Van Lanschot Aktie

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Van Lanschot Kempen Analyst Call 2026 Half Year Results. [Operator Instructions] Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Maarten -- apologies, Maarten Edixhoven, Chairman of the Management Board. Please go ahead.

Well, thank you, Sharon. And I can tell you, even in Dutch, it's a difficult name to pronounce. So thank you very much, and good morning all. Thank you for joining us for this update on our first half results today. I'm here together with Jeroen Kroes, our CFO, and I will share some of the key financial and strategic highlights with you before Jeroen talks you through the numbers in more detail. And of course, there will be ample opportunity for your questions afterwards. Let me start with saying that we have had strong results as we continue to deliver on our Growing Further Together strategy. This led to strong net inflows in assets under management of EUR 19.5 billion in the first half. And I'm proud to say we crossed the EUR 200 billion mark in client assets for the first time as Van Lanschot Kempen. On the back of that, our net result rose by 30% to EUR 88 million, and our focus on scalability resulted in a cost-income ratio of 66.4%, outperforming our target range of 67% to 70%.

And importantly, our CET1 ratio remained strong at 17%. If we go to the next slide. As you know, our strategy is focused on continuous and scalable client and revenue growth. We do this in a way that matters to our clients and is grounded in our expertise and highly personal approach, complemented by bolt-on acquisitions in our target markets. We continue to invest in our offering, our people and technology. For 5 years now, we have grown our assets under management by an average of 12% per year, and we continue to see momentum despite the volatile economic and geopolitical environment. Over the first 6 months, we again delivered strong growth. I already mentioned the EUR 200 billion clients' assets milestone. We see both new and existing clients entrusting us with significantly more of their wealth. This is the case in both private banking and fiduciary management on the institutional side.

Importantly, growth increasingly translates into operating leverage. I just mentioned the inflows in fiduciary management, where our current scale supports profitable growth. We continue to invest in technology and AI-enabled client tools to drive this further. Our ambition is to be the best wealth manager in Western Europe for our clients. With a personal approach and deep expertise, we support them through market developments, wealth transitions, family business opportunities and pension reforms. Our dedicated staff makes a real difference here. This is reflected in very high employee engagement scores and the widespread staff ownership of our shares. We see the feedback we receive from clients and externally as an encouragement to maintain our distinctive course as an independent wealth manager. We are very pleased with the Net Promoter Score of 45 for Private Clients Netherlands, for instance, up from 43 last year.

Let's now look at some of the drivers of this growth. First, growth in private banking. In the Netherlands, we saw very strong net inflows, primarily from new clients. In Belgium, we recorded net inflows following a bit lower than the stellar net inflows of the past 3 years. Also in Switzerland, we saw positive net flows in our private banking franchise. Secondly, we continue to expand our private markets offering with total assets under management in private market solutions growing to EUR 6.5 billion. In July, we secured $120 million in commitments from private banking clients for our second North American private equity fund. More than EUR 180 million was also committed to our new fund, investing in existing private equity portfolios, also known as secondaries. Since 2018, we have introduced 6 private equity funds. The third growth driver I want to mention here is fiduciary management, where we have won multiple large mandates over the last 6 months.

This includes Dutch Pension Fund SPW, our largest single client ever. The mandate is a clear demonstration of our expertise and leading position in this area, both in the Netherlands and the U.K. And finally, we saw healthy growth in private banking loans, in line with the growth of our client assets. We increasingly support our clients, including the next generation with a combination of investing and financing, providing liquidity. The further development of our wealth management lending product is an example of how we meet this demand. To sum up, we continue to build momentum across our growth drivers. As is clear, AI and cybersecurity are both key topics impacting our industry. We see AI as a great opportunity to deepen the relationships with our clients, make the work of our bankers and investment professionals even more rewarding and improve our efficiency.

AI has already become an enabler of our personal service, investment capabilities and scalable growth. Today, we see AI helping us to prepare, process and protect. Our focus here is on empowering our bankers and reducing administrative workload. This frees up time for personal contact and value-adding services for our clients. The current efficiency gain is about 3 hours per week per private banker. This is and will be a continuous process where our business and technology teams work very closely together to move relevant use cases into production rapidly. In this slide, it is important that we see a very high adoption rate across our workforce. 97% of staff is using our AI tools and 1 in 2 colleagues is using AI intensively. We also invest in our cybersecurity in order to protect client data and assets to the highest standards.

So how does this work in a day-to-day business of our bankers? They are supported by our proprietary private banker AI assistant, which makes it easier to prepare effectively for meetings with all relevant insights readily available for them. After the meeting, it securely captures what was discussed and the follow-up actions. It does all of this while taking into account compliance requirements. This reduces the workload for our bankers and relationship managers and lowers the risk of manual errors. Another area where we see efficiency gains is in continuous client due diligence and transaction monitoring. It's easier to get signals in case of anomalies and AI supports consistent and structured reviews. This enables data-driven and risk-focused due diligence while maintaining essential human oversight. To continue to provide excellent service and to keep improving ourselves, we aim to retain and attract the best talent.

I'm proud to say that we are succeeding quite well in this regard. We continue to focus on balanced hiring and our employee engagement remains high, very high. Turning to our environmental targets. We continue to lower our carbon footprint. We reduced the weighted average carbon intensity by 13% on average for the discretionary assets under management that are in scope. Within our own operations, the annual average carbon intensity per FTE dropped by 11%. As we continue to work towards our ambitions here, we invest in awareness and engagement among clients and employees through dedicated training, network and initiatives.

