hiring high-level quality CROs is extremely important, and we have been doing this consistently over the last 7 years. I know that some people talk always about the dislocation in the market of 2023 and that allegedly we have benefited from that. That might be the case. But again, we have been hiring much before the dislocation of 2023, and we will continue to hire in the years to come.

Now, what is extremely important, as I said, is to ensure that the CROs that join us can deliver fast and be successful with us. You can see in the middle that the business case delivery has significantly improved. And clearly, the growth is not predicated only on new CROs, but is also predicated on existing CROs becoming more productive. And I would say that on the right-hand side, you can see that our productivity in terms of AUM per CROs has increased more than 50% from CHF 230 million to almost CHF 360 million.

Now, very often, we get the question, again, very often referring to the dislocation in 2023, are you sure that you can grow your number of CROs and where do you find the CRO and how do you recruit? Now, we have put the page. I don't plan to go in detail on every single point. But I would say that our focus on hiring top talent CRO is continuous. It's not that we say, oh, today, we have a campaign. And for this season, we start hiring, and then, we don't hire for another 9 months.

And also, I always say that the hiring is driven by the executive management involvement. Obviously, HR is always involved. We have a very strong strategic recruitment team that I think is also here with us today, but it is essential that the executive management team is involved. We have a very systematic hiring process.

As I said, we leverage the strategic recruitment team, and we have also a proprietary predictive performance model that allow us to try to predict the probability for the new CROs to be successful within EFG. We have a structured onboarding process. And also, we have a diligent and transparent performance management process. I think this is extremely important, and again, at the end of the day, this, I always say, for us is extremely important.

The CROs are for us our partners. The CROs are the partners that will help, obviously, together with the old team to drive the firm further. And there is no point to come together if we are not able to deliver and the CROs are not able to deliver. It is a mutual partnership. It is a mutual agreement. And, therefore, this is why we are so focused in ensuring that we can predict how the performance is going to be.

And this, I would say, predictor, as we call it here, allows us to improve the decision-making process, which is not only based to, let's say, interpersonal, I would say, valuations or assessment, but with a very sophisticated model.

Now, going forward, very often, people say that the CRO model at EFG is simply the comp model. I hope that by now, you have realized that the CRO model of EFG is much more than only the comp model. Having said that, a transparent and attractive compensation framework is important, is good. And again, for us, it is very meritocratic and transparent.

Again, here, the philosophy of this comp model has not changed in the last 30 years. Obviously, we have adjusted over the cycles, but the approach is always the same. We are uncompromising focusing on risk and conduct assessment with a very dedicated CRO risk score card. And clearly, there is also a next-gen CRO succession program with a 3-year and over. Now, again, we believe that the CRO model has been very successful in catering for entrepreneurs that generate wealth and we grow with them across generations.

Now, as I mentioned earlier, one of the key features that we are going to have in the next cycle and beyond is going to be the wealth transfer. And, therefore, for us, it's now important, not only to hire and develop seasoned CROs and experienced CROs, but also to develop next-gen CROs in order to capture the ongoing wealth transfer.

We are developing, and we are in the process of finalizing, I would say, a quite holistic and comprehensive approach for the next-gen, starting, obviously, as you can see on the left-hand side, I'm on Page 39, on the next-gen clients. And there are several elements, including the wealth planning, the sustainable investing, the client experience, improving our branding, but for sure, one key element to be able to serve and to attract the next-gen -- the next generation of clients is the next-gen CRO.

So, in the future, we will not only hire experienced and seasoned CROs, but we will also attract either from our firm internally, but also from the market, the next-gen CROs, and this, we believe, is going to improve our ability, as I said, to serve our clients across generation.

Now, as I said, I could speak for hours about our CRO model, I'm very passionate. But I think that the best is actually that you hear them out. We're going to have a video in a few seconds, and you will see our CROs, new CROs, existing CROs, CROs coming from acquisition and next-gen CROs. Enjoy the video.

[Presentation]

I hope you had some color, you have seen a good variety of our CROs and the regional business heads and GBC colleagues. Now, the key question is how we make sure that this CRO model is rolled out across all the geographies where we are. And this is for the last cycle. What I'm very pleased is to say that we have a strong growth in all regions. It is clear from the graph that in regions like Asia Pacific, Continental Europe and Middle East and Latin America, we were able to grow much faster than the market, while in more mature markets, like Switzerland and the U.K., we were growing more in line with the market.

Now, regional business heads that are here, and we are going to hear them out in a minute, they are quite positive for the next cycle. And we believe that our network, our presence across geographies will support the next chapter of growth. As you can see here, we intend to grow faster or in line with the market. I would like to note about the U.K., where the new management team is particularly ambitious in order to grow and beat the market growth.

Now, I think the best again is to hear the regional business heads in the next video.

[Presentation]

Thank you. I hope you have now gained a better regional perspective about our strategy and how we want to tackle the next cycle. Now, summarizing the priorities for the next strategic cycle as far as our CRO model is concerned, we will continue to do what we are doing already very well, which is to hire top talent CROs, increase the success rate of new CROs and increase the productivity of existing CROs. And furthermore, we will roll out the next-gen CRO program. This in order to achieve our ambitions and our targets of 4% to 6% NNA growth. And again, we have an ambition to hire 50 to 70 CROs every single year.

Let us now go in the next 5 minutes or so to the client and commercial excellence. And here, the point that I'm trying to make is that as you have seen, we have been quite successful in terms of commercial performance, but we believe we can do even better and we can go to the level of commercial excellence.

When we were looking at this and we went back and tried to distill which were the levers, the success levers that allowed us to have this strong performance over the last 7 years, we came down to basically 3 main levers. The first one was the introduction of the systematic pipeline management in 2019. We then introduced the top deal team and strategic client management soon thereafter. And then, we were able, in the last few years, to activate our investment counselor, wealth planners and asset class specialists to support the CROs and the clients to deliver better service and better content to our clients.

So the question, again, if you look in isolation, all these 3 points, there is nothing particularly special, but putting together and delivering well, actually, as you can see, the performance is quite strong. Now, the question for the next cycle is what are the next key levers of success to bring our strong commercial performance to commercial excellence?

And actually, we have identified 3 untapped opportunities, I'm now on Page 47, for the next cycle. And they relate mainly to the existing clients and to the -- sorry, to the existing CROs. We believe that existing CROs can do more in client acquisitions. You already see that this is already happening. If you compare our performance in 2023 and today, we can -- we believe that we can do even better. And we believe that all the actions that are -- we are putting in place will allow CROs to tap this opportunity.

The second is we can do more in client engagement. We are now tracking how clients are engaging with our products and services. What is very interesting from the middle of the page is that actually the ultra-high-net-worth individuals are engaging more than the high-net-worth individuals and PB entry and asset and affluent clients, and we believe that we can do more in this respect.

And furthermore, we can increase the share of wallet and retention of our clients. The majority of our clients have 2, 3, 4 private banks or banking relationships. We want to climb the ladder of the rankings and become among the top 2 private banks that our clients have. How to do this? We like to introduce the concept of the augmented CRO, and we believe that the augmented CRO will be ready to capture these augmented opportunities.

What is the augmentation? The augmentation is through teams. First of all, I already said in the last cycle, we introduced or -- we had a much better interplay between CROs and investment counselor, wealth planners and asset class specialists. We believe we can do much more in this respect, and this will drive better service, better performance, better engagement and share of wallet.

And also, we believe, and Demis and Andre will talk about that, we will be able to augment our CROs through digital tools. We have announced yesterday the adoption of Aladdin Wealth in our platform or in our advisory platform. But as you can see on these slides, we are introducing several digital tools that will make the life of our CROs easier, faster, better.

And obviously, we are going to invest as we're going to hear from Alain more on branding to elevate our client experience. And this, again, should allow our CROs to attract more clients and to engage better with clients. We also believe that if we introduce all these digital tools and we introduce this augmentation through our teams, we will be able to improve our processes that are mentioned here, the pipeline management process, pricing, performance management, strategic client management and advisory.

And as you can see in the next slide, Page 49, all the tools that we want to introduce or we have already introduced, they have a clear function, and they serve the possibility to improve our client acquisition, client engagement and share of wallet and retention. Now, an additional benefit of the augmented CRO model is that the augmented CROs will be able to target our clients in a better way and in a more customized way.

We do not believe in traditional segmentation that some of our competitors use because, as I said earlier, and Andre is going to elaborate, we believe in giving the choice to the clients. So we do not segment our clients, but we segment our offering. We have a relationship-based pricing depending on the needs of the clients. And obviously, we adjust the coverage model depending on the segment of the clients. And this will allow to be much more focused in targeting, in delivering our products and services, ultimately improving the client satisfaction, and ultimately, also improving the returns for the firm and the shareholders.

So, to conclude, the priorities for the next strategic cycles in terms of commercial excellence are to be much better in client acquisition, to be much better in share of wallet and retention, to increase the client engagement and to roll out and introduce the augmented CROs. If we are able to do this, clearly, we are going to meet and probably beat our ambition and targets in terms of NNA growth, mandate penetration and return on AUM on our margin.

Now, given that my voice is leaving, I am very pleased to pause here and to invite to the stage Andre, who is going to talk about client advice and solutions. Thank you. Andre, the floor is yours.

Thank you, Giorgio, and good morning, everyone. It's a pleasure to share how our investment franchise is not just evolving, but thriving as we enter the next chapter of growth, sophistication and client excellence. At EFG, commercial excellence isn't a slogan, it's our starting point. Insightful, timely and actionable investment guidance is what drives client trust and our franchise. Every day, our teams deliver high-quality insights and forward-looking perspectives across markets and asset classes, helping clients navigate an increasingly complex world.

By placing investment content at the core of our value proposition, clients benefit from the full depth of our expertise and our global perspective. Over recent business cycle, our transformation has followed the clear and deliberate path. In the previous cycle, we focused on getting the basics right, strengthening foundations, aligning governance and ensuring consistent execution.

In the current cycle, we shifted focus to scale, innovation and our content and expanding reach and embedding a disciplined operating rhythm. That work has culminated in what we call our advisory target operating model, which deepens collaborations between CROs and investment counselors, and most importantly, makes that partnership the norm rather than the exception.

This next phase, which we're about to enter, is about moving to the next level of content delivery and sophistication. Uniting advice, content and execution into one seamless client experience. And we're now seeing the power of compounding, deeper collaboration, driving higher productivity and mandate growth, reinforcing our investment business as a core engine of scalable, profitable growth for the group.

As you can see from the slide, we have intentionally structured our offering across 4 pillars with clients focused on geopolitical and market risk, ever more so. Giving them choice is an overarching principle of our impartial advice, and the 4-pillar structure allows for this. These pillars consist of wealth solution, guiding clients and structuring, safeguarding and transferring wealth to empower the next generation.

Second, investment solutions, tailoring opportunities to each client's goals and risk profile to preserve and grow wealth through changing markets. Global markets, providing direct access to worldwide markets, backed by expert execution and timely effect. And last, but not least, credit solutions, offering structured and flexible lending that helps clients seize opportunities and also manage liquidity.

As Giorgio mentioned, we deliver our offering to our CROs who are at the epicenter of our model. They connect clients seamlessly to the 4 pillars, turning our broad capabilities to one cohesive advisory experience. These pillars effectively augment the CRO, giving them richer, more relevant content to drive prospecting with new clients and to deepen share of wallet with existing ones. CROs are empowered with insight, solutions and specialist collaborations enabling advice that is more connected, more informed and more impactful at every stage of the client journey.

And most importantly, as you can see in our numbers, this model is delivering consistent results. We've strengthened client engagement and mandate adoption. In Wealth Solutions, closer alignment between wealth planners and CROs ensures every discussion links advice to long-term client objectives.

In Investment Solutions, we've harmonized our global offering and steered clients towards discretionary and advisory mandates. We have scaled our structured products offering, contributing to record revenues. In credit solutions, we've broadened financing options. And in global markets, we've launched our FX advisory offering, providing timely guidance and enhanced execution, as FX markets have become more relevant to the investment outcome.

And overarching all of this, we've invested in talent across all 4 pillars selectively hiring specialists to deepen expertise and strengthen regional delivery capacity. The end result is what you see on the right-hand side of the slide, mandate penetration has risen to 67% and commission margin has risen to 45 basis points. In both cases, we are ending the cycle in a position of strength. These gains reflect deeper, more sophisticated client relationships, proof that our focus on engagement, content and talent is translating into sustained commercial performance and a stronger platform for the next phase of growth.

When we bring an investment counselor alongside the CRO, the quality of the advisory relationship improves materially, and that translates directly into economics. On average, our experience is that portfolio is managed with IC involvement, so where our investment counselors are connected, generate more than 40 basis points in incremental commission margin.

Looking ahead, technology will improve our ability to deliver. It allows us to bring a broader range of products to our private banking, entry and affluent clients quickly, consistently and at scale. So through stronger collaboration, smarter use of technology and more focused deployment of IC expertise, we continue to lift advisory quality and commission margins across the franchise.

I would like to return to the slide that Giorgio just mentioned. So in the next cycle, our focus is on delivering value through differentiated solutions. As you know, we don't segment the CRO, but we do segment the offering. As client sophistication increases, the proposition becomes richer and more tailored.

At the affluent and PB entry levels, advice is digitally enabled and efficiently delivered through system-supported tools. For high-net-worth and ultra-high-net-worth clients, the proposition intensifies, combining the CRO with investment counselors and specialists to deliver multi-asset and cross-border solutions.

This approach also broadens our reach within the existing franchise, enabling CROs to engage more effectively with clients. By becoming more tech-enabled, our CROs can extend high-quality advice to a larger share of their portfolios, driving higher client penetration and greater share of worth. As Giorgio mentioned, the integration of BlackRock's Aladdin Wealth platform, which my colleague, Demis Stucki, will touch on later, will bring greatest scalability, transparency and insight in what is a transformational way for us and in the way we cover our clients.

So, to summarize, we have 4 priorities that will drive this next phase. First, we'll expand wealth planning, capturing opportunities from the great wealth transfer and building a dedicated next-gen proposition. Second, we'll strengthen our fund solutions, adding more depth in private markets through new proprietary products and selected third-party partnerships. Third, we'll upgrade our credit offering, embedding lending into regular advisory discussions and broadening customized structured lending. And last but not least, as I mentioned, we'll extend our Global Markets Advisory with a stronger focus on FX advisory, an area where clients see more relevance and demand is high.

Together, these initiatives will underpin our 2028 ambitions, mandate penetration between 70% and 75% and ROA of 85 basis points or better. The next cycle is about scaling what works, combining stronger advice, richer content and greater productivity across the franchise.

To conclude, our focus for the next strategic cycle is clear: to build on the progress we've made and unlock further value through deeper client-centric solutions, strategic hires and specialists and product sophistication to deliver consistent client and shareholder value.

I will now hand over to Alain Zimmermann, our Global Marketing and Branding Officer, to speak about how branding and client experience helps us to deliver better content outreach. Thank you.

Thank you, Andre. Good morning, everyone. In private banking, our brand, EFG, is one of our most important assets, while it shapes how clients perceive us and why they decided to grow with us. For me, branding and client experience are key levers that directly support our business strategy. We've asked some colleagues from across our organization to share why branding matters for them, and obviously, for our clients. So let's hear their perspective.

[Presentation]

Over the past years, ladies and gentlemen, we relaunched and elevated the brand. We strengthened our positioning, which is quite important. And we started also to scale our visibility across all markets. Now, looking ahead, our strategy will focus on 3 priorities, as shown on the slide: first, brand visibility; secondly, client experience, as mentioned by Giorgio already; and without surprise, I think, digital marketing.

Now, let me just tell you a little anecdote, very relevant. Speaking about the power of digital. We had recently, believe it or not, our very first, it was 3 weeks ago, our first walking prospect who asked ChatGPT when landing in Zurich Airport, what are the 5 best Swiss private banks? EFG was on the list, and it was written very close to Paradeplatz. The client came to visit us, asked to meet a CRO. Obviously, he had a very good discussion because he decided to open the account. True story, just to speak about the power of digital.

Now, coming back on the priorities, brand visibility, client experience and digital marketing, they will allow us to scale what we've built, but obviously also to move closer to a true, what I call, top position in the industry. So we are entering now the next stage of a plan that is already delivering and now ready to, and I think that's important to, accelerate.

In private banking, branding is strategic because our entire business is built on the most important person, the client. And our clients are demanding. They expect true personalized and top service, flawless execution and obviously distinctive experiences. In fact, this is very similar to the expectation these clients have from what I call top luxury brands. And in many ways, I truly believe that the luxury sector is a fantastic benchmark for us, just because these sectors has mastered the art of building trust, but also emotion connections through disciplined brand execution.

