Good morning, everyone, and thank you for joining our results conference call. First quarter net profit stable year-on-year at EUR 162 million, despite the higher tax rate by two percentage points. Revenues up by around 4% year-on-year at EUR 343 million, with all product areas contributing positively. Banking up by around 2% with higher deposits volumes, more than offsetting the lower interest rates. Investing up by around 8% thanks to the volume effect. Brokerage up by around 5% thanks to the higher stock of Asset under Custody and the expanding active investor base. Operating costs were under control at around EUR 95 million, increasing by around 5.2% year-on-year, excluding the additional cost related to the growth of the business.
Cost-income ratio was equal to 27.7%, confirming operating leverage as a key strength of the bank. Our capital position confirmed to be strong and safe, with a Common Equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.34% and leverage ratio at 5.14%. Moving to our commercial performance. We are experiencing a material step up in our growth. This is driven by our unique positioning, capturing long-term structural trends and by our execution on several initiatives. The impact of this acceleration is clearly visible in our numbers. The first quarter net sales increased by 44% year-on-year. In April, net sales at EUR 1.3 billion, + 6% year-on-year, with around EUR 600 million deposits, around EUR 320 million assets under management, and around EUR 320 million Asset under Custody. Brokerage revenues estimated at a solid EUR 22 million.
New clients continued to grow at a strong pace, up by 18% year-on-year in the first quarter. In April, new clients were equal to 17,500, up by 16% year-on-year. Now coming to the guidance. Upgraded outlook for our 2026 and 2029 plan, confirming the quality of our diversified business model. The better outlook is driven by a combination of better than expected net sales and clients growth, very strong brokerage, expected to grow further, highest interest rates environment. No change on investing guidance 2026. We expect all the product areas contributing to higher revenues, thanks to the acceleration of our structural growth. We expect net financial income rising, thanks to deposits net sales and the new rates environment.
Investing a solid year-over-year increase in Assets Under Management net sales. Brokerage, we expect another record year. Banking fees stable year-over-year. Cost, we expect a growth by around 6%, not including around EUR 10 million additional costs for growth initiatives and around EUR 5 million for the Pan-European platform set up. Let's now move to slide seven and start to dive on the quarter results. Net financial income is up 1%, both quarter-on-quarter and year-over-year, led by the positive volume effect on deposits and by the higher reinvestment yield of our bonds running off. This performance is particularly remarkable when considering that the quarter-on-quarter comparison is affected by fewer calendar days, lower rates versus first quarter 2025. Let me reiterate the quality of our net interest income.
It is capital light and industrially driven by our clients sticky transactional liquidity. Deposits come to our platform for the quality of our services, not because of aggressive commercial campaign on short-term rates. This translates into cost of funding close to zero. As a result, even a small banking-only client is profitable. Down on the right, you can see the very strong dynamics of our deposit net sales in the first quarter. Deposits grew by 32% year-on-year before clients investments. Those dynamics were even stronger in April, with around EUR 700 million deposits net sales. Let's now move on slide eight. Investing revenues increased by around 8% year-on-year, driven by the growing volumes. The quarterly comparison is characterized by the usual seasonality. PFA costs related to FIRR and then Enasarco that are higher at the beginning of the year.
Other commissions in the fourth quarter of 2025 due to operating efficiency achieved by Fineco Asset Management, which are booked for accounting reasons in the fourth quarter, and fewer calendar days. On the right, you can see the drivers of our investing revenues growth, mainly the higher year-on-year Asset Under Management volumes, where 53% is represented by explicit fees solutions. On the other end, let's move on to slide nine for a focus on brokerage. Let's move to brokerage. One main pillar of our business model, a business that is growing strong, highly profitable with a high operational gearing and with a clear market leadership. The two charts on the slide highlight the long-term correlation between brokerage revenues and the stock of Asset under Custody. The brokerage business represents the best sign of the how fast the structure of the financial market is evolving.