I also very much look forward to the planned move this year to our new Amsterdam office, where we aim to achieve the highest standard in terms of sustainability, well-being and hospitality for our clients and also look forward to welcoming you there soon. Finally, from my side, we look back on a strong first half of the year, for which I want to compliment and thank all of my colleagues for their contribution and our clients for their trust. With these results, we are making strong progress against our 2027 targets in terms of growth, cost income, capital and capital returns. We have confidence in the second half of the year whilst we continue to execute on our Growing Further Together strategy. Jeroen, over to you.

Thanks, Maarten. As you said, we delivered a strong set of results in the first half of 2026. Let's take a closer look at what we have achieved. I will start with our assets under management. Our strategy is centered on sustainable, profitable growth while maintaining our capital-light business model with a target of 10% average annual growth in assets under management. In the first half of 2026, total AUM increased by more than 18% with organic growth accounting for 12 percentage points and positive market performance for the remainder. We saw strong inflows in both Private Banking and Investment Management. Two large new pension fund mandates drove particularly strong AUM growth in fiduciary management. And over the past 5 years, we have delivered average annual AUM growth of around 12%.

Now let's turn to our client segments. Private Clients Netherlands delivered strong net inflows of EUR 1.5 billion, which is in line with last year. The commercial momentum is good, both in the Netherlands and in the Swiss part of the business. We continue to attract new clients, which account for 2/3 of net inflow in the first half of the year. The first quarter also included some seasonal effects of clients converting savings into investments. The result before tax grew by more than 50%, driven by higher commission income and higher interest income. Costs remained well controlled and increased by 5%, mainly due to the expansion of our teams in order to serve a growing number of clients. As a result, the cost/income ratio improved to 59%.

The margin for Private Banking remained stable. Looking at Evi, we see that Evi's margin increased further. This is driven by growth in the Evi pension product and the continued simplification and harmonization of our product offering. In Belgium, we delivered strong financial results. Commission income increased by 18% and profit before tax by 11% to EUR 32 million. The net inflows amounted to EUR 0.2 billion. Compared with recent years, net inflows were lower in the first half of 2026 and reflected 3 developments.

First, we continued to attract many new clients with inflows from new clients at a similar level to the first half of last year. Second, following the launch of Mercier Van Lanschot 2.5 years ago, we saw a significant increase in share of wallet among existing clients. That effect was less present in the first half of 2026. And third, our investment approach in Belgium focuses on quality companies at a reasonable price. The market environment in the first half of the year has favored different investment styles, which led some existing clients to reallocate assets elsewhere, and that partially offset the strong inflow from new clients.

The average AUM margin in Belgium increased to 83 basis points, driven by continued growth in higher-margin discretionary mandates. Then turning to Investment Management clients. Investment Management clients delivered a strong first half year performance. The investments in this client segment in recent years continued to pay off, supporting growth across all activities. Profitability improved by 30% to EUR 15.7 million. Commission income increased by 7%, mainly driven by growth in private markets and fiduciary management. Looking at the inflows, our liquid investment strategies recorded net inflows of EUR 0.3 billion, primarily in our credits and dividend strategies. To accelerate growth in this part of the business, we are exploring potential strategic partnerships to increase our scale.

Private Market Solutions generated net inflows of EUR 0.2 billion as we saw continued interest for these products from our private and fiduciary clients. Total AUM in private markets increased to EUR 6.5 billion with an additional EUR 1.5 billion in client committed capital. We had strong inflows in fiduciary management, mainly driven by the new mandates, like Maarten mentioned, of Stichting Pensioenfonds voor de Woningcorporaties of EUR 15 billion and the mandate of Pensioenfonds Haskoning Nederland of EUR 1.3 billion. As fiduciary management now takes up a larger share of the total AUM in this segment, the average AUM margin declined to 13 basis points, while the margin of our investment strategies remained stable. Looking at both private banking and Investment Management together, we see that the securities commission income grew year-on-year in line with AUM. The combination of strong inflows and positive market performance led to growth in our recurring securities commissions, which increased to EUR 595 million on a full year basis.

And we see multiple engines to grow our commission income further, particularly by attracting new clients and expanding our private markets offering. Proceeding now to our investment banking activities. Commission income declined compared with the first half of 2025 and was broadly in line with the second half of 2025. This reflected lower activity levels in M&A and equity capital market transactions. And while it's difficult to predict market conditions in investment banking, we see some improvements in our activity level and pipeline. We maintained disciplined cost management and operating expenses remained in line with the previous year. With respect to the joint venture, we made good progress in preparing the combination of our specialist equities activities with KBC Securities, and we expect the transaction to close in the fourth quarter of this year.

Let's turn to our loan portfolio. We are starting to see the proof points of our increased attention towards providing loans to our private banking clients. Total lending continued to grow with mortgages increasing by 2% and other loans by 9%. And the quality of the loan book remains good with an impaired ratio of 1% and additions to the loan loss provisions, which amounted to EUR 3 million this half year. Our net interest income increased by 27% to EUR 97 million in the first half of the year. And as expected, net interest income has recovered strongly from the low level that we reached in the first half of 2025. This is driven by balance sheet growth and the gradual repricing of the asset side of the balance sheet. And based on the strong first half performance and the current market conditions, we now expect full year net interest income to be around EUR 200 million, and this is above our previously guided range of EUR 180 million to EUR 195 million.