And you see on the slide what I call the codes of luxury, and I think they are directly relevant to us. The codes are exclusivity, our business is about exclusivity; distinctiveness, you have to be different; emotional resonance, it's a people's business; and consistency across every single touch point. Well, applying these principles, ladies and gentlemen, at EFG, this will directly impact our business performance.

And on the right slide -- side, sorry, of the slide, you see the -- what I call, the 4 dimensions where we will drive measurable results. First, and without surprise, and you mentioned it, Giorgio, client acquisition. And in the next cycle, client acquisition will be key. A strong brand helps us attract new clients, but also very importantly, the next generation.

Second share of wallet, and you also mentioned it, Giorgio, because I think this is an opportunity and a big priority. By the way, we just conducted the biggest and first global client survey, and it confirmed that 2/3 of our clients have 2 or more, let's say, banking relationship, so becoming their primary choice will definitely have a significant growth potential on our business.

Third, pricing power. A recognized brand and trusted brand supports value-based pricing. And here again, if you look at some top brands in the luxury industry, you know how it works very well and how it protects margin.

And finally, talent attraction, a strong brand, as mentioned by my colleague, Ioanna, our Chief People Officer, in the intro video, helps us to attract top CROs and professionals who want to join a bank with a clear identity, and very important, a strong reputation.

So where do we stand today? Maybe this chart is a bit unexpected. It's a so-called funnel chart, which shows how prospects move from first stage awareness, do I know EFG, to consideration, do I understand what they make at EFG, to consideration, is this part of one option I would consider, to finally so-called usage, I will become a client.

The first point is very clear. Our conversion rate, so from awareness to become a client, is higher than the competitors, which is a fantastic news. This means that when people know the EFG brand, they often choose us, and that's the 14% conversion rate you see on the slide.

Well, there's a second point, which took all my -- all our attention, I would say, because it's equally important. The first stage, the awareness remains too low. Now, you can say, well, that's a weakness, where I believe this is a fantastic opportunity. Now, too few potential clients know EFG today compared to the peers. But that's clearly one of the target for the future because it represents this amazing opportunity to build the brand because the people -- the moment, sorry, people know EFG and enter in contact, the brand performs very well.

So, increasing our brand awareness, ladies and gentlemen, will further support the conversion as we just saw. But it will also impact what I call the brand value. And that's not our own calculation, this is from Brand Finance. So according to Brand Finance latest results, EFG ranks fourth in Switzerland, so just one step from the podium.

On the right, you can see the clear ambitions we've set for the next business cycle. Number one, without surprise, when you are just one step from the podium, you want to be on the podium. And I think it's just to leverage on the momentum we've built. Number two, it's not just about Switzerland, it's global. We are a global brand. So it's to enter the 250 global brand finance, which, by the way, since you, I think, like also saw numbers, this would significantly increase our brand value to approximately CHF 700 million within the next cycle.

And third, it's to increase our brand strength index from 61 to 70. Maybe you are not familiar with the brand strength index, but it's one of the most powerful indicator because it tells you the substance of the brand. It calculates exactly what I meant before, the awareness, the familiarity and very important, the client satisfaction, because we are a referral business, and if people are not satisfied, they don't stay. So these 3 ambitions require one thing above all, clients who trust and recommend us.

So let's look on the next slide how clients rate their experience with EFG. And I think, Giorgio, you already showed 2 numbers. While this year, we conducted successfully, as I mentioned, the first global survey across all regions, including e-banking, by the way, and the results are very encouraging. I don't know if you're familiar with the Net Promoter Score that's not specific to our business. This is across all industry. But I think the results are super encouraging.

Our NPS, measuring the client satisfaction, stands out at 50.2%, which is already very strong. But what is even stronger is the 85% of our clients told us, I'm willing to recommend you. And if you don't, let's say, convince by something you don't recommend.

With a score of 90%, ladies and gentlemen, clients consistently highlight 2 areas where EFG stands out. Number one, the trust and personal relationship with a CRO, and we know the importance of the CRO, I think that's a very good news. And secondly, the quality of service across the entire bank. But -- because there is a but, and I think the but is also the way to improve, they also told us that in the digital space, they expect more from us in terms of digital journey. The two points of, let's say, critic or a smooth and more intuitive e-banking and app. And that's clearly a message we got, and we will take very seriously.

Now, if you look at the ambition, being already at 50, I think we should not stop there. And if we fix exactly e-banking and app and the digital, we should target, and we will target, an NPS of 60. By the way, 60 comes very close to what you could see on the very top end luxury brands. You know the names from cars or some watches, and that's exactly because our clients compare not just banks to bank, but the experience they have across, let's say, many hotels, service, cruise. And I think this is exactly how we should behave, and that's the mindset we will bring in terms of client experience.

There is one reason why it matters, especially on top, because we say this existing client. There is a McKinsey survey, which shows that, coming back on the next-gen because the battle is about the next-gen, next-gen consider that client service is 1.6x more important than the parents, and now, the very good news, they are willing to pay a premium. So it's not just because we have to do it, it's just because it will also help the entire, let's say, business model.

So entering our next cycle, we have a very, I would say, good understanding of how to further drive our performance along the 4 final metrics, awareness, consideration up to usage. And we will concentrate, and without, I think, big surprise on 3 priorities, very focused, increasing visibility to impact awareness and familiarity. And this will clearly lead acquisition, but also share of wallet.

Secondly, elevate the digital client experience and even the overall experience because upgrading what I call the end-to-end journey through every single touch points will reinforce satisfaction, but also loyalty and the overall brand performance and the perception, and obviously, identifying and engaging with future clients, the so-called next generation of wealth owners.

Now, you might ask the question, okay, and what about the investment, but we will invest more. We will invest 50% more than in the previous cycle, also allowing us, sorry, to close the gap to peers. I think, Dimitris, you will show some of the figures. It will be 1.5% from revenues compared to 1% today. But what is very important, it will be a very targeted way to invest. And I, or we as a team, will be very diligent on the return tracking, and we will measure it. You've seen I like figures. So for me, it's not just about logo and pictures, it's also to make sure we have a plan and we measure it.

So, to sum up, the message is very clear, ladies and gentlemen, we know what to do, and we have a great opportunity ahead of us. For me, branding and client experience are absolutely not nice to have. They are strategic growth engines, and they will substantially support our augmented CRO model and approach as just presented before.

I thank you for your attention. I'm open to questions a bit later. And I will now hand over to my colleague, Demis Stucki, our Global Chief Operating Officer, who will cover the topic of technology and simplicity. Thank you.

Thank you very much, Alain. And yes, e-banking is on the roadmap. So good morning, and welcome from my side as well. I feel privileged to share how we will support the business growth and how a compounding result can be achieved from a CEO perspective.

Let me briefly reflect on our recent journey. As you might remember, 2016 and 2018, we're busy with the acquisition and the integration of BSI. The following cycle was about streamlining operation, the commission and legacy system and harmonizing our architecture. In our current cycle, we are focused on strengthening the platform, pursuing simplicity and enhancing our data governance as a foundation for AI.

Today, we're perfectly positioned to leverage our resilient platform and further accelerate our scale. Looking ahead, we will combine our successful simplicity framework with the power of technology to deliver on our augmented CRO promise. Simplicity, technology and augmented CROs, I will come back on this later in the presentation showing you that we have great opportunities ahead of us, and we are very well positioned to seize them.

Before we get to simplicity and technology, the 2 core themes of my presentation, I would like to highlight the 3 pillars of our smart execution strategy. Priorities that I set when I took over the role of the CEO a year ago, and by the way, I'm convinced of their importance for the next cycle as well.

So what are these 3 priorities? First, operational resilience. Having a stable, robust and secure operation platform is our top priority and a prerequisite to sustaining our business model. Protecting clients' assets and data remains at the heart of what we do. We have strengthened our teams by hiring strong specialists, and we will continue doing so.

Second, operational excellence and efficiency. I will deep dive on this in the simplicity section, sharing how this program is embedded in our DNA.

Third, client experience. We won the high quality of service that clients already received today from our CROs, to be consistently replicated across all channels. We are also committed to enhancing our CRO with technology that will make their life easier and give them time to focus on what really matters, building lasting relationships.

Let me now dive into our first topic, simplicity. I'm particularly excited to share important achievement we have delivered this cycle. And to start with the financial result, we have delivered CHF 66 million in cost savings over the last 3 years. In the next cycle, we plan to achieve even more. And as you will hear later from Dimitris Politis, our CFO and Deputy CEO, simplicity will remain one of the key contributor to achieve our cost-to-income ratio target.

Simplicity has driven us to rethink our core processes, striving for quality and efficiency, seeking every opportunity to challenge the way we operate. We have focused on 14 core processes. And while there is more to come in the last 3 years, we have absorbed volume increase of 30% in yearly trade transaction through higher automation without compromising on quality or risk control.

How did we achieve this? At EFG, we like to say that simplicity is now part of our DNA. It's not just a project. It's embedded in our culture and day-to-day operation. Everything starts with a structured and centrally led governance. With clear accountability across region, we have established a committee that we call OGA, the Operational Governance Authority. This is to ensure oversight, prioritization and consistent global implementation.

Next, simplicity is about generating and implementing ideas for improvement across processes, including our risk and control framework. Every core product and service is reviewed. Ideas are developed into business cases with timelines and targets regularly reviewed and roadblocks are escalated with clear action assigned. We're proud of the work that our team have done in reviewing end-to-end processes. We have established clear KPI to monitor progress and also celebrate successes.

Let me tell you, by now, all our colleagues are aware of our focus on simplicity. You have seen the overall achievements, yet, I would like to share a concrete example, Asia. Our teams in both Singapore and Hong Kong under the leadership of Albert Chiu, the regional business head, have reviewed operating models to find opportunities for regionalization and centralization, while the group transformation team ensured global alignment across functions.

We have leveraged lessons learned, having one clear target in mind, process automation and harmonization. As a result, we have increased straighter-through rate in our main markets from below 50% to 90%. We have also achieved a 12% compound annual growth rate in account opening. All these while reducing our direct cost and support function by 15%. Good.

As we look ahead to our 2028 ambition, we are taking our simplicity agenda to the next level. Our new target is to deliver efficiency gains up to 7%, which will result in total saving of CHF 70 million to CHF 80 million. Going forward, we will focus on these 3 areas. First, operational model and -- operating model and optimization. We will continue to look for efficiency on the frontline while making sure our control and support functions are properly sized. We know there is more to achieve in this area, and we're very keen to leverage on our past successes to help us reach these new targets.

Second, we want to put even greater emphasis on process and technology. This is about streamlining our core banking platform, accelerating our end-to-end processes and further increasing automation and digitalization. Selective adoption of artificial intelligence is also part of the plan, always under strong governance to ensure responsible use.

Finally, we will continue to foster transformation and optimize our footprint. This involves further regionalizing and centralizing key support functions to build scalable center of excellence. We will also look at optimizing our real estate usage and the legal entity structure to reduce complexity and avoid unnecessary overhead.

With the high level of automation we have already achieved in our main center, we are very confident that we can absorb higher volumes and continue driving efficiency. Ultimately, as you can see at the right side of the slide, our ambition is to improve operating leverage and reduce marginal cost for new business.

After reviewing our successes, our approach to simplicity and the 2028 ambition, I'd like now to move to the next section, technology. Over the past strategic cycle, we have consistently delivered on our 5 digital pillars. Starting from the foundation at the bottom of the slide, we have significantly invested in cybersecurity and defense, recognizing operational resilience as a key industry challenge.

We have completed a global upgrade and alignment of our core banking platform, Temenos, strengthening the resilience and scalability of our back end. As already highlighted in the simplicity chapter, we have been using technology to improve our process, leveraging on automation and harmonization.

We have strengthened our data governance framework and architecture, also by hiring very strong professionals. And this investment have allowed us, for example, to deliver a number of digital interactive cockpit, improving our client insight and benchmarking capabilities. Recently, we have also launched our new internal generative AI platform to support colleagues in a safe environment. We call it [ LI ].

What else? Well, we continue to invest in the Augmented CRO concept. And later on, you'll see a short video on some of the topics we have on our agenda. But before I move on, and as I did in the simplicity chapter, allow me to share a concrete example. I'd like to tell you how value from data is concretely helping us strengthen our support and control function.

Recently, Enrico Piotto, our Chief Risk Officer, together with his team and in collaboration with IT, have launched what we call the DIRC, Digital Interactive Risk Cockpit. This is not just a report that you read, it's one that you can touch and interact with, allowing you to drill down into any metric and access the right level of data for meaningful insight. The DIRC is not only used by the risk department, it is a report that goes regularly to our executive and Board committees, with very positive feedback and a very high level of adoption.

We're also proud to mention that this tool has been awarded as Best In-house Risk Data Initiative by Risk.net, a leading and worldwide recognized digital platform specializing in risk management, bravo Enrico. This is just one example of how we do extract value from data, and we will continue to increase our investment in this area in the next cycle.

Okay. Let's now take a step back and look at our technology architecture. To start with, I'd like to share with you the key principle guiding all our investments, ensuring we remain efficient, globally competitive, but also cost discipline. I've said it multiple times, we believe in simplicity, not only in our operation, but also in our technology landscape. That is why we have a single global core banking platform at the heart of our architecture.

This core system is complemented by best-in-class third-party application, all seamlessly integrated through a standardized connectivity layer. This approach allow us to deliver broader functionality and faster innovation while maintaining flexibility and keeping costs under control. When it comes to emerging technologies, such as generative AI, we're very selective and intentional in our adoption. We focus on areas where this technology can deliver real measurable value and align with our strategic objectives.

Our investment are targeted at capabilities that directly enhance the experience and effectiveness of our colleagues and clients. And as a result, I think we are very well positioned to further expand our technology investment and take us to the next level.

Whilst we have retained the essence of the 5 pillars from the previous cycle, we have refreshed them to reflect our priorities going forward. We recognize the need to keep investing in technology to further support and drive business growth and efficient scalability. So the new 5 pillars are, starting again from the bottom of the slide, ensuring that we have effective cybersecurity and operational resilience to protect our clients' assets and data, our bank, and ultimately, our reputation; next-gen core architecture, this is about a strong globally consistent foundation; continue to invest in the core to enhance our scalable platform, which can support growth in AUM, number of clients and transaction volumes.

Simplicity at scale, we want to roll out the simplicity achievement we have delivered in Asia on a global level, ensuring we have harmonized and streamlined processes across all locations. Value from data and AI, it refers to our continuous effort striving for high-quality data that can be used across function and process for additional insight and timely actions. Our goal is to offer a first-class client experience through all channels, so clients feel they have a consistent, seamless technology experience.

Looking ahead, technology will be a key focus area in our mission to enable our next cycle of continuous growth. Our strategy is clear, and our execution is on track. At this point of the presentation, it should not come as a surprise. Yes, we are increasing our investment in technology. We do so responsibly and remain well within industry benchmarks.

In the past, our technology investments were lower as we have prioritized other growth opportunities. We are now getting back on track, and I'm convinced that this is the right time to accelerate our investment to unlock new opportunities. And as you can see on the right side of the slide, our investment focus is in line with the 5 pillars I just described and ultimately with our 3 key priorities: resilience, simplicity, experience.

As I already mentioned, one of the key objectives for the next cycle is to use technology to transform the role of the CRO. Let's not forget, private banking is a people business. In fact, all our new tools are designed to empower CROs with actionable knowledge and advanced analytics, enabling them to be more effective and bring the management of portfolio to a new standard. We aim to minimize administrative tasks, ensuring more time is available to CROs to focus on what truly matters, building stronger client relationships.

I will pause here and show you how the Augmented CRO capabilities look in real time with Besar Amza, our Global PB CEO.

[Presentation]

Thank you, Besar. In the next slide, you will see a short overview and summary of the tools and use cases that you have seen in the video. I will not go through them again, but I will be more than happy to answer any questions during the Q&A session. I'm coming now to the conclusion of my presentation.

I opened my session with the 3 priorities, and I would like to close it with the 3 key initiatives for the next cycle. Number one, we are committed to operational resilience. With disciplined execution and strong risk management, we ensure stable, sustainable operation, enabling us to support and drive business growth with confidence.

Number two, we're focused on operational excellence and efficiency. Through process improvement, alignment and simplification, we're building a streamlined organization that is ready to adapt and succeed in a competitive environment.

Finally, client experience. Client experience remains at the central -- remains central to everything we do. By delivering value that empower both our internal and external clients, we continue to build strong relationship and provide excellent -- exceptional service.

These 3 pillars are the foundation of our CEO execution plan, and together, they position us to deliver sustainable growth and long-term value for all our stakeholders.

Thank you very much for the attention. I'll now hand over back to Giorgio Pradelli, our CEO, for the section on core foundation. Thank you.

Thank you, Demis. And let us now go back to the core foundations. Let me recap where we are in terms of our strategic framework so that we don't lose sight, let's say, of where we're trying to go. We have basically covered all our value drivers. So basically, all the areas in the middle of the page in bronze. We want now to focus on the foundation which is the -- as the foundation is at the bottom of the page.