Technology is driving a quick change clients behaviors, thanks to the demand for higher transparency led by AI. For this reason, we consider the brokerage Italian market significantly still under-penetrated, and we see a strong opportunity to grow. We are rolling out new initiatives to further unlock the potential from our Asset under Custody, which we will deep dive later. Now, let's focus on slide 11 on our capital ratios. Fineco confirm once again capital position well above requirements on the wave of a safe balance sheet. Common Equity Tier 1 ratio at 23.3%, and the leverage ratio at 5.14%, with risk-weighted assets at EUR 6.3 billion. Total capital ratio at 39.27%. Liquidity coverage ratio over 950%, and Net Stable Funding Ratio over 400%. High quality liquid assets on deposits at around 80%.
Let's now move to slide 13. Fineco benefits from a unique marketing positioning, fully capturing its long-term growth opportunity. On the left, we show our market share on the addressable financial wealth, which is still very small. On the right, we summarize the key structural trends that are reshaping the financial services industry and reinforcing our strategic positioning. First, AI disruption, which is driving for higher transparency in financial services and higher productivity. Fineco is already well positioned thanks to its market positioning and state-of-the-art platform. Second, the massive generational wealth transfer. New generations are looking for efficiency, transparency, and convenience, all core elements of Fineco's value proposition. Third, the consolidation in the banking industry with traditional banks not focused on customer experience. Fineco sits exactly at the crossroads of these three big structural trends.
Moving now to slide 14, we show a clear example of our distinctive positioning compared to the industry, focusing on the investing business. Fineco is a clear outlier in the Italian market with a value proposition based on efficiency, transparency, and convenience. This is reflected in a great quality of our investing revenues. Our revenues are mostly driven by recurring management fees based on a fair pricing with no performance fees and a negligible component represented by upfront fees. This is marking a clear difference in the long-term sustainability of our investing revenues compared to the system. As you can see on the right, other player are not just applying performance fees on the top of a highly expensive investment solution, but also clearly pushing stronger on upfront fees. Fineco clearly sits on the other side.
Moving to slide 15, you can see how all this is leading to the inflection point of our growth. Our most recent numbers are clearly showing a material step up in the magnitude of our growth in net sales and new clients. Let me reiterate that total net sales remain the most important KPI to evaluate our growth on each component of the mix contributes positively to our revenues and net profit. Asset Under Management leads to higher investment, investing growth. Asset under Custody net sales are a key driver for our brokerage revenues. Transaction liquidity, which is gathered with a cost of funding close to EUR 0, contribute to our capital light and industrially driven net interest income. Let's now move to slide 20, guidance. Upgraded outlook for 2026 and 2029 plan confirming the quality of our diversified business model.
The better outlook is driven by a combination of better than expected net sales and clients growth, very strong brokerage expected to further growth, higher interest rates environment. No change on investing guidance 2026 on investing. We expect all product areas contributing to higher revenues, thanks to the acceleration of our structural growth. We expect a better net financial income thanks to positive deposit net sales in the new rates environment. Investing solid year-over-year increase in asset under management net sales. Brokerage, another record year, thanks to higher assets under custody and active investor base. Banking fees stable year-over-year. Operating cost, we expect growth by around 6%, not including around EUR 10 million additional costs for growth initiatives and around EUR 5 million for the Pan-European platform set up.
Cost income, we expect it comfortably below 30%, thanks to the scalability of our platform and strong operating gearing. The cost of risk was equal to 9 basis points, thanks to the quality of our lending portfolio, and is expected in a range between 5 and 10 basis points. Finally, payout ratio is expected for 2026 in a range between 70% and 80%. On leverage ratio, our goal is to remain above 4.5. I'll now hand over to our Deputy General Manager, Paolo Di Grazia. Thank you.
Thank you, Alessandro, and good morning, everybody. On slide 21, we focus on the initiatives to fully unlock the value of our Asset under Custody and increase our brokerage revenues. First, the securities lending platform, which we plan to launch by the end of this June and will be a marketplace for institutional counterparties, giving direct access to our high quality and fast-growing stock of Asset under Custody. Let me remind the quality of our AUC, Asset under Custody, highly granular, well-diversified across classes and geographies and retail-driven, which adds significant value in the securities lending market. Importantly, more than 40% of the stock is already opted in. Combined with the expected growth of AUC, the opportunity can be very relevant.