Let's move on to costs. In the first half of 2026, we operated with a positive dual between income and cost. Income increased by 14%, while cost increased by 6%, and this resulted in a 36% increase in gross result. Our operating expenses include continued investments in growth. Staff costs increased, and we made additional investments in technology and AI. Our focus is on increasing scalability across the organization, particularly in support functions while using AI to improve efficiency and enhance our services to clients. The cost/income ratio improved to 66.4%, and that is outperforming our target range of 67% to 70%. Zooming in on our FTE cost, we can see the following. We expanded our workforce in line with business growth, primarily at client segments to support our growing client base. At the same time, we are centralizing selected activities in our client support teams and corporate center to improve scalability and free up front office capacity for client engagement.

This all combined led to a rise in net result of 30% to EUR 88 million, underpinned by strong growth in both commission income and net interest income. Revenue growth more than offset the higher operating expenses, resulting in strong operating leverage. Our results included EUR 4.2 million of one-off costs related to our new Amsterdam headquarters. And while these costs will not recur next year, premises costs will increase from 2027 on, reflecting a larger office footprint and the transition from a below-market legacy lease to market-based rental levels. Let me now take you through our capital developments. In June, we returned capital of EUR 0.80 per share to our shareholders. Further growth in the lending portfolio and client facilities led to a CET1 ratio of 17% at the end of the first half. And this ratio does not include first half retained earnings.

Later this year, the DNB floor on risk weights for residential mortgages will be lifted. This floor currently has a negative impact on our CET1 ratio of approximately 1.3 percentage points, meaning our CET1 ratio would increase when the floor is lifted. Our capital strategy remains unchanged. We steer towards a ratio of 17.5%. If we expect that this ratio will be clearly above 17.5%, we intend to return the capital above 17.5% to our shareholders. To conclude, our first half year financial performance reflects strong progress towards our 2027 financial targets and we look forward to the second half of the year. And with that, I would like to hand it back to the operator to start our Q&A.

[Operator Instructions] And our first question today comes from the line of Cor Kluis from ABN AMRO-ODDO BHF.

Thanks for the figures, which were better than expected from a bottom line point of view. A couple of questions. Maybe first question is about private banking net inflow in Belgium. I heard, of course, your explanation why it was somewhat low at least in the first half of this year. Could you elaborate a little bit more on what kind of net inflows you expect in Belgium going forward? Was this something that's temporary and you expect high mid-single digit or net inflows in the future? Or is this something that's going to continue for a while?

The second question is on loan growth, loan growth in other loans that was better than expected, at least higher than we all expected. Lombard loans, business loans, could you elaborate a little bit which part is temporary and which part is recurring because I think Lombard loans can be a little bit driven by what clients do in a specific period, so that might come back again. And the reason why I ask is, of course, that we can estimate a little bit what RWAs will be in the rest of the year because this RWA growth was, I think, mostly driven by the growth in other loans.

I think it grew by almost 9% in the half year. So could you elaborate a little bit more on the total loan growth for other loans for the rest of the year? Was this temporary or is this more recurring? And my last question is about NII. You increased your NII guidance from EUR 180 million to EUR 195 million to around EUR 200 million. Is this mostly driven by this loan growth? Or is this also driven by deposit margins, which are better? That were my questions.

All right. Thanks, Cor. And I think I will take all 3 of your questions. And starting with the first one. What about the inflows in Belgium going forward? Let me start by saying that we see -- we saw very strong inflows from new clients. So this is a trend that is continuing, and that is the same as before. So what are the things that are different? One thing is the fact of increasing share of wallet. And as we have said before, the fact that we entered the market as Mercier Van Lanschot led to an effect that we saw share of wallet at existing clients increase. And this is an effect that now was less visible. As you can see, with existing clients, increasing share of wallet is something that is a good thing, but this effect also had a sort of a onetime part of it. So -- but that was something that we said before that we expected some normalization in that part.

Then looking forward, when we look at our -- I also mentioned that our investment strategy and the way we invest that, that was, of course, less in favor in the market than, let's say, before. And this is totally normal effect if you have an investment that is an investment strategy that is value-based and that is based on high-quality companies at a good price. You see what we saw last half year that this was very much AI growth driven. And then we saw that our investment strategy was lagging behind what market. But I said that is totally normal. And we see that underlying our companies we invest in are doing really well. So over time, we see no reason that returns wouldn't come back to the levels that we have seen over the longer term in our investment strategy. So that being said, the temporary effect of reallocating by some clients of part of their portfolio, that is, of course, not something that we expect to recur for -- in future periods in the same way that we saw this half year.

So we remain very confident in the way of -- in our investment strategy. Then the loan growth in other loans, yes, we see very good developments in Lombard lending, especially, and that is in the Netherlands, in Belgium and in Switzerland, and we make an effort in providing more loans to our private banking clients. And this is something that we -- that is part of our strategy, and we see that, that is paying off. So we are doing more loans to our private banking clients. And therefore, you can say -- you say, is this recurring? Yes, it is part of our strategy to be more active in this part.

And we see that our clients also have -- that it's in the clients' interest and the demand for this kind of service. Then on NII, yes, it is better than we expected. And it has to do with, of course, loan growth helps, but what we also have seen is that over the past 6 months, we have seen upward interest rate movements that were not in our first guidance. And these upward interest rate movements have increased our expectations, and that's why we increased NII guidance.

Our next question today comes from the line of Jason Kalamboussis from ING.

I just wanted to have a couple of follow-up questions, notably on the Private Bank. On Belgium, do you find scope for M&A because now it has been some time since you have done your last deal, and this was also part of your growth ambition in a market that at the end of the day needs a bit more consolidation. So if you could comment there, that would be great. On the inflows in Belgium, do we have now -- was the first half represent a good representation of what we should be expecting for the second half? And also related to Belgium, you said that your strategies were more value-based. Would you consider is it -- does that mean that you have your eggs in one basket? Would you consider, for example, having other strategies? Or you find that you are better off being based and known for having this value-based approach? And the second question is on the Netherlands. We saw, I mean, within the Netherlands, very good inflows in Switzerland. Do you find that Switzerland will be more the engine growth in your inflows over the coming half year?

Yes. Thank you, Jason. Very good question. I'll take the first and the last one and then the second and the third on Belgium for Jeroen. With regard to your question for scope of M&A in Belgium, yes, our strategy is to -- our Growing Further Together strategy is autonomous growth and also bolt-on acquisitions. We have done 2 acquisitions in the last couple of years in Belgium, Mercier Vanderlinden and Accuro, increased our presence there in 5 years' time, almost fivefold in terms of assets under management. So yes, we are -- it's a very strong engine now of our entire franchise. And we will also be looking for more M&A opportunities in Belgium, of course, also in Holland, but especially also in Belgium.

And of course, that always has to do with either increasing further our scale, but also looking for maybe additions of capabilities that we would like to add. And but always with a discipline on the financial side. And also, it has to be a cultural match because that will determine the future success. So yes, we will be on the lookout for bolt-on acquisitions in Belgium. And then with regard to your question on Switzerland, which we indeed we report on the segment of private clients Netherlands, yes, we are quite positive on our franchise in Switzerland.

We are the only Dutch-based wealth manager that has a fully licensed subsidiary in Switzerland. And we see also from clients and those are predominantly Dutch and Belgium clients, increasing interest for our services that we offer in Switzerland. We have a great team there. So we expect future growth to come from our Swiss operations and also to reach more skill over there. So that, I would say, on Switzerland. And then over to you, Jeroen, on -- I think you already answered part of the net flow question.

I think I answered the part of it, but let me rephrase it such that in Belgium, we have the value way of investing, and it's a very strong investing together philosophy that we have in Belgium that works well and has led to very good returns over the years. So there is -- there are certainly -- we are convinced that this is a good strategy, and we will continue with that strategy. And over the long term, that strategy has led to very good yields and returns. And that being said, that is also what we say that over time, this will also lead to continued inflow. And as I said, new clients keep coming and inflow in the first half of the year from new clients was very strong. So that's also what -- yes, I think that's what I can say about it.

Very good. Just on a follow-up or I did ask, I think, the first half inflows, do they reflect what we should expect for the second half? Is it the new normal essentially?

Yes. I think what I did say is that the effect -- and I explained the inflow of the first half with the effect that we saw in the first half of the relatively lower returns of our strategy. And as I try to answer is that over the longer term, we expect our strategy to do very well as it did as of the beginning that we run the strategy, which is more than 20 years ago. So that effect of temporary lower returns, which is normal given our investment philosophy that effect is -- can be seen as a temporary effect.

Okay. So this is -- essentially, it is more around the strategy rather than the share of wallet, if I should put it this way, how I should see the first half.

There are 2 things. So the thing you mentioned, the part with the returns, that's the temporary part. Then there's the thing of share of wallet. And as I explained before, 2.5 years ago, we started with Mercier Van Lanschot in Belgium and brought together Mercier Vanderlinden and Van Lanschot Belgium. That combination got to a very strong start and is rightfully seen as a good challenger party in Belgium. That effect 2.5 years ago led existing clients to say, okay, this is a party that is making a next step. So I'm going to interest more of my AUM to this party. So that is an increase in share of wallet from existing clients. And we saw this effect over the last years. And naturally, this effect will fade out over time.

We will now go to our next question, and the next question today comes from the line of Benoit Petrarque from Kepler Cheuvreux.

Yes. So the first question is again on Belgium. I see that you had a 3.8% performance in your investment. So it is much lower than the 8% in the Netherlands. 3.8% looks quite low. I mean I appreciate the comments on the investment strategies, but that in H1, like we've seen, it sounds like quite low. And I was wondering if there have been maybe specific calls from the investment team on some assets or geographies, which could explain this performance? And also, could you provide maybe the outflow part of the equation, which will be useful to assess what is recurring and not?

The second question is on the cost/income ratio, 66.4%, clearly below the low end of your guidance, a sign that the operating leverage works extremely well. What do you think in terms of guidance on cost/income ratio going forward? Do you think you can sustain a low end of that guidance going forward? Or do you expect any type of cost ramp-up in other directions like maybe tech or real estate? And then on NII, thanks for the new guidance, very useful. Just thinking about '27, what do you expect? We see the forward rates obviously going up further. Do you think the equation on NII will be more a function of volume growth and less margin expansion going forward? Just trying to get a feeling about the direction into '27.

Okay. Benoit, thank you. A lot of questions, I think, that I can take. First, on the returns on Belgium, let me be very clear. Our investment focus and the way we invest for our clients is on a long-term basis. So for us, we look at the long-term returns of our investment strategies. And as you know and have seen, they are very strong in Belgium, just like elsewhere in VLK, but also in Belgium. So that is the answer. And the situation of what happens in a couple of months is, for us, less relevant. We really look at the long term there. With respect to further information on outflows, unfortunately, Benoit, we will not provide that detail.