We've always said that EFG's strong compliance culture and product risk management are the prerequisite of profitable and sustainable growth. We are committed to reinforcing our strong compliance culture and product risk management. Both functions are centrally managed and are increasingly enhanced by digital tools as you just heard. But again, let's hear from the colleagues across the various lines of defense directly in a short video.

[Presentation]

Now, let me hand over to Dimitris to present the 2028 financial plan. Dimitris, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much. So this is the point of the presentation where we take all the actions that you've heard described earlier, and we try to put them together to show you the strong financial performance that we can generate through this action plan. Before I do that, I'd like to start with a short update for the 10-month results, which is -- was released earlier this morning.

So the highlights of the 10-month results is that we had strong NNA momentum. We generated CHF 9.3 billion of net new assets for the first 10 months of the year. This is a 6.8% annualized growth rate, which is a slight uptick from the 6.5% that we put out in the June financials.

The profits came in at a record level, headline CHF 320 million of bottom line results for the 10 months. It includes a contribution from our insurance recovery of about CHF 45 million. But even without that one-off, the results would have been record results for a 10-month of 2025.

During the course of the year, we have made progress in derisking. It's been mostly in the life insurance space. I'll come back to that later. And clearly, during the course of the year, because of our high level of profitability, we have added quite a bit of organic capital, but at the same time, we've taken the opportunity to deploy some of our excess capital into 2 new acquisitions, which now have been closed and are fully reflected in the capital positions as at the end of October 2025. These 2 acquisitions added about CHF 12 billion of AUM to our overall business.

Moving on to Page 102. You will see the evolution of the AUM throughout the year. Clearly, the CHF 9.3 billion of net new assets, that I mentioned earlier, markets were favorable with CHF 9.2 billion positive. Just as a comparison, this is about CHF 6 billion higher than the same figure when we presented our half year results. We all know that currencies were against us this year. We have a CHF 11.6 billion negative movement in our nominal AUM. That figure is flat for the last 4 months of the year.

And clearly, we also have the acquisitions. That leads us to a total figure of 184 billion of AUM as of the end of October. It is the highest figure we've had in terms of nominal AUM. But more importantly, I think the figures on the right show the momentum of the business because the NNA are now a lot more equally divided between existing CROs and new CROs. In the past, it were more driven by new CROs. But now, the existing CROs are coming back, and the mix is about 60-40 in favor of the new CROs.

The final part of the overview of the 10 months is the usual figure -- or table with figures for the 10 months. I think that -- I'm not going to repeat many of these figures because we have seen them before. I'd highlight that the revenue margin is at 99 basis points or 95 excluding the insurance recovery.

The cost-to-income ratio is at 69% or 71.8%, again, excluding the recovery. That is one percentage point down compared to full year 2024. So the trajectory in becoming more efficient is there. And the capital ratios are very strong, 15.6% core, 19.1% total capital ratio. Again, these fully reflect the 2 acquisitions, so you shouldn't expect an additional reduction because of those acquisitions.

Now, to give a little bit of color around the 10 months or the last 4 months, I would say that from an NNA delivery, the 4 months have been pretty much equally strong. So we didn't have a summer lull, which usually happens sometimes with the NNA.

In terms of the profitability, we had the typically slower summer months, July and August, but then it has really picked up in terms of revenue generation in September and October. And also, the other final element is that in terms of the contribution that we have in the revenues from our legacy life insurance portfolio, it is very muted in the second half of this year. It also comes because we have actively derisked that position in the first half of the year. So this is pretty much as expected.

Now, moving on to describe a bit how we are closing the '23-'25 cycle. Just highlight the trajectory on the profits. It is -- I shouldn't hide that this is my favorite slide, both internally and externally. And the reason it is my favorite slide, it is not just because the profits have been going up every single year for the last 7 years, it's also because the progress in this profitability has been -- the expression is by design or not by accident.

What you will see on the right-hand side is the key highlights for the last 2 cycles. One is the last cycle, clearly marked by significant improvement in revenues, revenues are about 30% up since 2022. In the same time period, we have improved on our efficiency. We are now at 71.8% cost-to-income ratio. And in the end, this leads to what we really track, which is EPS growth. Our 10-month EPS is already beating the EPS of last year, and we still have 2 months to go.

In terms of achieving the growth and profitability targets, I will not dwell a lot of it. Giorgio has already covered it. You look at all the targets, we are clearly delivering against the 2025 targets. So actually, we are delivering a higher bottom line than what we were expecting initially, which is showing our strong momentum at this point, and also, our ability to deliver irrespective of the market conditions.

Now, the key question that we're trying to answer today is, how do you manage to do this? And the second question is, will you manage to do that again for the next 3 years? So let's start with the first question, which is how did you manage to do it? Clearly, the first element has been growth. We've been consistently delivering NNA growth.

If you look at the last 3 years, or '23, '24, '25, you're looking at an average of 6% growth. It is at the top end of our 4% to 6% guidance. What we also have done is, in 2023 and early '24, we've made a significant investment in hiring new CROs, quality new CROs, as it has proven because of the delivery of their business case. We've had 2 regions, which have been growing in double digits. So both Latin America and Asia Pacific, thank you, gentlemen, have been growing at double digits for the last 3 years.

And we've added also the 2 acquisitions. And if you look, we've had -- now we show the acquisitions at the right. These acquisitions are the equivalent of accelerating our performance by about a year. By the way, we've just closed those. So these are not included in our performance to date. These will start delivering performance in 2026.

The second point is operating leverage. And Giorgio explained earlier, operating leverage is growing your revenues faster than your costs with a golden rule of growing your revenues at double the rate that you're growing your costs. Now, have we met this golden rule every single year? I think if you look at the numbers, we have about a 50% hit rate when it comes to meeting the golden rule, which is not bad. We can improve, but it's not bad.

We have -- what is important is that every single year in this plan, we have delivered operating leverage. Every single year, the cost-to-income ratio has gone down. I didn't put -- I realized I didn't put the 2018 cost-to-income ratio as a starting point, which was 92%. So we started from 92%. And over the last 7 years, we are down to about 72% excluding the one-offs.

The only time -- if you look at this time series, the only time where we allowed costs to really grow were in 2013 with a carryover in 2014 because you don't do everything in 1 year in terms of how you account for these things, where you see that we had a higher growth rate because we are investing into securing top-quality frontline, back-office resources because the hiring at the time was not limited to just frontline, it includes a lot of hiring in support functions as well.

So I think what the message for me here is that what we've managed to do well is that we've managed to calibrate our investments to a level that matches our revenues, but also to time them in a way that we continue growing the P&L every single year. Now, one general -- a bit more general question is how will you continue delivering and because -- okay, this is history. The question is, what are the values, or what are the skills that you have that allow you to continue moving forward?

And going a bit off script from the financials, I would say that there's a couple of things that actually work for us. One is that as an organization, I find that we are extremely data-driven. I'm sure that you've noticed that by now. I'm sorry to say, but you had the Chief Branding Officer putting so many numbers to you this morning that it is -- for me, it's heaven. No, but we are very much data-driven, which means that this allows us to make objective decisions when we want to achieve something.

The second very strong skill that we actually have is that we run this business -- there are many terms in how you call this. I'm used to a term that was coined probably 30 years ago, which is management by objectives. So what we do is we set targets. We figure the actions required to get these targets, and each one of us commits to a plan. All the people that you see today on the podium have a 3-year plan, each one -- for each one of us in terms of delivering revenues, growth, cost, cost savings. So each one of us is committed to the plan that I'm going to be describing later.

Look, the final point is, and I'm sure that you'll get the opportunity to explore that after the meeting, but also through Q&A, is that this is a very strong team. It's a very committed team. It's a team that shares the same values, and it's a team which is -- it's very easy to communicate between us. So all these things give me the comfort that what I'm going to be presenting a bit later about 2028 is actually very much achievable.

One last point on the financials of the past is, as you've noticed before, a lot of our success in the last few years has been driven on increasing revenues. And you look at the chart on the left, it's very clear that driving revenues up has been a strong priority for us. What I think is more important now, or equally important now, is assessing the quality of the -- of our revenue mix. And the quality means how much of this revenue performance is actually dependent on markets and how much is not.

I think if you look at the top right, this is very clear. The top right shows the total interest-related margin. So it is what we publish as net interest margin plus what we have as swap income in our other income line. And you'll see that in total now, we're running at 29 basis points of interest-related margin for the 10 months.

It is the same figure as in 2022. It is practically the same figure as 2019. By the way, the average of the last 10 years is 29 basis points, that just to show that the performance or the margin that we have today is not -- is based pretty much on an average performance when it comes to interest-related factors. And it's not based on a bloated or inflated number, so it's not the 42 basis points that we had 2 years ago.

At the same time, if you look at the bottom of the page, you will see that overall, our commission margin has increased over the last few years. And also, the final point is if you look at the block -- the top block on the left chart, which is other income, primarily consisting of income from clients because of -- which is generated on currency transactions, you'll also see that, that has been expanding. So I think this gives you a better feeling of a breakdown of the revenues and should give you more confidence about our ability to generate that level of revenues going forward.

Now, Kurt mentioned it in his video, but clearly, performance does hinge on a solid balance sheet. Our balance sheet has been solid throughout the last 7 years. We have about CHF 20 billion of liquid assets, if you look at the -- on the asset side. Our capital ratios are 15.6% core and over 90% total capital ratio. So I think that there is no reason for us to even further strengthen.

We make sure that we maintain the strength as we move along. You will see that we also have used up 130 basis points of our capital to absorb the 2 acquisitions. But clearly, having the strong balance sheet is -- gives us all the resources to be able to grow the business as we move forward.

Final part, a bit on derisking of the balance sheet. On the left-hand side, you'll see the actions on life insurance portfolio that we took this year. Again, this is -- whatever I mentioned on this page is legacy and is at least 14 years old. So we have significantly reduced the exposure to life insurance. We've had some divestments. Actually, the carrying value is now at about CHF 260 million. I had to go back and look at what was the exposure I took over as CFO. It was at least 3x that, close to CHF 1 billion carrying value at the time.

On the litigation cases, we have had 3 legacy litigation cases related to life insurance, which have been resolved in the last few years. This year, clearly, the insurance recovery on a loss, which was accounted for back in 2022, is very significant. It's CHF 45 million. And we are supporting some higher legal and litigation expenses for the legacy cases throughout the year of 2025.

To close on the past performance, a quick note on the 2 acquisitions that we have concluded this year. There is not any new information on the slide compared to what we have shown in previous presentations. Clearly, the idea with this acquisition is that we take high-quality organizations, we add our product capabilities, we add our platform capabilities, depending clearly on each configuration and what the organization needs. And through that, we can create additional value. We can drive business faster. We can create cost synergies because our platforms are already more mature than the platforms that these organizations operate. So through that, we aim to enhance our profitability and create synergies in the next 3 years on the '26-'28 business plan.

Now, let's move to the 2028 ambition. As Giorgio described earlier, we are keeping 2 financial targets the same, so the 4% to 6% cost -- NNA growth is the same. The management for it is the same, but we are increasing or we are improving on 4 financial targets. The -- what is more important is what are the operational drivers that we have in mind when we are talking about this target.

So what we're looking to achieve is continue with the sustainable, high-quality organic NNA growth. This is parameter or driver number one. We also want to continue growing the top line. We have no reason to believe why we should not be continuing to grow the topline as we move along. At the same time, we are looking to improve efficiencies. We've been successful in the last few years. We see, again, scope to improve on that.

And the final part is thinking a bit more deeply into our capital management. We are proposing an enhanced capital management, which includes a higher dividend payout. So now we are moving to 60% payout -- 60% of annual profit as guidance for payouts on dividends compared to 50% earlier.

The last driver, and maybe I should have put it as 4 plus 1, because the top 4 are clearly things that we control and we can drive organically. The bottom one is something that we are scanning for, like we're scanning to figure out if there are additional acquisitions and actually meet our criteria and we can execute on. But clearly, adding some more AUM through acquisition will definitely accelerate our performance.

Now, clearly, whenever you have a plan, you need to figure out what is the backdrop of your plan. Giorgio was very good in describing the very strong fundamental underlying support elements that we have, so growth in global wealth by 6%, 9% if you include transferred wealth. Clearly, that is a very good backdrop to have in any business if you want to grow.

There are some elements that might affect the short term. We know that the cycle on the interest rates has turned, although apparently, it's a bit stabilizing at this point. This year, we had some more accentuated weakness on the dollar. But if you look at the chart, the dollar has been weakening throughout the last 5 years or even longer for that matter. So I think that, overall, we are well positioned on a macro level.

And I would like to start on Page 116 to take the targets on one by one. So the first one is NNA growth. And clearly, one of the question is, can you sustain your current performance? The beauty of this performance is what you see on the top right. This is very well diversified between regions. So it doesn't mean that every region has been performing at the top level every single semester. We had times when some were overperforming, some are a bit underperforming. But overall, over the course of the last years, we've seen a very strong diversification in the performance between regions.

The other element, which is what you see on the left, is that at this point, we are back in a -- I would call it, a healthier mix between new and existing CROs. We had a time for the -- for '22, '23 and '24, where the new CROs have been the ones driving NNA growth. The reason for that is what you see at the bottom right. The bottom right shows that in those years where existing CROs did not deliver, one key reason that they did not deliver was that our clients were deleveraging.

And clearly, when the clients are deleveraging, this affects the existing CROs, doesn't affect the new CROs who are bringing new clients, it affects the existing CROs. Now, what we're seeing with rates dropping, and also more importantly, with an upward sloping curve on the rates, we see our clients releveraging. We're actually -- the indication we have for -- the data we have for 2025 is that they are back into releveraging mode. So I think that will also allow our existing CROs to contribute, which takes me to Page 117, which is how do we view the world going forward on the NNA.

For the existing CROs, we believe that there is more scope. And we believe that there is more scope, and you've heard all the bullets that are listed here, you've heard before. So it is new client acquisition. It is about share of wallet. It's what Andre described for content innovation. It is what you heard from Alain for brand awareness, what you heard from Demis on augmented CRO capabilities. So all these things will add to the abilities of our CROs for them to be able to deliver more NNA going forward.

Now, on the new CROs, Giorgio described that we clearly will continue hiring. The guidance is the same as it was before, between 50 to 70 new CROs hired on a gross basis. We have been significantly improving our ability to predict, and our hit rates are getting better when we hire CROs. And clearly, what is also important is that the pool of CROs coming our way is becoming even of higher quality and also getting some more from brand awareness is going to be helpful in terms of getting that top talent through the door.

Moving on to Page 118, and this is about margin. And the question here is we are operating at 95 basis points today. On average, the revenue margin has been 85 basis points for the last 10 years. And clearly, we are guiding at this point on a margin, which is higher than 85 basis points. We do believe that because of our current capabilities, because of the investments that we will be making, also because of what we see in the markets at this point, those all point to a margin, which is higher than 85 basis points in 2028.

On the interest-related income, I've made the comments a bit earlier. Over the last couple of years, we've seen a reduction on that margin because of the rate cuts. We see it stabilizing now. So we don't expect too much impact going forward.

On the commission margin, Andre explained all the actions that we are going to be taking. We've been building on the commission margin over the last few years. So we do expect a good performance on that going forward. And in terms of other income, we have expanded in our capabilities and currency trading over the last 3 years. There are more projects coming in that are in that area from courtside. So I do believe that we have scope also to expand on the other income side.

So, in a nutshell, in -- on Page 119, how do we expect these to play out? And again, I'll take the point that this is an illustrative chart, and you should not try to measure and figure out exactly what the numbers are because you'll not be able to do that. Our current run rate, and I'm talking about the last 4 months of the -- is the average revenue margin for the last 4 months of 2025 is 92 basis points. From that level, we expect limited impact from the interest rate cuts.

We include here the sensitivity from the rate cuts. So the chart that you see at the -- within the Block A of -- it shows minus CHF 34 million. So minus CHF 34 million is the annual P&L impact of 100 basis points reduction across all major currencies. The number simply for the dollar is about half of that, it's about $15 million on that chart.

I think if you take the forward estimates from now on, they are pointing to less than 100 -- clearly less than 100 basis points. So if you do the math in the possible negative impact from interest rates should be really, really marginal and clearly less than a basis point given CHF 180 billion of AUM that we currently run.

Our biggest effort is going to be in Block B, which is the commission side. This is -- these are the areas that we actually control. It doesn't depend so much on to the market. It's about product. It's about the commercial excellence plan. And we plan to expand our commission margin going forward.

And the third part, although that we will try to increase our ability to do other products or more FX products, there is the possibility of lower market volatility that might reduce a bit that activity. And clearly, we are walking away from the life insurance portfolio at this point as it is in wind down.