Second initiatives, the Auto-FX, which is now live on all our client base. The Auto-FX gives clients a linear customer experience with no exposure to Forex risk. At the same time, it presents a structurally more profitable setup for the entire bank, improving both revenues generation and client satisfaction. Finally, our activity as a systematic internalizer and market maker. We are positioning Fineco to benefit from the shift of European brokerage market toward a more quote-driven model, increasingly similar to the United States. In the future, we expect growing volume to be internalized across multiple asset classes. We will expand our activity as issuer and market maker for a wide range of products. Finally, this activity is a backbone of the launch of our future Pan-European platform.
Down in the slide, we show the strong upside potential of these three growing initiatives to our brokerage revenues. Their contribution today is progressively building up, and we are very confident they will become increasingly important going forward in the future. Let's now move to slide 22 to dive on ETFs. Fineco is uniquely positioned to capture the strong client-driven shift toward ETFs. For a player like Fineco, the business represent a strong growth opportunity and a new revenue engine for brokerage both and investing, thanks to two main pillar. The first, our very efficient trading platform that is building up strong in volumes on the ETF side. Second, our distribution model based on advanced advisory solution with an explicit fee where ETFs are synergetic with no significant harm to margin and profitability of the bank.
As a consequence, on the left side, you can see the strong acceleration in revenues from ETFs over the recent years. The stock on our platform is quickly on the rise and is now close to EUR 18 billion, gaining strong traction both among clients supported by financial planner and among direct clients. To further monetize ETFs, we are acting on several levers, both on brokerage and on the investing side. On the brokerage side, we, first growing clients engagement means higher turnover and higher brokerage fees. Second, ETFs are very well in demand for securities lending, and it's a strong opportunity for our internalization engine. Finally, the platform fee agreement with a selection of ETFs issuers will be in place by the end of this half, adding a further recurring revenue streams.
On the investing side, we see the strong clients interest means a big volume for our advanced advisory services, resulting in stronger revenues. Second, FAM, Fineco Asset Management is live with its active ETF range. For plain vanilla ETFs is entering in a co-branding partnership with one of the leading issuer. Finally, ETFs accumulation installment plans are now fully available on our investing services. Let's quickly move to slide 23. The plan for the deployment for our Pan-European platform are progressing as expected. We confirm that by year-end we will launch our first friends and family phase, which will follow the full launch on early 2027. Moving on to slide 24, we summarize the deployment of our artificial intelligence across our proprietary platforms.
As a reminder, our AI-driven initiatives are already starting to deliver results. As an example, personal financial advisor constantly using the AI platform saw an increase close to 20% of their commercial proposals. Finally, let me now briefly summarize the most recent artificial intelligence initiatives. First, we are live with the customer relationship management for our financial planners. A key step to increase their productivity is fully integrated with Fineco platform and data, and allows our network to better clusters client and identify priority actions. Second, we are in the friends and family phase, also with the brokerage co-pilot that will improve the awareness and the engagement of our direct clients. The AI tool allows clients to screen securities, analyze portfolios on relevant news, and is fully integrated in the execution engine.
Thank you for your time and, we can now open the call to questions.
Thank you. This is the Chorus Call conference operator. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. To remove yourself from the question queue, please press star and two. We kindly ask to use handsets when asking questions. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Enrico Bolzoni with JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my questions. First question, I just noticed that there was a small drop in management fee margins over the quarter. I suspect this might be related to the fluctuation in markets and the mix. Can you perhaps help us to understand a bit what drove it? Perhaps would be helpful to know, for example, what proportion of your AUM was in equity, or let's say high margin product, at the end of March relative to the beginning of the year. That would be helpful for us to understand how the margin might evolve there over the coming quarters. The second question, I noticed that there's a very good trend undergoing on your salary, pension transfer.