Then going forward, the cost income, yes, 66.4% is below the target range. And what do we think going forward? Yes, we will invest in further growth in AI and technology. So yes, investments will continue. But of course, we are very motivated to keep this cost income at a level that is around where it is now. That is, of course, our ambition. And we're certainly not trying to go to the upper end of our target range. So we like where we are now, and we will -- we have the ambition to stay the course as much as possible. I have to say that in the first half of the year, markets have been beneficial, of course, for private banks, and that was helpful as well.

Then NII 2027. As you know, I will provide guidance, but I'll do that with the annual figures. So you will not get guidance today. A couple of words, though. The things that we are seeing now with interest rate environment, growing balance sheet, if you take those as a basis, you can, of course, see that NII for 2027, there's not a lot of reason to expect that it will be a lot different from what we will see in the second half of 2026. So everything that we expect for 2026, you could project further on to 2027 that will be -- there's no reason to say that in 2027, things will be a lot different.

Great. Just maybe a small one on the Dutch business, the Dutch private banking business. I think the growth is actually accelerating there. You have a new number of clients going up. I think it's 5.5% net new money in H1 normalized. You also see marketing expenses up, and we actually see VLK also clearly more visible on the marketing side in the Netherlands. So what -- how do you think about your marketing budget going forward? Do you think it could be slightly higher than we've seen in the past?

Yes. Thank you for that question. We are indeed very excited also about our growth opportunities in the Netherlands. And like you said, we are investing significantly in the private banking activities in the Netherlands. We opened up some new offices in Utrecht, Maastricht. We see that also bankers from the competition joined us and attracting, of course, new clients. And we invest strongly in our new branding and hospitality. In that sense, we also look forward to moving to our new building, which will also be really next level in hospitality for our clients here in Amsterdam. So yes, we expect to continue to see momentum and that growth. There's one remark I want to make there. In the Netherlands, always, we have this effect in the last quarter, of course, of people from also fiscal reasons moving more towards savings. So that is always in the last couple of years, an effect there. But to your point, driven by those investments and our opportunity to gain market share, we expect to continue that momentum.

[Operator Instructions] There are currently no further questions. I will now hand the call back to Maarten for closing remarks.

Well, thank you very much, Sharon, and thank you for listening to us and your questions. Wrapping up today with our strong results, we are firmly on track to achieve our 2027 financial targets. Our strategy focused on scalable growth is delivering with momentum in the core drivers -- growth drivers we see in our markets. And as we also discussed, we see that momentum continuing and are really convinced that we can further gain our market shares in the Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland and the U.K. So thank you for your questions and interest, and I wish you a very great day today.

Thank you. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.

Good day, and thank you for standing by. Welcome to Van Lanschot Kempen Analyst Call 2025 Annual Results.

[Operator Instructions]

Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I'd now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, Maarten Edixhoven, Chairman of the Management Board. Please go ahead, sir.

Thank you very much, and good morning all. Thank you for joining this morning. And we're happy to share with you our full 2025 results and the progress we are making on our Growing Further Together strategy and 2027 financial targets. I will first discuss some of the highlights demonstrating how we are delivering value for our clients, colleagues and shareholders.

And after that, our CFO, Jeroen Kroes, will take you through the results in more detail. In short, we realized a very strong set of results in 2025 against the backdrop of ongoing geopolitical uncertainty. We remained focused on our clients and disciplined execution of our strategy, ensuring scalable growth and resilience.

Commercial momentum continues across our client segments as demonstrated by net inflow in assets under management of EUR 7.9 billion and a 7% increase in client assets to EUR 180 billion.

Net profit rose 11% to EUR 157 million, driven by commission income and disciplined cost control. Based on these results and our solid capital position, we are very pleased to share a proposed dividend of EUR 3 per share and a capital return of EUR 0.80 per share.

If we go to the next slide. We grew across all our business activities, and I would like to highlight several of our core growth drivers. First of all, we're capitalizing on our commercial momentum in all our markets. Existing clients continuously entrust more of their wealth to us, and it's great to see that many new clients also find their way to us, recognizing the benefit of a focused independent wealth manager.

In the Netherlands, assets under management grew by almost 10%. And in Belgium, it was an impressive 16%. We're gaining market share in both markets. And also in fiduciary asset management, we had many new clients and saw assets under management grow.

We also see strong interest in our private market offering. Private banking clients in the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland committed more than EUR 540 million into new funds we launched. And we see a similar appetite with institutional clients, for instance, in private credit.

Bolt-on acquisitions remains another growth avenue for us. The acquisition of Wilton Family Office was a great example of how we look for parties with the right fit to strengthen our proposition in this case, in the highest segment of private banking in the Netherlands.

Fourth, we focus and continue to focus on the great wealth transfer by ensuring our offering adds value for our next generation of clients. We are tailoring our loan offering, for instance, but also providing network opportunities and knowledge sharing.

And partnerships are another way to achieve our strategy. As announced early January, we are planning to set up a 50-50 joint venture with KBC Securities. By combining our equity activities, we will create a leading Benelux broker as well as a leading sector specialist in European real estate and life sciences.

Subject to regulatory approval, the transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of this year. This will also bolster our corporate finance activities, which remain a key element of our wealth management strategy. I want to call this out as a great example of how we intend to leverage partnerships to support scalable growth and deliver innovation and enhanced value for our clients.

Move to the next slide. During 2025, we have engaged in several partnerships to this point across our business, strengthening our client offering, operational efficiency and also our innovation capacity. For instance, on the investment management side, we are partnering with State Street Investment Management to drive innovation in active ETFs and other investment solutions to strengthen our offering to clients.

Cultural fit and a long-term focus are key elements we look in for selection of partnerships, just like in our acquisitions. A key area of investment during the year and going forward is obviously AI and digitalization. We see AI as an accelerator of our scalable growth, while at the same time, it is a tool to deliver value to our clients and meet their evolving expectations.

To summarize approach to AI, we look at 4 pillars. First of all, we are continuously strengthening our digital foundations, modernizing platforms and improving data quality.

Second, we are accelerating efficiency by using AI and GenAI to automate routine tasks and to free up capacity for further growth. We are embedding AI solutions in internal software development, client engagement and portfolio management, delivering superior intelligence to our clients. And ultimately, it's about transforming business models, for instance, with AI-driven hyper-personalization and agentive portfolio management. To ensure we continue to work according to our values and compliance standards, we invest both in the technical side and the transformation and training side, and we have implemented clear guardrails and governance throughout the firm.

To give some examples, currently, there are over 20 AI use cases live in production across our organization. Our private banker AI assistant helps our bankers, for instance, to prepare for client conversations. This saves them time about average 3 hours per week and also improved service to clients.

Another one is the investment model agent, increasing the speed and scope of analysis for our investment teams. We are proud that our progress was recognized with 3 Financial Times PWM Tech Awards in 2025. As you would expect from us, as a specialist, highly personal wealth manager, we see AI as an enabler, but never as a replacement of the connections and the long-term connections we build with our clients.

We move to the next slide. It's rewarding to see that our clients tell us we remain very much on the right track, and we are striking the right balance in terms of client experience, digital service and being relevant throughout the various life phases our clients go through.

The Net Promoter Score among private banking clients in Netherlands and Belgium remains very high and client satisfaction within investment management clients and investment banking clients also remain strong.

Then turning to ESG. Simply, we are staying the course. In a year with evolving dynamics, we continue to make our progress on our ambitions. Our specialists continue to support our clients to deliver on their sustainability ambitions. We see clients, NextGen in particular, focusing on the impact of their investments in a broad sense, really focused on impact.

So we are also doubling down in the area of social impact and philanthropy. Also, employee satisfaction remained high with the engagement score well above our target. And when it comes to climate, we are driving year-on-year progress, and we more than met our targets for carbon emission reductions, in both our discretionary assets under management and our own operations.

If you move to next slide, wrapping up, with these 2025 results, we are well on track to reach our 2027 targets. Jeroen, over to you.

Thanks, Maarten, and let's look at our 2025 results in a bit more detail. Our strong 2025 result was driven by continued growth in assets under management. Total AUM rose by more than 6% with organic growth accounting for 5.3 percentage points. Market performance and the acquisition of Wilton Family Office accounted for the remainder.

While AUM growth for Van Lanschot Kempen as a whole was 6.4%, growth in our Private Bank was significantly higher. As Maarten mentioned, 10% for Private Clients Netherlands and 16% in Belgium. Our target is to grow AUM by an average of 10% per year through organic growth, acquisitions and market performance. Looking at the past decade, we have achieved this target.

Let's take a closer look now at our client segments. Private Clients Netherlands to start with, delivered solid financial results in 2025. Commission income increased by a strong 10%. Interest income was lower, which we had anticipated. And as a result, our overall performance is comparable to 2024.

AUM grew by 10%, as mentioned, with higher net inflows into discretionary management. As in previous years, we observed a seasonal pattern in the development of assets under management within our Dutch private banking franchise with strong inflows in H1 and a small outflow in H2.

Important to note is that this trend is visible in AUM, but not in total client assets. Client assets, which includes both client savings and investments. Net inflow in client assets has been very steady in recent years with comparable net inflow in each half year period over the past 2.5 years.

When looking at AUM in isolation, a recurring seasonal trend emerges. In the second half of the year, clients tend to shift part of their AUM into savings. Also, both existing and new clients tend to postpone investments. Then in the first half of the following year, these savings are typically invested or reinvested into AUM.

Looking through these seasonal effects, the underlying trend remains strong. For instance, inflow from new clients in 2025 were evenly distributed throughout the year. And in early 2026, we already are seeing the typical investment of savings into AUM, while client assets continue to grow.

In Belgium, where we operate under the Mercier Van Lanschot brand, we had an exceptionally strong year. Inflows reached EUR 1.9 billion, commission income rose by 24% and results before tax increased by 78% to EUR 67 million.

Commercial momentum remains very strong with inflows split evenly between new clients and increased share of wallet from existing clients. As Maarten already mentioned, client satisfaction is high with praise for our personal approach, expertise and consistent quality of service.

We continue to expand in this attractive private banking market by focusing more on the French-speaking part of the country by growing our team of bankers and by opening new offices.

Within investment management clients, we had strong inflows in fiduciary management and alternative investment strategies, while liquid investment strategies had an outflow. Let me break this down for you in more detail. Our private market funds had inflow of EUR 800 million across alternative credits, farmland, non-listed real estate and private equity.

We launched several new private equity strategies with total capital commitments from private banking clients of EUR 0.5 billion. This will result in net inflow once the capital is called.

Our liquid investment strategies saw net outflow for 2 main reasons. First, we decided to discontinue the sustainable equity strategy, which held around EUR 600 million in assets under management as it no longer aligned with client preferences and created room to shift more to individual stocks.

Second, our small-cap investment strategies experienced outflow. More than 2/3 of this outflow is related to a few large wholesale clients, shifting their allocation from small caps to large caps. In addition, fund performance over 2025 was lagging, partly because of more value-based investment style and sustainability exclusions.

These outflows impacted the margins in investment strategies. Fiduciary management had a strong year, winning its largest new mandate to date in the Netherlands and the U.K. We were appointed fiduciary manager for 2 pension funds run by the Holcim Group with AUM of GBP 2.5 billion.

In the Netherlands, we welcomed SPW or Stichting Pensioenfonds voor de Woningcorporaties as a new client. The AUM of over EUR 15 billion will show us inflow in 2026. It's also great to see that fiduciary clients more frequently chose complementary services.

In addition to fiduciary management, we also provide them with specific solutions such as alternative credit and non-listed real estate. Taking the results from our private banking and investment management activities together, our securities commission grew year-on-year in line with AUM. Our starting point for AUM in 2026 is higher than it was for 2025.

If we were to maintain this starting point AUM level throughout the year, so without any increase, securities commission would amount to EUR 537 million, and that is around 5% growth, compared to the commission income of EUR 512 million that we reported in 2025.

But obviously, we do see multiple engines to grow our AUM during the year across our private banking activities, private market solutions and fiduciary management. These engines are shown on the right-hand side of the slide. Proceeding now with our investment banking activities.

Here, we delivered a stable year with income and costs broadly in line with 2024. As Maarten explained, we have announced a new partnership with KBC Securities in equities.

Our Corporate Finance and ECM activities remain fully owned as a key element in our wealth management offering. Alongside our strong positions in real estate and life sciences, we increasingly advise private banking clients on the sale of their businesses.

And being able to provide these services is of great value to these clients. Turning to our loan portfolio, which stood at more than EUR 9 billion, consisting of loans to our private clients. Roughly 2/3 consists of mortgages with the remainder mainly in Lombard loans.

The portfolio grew modestly and remains of high quality with an impaired ratio of 0.9%. Then let's move to the NII. Net interest income was EUR 164 million. It improved during the second half of the year. After several ECB rate cuts in the first half, rates were stable in the second half. Combined with portfolio growth and lower amortization of discontinued hedges, this resulted in NII near the top of our guidance.

Under current market conditions, we expect net interest income for 2026 to be in the range of EUR 180 million to EUR 195 million, based on a slightly growing portfolio and normalized margins.

And even though NII came down in 2025, we operated with a positive jaw between income and cost. Income increased 5%, cost by 4%, and this resulted in a 9% increase in gross result. And with NII and commission income expected to grow in 2026, this will further support the jaw. However, cost discipline remains essential.

Our focus is on increasing scalability across the organization, particularly in support functions and using AI to improve efficiency. This should help to further improve our cost income ratio, which is currently 69% and within the target of 67% to 70%.

As a wealth manager, we stand out among our competitors because of our personal approach and long-standing relationships.

Clients value this, and we continue to grow FTE in client-facing teams as we grow in the number of clients. At the same time, we invest heavily in efficiency and scalability in the corporate center. In 2025, we absorbed all business growth with the same number of FTE in these functions.

Moving to our total net result, which was up 11%. The main contributor to our higher net result was higher commission income. Other income was EUR 7 million lower than in 2024, and this is primarily due to lower results from our participating interests.

Let's move to our solvency position. Strong capital generation in 2025 supports a proposed dividend of EUR 3 per share. In addition, as we report a solid capital position with a CET1 ratio of 18.2%, we proposed a capital return of EUR 0.80 per share. The capital return, which is expected to take place in 2026 has an impact of 0.7 percentage points. Adjusted for this, the pro forma CET1 ratio lands at 17.5%, which is fully in line with our target.

To conclude, we remain well on track to achieve our 2027 financial targets, and we look forward to the year ahead. With that, let's open it up for questions.

[Operator Instructions]

We will now take our first question from the line of Cor Kluis from ABN AMRO.

This is Cor Kluis from ABN AMRO. Congratulations with the figures, were very strong in all fields. A couple of questions. Maybe first on what happened yesterday and the wealth tax in the Netherlands. The Dutch government, of course, wants to tax investment returns for 36% once tax been realized gains is not allowing minuses and pluses of years to be netted.

The government might change a few of these things, but probably not all 3. So the Netherlands becoming less attractive for wealth in 2028. Could you elaborate a little bit more on your view on this? And also, it's great, of course, that you have good operations in Belgium and Switzerland and abroad, more strategically might this help a little bit more to expand a little bit further abroad where the governments are not acting this way?

Second question is about cost guidance, cost guidance for 2026. Could you help us a little bit with that? You already mentioned that the wage will go up 3.6% on the 1st of January, like last year, basically and FTE growth probably again around 4%.

So you already have 4 basically. What cost guidance can we expect? You talk about AI. You could say AI could cost some money to get it, but you also might get a lot of efficiencies from that. So could you help us a little bit more on cost guidance for 2026?

And my last question is on NII, which was, of course, for H2 at the top end of your guided range and also for 2026 will be, I think, on the top end or above what people have been expecting. Could you elaborate a little bit more why that is so strong this NII? What are the drivers or what are the most important drivers for that? That were my questions.

Thank you very much, Cor, also, of course, for the compliment. I'll take the first question and Jeroen, your second and third question.

On the Dutch government and taxes, yes, there has been a lot of discussion on that. And I think it's good that the new Ministry of Economic Affairs decided to pull the proposal. I think a tax on unrealized gains is almost unknown.

And that's one, I think, of the most important points. The tax system shouldn't deviate too much from the tax systems around us. I would call for a more unified tax approach in Europe in that regard.

So this is a good first step, but that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. And I think -- let me make 2 more points. I think what we also in discussions with our clients, see, is that what they especially need is clarity.

Everybody realizes that taxes have to be paid, but you want to have a predictable government so that you can also -- and especially the long-term relationships we have with our clients that you can plan for that. So clarity, stability, I would say, is the most important.

And then second, yes, we are more in favor of taxation of realized gains than unrealized gains. So that, I think, is another point. Then indeed, to your point, we, of course, are also active in Belgium and Switzerland.

And also in those countries, taxes have to be paid, but we are happy that we can serve clients in those countries as well. And we expect those activities to grow as we have seen also quite significantly in Belgium over the last 5 years. So that continues to be our strategy.

We always will be looking at further possibilities to increase our private banking activities and scope also through acquisitions. But we focus in first instance on the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland to solicit further growth and follow our clients as well.

So Jeroen, can I give it to you for the question on cost and NII.

Yes. So the question on the cost guidance, yes, Cor, what we said, the 3.5% general salary increase is there. We started the year, obviously, with a higher number of FTEs than we had a year before. So that also impacts the cost going forward.

Something else to say, and I tried to say that by mentioning that when we grow in number of clients, there will be growth in the front end, so the client-facing end of our organization. So bankers, relationship managers, and we use AI to absorb most of this growth in the -- let's say, in the back-end side of the company.

Of course, we also use AI to make our bankers more efficient, so they can service more clients with the same quality. And that is what we are doing. And your question, are you investing in AI? Yes, we are.

But this is all, I would say, within the normal way that we run investments in IT. We all run it through the P&L. We take it in the normal course of business. And yes, we have attracted people that are working on this.

So on the one hand side, you see some extra people focusing on AI implementation and you see some wins in increased efficiency there. So I think that's what I can say on the cost side, then on the NII. If we play back to half a year ago, we discussed the first half year figures.

And at that moment, we were below guidance. I could then already say that we would stick to the guidance, and this turned out to be -- and it turned out to be within the guidance.

So that's good. Why did the second half look so much better? A couple of things there. We already mentioned portfolio growth, the more stable environment with no more ECB rate cuts.

Yield curve became steeper, which was positive for us. And also important is that the amortization of discontinued hedges was -- so the cost we had to incur for that were lower in the second half.

And that combination led to these better figures. And yes, going forward, we feel that the current guidance is the best one we can give at this moment. And as mentioned, you can see that the second half and the trend that you see in the second half will also be forwarded to 2026.

We will now take our next question from Henk Slotboom from the IDEA.

A more fundamental question. There's a lot to do about AI and wealth management and that sort of things, and I won't bore you with those kinds of stories. But what struck me in your introduction, Maarten, was what you said about AI and the productivity for account manager that there's 3 hours extra to be spent on clients.

Now I worked at Van Lanschot for 8 years, so I know that client intimacy is one of the key differentiators there. But still, your NPS is declining, still very high. But almost in all segments, I see a decline. Is this a temporary thing? You would expect if you have more time to speak with your clients and you have more tailored advice that the NPS should go up. So perhaps you can provide some context there.

Yes. It's a great question, Henk, and thank you for that. And now that's actually -- and indeed, if you worked at Van Lanschot, you know that also bankers and relationship managers, what they love most is to work with clients and have the conversations with them on their long-term goals and what's happening in the families and the family companies.

And they like less the admin type of the work. So I think one of the big benefits I didn't even mention next to the efficiency gain, and we are at early stages there is the fact that I really believe that if we have the bankers and relationship managers that are the happiest in their work, have the most quality time with their clients, then our clients are also happier.

So in that sense, I expect AI to make their work better, more interesting. There will be more -- even more -- they are already highly engaged, but even more engaged as they can spend more time with the clients and the admin part of the work is done by very intelligent agents. So more like a digital twin of the private banker. And I think -- I do think that, that will have a positive effect in the end on the service that clients expect, hence, also on the NPS.

But do you -- I guess you agree with me that NPS is what -- is your best protection against whatever could happen from the side of AI type of initiatives we've been all reading about. So it must have a high priority for you.

It does. That's also why we show it. And like you said, there are -- in some areas, there are small decreases, but still at a very high level. And as a management Board, but also the colleagues in the field are following and tracking this very closely. And one of the most important elements of NPS is contact frequency with our clients.

And that's, for example, something we really steer on and also encourage our bankers and relationship managers to focus on. And the quality of that contact, of course, through AI will even be higher. So that's just to give you one view on how we drive that and how we look at that and how we monitor that.

[Operator Instructions]

Well, there are no further questions. So I'll hand you back to your host to conclude today's conference.

All right. Thank you very much. And thank you all for your time today on behalf of Jeroen and the other members of the team here in Amsterdam. To wrap up, we delivered a very strong set of results over 2025, keeping us well on track to deliver on our end of year 2027 financial targets.

And allow me please also give a big compliment to all our teams, colleagues for their energy and dedication, remaining very close to our clients and capturing the growth momentum. We will continue to invest in our solutions and partnerships as well as digital and AI capabilities to deliver the best and most personal experience to our clients, and we remain fully focused on that. So thank you very much, and I hope to speak to you soon in person.

This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect your lines.