Overall, we feel very confident that we can maintain our revenue margin, which is above 85 basis points in the medium term. And clearly, the starting point of 92 basis points of today is also a strong starting point for us to defend from.

Moving on to cost-to-income ratio. And here, I think if you look at the last 2 cycles is a tale of 2 stories. If you look at the one on the left, clearly, the cost-to-income ratio went dramatically down. We started from over 90%, we closed the cycle at 76%. A lot of the actions, which were -- had to do with closing down businesses, selling businesses, making sure that we streamline as much as we can.

I've heard some criticism that we have not been moving as fast on the cost-to-income ratio in the last couple of years. If you look at the numbers, okay, from 2022 to '23, we actually reduced about 3 percentage points, but then it's been not moving as fast as some people would have liked. I think that relates one to one with the first bullet point under achieving scale, and that was about investing at the right time.

What we actually did was that we very consciously sacrificed a bit of cost-to-income ratio in order to get a bigger bank, more AUM and in the end, more bottom line profit out of this equation. By the way, that investment takes 2 to 3 years to actually become fully profitable. We're looking at about a time where that investment is going to be becoming fully profitable.

Now, going forward, you've heard the priorities. It's about branding, client experience, commercial excellence, technology. I think all these things will play -- are all in driving the cost-to-income ratio. And we are updating and improving our target to 68% compared to the 69% that we had previously.

Page 121, a brief overview of the action points in the last few years. The first block, 2019 to 2022, you see the list. We actually managed to do 9 transactions in that time period. '23 to '25, predominantly focusing our improvements or our cost and efficiency actions into the simplicity program, which is a very rigorous, very detailed, very well monitored program. We started with a target of CHF 40 million and expanded it to CHF 60 million, actually expecting to achieve CHF 66 million by the end of the year.

And since we believe that this has been successful, we now know how to do it and we found more scope around it, we are now embarking into Simplicity 2.0. Simplicity 2.0 is a bit larger in scope, so CHF 70 million to CHF 80 million, about 7% of our cost base, and this is going to be delivered in the 3-year period ending in 2028.

Now, you heard about investment. And clearly, investment is nice, but we always hope that we get actually a financial return out of that investment. Demis focused on the figures on the left. So this is about increasing investment to support growth and scalability. Alain was timid, he did not put the chart on in terms of the money that he would need, which is another 0.5% of our annual revenues, which brings us pretty much now in line with our peer group.

For me, there are only 2 comments on these numbers. The first thing is, as you see, it's measured. Increasing your technology spend from CHF 30 million to CHF 43 million while you're growing at this pace is very reasonable, and we should be clearly be doing it. And clearly, Alain had -- adding 0.5% of your revenues on that is clearly -- is a very good investment.

The second point is I do believe that these 2 investments are the investments that create the highest return on investment that we have from all the possible portfolio of investment that we can actually make. So I think that the fact that we are here and we can actually discuss this, it's very important because they will definitely help us in improving our performance going forward.

So I'll move to Page 123, which tries to describe how we think about the evolution of cost-to-income ratio. So our starting point now is 71.8%. Block A, which is the simplicity and efficiency side of it, is the biggest driver in terms of the achievement of the 68%. Simply put it, if you take the CHF 70 million to CHF 80 million of efficiency improvements that we are putting forward and you apply it to our current numbers, you end up at 68%.

So the self-help element, the ability for us to deliver that 68% is predicated on delivering on Simplicity Version 2.0 after a strong delivery on the first round of simplicity. The investments are going to be focused. So I don't expect any significant impact when it comes to the cost-to-income ratio.

In Block C, we're talking about revenue improvements. Clearly, we expect to grow the revenue as we move forward. Essentially, what we're saying in Block C is that our marginal cost-to-income ratio is lower than an average cost-to-income ratio. So as we move along, we will be improving also our cost-to-income ratio. And the last bit is a bit of carryover effect in 2026 from what we've seen in terms of interest rate drops and the currency fluctuations in 2025.

Next page, 124, is on return on tangible equity. We had a 30% growth in profitability in the first cycle. We arrived at about 13% return on tangible equity. We added almost another 20% per annum growth getting us to 19%. Now, what we're looking forward is also another 3-year cycle, where we can grow profits at around 50% per annum and hit at least 20% as our internal intangible equity in 2028. We believe that we can maintain that 15% per annum even beyond 2028. So even if we're looking at a 5-year horizon, we should be able to deliver that 15%.

And if you look at the highlights, I'm not going to repeat them all, it's more about our delivery in NNA, in defending the margin, in making sure that we improve our cost-to-income ratio, maybe a bit of headwinds early on in 2036, but also a bit of capital optionality because with the capital surplus that we actually have, we have the ability to add more and accelerate through acquisitions.

Now, moving on to a bit the capital management framework because this is also important. The capital management framework that we are putting forward is very similar to the one that we had put forward 3 years ago. So you'll see that our minimum capital ratio is about 8%. We maintain a management floor of 12%, which means that as management, we would not like to drop below 12%. And if our core Tier 1 is above 15%, subject to market conditions, to availability of M&A and also to regulatory developments, the Board might consider delivering some of that excess capital back to shareholders. In reality, what this means that we have a corridor between 12% and 15% of core Tier 1, where we need that to support organic growth, but also maintain it as optionality for additional M&A.

Now, what is very supporting at this point when it comes to the capital ratios is that we are going into another step change into our profitability. And through that, we generate quite a bit of organic capital. At the same time, our business is a low capital consumption business. It's a capital-light business. So we don't need a lot of that capital that we generate every year to make sure that we maintain a very solid balance sheet and a very solid capital ratios.

So in that respect, we believe that along with the next level of profitability, we need to improve on our payout ratio. So the guidance for the payout is now 60% of annual profit compared to 50% previously. Just to remind you, the dividend yield has been 4.5% for the last 3 years. And on top of that, we will maintain our buyback program, which added 2.9% of so-called yield in the last 3 years.

Now, moving on a bit to discuss acquisitions. Clearly, we've been active in the last 10 years. What the chart on the left is a compilation of all the transactions over CHF 5 billion of AUM by Swiss private banks.

So EFG is #2. We've done BSI. Shaw and Partners and Cité Gestion, actually also done ISG, but it is less than CFH 5 billion, so it's below the line. What it shows is that clearly, we have a track record. We have the team who can actually manage this. We have delivered quite a bit of value in the past from doing M&A, and we're actively scanning the market. So for us, M&A, as I said earlier, is an accelerator to our ability to deliver these profits. And just to be very clear, none of the targets that we've put forward includes the impact from any additional acquisition that we have clearly not announced yet.

In terms of the assessment of the criteria, these remain exactly the same as we had before. So there is no change. Clearly, it needs to be a bolt-on acquisition. We need to be able to create value through the synergies. The cultural fit is a given. If you don't have a cultural fit, we should not be embarking. And to avoid any value dilution, we have also several internal financial metrics that we need to meet. The one that we disclosed publicly is a return on investment in excess of 10% in year 3 of the operation. So after some restructuring costs might be born. And -- so these are pretty much the same -- pretty much -- they're exactly the same as the one that we communicated back in 2022.

So just to close with the financial targets, you see the ones that we had in '25. You see the enhanced financial targets for 2028. I think the very strong element or the very strong parameter that we have now is that we are closing this cycle with a lot of momentum. And closing the cycle, a lot of momentum has a value because clearly, we are meeting the targets. The other very positive element is that you use the same momentum to carry you over into the beginning of the next cycle. And that is very important because in every cycle, starting on the right foot is very, very important.

On this basis, we believe that the targets that we have are, on one hand, ambitious. On the other hand, I believe that they are very much grounded to reality. And by that, I mean that the reason that I believe that we can deliver them is, clearly, we have a very strong track record in delivering the targets before. But also, we have a very high-quality team, which is already committed to deliver these targets. Clearly, for the shareholders, what is very important is that through the delivery of these targets will be compounding returns, compounding EPS, clearly, adding more confidence to the one that investors already have to EFG. And through that, we can create even additional value.

On this point, I would like to thank you for your attention. I saw several people taking notes. I'm expecting a fruitful Q&A session after all. And on that note, I pass it on to Giorgio for his closing remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Dimitris, and we are now coming to the close of the presentation, and I will try in the next few minutes to summarize what you've heard in the last 2.5 hours. So first of all, as you can see on these slides, our performance over the past years has been strong and consistent. Over the last 2 cycles, we have made investments in our talent and into transforming the bank for the future. So we can now start the new cycle on a position of strength, and we are confident to continue delivering double-digit profit growth of around 15%.

As we mentioned earlier, we are confident that we can continue this journey of value creation for the long term. We have a sound strategic plan, and we have the right levers to implement it. I'm sure you have noticed by now that our performance mindset is very strong. The team is very strong, and our confidence comes also from the fact that we have a very strong track record in executing our past plans. As I mentioned earlier, I believe we are pretty good in navigating the short-term market conditions, but we have a very clear strategic direction, and we also believe that the underlying long-term trends for our industry, for private banking and wealth management are actually very positive, and we are particularly convinced that EFG is very well positioned to benefit from the value that will be created by entrepreneurs globally and by the move of the wealth that will go across geographies and generations.

I will not repeat one by one the targets. I'm sure you've seen this slide a few times already. Again, I reconfirm that out of the 6, we are upgrading 4 of the targets and we are maintaining 2, and we are committed in creating sustainable value for all our stakeholders, for our clients, for our shareholders, for our people, for our regulators and for our communities. And I will try to leave you with 3 points that are, in my view, the -- if you want, is what we distilled out of these 2.5 hours: consistent performance, we have delivered against our plans; further potential, we have identified untapped opportunities to maintain the growth momentum in the next cycle; attractive returns, we are committed to delivering financial targets and attractive returns to our shareholders.

With this, I would like to close the presentation, and thank you for your attention. I now hand back to Jens in order to open the Q&A session.

Thank you, Giorgio. And thank you, obviously, for all the presenters for the very insightful presentation. So as we said, we will now start with the Q&A session. So obviously, I think we have couple of people in the room where I would expect there will be some questions. [Operator Instructions]

Let's start there and then we move on.

This is Máté Nemes from UBS. I have quite a few questions, but I'll limit myself to perhaps 2 and give my colleagues a chance as well. The first question would be on the gross margin, the minimum 85 basis points. So Dimitris, you showed 92 basis points for July, October. I think you've been pretty clear that the decline in interest rates shouldn't have much impact, maybe 1 basis point based on forward curves. And it seems like the recurring margin has been also edging higher. At the moment, you have somewhat higher contribution from activity-driven margin, but it's not outlandish. So I'm just wondering, what does the minimum 85 basis point level assume? Is that basically going back to 0 or negative interest rates in key jurisdictions in the U.S. and perhaps from the ECB, it seems like there's quite some buffer for unforeseen events. And also if you could just confirm what sort of assumptions do you have for macro conditions? That's the first one.

And the second question would be on Page 47, where you are showing 40% contribution to NNA from existing CROs. So quite a high level and a huge jump from the previous years as well. You mentioned that you also -- I think Giorgio mentioned that you also see an upside, further upside to that. Can I just ask what exactly do you have in mind for that and how sustainable that can be? And also, how do I reconcile that with the 68% cost/income ratio? And let's say, in operating mode there, roughly half the NNA comes from existing CROs, so productivity is really high, half comes from new hiring. How do I reconcile that for the 3, 4 percentage point improvement in the cost/income ratio? I would probably expect somewhat more ambitious outcome in this case, which suggested some buffer also in that metric. If you could elaborate, that would be helpful.

So let me take the first one on the gross margin because, Máté, you're right. We're clearly starting with the 92 basis points. The -- it's on Page 119, I think, is where we show what we expect to be happening. We don't expect a lot from the reduction on the interest rates, mostly the dollar and anybody can decide how many cuts going forward, but even with 4 cuts, you're talking about less than 1 basis point of impact. The commission income has been higher the last couple of years. We expect to move it even higher. And maybe there is some negative effect on the other income.

In terms of the target, what I would like to stress is that the target is not 85 basis points. The target is specifically higher than 85 basis points. So you should not be reading it the same way you read the 68%, which is something which is a bit more and more specific. So we do expect with the visibility that we have now that the revenue margin is going to be, how should I put it, significantly higher than the 85 basis points that you actually see. Look, I've been blamed so many times about the revenue margin, and I've had it wrong so many times, me being more on the pessimistic side than one has come out that I'm not going to argue. But look, given the visibility that we have now, we do not expect a significant erosion over the next 3 years.

Maybe if I may complement, Máté, I think I recall when we were in an environment of low interest rates or negative interest rates in some markets, we had a return on AUM on the 70 and people were saying 85. You will never see 85 again, right? Now then we are over 90, and now people say, oh, 85 is low. So I think -- as I said earlier, we are pretty good in navigating, I think, the short-term market environment. And clearly, we will all -- there is no CRO -- and you have many top CROs in this room, by the way. There is no CRO that if he has an opportunity to deliver more, will not deliver more. And I believe that, as Dimitris said, I think the current environment at the moment is pretty constructive. And so we will be higher for sure than the 85. But again, this is something that it is more, how should I say, an exogenous factor that has an impact not on EFG, this is an impact on the industry. And traditionally, we have been better than the industry in terms of top line resilience.

And in a way, to keep the 85, we have kept the 85 basically since 2019 when we started is to say, look, across the cycle, this is the 10-year average. We believe that this is by now a floor. Obviously, we'll fight tooth and nail to make sure that we keep the highest margin as possible.

Maybe I take the second question, which was on Page 47. And I think that the question was about the right-hand side of the slide, correct, is about the contribution of existing CROs to the total NNA and how we see this. Well, let me -- how should I put this? In the years, let's say, before COVID or before 2022 to be fair, so in the earlier years, when we were delivering -- when we started to reignite growth and we were delivering -- maybe you can put that slide, Besar, with the time line and the NNA over the time line. We were growing around CHF 8 billion a year in absolute terms. Out of the CHF 8 billion a year, about 50% was existing CROs and about 50% were the new CROs. You can see here in the middle years, we were running around CHF 8 billion. This was CHF 4 billion and CHF 4 billion.

Now we have about -- excluding now the new acquisitions and excluding Shaw and Partners, we have about, let's call it, 500 CROs. I recall that when we did the IPO, this was 20 years ago, the expectation was that every CRO would deliver CHF 30 million net new assets every single year. Now things have changed. There are deleveraging, et cetera, et cetera. But if you take 10, you are more or less at around 5. And this is more or less 50% of what we are delivering at the moment. As I said, we already crossed CHF 10 billion today. So hopefully, this year is going to be higher than that. But this is how we think about that. This is how all regional business heads and Anthony, they speak to the CROs and to the heads of private banking, some heads of private banking are in this room. And this is something which we believe is achievable, obviously, in an environment where releveraging is positive or at least there is not deleveraging. And if you -- with all the new initiatives that we want to implement in terms of content innovation, in terms of augmented CROs, we believe that this should be feasible.

Again, it's not a guarantee, sometimes the new CROs are much more relevant in a specific period and other quarters, maybe it's the other way around, but this is how we think about it.

The third question, if you take it, Dimitris?

I think it was combined with the second one. I don't know, Máté, is there anything else that you'd like to cover?

There was a related one to the NNA contribution from existing CROs. I was just wondering if you can sustainably generate really a 40% plus share from existing CROs. Presumably, that would allow you also to open up the operating jaws to a much larger extent. And in this context, I was asking about buffers in the cost/income ratio.

And if you go to the page of the untapped opportunities, again, let me just also give you a bit of our thinking and why we feel that some of these untapped opportunities are really attractive. In particular, the share of wallet coming back to your point. At the end of the day, the cheapest form of net new assets is increasing the share of wallet. Why? Because I don't need to hire anybody because usually, these are existing CROs. I don't need to open a new account and have all the process that, as everybody knows, in private banking, it can be quite cumbersome because the accounts are already open. And so everything you heard before from marketing to content innovation, to digital will allow us to improve the share of wallet.

And again, I would like to emphasize, I think Alain did it very well, but just to complement, I think the ability for us to increase our brand profile is extremely important. Because if today, we are #4 bank, we want to become #3. If we're #3, we want to become #2. And if we manage to increase the ranking, as you know very well, is not that it's linear, right? The top guys get from the clients a bigger part of the portfolio, and this is where we want to position ourselves.

Okay. I think we take a question from Nick here in the white shirt. Thank you.

It's Nicholas Herman from Citi. Three for me, please. Actually, thank you for that answer on the NNA from existing. My first question is on growth, and particularly on Slide 42. So I was taking a look at the equivalent slide back in 2022 and kind of putting together the -- those numbers. And that kind of implied an overall NNA at the top end of your target range. Just eyeballing this slide here, it seems to put you considerably above that target range. So I acknowledge you're trying to be conservative in setting your targets, but it does imply quite -- the target does imply quite a large margin of safety there. So for avoidance of doubt, are there any puts we need to be mindful of when you're thinking -- when we're thinking about that medium-term growth profile?