I was looking at your slide where you showed the money coming in from these. On average, in Q1, for example, your bank transfer and salaries have increased by 13% year-on-year, so compared to the same quarter last year, despite average clients having increased only by 9%. The same trend applies to 2025. It really looks that either your existing clients are giving you more money or transferring the back book or the new clients, on average have higher initial transfer compared to the historical one. Can you maybe give us some KPI? I don't know, perhaps how many clients are you seeing using only Fineco or Fineco as their main, their main bank? Is the trend increasing?
Because clearly this looks like a very positive trend. Finally on NII, I appreciate that you don't provide a very specific guidance, but if I look at consensus currently, expects about 6% increase year-on-year, that looks pretty light. One of your competitors just reported and they revised their guidance up. They now expect 15% growth year-on-year. Can you just give us a ballpark figure, even based on current deposit levels and forward curves? I think it would be very helpful, just to get a sense of how NII could evolve. Thanks.
Thank you for your questions. Let me start by the first one on the small drop in management fee margins. As you are correctly underlying, it is a really very small drop. It's clear that the reason a combination of- A change in the market, a change caused by the market effect because clearly when you have a negative impact caused by the market, clearly this tends to drive down the, also the margins because it's impacting. Clearly there has been still the reason the largest component in terms of net sales represented by fixed income solutions. That clearly. Again, as we are continuously repeating, we are not particularly focused on the very small evolution on the margins because at the end of the story, what is for us important is the combination between volumes and margins at the end of the story, the evolution of revenues.
Clearly it's, we have been always extremely transparent on this point, that we think that, generally speaking, the, on the asset under management side, the industry is expected to keep on experience some kind of a pressure on margins. What is important that you are able to keep on growing decently and robustly and, at the end of the story, delivering an a good evolution of the, of the revenues. At the moment, the proportion of Asset Under Management in equity is probably in the region of 35%.
Yeah.
More or less, that. We didn't see any significant change at the end of the first quarter 2026. We don't expect any significant change in going forward on the short term. On the good trends on salary and pensions, clearly this is a combination of new clients that they are entering into the bank using the platform. Clearly, for us, it's very important to underline how the way we are gathering clients. Fineco is not gathering clients throughout aggressive offer or paying very high rates. Fineco is gathering clients because the clients are truly interested in using our services because they are considered state-of-the-art.
Clearly in the, in the evolution of the crediting of salary by clients, there is clearly a great contribution by the new clients, but we have also the clients we acquired in the past, that they are becoming more familiar with the platform, they are deciding to credit their salary with us. It's a kind of increase of the share of wallet in terms of experience of our clients. Clearly, we think that probably Fineco is. What is important is to look at which is the to say if Fineco is not or not, is yes or not the main bank for our higher clients. The answer is that this is clearly yes.
This is perfectly demonstrated by the when we look to the what's going on on the private banking side. Fineco is growing 3x faster than the industry. This is the segment in which we are growing the most in terms of speed of acquisition of assets exactly for this reason. The more the generational transfers is progressing, the more the clients are becoming, are realizing the quality of our offer, and the more we have clients that they are using, upper end clients, they are using more and more Fineco as their reference bank. Consensus expected 6% increase on our net interest income.
Clearly we think the reason of the upgrade is because clearly we expect more, because we clearly. This we are confident on that because on one end, there is the very clear evidence that the growth that the bank is experiencing is very well ahead of our expectation. By definition, growing net sales is bringing together higher deposits as well. The same story for the client acquisitions. This is the main driver. In terms of a change of the interest rates environment, we took a conservative approach.
Clearly now we are expecting a forward rate curve that is higher respect to the forward rate curve we used for preparing the plan, but is remaining definitely below the actual forward rate curve. It's, so the expectation in terms of evolution net interest income is clearly above this 6% increase, but remains, let me say, reasonably cautious. It's, it's not, we are not bringing in a book of dreams.
The next question is from Christiane Holstein with Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thank you for taking my questions. My first question is around the upgraded guidance outlook. