Today, thank you for standing by. Welcome to Van Lanschot Kempen Analyst Call 2025 Annual Results. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. After the speaker's presentation, there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. 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. Good morning, all. Thank you for joining this morning. 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. 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. 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, it's great to see that many of 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%, in Belgium, it was an impressive 16%. We're gaining market share in both markets. Also in fiduciary asset management, we have many new clients and saw our assets under management grown. 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. 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 equities 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 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 enhance 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 four 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. Ultimately, it's about transforming business models, for instance, with AI-driven, hyper-personalization, and agentic 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, then 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 improves 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. If 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 remains strong. 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, next gen in particular, focusing on the impact of their investments in a broad sense, really focused on impact. 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. 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. 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 wealth and 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. 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 developments of assets under management within our Dutch private banking franchise, with strong inflows in H1 and a small outflow in H2. Important to know is that this trend is visible in AUM, not in total client assets. Client assets, which includes both client savings and investments. Net inflow and client assets has been very steady in recent years, with comparable net inflow in each half year period over the past 2 and a half 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. Both existing and new clients tend to postpone investments. 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. 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 Vanderliden , we had an exceptionally strong year. Inflows reached EUR 1.9 billion, commission income rose by 24%, 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 half a billion.
This will result in net inflow once the capital is called. Our liquid investment strategies saw net outflow for two 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 aligns 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 two pension funds run by the B&CE 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 port 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. That is around 5% growth compared to the commission income of EUR 512 that we reported in 2025. 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 consist 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%. 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-EUR 195 million, based on a slightly growing portfolio and normalized margins. 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. 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%-70%. Clients value this. 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. As we report a solid capital position with a CET1 ratio of 18.2%, we propose 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.
Thank you. To ask a question, you will need to press star one and one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A roster. We will now take our first question from the line of Cor Kluis from ABN -AMRO. Please ask your question. Cor, your line is open.
Hello, good morning. Indeed, Cor Kluis of ABN- AMRO. Although, congratulations with the figures, were very, very strong on all fields. A couple of questions, maybe first on what happened yesterday and the wealth tax in the Netherlands. You know, the Dutch government, of course, wants to tax investment returns for 36%, wants to tax unrealized 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 three. The Netherlands is becoming less attractive for wealth in 2028. Could you elaborate a little bit more on your view on this?
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%. You already have four plus four, 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. Could you help us a little bit more on cost guidance for 2026? My last question is on NII, which was, of course, for H2 at the top end of your guided range, and now 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.
Thank you very much, Cor, also, of course, for the compliment. I'll take the first question, and Jeroen, the your second and third question. On the Dutch government and taxes, yeah, 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 profit, 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.
This is a good first step, but that doesn't mean we're out of the woods yet. I think, let me make two 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 in the long-term relationships we have with our clients, that you can plan for that. Clarity, stability, I would say, is the most important. Second, we are more in favor of taxation of realized gains than unrealized gains. So that, I think is another point.
Indeed, to your point, we, of course, are also active in Belgium and Switzerland, and also in those countries, taxes have to be.
have to be paid, but we are happy that we can serve clients in those countries as well. We expect those activities to grow, as we have seen also quite significantly in Belgium over the last five years. That continues to be our strategy. We always will be looking at the further possibilities to increase our private banking activities and scope also through acquisitions. We focus in first instance, on the Netherlands, Belgium and Switzerland to solicit further growth and follow our clients as well. Jeroen, can I give it to you for.
Sure thing.
the question on cost and NII?
Yep. The question on the cost guidance, yes, Cor, the 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. 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. Your question, are you investing in AI? Yes, we are. This is all, I would say, within the normal way that we 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. On the one hand side, you see some extra people focusing on AI implementation, and you see some some wins in increased efficiency there. I think that's what I can say on the cost side. On the NII.
If, if we play back to a half-year ago, we discussed the first half-year figures. At that moment, we were below guidance. I could then already say that we would stick to the guidance. This turned out to be. 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. Also important is that the amortization of discontinued hedges was, so the costs we had to incur for that were lower in the second half, and that combination led to these better figures. Yes, going forward, we feel that the current guidance is the best one we can give at this moment. As mentioned, it, you can see that the second half, the trend that you see in the second half will also be forwarded to 2026.
Okay, wonderful. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Cor.
Thank you. We will now take our next question from Henk Slotboom, from The Idea. Please go ahead, Henk. Your line is open.
Sorry, good morning, and thanks for taking my question. 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. What struck me in your introduction, Maarten, was what you said about AI and the productivity per account manager that there's three hours extra to be spent on clients. I worked at Van Lanschot for eight years, so I know that client intimacy is one of the key differentiators there. Still, your NPS is declining. It's 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. Perhaps you can provide some context there.
Yeah, it's a great question, Henk, and thank you for that. Now that's actually. 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 their families and their family companies, and they like less the admin type of the work. I think one of the big benefits I didn't even mention next to the efficiency gain, and we are at the 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.
In that sense, I expect AI to make their work better, more interesting. There will be more, even more, they're already highly engaged, but even more engaged.
as they can spend more time with the clients, the admin part of the work is done by very intelligent agents. More like a digital twin of the private banker. 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.
I guess you agree with me that NPS is what's your best protection against whatever could happen from the side of AI type of initiatives we've been all reading about. 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. As a management board, but also the colleagues in the field are following and tracking this very closely. One of the most important elements of NPS is contact frequency with our clients. That's, for example, something we really steer on, and also encourage our bankers and relationship managers to focus on. The quality of that contact, of course, through AI, will even be higher. That's just to give you one view on how we drive that, and how we look at it and how we monitor that.
Okay. Thank you. Very clear. Thank you. Have a nice day.
Thank you. Excellent question, Hank.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone keypad. Well, there are no further questions, so I'll hand you back to your host to complete today's conference.
All right. Thank you very much. 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. Allow me, please, also to give a big compliment to all our teams, colleagues, for the energy and dedication, remaining very close to our clients and capturing the growth momentum. We will continue to invest in our solutions, partnerships, as well as digital and AI capabilities, to deliver the best and most personal experience to our clients, we remain fully focused on that.
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 line. Speakers, please stand by. Thank you.