Thank you, and thank you everybody for joining us today, in a moment where there's been a lot of volatility around and a lot of macroeconomic changes. We are quite pleased to report very strong results for the bank across our business lines and in general. If you go to Page two, which is a snapshot of our main messages for today, we report EUR 68.5 million of adjusted net profits for the first half of the year, with strong performance in factoring and lending growth, in securities services and payments and good results from the synergies in the corporate center.
Importantly, the business is extremely well positioned to take advantage of the new interest rate environment and in general of the new macroeconomic condition, which we're starting to see flowing through the business, particularly in factoring and lending. In factoring and lending, we have achieved a strong rebound in volumes and the loan book, which has reached the highest ever for the bank, although we are only midway through the year, and you know that we have a very seasonal business with a peak of activity always at year-end. This brings us back to the 10% growth year-over-year that we have indicated to the market. We're back on track to the target we had indicated as we have reiterated a number of times in the last few quarters.
On Securities Services, the business has been impacted clearly by the negative financial markets in terms of assets under custody and under management, but given good cost control, we were able to achieve a growth in profit before tax of over 20%. Payments also benefited from the rebound in activity in the economy. Even here we have a double-digit growth in profit before tax. The corporate center continues to perform well in terms of synergies with a growth of over EUR 25 million of profit before tax year-over-year. Capital remains plentiful, and that gives us plenty of flexibility going forward and continue to grow our credit business. We have a Core Equity Tier 1 of over 15% and Total Capital Ratio of over 21%.
That's actually not accounting the earnings of the period, since we have those ready to be paid in three weeks to our shareholders as interim dividend. The first time we do so as a bank. That equates to roughly 37 cents per share, bringing the total distribution to the shareholders of over EUR 350 million the last 12 months, which is equal almost to 2 EUR per share of dividend distribution over the last year. We have been cleared by Bank of Italy for the acquisition of MC3 Informatica, which is a small consulting business that we acquired in Brescia, and we continue to have no exposure to Ukraine or Russia.
If we sum up on page three, what were the positives of the quarter? Clearly, factoring is back on track in terms of growth with a very positive pipeline, strong customer demand and a positive outlook going forward. Securities Services and Payments are delivering good PNRR results. We continue to have a good market position, particularly in Securities Services, pension funds, which is a crucial market for us, also given the fact that it's highly likely that the government in Italy will finally enact the obligation for the Cassa Previdenziale to actually have a depository bank as well, which should drive growth of this business going forward. Interest rates started to show the positive impact. The hard to collect bond portfolio has increased in terms of yield given the rollover of the investment.
We have gained a positive spread in retail deposits and marked down to the WIBOR, and also we've been able to control euro funding cost over the period. Overall, a pretty strong set of underlying economics for the business. There are also things which didn't work out as well. We still have delays in the LPI collections in Italy, particularly given the difficulty in having out of court transactions in the Italian market. Although there, we are seeing some sign of improvement, particularly in July. The financial market clearly has impacted the level of assets under custody in Securities Services. Spain continues to inject liquidity in the market and the recent invoices have been paid fairly well.
Overall, we think the environment is quite positive for the business. The results of the bank are strong. We continue to generate a lot of free capital, and we're well positioned in the current environment. I leave it to Giorgio to go through the details of the presentation, and we can start the thing from page five, going through the factoring and lending.
Okay, thank you. For the factoring and lending, as highlighted by our CEO, there was a strong rebound in terms of volumes. Also we are at the highest level in terms of loans receivable portfolio. The growth for the loan book is around 35%, and this is historical high with a very strong performance in Italy and in Greece. We suffered a bit in Portugal, but mainly for a delay on a large contract that previously last year was signed in June, and this year has been signed in July. For the NPI stock, we are seeing a continued growth and is at EUR 745 million before taxes with the part not recognized in our P&L that is EUR 434 million.
The NPI collected decreased year-over-year, as I highlighted before, due to the delay of out-of-court agreement, especially in Italy. The agreement with the debtor is sometimes, and after the COVID, is a bit long path, and we are still suffering about that, but we are seeing some improvement starting from July. Going to the next page, the profit before tax. The profit before tax grew year-over-year. The net interest income grew 16%, despite the lower NPI over recovery. The total net revenues grew at the same level compared to the previous year. We've seen also an increase in direct OpEx.
This has been driven by the higher volumes, but this is flat year-over-year on average loan. The profit before tax grew at 15% year-over-year. We have seen also an increase in terms of net provisions due to some change in the generic provision macro scenario and some specific provision booked in our portfolio in Poland. Going to the next Page seven, for the securities services, the assets under custody, in general, suffered a bit due to the macroeconomic environment. Despite that, we book a very positive P&L result, and total net revenues are up by 6% year-over-year.