The second question, coming back on cost/income question for -- I guess, for Dimitris. It's clear that your targets are conservative. They're set with conservative assumptions. So but I guess, broadly speaking, and let's say, there isn't not another exceptional hiring window like there was in this plan. How should we think about the marginal cost/income on revenues over and above your plan?

And then the final question, please. Your balance sheet and capital position is clearly strong, but equally, your annual report outlines a large number of legal cases outstanding, not only related to the legacy cases that you outlined on -- I think, on Page 111. So how do you think about your contingent legal liabilities? And how does that feed into the amount of capital that you're keeping aside over and above the 12% and what is genuinely available for M&A?

Maybe I take the first question, which is on Page 42, and I was smiling when -- Nick, thank you for the question, when you asked the question because this is something that actually indeed, we thought you might ask. Well, indeed, I think that -- and all the regional businesses are here, I think that the prospects that we see in the various regions are quite good. So clearly, if we are going to achieve in the next 3 years all the targets that you see on this, we're going to be at the top end of the range, if not like this year, beating the range.

I would like to go back to what Dimitris said in his presentation. Clearly, we are very pleased that we have a very resilient and diversified business. And for us, it's extremely important that we can make the plan that we have presented to you, even if not all the 5 engines are running at the top end. And therefore, again, I wouldn't say that there is -- I don't know how you express it, a buffer or a margin of error. But I think it is also important to assume that when you have a portfolio of businesses, not all will manage to achieve 100% of their target. So I think it's a prudent, how should I say, planning. But you're right, I think that today, all our -- all my colleagues, all the regional business heads are quite positive about their markets.

The second is on cost to income on marginal...

On the marginal cost to income, which is -- it's a fair question. When it comes to marginal cost to income, it depends which of the businesses that we run you look at. But I would say that depending on the case and depending on the business, we are looking at something between 30% to 45%, 50%. But again, it depends on the business case. Like there is one large business case that we are discussing now on the investment side in Andre's field, it's up 20% incrementally. But usually, you're looking at something which is better than 50% cost to income on a marginal basis.

And maybe just to complement, I hope it came out from my presentation earlier, but our "obsession" with operating leverage is the flip side is the marginal cost income. And on this, as I was saying, we are really focused not only at group level but a single initiative level as Dimitris has just said. And obviously, when we hire CROs, this is exactly also what we look at. And as Dimitris was saying, also hiring CROs is below 50% on a clear basis.

Now your last question about legacy cases. And clearly, you're correct. We do disclose in our contingent liabilities, some legacy legal cases. In terms of how we think of it from a capital perspective, when we set our management floor of 12%, we take into account the risk profile of EFG. So we take everything into account. And it's -- clearly, it's not just the legal cases. It's risk profile. It's a credit profile. It's all the risks. And this is how we came up with the 12%.

Okay. Then we move on. You have the microphone already, then please go ahead.

Okay. Great. This is Daniel Regli from ZKB. I have a follow-up question on the gross margin question from Máté obviously. And I still struggle a bit to see the 85. Obviously, you're coming from 95, I know. But still when you're looking at the net interest margin part, obviously, the mix will be different in '28 and particularly will be more coming from the traditional net interest margin part and less from the treasury swap part. So can you maybe help me understand where exactly you see this increase in the traditional interest income part from 19 basis points to 24 basis points.

And then secondly, also on the gross margin, we -- today, it's about 20 basis points coming from other operating income, and you have it 13 basis points in '28, I think, if I remember the slide correctly. Can you maybe help me a little bit on the dynamics in this part? And then last but not least, obviously, historically, we have always been talking about fee margin pressure in wealth management and asset management. So can you maybe elaborate a bit where we stand here today?

I think what is going to be useful is maybe we move to Page 118, the page before that -- before this one that we show now because that gives you a bit of the history. I understand Daniel, your comment is that you find the 85 basis points too optimistic, which is the opposite from Máté's view, which probably taking...

That's why we have a market. That's why we have...

Yes. So the 85 is probably a good number. Now the -- if you look at this chart, if you look at the left, I'll come back to your point about the mix between NII and swap because they are completely interchangeable. Like the reason I create the swap income is because I have dollars, I swap them into Swissy. And because of that, the accounting has to be split into different lines. I could have kept them in dollars, and it would have been net interest income. So the 2 are completely in 1 bucket, but exactly the same thing. So we are now 29 basis points. The average for the last 10 years has been 29 basis points. And a couple of years ago in 2022, it was again 29. I feel that, that is a solid number.

Now both the number for commission and the number for other income, excluding the swap, which is now 21, are higher than what we've had in the past. Why? Because we are doing more things, and we are doing things better. That's the reason why I believe that overall, we will be more than 85.

Can I make a comment? I think the last question was about pricing power. On that, I think it has been mentioned by Alain, Andre, and I'll give you a word in a second. But just to frame the point how we see it, we agree with you. There is, for sure, a huge pricing pressure for plain vanilla business and for plain vanilla service and products.

On the contrary, and maybe we can go briefly, and Andre, maybe you want to comment on Page 58. If we are able to move from the plain vanilla products and services and to go and to give -- add value to the clients with more sophisticated is both Pages 57 and 58 to our clients, I think there, we have pricing power. But maybe Andre, you want to comment?

Yes, most definitely. I think if you look at my shop, so to speak, I would say, I have 3 types of asset management businesses, by and large. One is an institutionally facing one, which is EFGAM which is the smallest component. And there, you have had margin erosion because you're competing in the institutional space. I don't think that's a surprise. But when I look at advisory and discretionary specifically, we have not really seen it. And the reason for that is that markets have become a lot more complex, and clients are more than willing to pay the right price, if you're giving them the right advice and managing them on appropriately according to SAA and TA. So clients are still willing to pay for that.

I think where we've become much more selective for a client outcome that works for them is the product we put in there, making sure it's the best on the market. And as you know, we're open architecture, and also the use of passive versus active in terms of how we build our SAA and TA, but the clients are still very happy to pay for that. I think the other metric, which is on Slide 58, which to me is very key in terms of how we look at the next cycle is as you align an IC with an advisory relationship, the margin increase is really material. And that, to me, is a proof of the pricing power, if there's anything else. So that's how I would look at it.

We put the microphone next to Andreas. Okay, that's fine...

Andreas Venditti from Vontobel. Maybe 1 question for you guys and 1 question to open up also to the regional heads. On the CRO, you showed the strong improvement in the performance of the business cases, the targets that were reached. And maybe you can explain a bit in your view, what was the main driver of this? And how far can we go? I mean, is there a limit to what the achievement rate could reach?

And maybe on the regional heads, a few questions. Maybe the optimism from the U.K. team. We've seen the 2 slides, and it suggests a very strong improvement going forward. And similarly, not in that range, let's say, from the Swiss team, were also from below market growth over the last 3 years. The expectation now is to beat market growth. Maybe if you could add some flavor here.

And finally, from Asia, I mean, a very big topic. We've seen some competitors with very, very high numbers. You have also produced obviously, very impressive results over the last few years. What can we expect from Asia?

So let us start with, let's say, improved business case delivery. This is the middle of the current page that you see here on the slide, which is Page 36. And I think you referred to the fact that obviously, our success rate was below 50% in the early years of the last 2 cycles. And now we are -- we had a great year in 2021 with 3 quarters and now we're running at 2/3.

If we go to the next slide, this is what gives us confidence. I believe that, in particular, on the right-hand side, we have developed internally this, we call it the predictor. And I think that this will allow us to do better -- to make better decisions. And this is the last point, the decision-making is actually to drive the decision-making using this model. To be fair, we have been using this model for quite some time, but to the frustration of some colleagues, then it was overridden. And people will say, no, but the model is not perfect. Actually, I know better. I've met the person. I have a great vibe. This time, it's going to be different, right?

And then when you back test the models after several years and then at the end, the results are always consistent. And the way we do it, we have 8 different predictive indicators and then -- and by the way, among the 8, there are a couple that are actually the killers that already if there, you don't -- the score is bad, you know that the delivery is not going to happen. So now we have done this back testing, and then we went back, and this gives you different buckets of probability from the outstanding candidates to the -- we call them orange, because obviously, red, we would not even consider them, but the dark orange is actually what we call them, then you see the probability. You see that the outstanding -- the probability of success is 80%, 90%, and you see that in the lower buckets, the probability of success is significantly less than 50%.

And so -- as I said, as actual is mentioned here, there is a strong executive management involvement during the process. But ultimately, all the CROs that we hire are approved by the regional business heads, by Dimitris and myself. So with Dimitris, we have agreed that we are not going to override anymore the predictor. And I believe that we can improve significantly the 67%. Now where can it go? Obviously, our ambition is that every new CRO that comes in is going to be successful. We think we are better. We are becoming better. I think also a key point which you have here in the page is the due diligence.

I think we're becoming better in the due diligence phase, but the due diligence phase is 2 ways, is the firm obviously assessing the capabilities and the prospects of success of the candidate. But conversely, we always want the candidates to assess our capabilities because at the end of the day, for whatever reason, he says, oh, the -- let me pick on them. The technology is not sufficient or the product offering is not so sufficient or in Enrico, the credit risk appetite is not in line, then there is no point to start. Now where can we go? I don't know. Obviously, let's say, we're at 67%. We -- ideally should go...

The top lines of the predictor at our 85%, 90%. So...

So if we only -- if we don't onboard anybody that is on the lower part of the Board, and we only consider the top part of the Board, yes, we should go to in excess of 80%. Sorry for the long explanation.

And may I just add to the selection process, which Giorgio has just been talking about, the due diligence is clearly very important. But then what happens after the CRO joins us is also very important to how far they get in realizing their business case. And it may seem obvious, but we have a performance culture, CROs don't join us to have a quiet life. They come because they want to do the best they can for their clients. When they arrive, they need the organization to help them to bring on the clients. And that is the second part of this. It's the -- once they're on board, how do we deliver?

And if we just go to Slide 46, which we've obviously seen before. But what they find when they arrive is that we have a systematic pipeline management process. We have a top deal team. So if they have a very big deal, they have people who are ready to talk to them to assess the deal and that may be that we assess the deal, the client, and we think actually this doesn't meet our risk appetite. So don't spend any more time on that, move on. But if they do move on, essentially, one way to think about it is it's not so much that these processes are driving the new CRO. They're actually also driving the organization to support the new CRO with their business at a very early stage. And this is what we've been trying to improve.

And in terms of can we go further? I think those of us who are involved in this know that we have not optimized this yet. There's lots more we can do and especially with all the things that we were talking about with technology, with data and with the offering in investment solutions, there's a long way further to go.

And for the reference, Anthony leads the pipeline management process is in the chair of the top deal team. So thank you, Anthony. Now let's go to Christian, to the U.K.

Yes. Clearly, I've now been here 2 years. And what we have seen is over the last 18 months, a strong demonstration of NNA growth actually. And we've done that by focusing on both international and domestic clients that independent of residency still have a strong connection to the U.K. It's really been done by a strong focus on business development. We touched on commercial excellence and as well as really optimization of our overall service offering. Andre touched on the advisory business. We made a significant investment in the -- our advisory business in '23, and we're now really starting to see the fruits of that by becoming one of the advisers of choice in what is a very sophisticated financial market.

Albert? Franco, sorry.

Franco Polloni speaking. I apologize for my voice. Coming to Switzerland, maybe first on the improved business case delivery. As Giorgio knows, I believe in discipline and not in coincidence. And for this reason, we have been learning in the last years that we are very much effective when we go for the team acquiring, rather to go for the single client adviser. And this, we have been able in Switzerland to deploy in that way so that you have seen also the business case improved, delivery improvement are really effective.

So this is the reason why, at least in my region, but I believe my colleagues are doing the same. We are more focusing on teams, and we are also very effective. And Anthony mentioned, when it comes to onboard the teams, we have experience, and we are also able to bring all the groups successful to the target that we agreed at the beginning.

In terms of your comment about the growth in Switzerland during the cycle, I would like to recall that in the previous cycle, and Giorgio mentioned it on Page 24, turnaround of Switzerland since 2019, 2022, including the phase during the COVID. The end of '22, we understood that for the next cycle, we would have focused on existing CROs. It has been mentioned, for us, it is paramount to make sure that existing CROs are delivering. And this is part of our strategic plan, a consistent plan, which is also happening in Switzerland. At the same time, we also declared to invest in Switzerland, which is our home country.

And the third pillar of this cycle was let's focus on international markets where we have internal experience. When -- and this we deployed in 2023, 2024 and 2020 -- and this year. Basically, what happened in 2023, I think we were able to start to acquire the team in Gstaad. We had -- at the same time, we were able to deploy the team in some of St. Moritz and eventually also being able to open the FSO in Tel Aviv. And 2022 has been a year of transition, has been the year we have been planning. We have been taking the decision, and the execution came basically this year -- in 2024 and this year.

If I go back to the numbers and also projected the numbers, the region for 2024 and in 2025, thank you to the support of this initiative is at the moment, performing '24 and '25 above the average that we've been setting. '23, having said was the year we have taken the -- basically, we implemented the decision. Going forward, we believe and I believe in basically keeping the same what we have been doing, that is very disciplined. We will continue with existing CROs. We have been successful in managing their growth. And next -- in the next cycle, we will continue to make sure that with teams and making sure that the existing business cases will be developed. We will be growing further, I believe, and I'm convinced that we'll be able to be above the average, which has been set -- which is what you see as our presentation on Page 43. Thank you.

Albert?

I'm Albert Chiu, I'm the regional business head for the Asia Pacific region. First, I would like to thank you for your very kind comment about the business performance of the region for this cycle. Indeed, we have delivered a very good growth in NNA, revenue as well as profitability in this cycle. And I think the key of this success is because of our effort to focus on 4 key markets, which is Greater China, Southeast Asia, IAM as well as NRI. So we managed to recruit a very, very good, experienced and quality CRO from our peers. And then we worked very closely with our colleagues from investment solutions, global markets and credit to help them to be successful.

So because of the success, we believe that we have built a very good momentum into the business, and we become a very attractive place for good CROs. And therefore, we are confident going into the next cycle to repeat the success. And I think Giorgio has also mentioned a few times that the Asia Pacific market will be a region that has very, very good wealth creation in the next 5 years. And I think he also mentioned that by 2030, 33% of the ultra-high net worth individual will be in my region. So I think we are also in the right region. And we continue to be close to our clients to actively deliver good services to our clients. I believe that our growth, even though it's quite ambitious that we're able to deliver.

I think you asked about a question about the success delivery. I think in our region, because of the partnership with all the other colleagues, other support functions, we're able to deliver well above average success case for our new recruitment CROs. So we are very confident going into the next cycle. Thank you very much.

Thank you. I think there's a quite -- exactly you have a microphone already.

This is Daniele Scilingo from Mirabaud Asset Management. First of all, congratulations that you discovered the magic of compounding but also delivering it. Speaking about this, your 300 basis points of buffer in the capital will be the compounder of the compounder if you can find M&A. If we are here in 2028, we look back to your M&A strategy, will that have moved the needle in your assets under management? Or is that a marginal endeavor?

Do you want to take that? Can you put the slide with our track record on M&A?

Yes.

There is that.

So I think that in order to be able to move the needle, you need 2 things. One is you need to have the capacity to do it. And the second one is you need to have the capability to actually extract value. We're looking at -- so I think in terms of the track record in being able to deliver value, I think what you have here is very important. The BSI transaction should be reviewed by one of the large business school reviews at some point because knowing the numbers and like I've been doing M&A or involved in M&A for the last 30 years now, the level of value extraction from that transaction, I have not seen in any other transaction in Europe in the last 20 years.

So I think in terms of capability, I think we've proven that we can do it. Now there's -- the other question is, do you have the resources? If you can turn a couple of pages earlier where we show our capital ratios, we are at 15.6%, and we have set the management floor of 12%. That means we have CHF 400 million of capital that we could possibly use. That is without going into a transaction where we might issue some shares and not just use cash, which give us even further ability in terms of our capacity to do transactions. And even in the Cité Gestion transaction that we did, that we closed a couple of months ago, there was an element which was in shares.

So I think in terms of financial capacity, we also have quite a bit of financial capacity in terms of doing deals that could move the needle.

The last element that is missing is are there other objects around BSI was once in a century. But how do you see the market and the opportunity in the next 3 years to deliver on M&A?

Look, it takes two to tango, we are ready to tango. So...

If you can go to Page 15, maybe let me try to answer the question. As I mentioned earlier, we had clearly a dry season. And for sure, during COVID and 2022, I don't think we have assessed any dossier that came our way or...

There were no transactions created. It was not just us. It was...