We put a lot of effort also on the OpEx. Direct OpEx decreased around 9% year-over-year, and at least we have a profit before tax that has been higher of 22% compared to the previous year. For the payments, at page eight, also the final result, profit before tax, was very positive, around 11% year-over-year. We have seen an increase in number of transfer and collection. The card settlement are up by 36% year-over-year. For the checks and receivable, we have seen a structural decrease, because this is a line of business that is decreasing time by time. The corporate payments are higher.
At the end, the net interest income has been significantly higher compared to the previous year. Going to the next page for the corporate center. Also in this business unit, we achieved a good result, not commercial results, but in this case, we put, starting from last year, a lot of effort in terms of synergies. The final result of the first six months of 2022 are reflecting the effort that we put on that. We have a profit before tax that is positive. Compared to the previous year, the increase was around EUR 25.5 million. In terms of synergies, we decrease OpEx that are down by EUR 11.9 million.
We also have a provision for risk that increased primarily due to some change in the employee benefits. Going to the next page, we have our asset and liability structure. We are strong in LCR leverage ratio and also in the NSFR ratio. We increased our government portfolio to EUR 6 billion. At the end of the first six months of 2022, the floaters are around EUR 3.2 billion. There was a strong growth in Polish retail deposit market, and we took advantage of the markdown of the interest rate in term deposits compared to the WIBOR.
The euro cost of funding is at 13 basis points over WIBOR one-month. We didn't have any ECB funding that has to be refinanced, not now and also in the future. We are confirming at page 11 our good asset quality. There was an increase in terms of basis points for the cost of risk. It has been driven by the change in generic provision and some specific provision that has been taken into account in the lending business. 83% of our impaired loans are toward the public sector. The main parts of our non-performing exposure are related to the municipalities, so-called dissesto finanziario.
Saying that, we have page twelve, the final result, EUR 68.5 million in first half of 2022 of it that can be distributed as interim dividend.
The distribution will be on the 24th of August. Despite that, we are maintaining EUR 152 million of excess capital that remains at our disposal. In that, the total capital ratio, the CET1 is at 15.1%, and the total capital ratio is at 21.2%. On, also on that side, we are maintaining our strong shape, and so we can have a very positive look to the future. Saying that, I leave the floor again to Max Belingheri in order to conclude our presentation.
Thank you, Giorgio. I will clearly start the first half. We've done the first half of the year with a strong set of results. We're quite pleased, particularly in having restarted the growth of the factoring and lending business and reaching the highest level ever of our loans. Importantly, the fact that we have continued to invest in that business and we have plenty of capital and liquidity puts us in a great position to take advantage of the growth opportunity that will come in the months and year ahead. With that, I conclude my presentation of Giorgio, and leave the floor for any question you might have.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. To ask a question, you may press star then one on your telephone keypad. To withdraw your question, please press star then two. The first question is from Nicolò Nunziata with Intermonte SIM. Please go ahead.
Hi, good afternoon. Thank you for the presentation. I have three question. The first one is related to the outlook. I was wondering if you could provide us some quantitative guidance for 2022. The second one is related to quarter results and in particular to corporate center. I saw a negative impact related to the currency swap. I was wondering how much of this impact has been offset by higher NII. What kind of evolution do you expect going forward if you expect other negative impact? Finally, always looking at corporate center, I was wondering if in this quarter you have booked some banking charges. Thank you.
Okay. On the outlook, it's an easy answer. We don't give a guidance for 2022. We haven't given to the market when we had the plan, and we don't give it today. On the corporate center, the swaps are offset by net interest income. We always run a matched funding position in currencies, so two items are offset. In general, we have more funding at overnight and one month EURIBOR or WIBOR when we swap, and we have more assets on six months WIBOR or EURIBOR. Therefore, there is a bit of a delay in catching up with the rates, which will have a positive impact for us going forward.
In terms of overall offset between the two items, are actually offset by the corporate center by the interest income line. In terms of banking charges, yes, we have had the Resolution Fund charged to the P&L in the quarter for EUR 3.7 million.
Sorry. Maybe a follow-up. I do not understand the banking charges registered in the quarter.
EUR 3.7 million of Resolution Fund.
Thank you.
The next question is from Andrea Lisi with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. The first one is on LPI collection. Wondering to understand if you are putting in place or if there is a possibility to put in place some strategy to improve this amount, this level, going on. The second question is your feeling about the securities and payment services in a worsening macro scenario, how resilient this business can be. The third question is on loan loss provision. We see that you set some loan loss provision in the quarter. Do you think that you have put in place also some generic provisions, or do you think that even in case of a further worsening of the scenario, you are okay with this item, or maybe there could be something more?
The very last question is on the NII of the corporate center. We see EUR 10 million increase in contribution quarter-on-quarter. How much of this is related to the higher contribution from the bond portfolio? Thank you.
Sorry. Let me restart the question. I was on mute while I was talking. On NPI collection, we have made some changes in the team and how the team is working to get more transactions in Italy, specifically. We expect the performance to improve. Now, the timing of it is not only in our hands, because we are doing transaction with the public sector. It depends on also willingness of public sector to transact. That's clearly a key point for us of focus in terms of improving the cash collection in terms of NPI.
Remember last year, we had a positive impact in the first quarter of strong collections in Spain because the court processes had restarted after a year gap. On the macro environment for Securities Services and Payments, there has been a correction in the public markets. We are therefore exposed to that in our business. But at the same time, we have used some hedging by having some commission driven by settlements, which tends to grow actually in moments of dislocation, which has covered a part of that impact. Overall, we are operating in areas, particularly in the pension fund area and in the alternative asset management area, which have secular trends of growth.
The pension fund sector, pension funds, the one that are set up by industry bodies are still very much in the accumulation phase. That actually drives continuous flow into the assets. The alternative asset management market, again, in Italy is still relatively small, and we still see a lot of initiatives in that field that cover everything from real estate, credit, private equity, and so on. Overall, we remain quite positive on that front. Payments is more linked to economic activity. Again, the Italian market is probably less impacted than others in terms of GDP growth. Also, given the huge inflow of money that will come through the PNRR.
Therefore, we are quite positive also on the development on that front as well. We don't see any major dislocation there. In terms of medium-term opportunities, as I mentioned before, I think this decree, which has been announced by the departing government, hopefully, will be enacted before the end of the year. It could open up an interesting market worth around EUR 100 billion of assets that will require to be moved into a depository bank. Those are the Cassa Previdenziale, which are similar to pension funds. We have a strong position. In terms of general provision and cost of risk, as you see, it's still aligned with what we had in the first half of 2021.
We are not seeing a worsening driven in our portfolio by the macro condition. Because we use for the general provision an external provider, Moody's in this case, which assess the risk portfolio, then we have to take a charge based also on their macro assumption on the portfolio as a whole. Which is, if you want, a mathematical impact more than an increase in the overall cost of risk. Our portfolio is almost entirely toward the public sector, and therefore the charges we are getting are an immaterial part of that portfolio of the remaining portfolio.
On net interest income, if you look at the bond portfolio, where we are today compared to where we were in March, remember we have the fixed rate part, which is fixed rate. So by definition is not impacted. The floaters are basically on almost all, about EUR 100 million, which is on a three months. It's on six months, sorry, on six months rate. So it means actually the reset will happen later in the year, basically starting from this quarter. So we haven't seen yet the impact of that on our accounts.
Thank you.
What we are seeing, remember, we have the rollover effect, so the new bonds clearly are reinvested at a much higher yield than the one that are expired.
Really clear. Thank you.
The next question is from Giovanni Razzoli with Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon to everybody. Three questions from here. Can you share with us since the last time that we spoke at the end of May, the evolution of the short-term rates has significantly improved. Can you share with us an updated sensitivity to the rate environment? In that context, how shall we look at your EUR 175 million business plan target for 2023 in that environment? That's my first question. The second question is clarification of the evolution of the leverage ratio, which has decreased, if I'm not mistaken, on a quarter-on-quarter basis by 60 basis points to 4.1%.
I'm wondering whether this is due to the interim dividend payment, because I've seen that the total asset grew by, you know, only 3% quarter-over-quarter, which is a remarkable level, but not that much in the context of the decrease in the leverage ratio. I was wondering as, you know, we are back approaching the 4% level, whether how this square with the growth that will remain strong in the future and with your target to stick to a 100% payout policy for the future.
The third question is the decision to pay an interim dividend. Well done, in my view. I was wondering whether the decision to go for that we may read it as an indication that your M&A appetite is a little bit lower when comparing with the previous quarter. I was wondering also what your reasoning about your M&A strategy and external growth options in the context of rising rates and acceleration of the volumes. One would think that, you know, on a standalone basis, you seem to have a significantly more acceleration option to accelerate the volumes. Sorry, the profit generation than with the external growth also taking into consideration the executional risk that is attached to M&A.
If you allow me to ask you also this, we read that you would be in exclusive talks for an M&A option. I would like to know whether you can share with us when this period, if there is, terminates. Thank you.
Okay. Let's go through them. Actually a lot of questions, so if I miss some of them, please remind. On the interest rate environment, look, we spoke at the beginning of May, rates actually went up, in terms of forward, and it came back again. The environment has not changed massively, since then, if you look at where we are today. The analysis we shared with you still stand in terms of sensitivity to the interest rate environment. On leverage ratio, we don't have an explicit target on leverage ratio for our dividend policy. The dividend policy is set in terms of total capital. We had declining leverage ratio because the asset side grew.
Certainly we don't account for the EUR 68 million of capital of the period in the leverage ratio, because that will be paid out. That's an important consideration. Certainly we don't have a 4% target in terms of leverage ratio. In terms of mix, also, you need to bear in mind. Given that the loan and receivable portfolio yields significantly more than the government bond portfolio over time, we can keep the leverage ratio at a fairly fixed rate and substitute one for the other, while the government bond portfolio amortizes and the loan portfolio instead grows. In terms of interim dividend, look, that's a decision we communicated to the market earlier in the year. It's independent from the M&A consideration.
At the moment, we don't have anything announced or signed, so there's no need to change our plans. The interim dividend was a way to actually make sure we repatriate capital to the shareholder in the most efficient possible way. As you know, our business is a peak of demand of capital at year-end. Actually we generate a lot of capital in the middle of the year that sits there doing nothing. Having a payment midway through the year was a way to make our balance sheet more efficient overall. In terms of organic and inorganic growth, we look at opportunities all the time.
We have certainly now a lot of opportunity to grow organically, but we knew we had those opportunity to grow organically when we announced in our strategic plan also, the M&A strategy. We speak to that because we see the benefit of, diversifying and complementing our business, which is the strategy that we've laid out on the M&A side. On the status of the discussion, we don't comment to the market until we actually have something meaningful to comment.
Thank you.
The next question is from Filippo Crini with Kepler. Please go ahead.
Hello. Good afternoon. Just one question from my side. Could you confirm the timetable of the off-boarding of the asset in the depository bank with Arca? Still you can confirm that this off-boarding that was unexpected, looking at the time when you presented your industrial plan, does not bring any impact, really negative, on your target and attainment of the result of the business plan in 2023. Thank you.
Yes. In terms of timetable, we expect it to happen by the year-end, as communicated also by Arca to the market. In terms of the target, as we have communicated to the market in November of last year, we reiterated our targets for 2033 at a group level. Clearly not division by division, but group level. We believe that the trajectory that we have set ourselves on will continue to confirm those targets, which is actually. Sorry, a question I missed on the previous list of questions that were submitted.
As a reminder, if you have a question, please press star then one. The next question is from Michele Baldelli with BNP Paribas Exane. Please go ahead.
Yes, good afternoon to everybody. I have a couple of questions. The first one is the strategy on the refinancing of the portfolio of bonds. If you can update on is it still a majority or almost all in Italian government bonds, or would you like to diversify more on this? Secondly, still on the refinancing, what is the spread that you see on the marginals or the new refinancing of this bond portfolio? Another question relates to the LPI. If you can give a little bit more color if you have been impacted by any rescheduling of the LPI accounting, if there is let's say a longer time on some of these loans to get the money from the government. Thank you.
Yeah. On this one, no, not really. Remember, we have on average a five-year expected collection time for the portfolio. So movement of lower level of collection within the year are not really moving the amount as much. If you think about how much we have collected less is EUR 9-11 million less than last year, on a portfolio of EUR 700 million. Most of the collection happened in the last quarter, so we don't have an impact there. In any case, if we were, remember, we always take a revenue provision in case of reschedulings, because we're keeping the IRR of the portfolio always at the level that we price the portfolio at.
In terms of the bond portfolio, if you look at Page 10, you'll notice that your margin increased, the size of the portfolio compared to last quarter. Importantly, we have substituted fixed rate part of the fixed rate portfolio that was being repaid with floaters that's more matched to our liability side as well. You have a spread here of 77 bps that increased compared to the previous quarter. If you take the latest bonds we have acquired, we had a spread of roughly 100 basis points over EURIBOR six months, which means actually we're locking in good returns on a bond portfolio, which remains almost entirely with the exception of $100 million of USD short-term bonds based on Italian government exposure. Why?
It's mostly actually because it's the most liquid market in Europe in terms of bonds. It's easier to do repos on Italian government bonds than, for instance, Spanish Bonos or Portuguese bonds or other bonds. As we said, our strategy is actually to continue to grow the loan and receivable portfolio and have this one as a plug for our liquidity, maximizing our leverage ratio.
Thank you very much.