There were no transactions in the market. In '23 and '24, there were a couple, but very few. Today, to be fair, there are several dossiers that are coming our way. Now some are not in the right market and so on and so forth. But today, what we see is that the velocity in terms of activity has increased. I believe -- but we are saying this for the last 10 years. So I believe that the consolidation of the market will accelerate. And for sure, we are ready. Now how fast this consolidation will take place, where this is to be seen. But for sure, I think if I had to foresee, I believe that the next cycle is going to be more interesting in terms of M&A than the last cycle.

Great. Any other -- Nick has -- maybe we take Casper first and then Nick afterwards, yes, the blue shirt, please.

Casper [indiscernible] Capital. Maybe again, as we have some of the CROs or regional heads here. First, Christian, just to follow up regarding the U.K. and your optimism. So you don't really see much of an impact from the non-dom status change, I assume you kind of pointed out.

Second point is -- and whoever feels it makes sense to answer this, is there a limit when we talk about CRO productivity, limit in terms of how much CROs can actually manage. We've increased the AUM per CRO of 56% over the last, what is it, 10 years or so. Of course, this depends mostly on the size of your client and the number of -- the limit is the number of families or the number of individuals one can actually manage. But has this -- is there something different behind the 56%? Is it that you target different clients? You have different kind of client segmentation or what's behind that? Maybe somebody can comment on that.

And the third element would be maybe for whoever feels this is relevant in his region, this next-gen CRO development or program, can you maybe give an example, talk us through this a little bit how this really works and how you want to have these next-gen CROs and take over and manage the wealth transfer, the big wealth transfer?

Christian, do you want to take the first question?

Yes, why don't I start off with the first one. While we've obviously seen people leave as it relates to residents, we've been actually able to retain a very large percentage of the assets that are still being booked in the U.K. At the same time, a lot of international investors are actually really liking the U.K. for its legal system for all the connectivity. So that is we are doing a joint venture with our agent colleagues. There's a number of international jurisdictions that are very actively looking at the U.K. in order to book there. So it's something that we've gotten some really good traction in.

Maybe I take the second question, which is about the limit of the AUM per CRO in terms of productivity. If you could go briefly to Page 36. I think this is the page you are referring to. Clearly, there has been a very good performance over the last 7 years. But let me go back 1 page, and this is the page that depicts also the stratification of our clients.

And I mentioned it earlier on percent that actually 90% of our clients are basically high net worth and ultra. But the ultra, this is 53%. And these are clients that have with us more than CHF 30 million. Typically, every client has about 2, 3 banks. So let's call it that liquid financial assets is in excess of CHF 100 million. Obviously, if you look at the same, and I believe that in 2022, we had a similar chart. At the time, the percentage of the ultra was below 50%. So we have been growing almost 5 percentage points. So it is quite significant over the last 3 years in increasing the relevance of the ultra clients, while we have been decreasing the relevance of the affluent and the PB entry per client. So I believe that actually the limit in terms of capacity is not so much the AUM, but it's the number of relationships that CRO manages.

Now here, there is another point that I think Dimitris, [ the CROs ] mentioned in the video, he started as 1 single CRO and by now has a team of 10. So we have the ability to create teams, and I would like to answer also maybe the following question, which is about the next-gen CRO. In the past, we always said next-gen CRO, I think in the video, Michael, who was the last CRO that spoke, he started as a CSO, which is client service officer. He became a junior CRO and then when the senior CRO retired, he took over, and now he runs the team. And this ability to complement the seasoned CROs with the next-gen CROs is what increases scalability.

Now I'm not going to give you a number or a target where we expect the AUM per CRO to go. I don't know if it's going to be 56% in the next 7, 8 years but I can -- I believe that there are -- there is still significant potential. And as you know, there are some players that we consider our direct competitors that have such significant bigger number of AUM per CRO. So it is feasible.

Maybe Ioanna, do you want to mention quickly the rollout of the next-gen CROs?

Pretty sure. As Giorgio mentioned, it's a membership development program. It's a 36-month program. We pair senior CROs with younger talent that we can source it internally or externally. And the idea is really to nurture the future CROs. We want to release, obviously, eventually capacity, free up capacity from our senior top performers, many of them are also in this room, but develop the next gen that will also match the major wealth transfer that we're seeing really meet and talk the language of our next-gen clients. It's interesting to say that we already have a good pipeline. The idea is like the senior CROs will allocate some assets that they will guide the next gen, how to build those and how to develop the traits necessary to be as successful as they are.

Great. I think Nicolas was waiting exactly. So if we take -- yes, microphone is coming from behind, don't worry.

I can resist another one, [ sorry ]. Just I did have a couple of follow-ups, please, or I just have additional questions. First one on your investment budgets and CapEx. So the CHF 45 million of our annual tech investment is about 2% to 2.5% of revenues. I guess, firstly, that doesn't strike me as a particularly large number. I could be wrong, but my impression is that peers are investing proportionately more than that. So I guess the question here is twofold. With these investments, can you deliver what your clients are asking for today in terms of digital offering and banking app that Alain outlined, but also presumably, expectations will continue to rise, peers will continue to invest more. The bar will rise. So what gives you confidence that you won't fall further behind just to hit your 2x golden rule?

The other 2 questions I had were just around your clients and -- so the average AUM -- actually -- I was interested actually, the -- what is the average AUM per CRO for mature teams versus for individuals? Just kind of, again, thinking about how that could -- that AUM per CRO could trend over time. And then the final question was, how does the average margin -- gross margin compare between ultra-high and high net worth clients, I guess, both overall but especially on a recurring basis, please?

So maybe the first question, Demis, do you want to take it?

Yes. So the first question is about the level of investment that we expect for the next 3 years. During the presentation, I mentioned about the OGA, while I did not mention -- the operational governance authority. I did not mention about the DGA, which is the digital governance authority. It works on a demand management process where all the colleagues can submit request for future enhancement. At that committee, we review constantly all the project that we have, and as Dimitris said more than once, we love data. So every request is submitted with the business case and the number that you have seen that, as I mentioned in the presentation, are well within industry benchmark will allow us to deliver on what we have committed in the presentation.

The second question, if I noted correctly, was about the average AUM per CRO and the difference between mature teams and individual CROs. Was that the question? I don't have the data with me. I can come back. But I would say that in my view, what I've seen and maybe the regional business heads and Anthony can step in. The major difference that I've seen is not -- if an individual CRO is successful, you can achieve very good targets. But in terms of the probability of success, what we have seen in recent years is that when we hire teams, the ability to succeed is much higher than when we have single CROs joining.

There are very simple reasons for that. If you come as a team, the ability to defend on the other side is lower. If you come as a team, there is already a separational level, the people that go out, the people that do the investment, the people that prepare the files and so people can hit the ground running. Now I can come back to you if -- on the AUM per CRO in particular. I didn't note down the last question.

The last question is the difference in revenue margin that we have from an ultra-high net worth client versus a high net worth client. So the difference between the bands. Yes. Well...

Well, we don't disclose that. Obviously, there is a difference. And clearly, the ultra in basis point terms is lower than the high net worth. And obviously, the -- some people ask, why don't you basically cut the tail and reduce the PB entry and affluent, which is 11%. But the reality that in terms of return on AUM, that's quite attractive, and this is why we continue to serve them. And as we mentioned in the context, if you go to the augmented CROs, one of the issues that we -- well, keep this slide, we want to improve the cost to serve for the clients, the PB entry and the affluent using technology to complement junior CROs and CSOs and CROs because today, as you've seen in the other slide, the number of products and services per ultra is higher than with the PB entry and affluent, and this is because the attention is different. So if we can increase via technology, the engagement with these clients, we will be able to increase the number of products and most probably even increase the return on AUM.

But the key point is that there is also like a natural headwind to your commission margin expansion because of that, assuming that mix shift continues, I guess that would be the key point, but that's right.

Can I just ask if we have any question on the telephone lines? I think before there was none, but maybe just checking before we forget them because, obviously, we have quite a few people in the room. And if not...

Gentlemen, so far, there are no questions from the phone.

Okay. Thank you. So then the question is -- any final question from -- or then I would hand back to you, Giorgio. Thank you.

First of all, thank you very much, and thank you very much, really, for coming in person to this presentation and bearing with us for 3 hours. This is really very much appreciated. Just to give you with 3 messages, we have delivered consistently, and we have achieved our 2025 targets. We see additional strong potential for further growth. And with this new strategic plan, we, as management team, are enforcing our commitment to long-term value creation for our stakeholders, for our clients, our shareholders and our employees. Thank you very much.

Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. A very warm welcome to EFG International's First Half 2025 Results Presentation on a very lovely sunny morning in Zurich. As usual, I'm joined by our CEO, Giorgio Pradelli; and our CFO and Deputy CEO, Dimitris Politis.

We will have presentations on both topics from the gentlemen, and then we have enough time for the Q&A session. Afterwards, as usual, I point out the disclaimer on the slides.

And without any further delay, I hand over to Giorgio. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you, Jens. Good morning, and a warm welcome also from my side to those that are here in the room live in Zurich or via webcast and that we are here to discuss our results for the first half of 2025.

Now before going into the presentation and looking back at the last 6 months, I must say that they were quite eventful months if you look at the global affairs and also if you look at the financial markets.

On the other hand, for EFG, actually, they were excellent 6 months, and we had a very successful period. So for this reason, you can imagine that today, we are quite pleased to be here to present this strong set of results to you.

Let us now go to Page 4. And as you can see here, we like to emphasize again that we have delivered another set of consistent performance, and we are progressing towards our 2025 ambition. In a nutshell, we were able to generate a very strong growth, we were able to translate this strong growth into a record profitability and attractive returns for our shareholders, and also, we were able to deploy our excess capital into 2 acquisitions.

Let us now look at the key highlights. Let us start always from growth. We delivered strong NNA of CHF 5.4 billion. This is equivalent to a growth rate of 6.5%, and this is above our target range. Now we love NNA, as many people in the bank knows, because clearly, this is a leading indicator for the future performance of the bank, but this is also a clear indication that our clients appreciate impartial advice and the comprehensive solutions that our client relationship officers and the teams offer to them.

Now growth is very important, but growth has to be sustainable. And we are very pleased to report that this is actually the 13th consecutive semester of positive NNA. And as I said, growth is important, but also has to be sustainable and profitable.

And let's now go to profitability. We were able to translate the strong growth momentum into a record profit for the first 6 months of 2025. We have delivered a reported net profit of CHF 221 million. This is 36% higher compared to the same period of last year, and we were able to deliver a strong return on tangible equity of 24.4%, which is clearly above our target range, as you can see on the right-hand side of the page.

These figures include a contribution from insurance recovery. Dimitris will go in more detail later. This shows only that derisking for us remains a key priority. But what I'd like to emphasize is that even without this exceptional one-off item, we would have delivered a record profit for the first 6 months of the year in any event.

Now what we like when we are able to generate growth that translate into record profitability that we are able to generate surplus capital, and then we are able to deploy this excess capital into value-accretive acquisitions. And like we have already announced during the course of the semester, we were able to sign 2 acquisitions, one in Geneva, Cite Gestion; and the second one in Auckland, New Zealand, ISG. So all in all, a very good, strong start of the year and a continuous progress towards our objectives for the rest of the year.

With this, I pause and I hand over to Dimitris, our CFO and Deputy CEO, who will now provide a detailed overview of our financial performance for the first semester of 2025. Thank you. Dimitris, the floor is yours.

Thank you very much. Good morning, everyone. I will start with Page 6. Page 6 is the usual page which gives you pretty much the high level view of our performance over the last few years. As Giorgio said, we are very pleased to be going into the last year of this business cycle on a record profit.

The headline profit after tax figure is CHF 221.2 million. This includes a one-off recovery from insurance on a legacy case, which we resolved back in 2022. The net impact of that recovery is about CHF 45 million. And as Giorgio already made the point, at CHF 175.8 million, which is the result, excluding that one-off recovery, we would still have a record first semester in 2025.

Now in terms of how did we get there? I think the 2 key ingredients that we have is that we continued to create operating leverage in the semester. The revenues are up 7%, mostly on commissions. The costs are up 4%. A lot of that has to do with variable compensation. And that means that in the end of the day, we have enlarged the profitability, we have improved the cost-to-income ratio by approximately 2 percentage points compared to last year. And clearly, we have managed to deliver a record return on tangible equity at 94% or 24.4%, including the one-off gain.

On Page 7, we have the usual page with the headline numbers, 6.5% growth in net new assets. I'll come back to that with more details. 97 basis points of revenue margin, excluding the recovery. 35 CROs which have been hired or signed to be joining in the next couple of months. CHF 162 billion of AUM.

In terms of the profitability, you'll note the resilience in the revenue growth. Revenues are up 7% and the improvement in the cost-to-income ratio. And clearly, as I also mentioned, the record profit and the record return on tangible equity.

Last, but not least, on the right-hand side of the page, all about capital and liquidity in a time where there's more volatility in the market, we managed to create almost 3% of new capital on a gross basis in the first 6 months of the year. Our capital ratios are 17.1 core capital and 20.6 total capital ratio. These figures fully include the adoption of Basel III final in Switzerland. And finally, the LCR is at 255%.

I will skip the next 2 pages, which gives you all the detailed numbers. And then on Page 10 gives you a bit of a history or a bit of a trend over the last 3 semesters. And starting from net new assets, we've had 3 consecutive semesters where our growth has been beyond our 4% to 6% target range. Clearly, that is a strong beat, and it's a strong momentum for growing the business, and also achieving profitable growth, which is the key target for this business cycle.

You will see that we are very resilient when it comes to our revenue margin. We are at 97 basis points this semester. This is the same as the first semester of 2024 and actually 2 basis points up compared to the second half of 2024.

Cost to income has been improving continuously. If I were to draw the same and go -- the same chart and go even further back, you will see that every single year, we've been managing to bring down our cost-to-income ratio. Now it's at 71.2%. And the return on tangible equity has been constantly be going up with this semester being a record semester.

On Page 11, we have the first page when it comes to our growth. We started the year with CHF 165.5 billion of assets under management. We added CHF 5.4 billion through net new assets. This is 6.5% growth annualized. Markets were positive, around CHF 3 billion.

Clearly, the currency translation with the weakening of the dollar has worked against us, that is CHF 11.7 billion. So we are ending, on the 30th of June 2025, with CHF 162.3 billion in AUM, minus 2% since the beginning of the year. Pro forma, including the 2 acquisitions that we have signed, but we have not yet closed, we would have been at around CHF 173 billion of AUM at the end of June 2025.

I think what is a bit more interesting is what you see on the right-hand side of the page, the CHF 5.4 billion came with a different mix between new and existing CROs. If you remember our disclosures at the end of the year, in 2024, approximately 90% of the NNA came from new CROs. So the contribution of existing CROs was fairly modest. In this semester, we're actually seeing a bit of a reversal of the trend. So 1/3 is now from the existing CROs and 2/3 is coming from new CROs. So it's a lot more balanced and closer to the mix that we would expect going forward on a medium-term basis.

Page 12, in terms of which were the regions that actually drove this growth. You'll see that all of the regions are in positive territory, all the regions are either above 4% or very close to 4%. Clearly, we have Asia Pacific leading the pack at CHF 1.8 billion of NNA and roughly 9% growth for the semester.

Latin America managed to have the highest growth rate at 14% and contributed CHF 1.4 billion. But you will see that the very positive element of this diversified business is that we have 5 regions plus EFGAM funds in this semester contributing positively, which drives the overall growth of 6.5% on average for all the regions.

On the next page, we go into the movements in CROs. The net number of CROs has gone marginally down. As I mentioned earlier, we have hired 18 CROs. We have signed another 17 for a total of 35. Clearly, we are continuously doing performance management in our CRO base, which explains the very small net drop in CROs.

And I think on the right-hand side of the page, you will see also that the average AUM per CRO have gone down. Now they're at CHF 328 million per CRO. The reason for that is the negative impact that we've had from currency exchange. So it's the weakening of the dollar that has driven the average AUM to go down on a per CRO basis.

In terms of hiring, at these levels, we're coming back to a more normalized hiring level. If you remember, in 2023-2024, we had accelerated because of market dislocations. Since then, the numbers are more around the 50 to 70 gross hires per year that we have guided as being a reasonable hiring range for us going forward.

Now moving a bit more to the P&L on Page 14. You'll see that clearly, our revenues have gone up substantially. These are 15% up year-on-year including the one-off recovery, which is recorded in net other income. Otherwise, it's a 7% increase in revenues.

Why is this page important? Because our strategy, and this has been communicated already about 12 months ago, our strategy in the medium term is grow the business, build scale and at the same time, defend margins. So on this page, what you'll see is if you look at the average AUM, which is the second bubble, you'll see that we started with CHF 153 billion in the first half, growing to CHF 160 billion, growing to CHF 165 billion roughly on average for the last semester. So we have been growing our business throughout the period.

At the same time, if you look at the bubble above, you will see that we are fairly stable throughout the period. So our defense on the revenue margins has been quite successful over the last 6 months.

Now in terms of actual absolute numbers, you'll see that the majority of the growth came from commission income. This is something that we like very much. Approximately CHF 40 million-plus compared to the first half of 2024. This is on the back of the growth in AUM. It's also on the back of adding an extra basis point on the margin, and you'll see also on the following page or the following pages that, that is also high quality revenue because it is included in the recurring margin rather than the more volatile trading parts of commission income.

In terms of the other elements, net interest income, including the swap -- the treasury swap revenues were pretty much flat year-on-year. And we had very good activity in currency trading. In the first half of the year, it was very similar also to the one that we had in the first half of 2024, but this has clearly supported the net other income.

Life insurance gave us 2 basis points of revenue in 2025. It was 4 basis points in 2024. And clearly, we have the CHF 55 million of the one-off insurance recovery, which has also added to the performance in net other income.

Now on Page 15, we show on the left the revenue margin evolution. I will not spend too much time on that. I think most of the trends I have already described on the previous page, spend some time on the right-hand side of the page, because clearly, the world is evolving, and we're seeing many changes happening in the last 6 months.

We have now clearly have some more volatility on the currencies. For that reason, we are now including some indications of what the weakening of the dollar could be as an impact of our cost-to-income ratio. As you know, we have about half of our AUM in dollars, and we don't -- we have a much lower percentage of our costs in dollars, so we are long dollar, if you want -- if you wish, in our P&L. So a 10% variation in the dollar-Swiss rate costs 2.2% in the cost-to-income ratio. Clearly, the exposure on the euro-Swiss is a lot smaller at 0.4%.

The impact from interest rates, which we have been reporting for the last few years has actually gone down. Now it's about CHF 45 million of profit. If all reference rates go down by 100 basis points, so I think where does that leave us is what you see at the bottom line of the page for us in terms of our actions going forward and what we are expecting is we're expecting clearly a positive for our organic growth. That is part of our ongoing strategy to build more scale for EFG.

The structural weakness of the dollar is a negative. Clearly, the reductions in interest rates are going to be a negative, but we are also seeing in this semester some releveraging. We have a stronger contribution from both new and existing CROs in giving out new loans, and this will also support revenue margin going forward.

Page 16 is about commissions. As I mentioned earlier, our recurring margin gained a basis point. So now it's 34 basis points. The nonrecurring, the more trading side of it, is still at 10 basis points for a total of 44. The improvement in the recurring is on the back of higher penetration of mandates in our AUM. We've reached 64% in the first half of 2025.

To remind you that in 2022, we have set ourselves a target of 65% to 70%. So I'm very close to achieving that target. And what are the drivers for this success is what you see on the right is significant increase in advisory AUM as a mix. The discretionary is holding very stable but also the balances of discretionary in absolute terms are going up. And we are headed for our fourth consecutive year of increasing revenues from structured products. And we are also expanding our offering and the AUM that we hold on private equity products.

Page 17, which is all about costs. I think that historically, we have been very good at managing costs, also not just the absolute amount, but also in relation to our revenue growth so that we create operating leverage.

Our cost-to-income ratio improved to 71.2% this semester. This is 1.4% better than the first half of 2024 or 1.7% better than the -- than what we posted for the full year 2024.

Now in terms of absolute numbers, costs are up 4%. This is driven by personnel expenses. The reason that the personnel expenses are up is that if you look at the time series that is shown in the chart, in the last 3 semesters, you will see that we have been constantly going up. This is the impact of the investments that we made in '23 and '24 now flowing fully in the P&L. Clearly, this is now fully printed in the first half of 2025.

There is an increase in variable compensation over the first half of 2024. On the other hand, the other operating expenses, what the G&A has gone down by 4% compared to the first half of 2024. And this is part of the conscious efforts to manage costs. This is despite higher legal and litigation costs and all this performance is also in spite of the strengthening of the Swiss compared to the other currencies, which has clearly a drag in the P&L or the cost-to-income ratio and the P&L in the period.

In terms of cost management, I'll turn you to Page 18. I'm not sure if the title is -- should be active cost management or actively managing efficiency because it's clearly -- it's not a reduction in cost is how do you manage your cost base while you're growing at very high rates. And the idea here has always been we need to make sure that we make room in our cost base to be able to fund our future growth.

And the simplicity program that we are describing on this page does exactly that. You will see that in October 2022, we announced a target of CHF 40 million. We expanded that target to CHF 60 million back in July 2023. At this point, we are on a run rate of current execution of CHF 63 million, so we are above what we have stated and we expect to close the year at CHF 66 million. So clearly, a lot of actions included over the period of the last 2, 3 years.

In terms of areas for these actions, you will see that on the right, there is -- a lot has to do with regionalizing some of the functions and the task that we are doing or even centralizing them in some locations. This cuts across risk, finance, compliance, operations, IT, so it goes across all functions.

We have been renegotiating contracts through more effective procurement. We have been optimizing our real estate footprint, and we also have included demand management in our IT efforts to make sure that we prioritize what makes more sense and has a bigger impact in terms of technology and delivery for everybody else in the bank.

I think I'll turn to the next page, which is Page 19. It's the usual page about our strong balance sheet. You'll note that there are not many differences compared to the balance sheet in terms of the composition that we have reported before. We have about CHF 17 billion of excess liquidity. So in terms of liquidity, we are in a very good position in terms of allowing the capital that we have and the liquidity that we have to grow the business.

Capital ratio of 17.1%. Core Tier 1, total capital ratio of 20.6. Again, to mention that these already include the full impact of the adoption of Basel III final. Leverage ratio of 5.3%, and liquidity coverage ratio at 255%.

In terms of our buyback programs, in the last 6 months, we acquired 4.8 million treasury shares. And the Board yesterday decided to launch another treasury buyback program for the next 12 months. It is going to be for 9 million shares and the purpose of the program is to purchase shares to fund variable equity compensation schemes that we have for employees. It's been the same purpose that we've been buying treasury shares over the last 4, 5 years. So no change on that.

In terms of the derisking. We mentioned the recovery from the legacy -- from insurance on the legacy case, which is very important in terms of turning the page on some of the legacy issues. The other topic where we've been active in the first 6 months has been our life insurance portfolio.

So in February 2025, we disposed of our entire synthetic portfolio. That was a combination of life insurance policies and hedges on them. So that is now gone. There is no residual exposure. And in May-June of 2025, we also managed to sell approximately 22% of our outright exposure. This is us holding life insurance policies. So now the exposure is down to CHF 250 million on our balance sheet.

Page 20 gives you the walk in terms of capital generation. Once more, like it shows you that we are a very capital-light model. We managed to create 2.9% of capital on a gross basis. We have -- clearly, the growth has pushed us to increase risk-weighted assets. So that is one use of the excess capital.

We have dividend and we've done the buyback. That gets us to a core Tier 1 of 17.4% as at June 30. And then we also have a bit of a technical movement, which has to do with our Tier 1, which is a dollar-based instrument. And according to the accounting rules, the revaluation of that instrument goes into core capital rather than Tier 1 capital. So that eats up another 30 basis points of core equity. But as you will see, the total amount, the total capital at 20.6 remains constant.

This is a timing difference in the sense that when this instrument matures, that 30 basis points will come back and will also help core Tier 1 capital at the time.

Now as Giorgio said, when you're creating all this capital, you need to make sure you do value-accretive acquisitions. There were 2 that were announced during the period.

I'll go to Page 22, just to remind you of the parameters that we have or the requirements that we have whenever we were assessing all these transactions. Clearly, we want to grow the business in an area where we are present, where we want to add capabilities, but we also need to realize some synergies. So it's a matter of acquiring in the right locations.

Number two, which is the cultural fit, is probably should be #1 in terms of the sequence that we described it. If there is no cultural fit, we do not do acquisitions because we know that you need cultural fit to make it successful.

And clearly, number three is something that we, from the finance perspective, we will definitely look a bit closer to make sure that we actually create value and one measure of value is to make 10% on your investment by the third year.

Now I'll briefly go through the 2 transactions that we have already announced and we are in the pipeline of closing. First one is Cite Gestion in Geneva in Switzerland, it's about CHF 7.5 billion. And the beauty of Cite Gestion is that it's a scalable platform, which has a very clear organic growth plan.

You will see on the page its growth plan between 2016 and 2024. It started with CHF 2.3 billion, has grown to CHF 7.5 billion of AUM, and it's still aggressively growing already in 2025. We expect to add value by providing a much bigger and a much more robust balance sheet by having expanded product capabilities and will clearly also provide support on the back office infrastructure. We expect to close this transaction in the second half of the year. We are waiting for regulatory approval and the capital impact of this transaction is 110 basis points.

The second one is ISG in Auckland, New Zealand. This is a much smaller transaction, but it's also on a company that has demonstrated its ability to grow over the last few years. This transaction will be done by our subsidiary, Shaw and Partners in Australia. The idea is that the 2 companies locally will work on a partnership. Shaw and Partners is a bigger enterprise, it can offer enhanced pricing, combined marketing, combined business development and we expect to get more revenues generated through this partnership.

The transaction -- this transaction has been approved by the regulator very recently, and we accept to close in the next few weeks, and the impact is going to be 20 basis points.

Now to close, it's a great privilege going into the last year of a business cycle with a record first half. So I think that in terms of confidence on delivery for 2025, I think it's an easy statement to make in terms of being able to deliver after record financial results in the first half.

Now the priorities for '25 actually have not changed. So it's all about business development, it's about defending the revenue margin and it's also about being cost efficient, while we're doing all this. It's the thing that we have been working on over the last few years, and we will continue working on.

And we're looking forwards to welcoming both Cite Gestion and ISG into the family. With them, we will grow to CHF 173 billion. And through that, we expect to also fund our future growth and profitability.

And on that note, thank you very much. And I'll pass the word to Giorgio for his closing remarks.

Thank you, Dimitris. And now let us look ahead. Let's focus now on our outlook and on our strategic priorities for the next quarters and beyond. Now I must say that we expect that the complex market conditions will continue to persist.

And this is a bit a combination of short-term market volatility, which is not always a negative. Actually, in the last 6 months, it was positive for our business and supported our top line. But this short-term market volatility is combined with some more long-term factors that we need to take into account.

Dimitris already mentioned some of them. Obviously, one is the structural weakness of the U.S. dollar and the second is clearly the fact that we are in a phase of interest rate cycle where in Europe and in Switzerland, interest rates have come down already, and we expect them to come down also in the U.S.

So turning to Page 28, we are clearly mindful of the challenges ahead, but our focus is on our strategic priorities and our focus is actually on what we are able to control.

Now the first priority remains growth. I explained already earlier why we believe that strong organic growth is extremely important. It shows also that what we are offering as value and is attractive to our clients and the DNA of EFG is always to attract new clients and to increase the share of wallet of existing clients. So we will continue to focus on net new assets and on organic growth.

Now our clients love the excellent service that our client relationship officers offer. I've been saying here in this room many times that I believe that our CROs are second to none in offering the best possible service that you can find in our industry, but also we want to continue to focus on high-value products and services that obviously are relevant to our clients to manage their financial affairs, but also are helping our net commission income.

Dimitris has shown that our trend in net commission income over the last years has been very positive, and we are focused both on increasing the recurring net commission income, but also to allow clients to trade and to increase, let's say, the net operating income on FX and net commission income.

Overall, this remains extremely important for us. Dimitris said, we need to be a bit more depending on protecting, in particular, the net interest income given the cycle of interest rates. On the other hand, we have seen that releveraging in a low interest rate environment can be a very good way for us to offset some of the pressure on the NII. So it's going to be more defense, but I think we have several levels to offset the trend.

And clearly, last, but not least, we will continue to apply strict cost discipline and to further improve our efficiency. I have received several questions already about the U.S. dollar and what we are doing, et cetera, et cetera. I'm sure we're going to receive a few more, but I -- my answer is always that, first of all, in life, there is no silver bullet and you have to face head-on the challenges. But second, we are basically -- we always say that international private banking wealth management is an export industry, and we are exactly like any other export company in Switzerland, when you are basically obliged to become more efficient, to become more productive, to absorb the fact that sometimes the FX is against you.

Obviously, from a financial standpoint, if we can do like the team, and I'm very grateful to the team, you can do an edge and get it right, obviously, this in the short term helps. But in the long term, the only solution is to become more efficient.

Now this is a bit, I would say, the situation, I would say, for the next couple of quarters going forward. But if I step back, I must say that EFG, we are on track to exceed our 2025 ambition. You have seen this page already several times. This is what we committed to the market to the investors in October 2022. In a nutshell, we said that we are committed to grow the net profit at 15% CAGR, compounded annual growth rate, which, as everybody knows, if you do that, the magic of compounding over 5 years should double the business. The good news is that at the moment, we are running at 21%. And in terms of return on tangible equity, we are in excess of our targets.

And clearly, this is extremely important for us. And as it has been said, it's a great privilege to be in the last year of the cycle in such a strong position. Now obviously, from our management team, it's also pleasing to see that all our efforts are translated into numbers. And clearly, you see that in a semester, we are now generating a net profit that in just a few years back, we were generating in a year. So this is an aside comment is quite good. But overall, we are on track to exceed the 2025 ambition.

And to close, on Page 30, we are obviously very well placed for continued sustainable and profitable growth. And if there are 3 messages for you to take home, I would say, that clearly, today, we are reporting a record profit and a very strong growth momentum that we will make sure that it will continue in the next quarters. We are on track to exceed our 2025 ambition, and we are already preparing in order and we are committed to deliver this strong performance also in the next cycle in the next 3 years. And in this context, we are very excited, and we look forward to updating the -- our stakeholders about future strategic direction, priorities and targets on November 25.

With this, I close the presentation and hand over to Jens to open the Q&A session. Thank you very much for your attention.

Thank you, Giorgio; thank you, Dimitris, for your presentation. So as just highlighted, we will start now with questions. And as usual, we start with questions in the room first and then we move to the telephone line. I think Andreas has a question, so we'll take him, on the right-hand side.

If we look through the operating income development a bit more in detail, I think the single largest driver of the year-on-year strong performance was actually from fee and commission expense, not a number that we usually talk about in this room, but it went up quite a lot or it improved, actually, quite a lot, almost CHF 50 million. So I guess it's a single largest driver of the revenue improvement. Maybe you can explain what happened there?

Then you talked about the sales of the life insurance. So happy to see that this exposure has gone down, obviously. You didn't mention any impact on the P&L. So can I assume it's not relevant in terms of gains or whatever?

In terms of third one, in terms of releveraging, we've seen a little bit in the first half, would you expect this to improve in the second? And of course, it's a function of what interest rates and the curve is doing. But do you see that clients are getting more active in this respect? Yes, I'll leave it here, and maybe I'll come back later.

Let me take the first 2 questions. And Andreas, you're very right that in our financial accounts, just looking at the right note, which is Note 9, we've had, over the course of the last 3 semesters, a drop in commission expense, but you will also see that equally our brokerage fees have gone down.

And this trend is very much a parallel trend. The reason for that is very technical accounting is that the way you account for structured products, you need to gross up your commission income and your commission expense. On a net basis, that is 0.

And because we've been moving our -- the way we actually do our structural products, this has decreased both the commission income and the commission expense. The real driver, like if you exclude this technical which I think is, as you say, it shows on page, but it's not creating the real value. If you look at the number that has actually increased over the last 3 semesters is the first line, which is advisory and management fees, which is the recurring part, which has ended up with the one -- the plus 1 basis point of recurring revenue over last year.

Now to your questions about the contribution of the sales on life insurance, total impact, everything in, is CHF 12 million. And this is pretty much the contribution of life insurance for the entirety of the first half. So all the rest, call it, the normal life insurance had a 0 P&L in the first half, which is lower than what we've seen in previous periods, so.

Maybe on the question of releveraging, I would say, first of all, that for us, lending has been always a strategic asset class for our clients, and we have given it basically to our key strategic clients at the right price, at the right return, obviously, taking into account the cost of capital and the cost of liquidity.

And we have seen, since 2022, so the last 3 years, basically, we have seen actually a phase of deleveraging. Now we see some, I would say, some green shoots. We see that this first semester was positive. We see that clients now that interest rates are lower, but also the yield curve, what is very important is the shape of the yield curve. The yield curve are getting more positively shaped. This will encourage certain clients to leverage their financial assets in the real estate assets.

Do we expect this to continue? I think so. I think that especially if U.S. dollars interest rates will come down, the demand for lending will increase. Obviously, for us, it is extremely important to do it for the right clients.

We don't want to do only lending. We want to -- lending has to be one component of a holistic relationship with the client at the right price and obviously, for us, our risk and credit appetite criteria are quite stringent. And so within these parameters, we believe that it will increase.

Now to give you just a reference, in the past, we used to have a penetration of lending between 14%, 15%. Now we went to -- I believe, it would after the -- yes, 11%, which is the lowest level since the acquisition of BSI almost 10 years ago. So this is the order of magnitude what we are talking about, a few percentage points in terms of penetration. But we can expect that maybe if you look at NNA, maybe lending for a few semester will grow faster than the average NNA.

Great. Is there another question in the room at this stage? No, then we take the first question from the telephone, please.

[Operator Instructions] The first question comes from [ Hannah Leivdal ] from Citi.

This is [ Hannah Leivdal ] from Citi on behalf of Nicholas Herman. I just have 2 questions, if I may. So the first one is on targets. You're clearly confident of exceeding your financial targets. And I just wanted to confirm that this is both net profit and the cost-income ratio. And can you achieve your cost-income target without the insurance recovery?

And secondly, on M&A, we have seen you announce 2 bolt-on deals this year. Should we be expecting you to announce any more of this?

Look, regarding the targets, obviously, as I said, and as I mentioned in the slides, we are very confident that we will exceed the CAGR growth target of net profitability of the company, which is ultimately what we are trying to achieve. We are trying to achieve a company that has a strong growth momentum and that we're able to translate this growth momentum in a sustainable and profitable way and ultimately to grow the franchise in terms of profitability.

Now regarding the sub-targets that we have announced and that we are trying to -- obviously, to meet, it is -- there, the situation is a bit more differentiated. For sure, as you have seen in this cycle, we have been running at margins way over the target of 85 basis points, which is clearly something throughout the cycle.

We have been running faster on the top end of the range in terms of NNA. We have delivered a much stronger return on tangible equity. The cost-to-income ratio indeed is the area where we -- I believe we are closed because we are at 71%. We have managed in the past, and we have managed actually in this semester to improve 2 percentage points in a semester, but you need to take into account that when we did the plan in 2022, we did not expect a dislocation in the market the following year. We know in Switzerland, why this has happened.

And this allowed us to make investments that were much larger than anticipated. But again, the overall franchise in terms of size and in terms of profitability is much larger. I can tell you that we are going to do anything which is in our power to make sure that we achieve the 69% in terms of cost-to-income ratio. But out of all the targets, this is clearly the most challenging at this stage. I don't know, Dimitris, do you want to add anything?

No. I think that on the target is exactly that. I think that broadly speaking about the second question, which is the -- what we are reviewing in terms of M&A? We are in a very good position in terms of capital. So we have the resources to do it. We are also growing capital every single semester with our own organic capital generation.

So in terms of redeploying it for us, it's the best option that we have in order to create value. And look, in the last 18 months, we've added organically CHF 15 billion of AUM and through acquisition CHF 10 billion. We are clearly out there looking for the suitable targets to do M&A.

And we are hopeful that the consolidation in the market will continue, especially with some of the smaller players wanting to find bigger homes for them to be involved and to make their business plans a lot more sustainable over time.

The next question comes from the line of Daniel Regli, Zürcher Kantonalbank.

I have 3 questions, if I may. One is on net new assets, one is on gross margins and one on the acquisitions. First, on net new assets. Obviously, what also pops out is that Latin America had quite a strong net new asset growth. Can you maybe talk a bit about from which countries this was mainly coming from? And whether you see a kind of a benefit from one of your competitors selling its business in Brazil?

And then, sorry, maybe secondly, can you also talk a bit about the competitive situation in Switzerland, kind of with UBS integrating prior Credit Suisse Switzerland now and whether there is some kind of opportunity for you in Switzerland?

Then on gross margins, one question I have is about this 10 basis points you show as nonrecurring commissions. And obviously, you say that it's nonrecurring, but it's -- it looks quite sustainable. Actually, you were always around 9, 10 basis points over the past couple of years. So can you talk a bit about how do you expect these 10 basis points to develop going forward? And in particular, have you seen any kind of pickup in this number in H1 due to the increased volatility we have seen in H1?

And then maybe a second follow-up question also on the net interest margin. Obviously, you show and this is quite helpful this CHF 45 million on the top right of Page 15, the impact from interest rates. But based on the current forward rates, how do you expect the net interest margin to develop into H2 '25? Can you give us some kind of guidance there?

And then just one last quick question on your acquisition of Cite Gestion. This return -- by the way, also very helpful details you provide here on the Slide 23, but it is 111 return on assets. Is this really kind of revenues per balance sheet assets or is this comparable to your gross margin, i.e., return on assets under management?

And then can you maybe talk also a little bit about what will happen to this number when you integrate the business into your business?

Thank you for the questions. Maybe I'll take the first one on net new assets. And indeed, I think Latin America for us has been a very good business over the last few years, and we have been able to grow at the -- not only much better than our range of 4% to 6%, in the last few years, we were at double-digit growth rates.

Clearly, Brazil for us is the biggest market in the region, but overall, the growth is quite diversified. And I would say that we have a good setup to cover Latin American clients because, obviously, we recover them out of Switzerland. But also we have a strong presence in Miami and in the Caribbean with Bahamas and the branch in Cayman. So we give choices to the clients, and I think that our teams are extremely strong in covering the various markets.

Regarding Switzerland and the competitive landscape and situation, while, I've been always saying that the ecosystem of private banking and wealth management in Switzerland is extremely solid, very competitive and actually is the best ecosystem that you have globally in our industry. And I must say the competition is quite fierce.

Now over the last few years, our competitive positioning has been -- our market competitive positioning has been improving in relative terms. So for us, it's good. We have better visibility. Five years ago, it was, I would say, more challenging to engage in discussions with the top bankers of the country; now, it's much easier.

And again, I don't think that -- I mean, the situation of Credit Suisse and UBS, I would say, obviously, the integration is ongoing. But in terms of competitive landscape, I don't think that it's influencing very much any longer.

The market, I think, again, what is good for the country and for the financial center is that the competition among all the players is quite strong. And you always look at your competitors, we respect them all, but they always force you to become better and to run faster. So I think I pause here on the NNA. I don't think there were other questions. Gross margin, Dimitris?

So let me take the commission margin, what you mentioned, Daniel, about recurring and nonrecurring. Clearly, the 10 basis points that we have are not one-off in terms of when we say nonrecurring is that they are based on transactions, and they are not based on pre-agreed mandate fees, which are the ones that we would call the recurring part of the business.

Now if you look historically back, these 10 basis points over the last 10 years, I would say, have ranged between 8 basis points to 12 basis points. So it is not that -- we don't expect to have them next year or next semester. We clearly expect to have them because it's part of our business and the range has historically been this between 8 to 12 basis points, and now we are pretty much at the middle of that range.

Now in terms of your other question about net interest income and the forward rates. The information that we show on Page 15, on the top right, is exactly that, which is the sensitivity to interest rates. If you -- the way you should be reading the chart is, and I'll take one concrete example, let's take the dollar, which is the bigger number there.

If reference rates in the dollar dropped by 100 basis points, we expect our revenues to be down something between CHF 15 million to CHF 20 million if you read the chart. Now I think if you look at forward rates, people expect probably 2 cuts nowadays for the remainder of the year maybe. So on that assumption, you can easily calculate that we would lose about CHF 7 million to CHF 10 million, let's say, over the next 12 months following the cut.

Now I think that the -- in terms of -- we can discuss people's expectation on the rate cuts, but for us, this is an easy reference to be able to apply what is the impact as you realize at these levels, given that we are running at our annual revenues are in excess, like we are running above CHF 1.5 billion, these are now become less significant numbers as we move along the tail of the reduction of the rates.

Finally, on the revenue margin on Cite Gestion. Yes, the 111 basis points is calculated the same we calculate our revenue margin. So it's our -- their total revenues divided by their average AUM in the period. The reasons that they are so high is they are 92% in mandates and clearly, this is helping a lot the revenue margin.

To your question, what will happen after they get integrated? What I expect is that they will maintain and grow this very profitable business. But on top of that, they will add another couple of other products or business lines. To give you an example, they have a fairly limited balance sheet because of the smaller equity. They can use our much bigger balance sheet to give more loans.

Now will these loans be over 110 basis points? Maybe not. But the idea is there that you expand the business by adding more revenues even if that might dilute a bit the revenue margin. So in that terms of the play, it's -- as I said, it's about expanding the business, expanding the capabilities and making sure that we capitalize on this growth momentum and the capabilities of Cite Gestion.

Okay. Very helpful. Can I just add one quick follow-up on the nonrecurring commission income? So maybe just can you break this 10 basis points down for me a bit? What is driving this? Is this structured products mainly? And if yes, is it like half of it or 75% of the 10 basis points coming from structured products?

Most of it, Daniel, comes from brokerage activities on debt and equity instruments. This is the majority of what we call brokerage fees or nonrecurring fees.

[Operator Instructions]

Great. Are there any further questions in the room at this stage? No. Operator, do we receive any further -- here, sorry, we have now another question in the room. Thank you.

I wondered about the number of the customer relationship officers, CROs, which decreased from last year to the first half year. Is that because some CROs didn't perform enough? Or did they change to -- did they get retired or did they go to other banks?

And one other question about the dollar exposure. You suffered a lot from the dollar weakness in the assets under management, in the AUM. How will you tackle this problem? How will you reduce the U.S. dollar exposure in the short term? Could you explain that once more?

Thank you. Regarding the CROs, I would say that, yes, it is a bit all of the above. As you mentioned, clearly, as you know, we are -- we have been very active in recruiting teams and recruiting CROs. We are very pleased with the performance of the new colleagues. Some really had exceptional performance over the last few years. But there are also situations where, as in any relationship, it doesn't work. We don't get the expected results on both sides.

And our agreements are very clear, if it doesn't work, then with part ways. This is a small minority, but there are some. And also, there are several people retiring. And on the other hand, because this is usually the follow-up question, we don't lose CROs to competition. In the worst case, CROs decide to become even more independent and they set up an external asset manager or they join an external asset manager, and they continue to collaborate and cooperate with the bank. So this is, I would say, in the -- absolutely in the norm.

Regarding the U.S. dollar, I -- as I mentioned earlier in my presentation, there is no silver bullet where you can change the exposure overnight. We were checking, in the last few days, how was the exposure 10 years ago? And 10 years ago, the percentage of AUM in dollars was in excess of 50%, it was 53%, 54%.

If you look today, we are at 46%. So there has been a gradual trend of decreasing that also because of our acquisitions. But on the other hand, it's very, very difficult to change the mindset of clients. If somebody -- like most of the clients in Asia Pacific, in the Middle East, in Latin America, if they think dollar, they're not going to change overnight their view of the base currency.

As I said earlier, the only thing that we can do is like any export company can do is to become much more productive and efficient is reduce our cost, is improve our -- the services and products we offer to increase our net commission income, to continue growing and offset this negative impact. This is in a nutshell about the situation.

Great. Thank you. I think we have one further in the room and one further on the telephone line as well. So now we're getting...

Maybe to follow up on the U.S. dollar question. Can you maybe give a split of the costs by currencies? Because I didn't find that in the -- just makes it may be easier to calculate the impact.

Then the other thing, maybe in terms of growth. You mentioned structured products that keep on growing year after year. Maybe you can give a bit more color there, also in terms of how large this business is? And the same on the private markets. You said record fundraising. What is that? Maybe if you can give a number on that, that would be helpful.

So let's start the first question, which is the breakdown of the expenses. In terms of -- for the first half of the year, 50% of our expenses are in Swiss and I would say that 25% are in dollar or dollar-linked currencies like Hong Kong dollar, Australian dollar, things that move fairly -- in a fairly correlated way. So that is the breakdown of the costs for the first half of 2025.

The next question, structural products...

Structured products, this is an asset class that I believe is quite interesting, especially when the markets are volatile as they are and when there is some level of positive interest rate. As you know very well, clearly, when interest rates were negative or flat in the markets and there was little volatility, it was very difficult to be focused on that.

The business has been growing. It's been growing in the last 4 years. The clients do a variety of strategies, from the reverse convertible to the equity-linked notes and capital guaranteed. So there is a variety of strategies.

And again, there are several bankers and several clients who like that. Not everybody likes that. So just as order of magnitude, I would say it's about 30 -- let's say, 1/3 of our bankers that are involved in these products. Other geographies, for example, don't like them very much. I think this will continue. As long as interest rates, at least in the key currencies, will remain positive and the markets or the -- maybe the volatility, if you look at the VIX has gone down, but the views of the market, as you know very well, are very, very different, and this will continue.

On private markets, I think, to be very fair, we are playing a catch-up game compared to many of our competitors. Our penetration remains fairly low, is in really the low digit percentage, but we see some traction. And maybe from a cyclical standpoint is not bad because clearly, overall, there has been a slowdown, but maybe these are the vintages when it's right, is the right moment to come in and not when everything is at record levels.

We believe that this is an asset class that will increase. But again, we are very low. And by the way, structured products, too, I think our penetration is 3%, so is structured product is 3%, so it went down. And overall, so -- and private markets is also low. If you read the theory, it should be 15% to 20% on a portfolio, I think we will be happy when we go to 5%. So it's a long way. But at the margin and to sustain the net commission income, this is quite relevant, right?

Okay. Can we have the question on the phone, if there's still one left, please?

We have a follow-up question from Daniel Regli from Zürcher Kantonalbank.

The costs shown on Page 18. And can you just talk a bit about how much of this CHF 66 million will be already visible in 2025? I expect the CHF 66 million is kind of an exit cost save number you would have achieved by year-end '25 to be fully visible then not before '26, is this correct? And can you talk a bit about what is the step-down, which will be left after '25 versus '26?

Daniel, again, you are correct. So our level of execution at year-end 2024 was CHF 49 million. So that is the December '24 figure, and we expect to close December '25 with CHF 66 million. So we're going to be achieving another CHF 17 million during the course of the year. This will not print fully in 2025, it will only print fully in 2026. So again, the timing might vary throughout the year, but you get an indication of what the -- what will be appearing in 2025 and what will be appearing in '24 and 2025.

Okay. But is it fair to assume that about the CHF 17 million you kind of execute during '25 will probably be about half of it visible in 2025 already and then the step-down will be the other half in '26?

Possibly. And then you'll get full recognition in 2026.

Yes.

Great. I think we have no further question, then I hand over for final remarks to Giorgio.

First of all, thank you to all for your attention and your questions. And basically, to sum up, I would like to say that clearly, we have entered this final year of our current cycle with a strong growth momentum and record profitability. We are confident that we will exceed our 2025 ambitions. And we are committed to continue the strong performance also in the next strategic cycle, the 2026-2028 cycle, and we look forward to updating the market and our stakeholders on our future strategic direction, priorities and financial targets on the 25th of November of this year. Thank you very much.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.

Actually, I'm pleased to report that we delivered a strong performance with another record profit and strong growth. We delivered strong net new assets above our target range. And I'd like to emphasize that when looking back at the last 18 months, we have delivered consistently strong organic growth, and we have also signed 2 acquisitions, Cité Gestion in Geneva and ISG in Auckland, New Zealand. Our record net income was additionally supported by a contribution from an insurance recovery, showing that derisking remains a key priority for us. So all in all, I'm very pleased to report that our result for the first half of 2025 was very successful. Our well-diversified and resilient business model continued to deliver against our strategic plan.

The ongoing uncertainty around geopolitics and tariffs led to elevated market volatility. Interest rates came down in Switzerland and in Europe, but we were on hold in the U.S. However, this volatility resulted in increased client activity, which actually supported our top line. Up to now, the global economy proved to be overall resilient against these headwinds, and we navigated market conditions quite well for the first half. However, looking ahead to the second half of this year, we need to be somewhat more cautious and cannot exclude a slowdown of the global economy. Additionally, further interest rate cuts are expected, especially in the U.S.

Also, the significant and structural devaluation of the U.S. dollar against the Swiss franc has impacted our assets under management in the first half of this year as almost half of our asset base is in U.S. dollars. In times like these, diversification is key, not only in terms of asset classes, but also in terms of geographies and currencies. We believe that our global boutique approach, impartial advice, and comprehensive solutions are well suited to support our clients in navigating such complex conditions.

Our first priority, as always, are our clients. We want to deliver the best possible service and solutions to our clients in any environment. At the same time, we will continue to execute our strategy and focus on generating sustainable and profitable growth, which remains our key target.

Given the structural weakness of the U.S. dollar and decreasing interest rates, we are implementing further initiatives to ensure we can mitigate any impact from the structural shifts and protect our revenues over time. Our well-diversified business model provides us with the necessary levers to do so in an effective manner.

We will also continue to apply strict cost control to further enhance our efficiency. While we are very aware of the challenges ahead and are somewhat more cautious about the midterm market outlook, we remain confident about our ability to exceed our ambitions and financial targets for year-end 2025.

Let me now thank the entire team around the globe for their commitment to EFG and to our stakeholders. I also want to thank our clients and investors for their continued partnership and trust. As we come to a close of the current 3-year strategic cycle, we look forward to updating the market about EFG's future strategy for the 2026-2028 period at our Investor Day on the 25th of November.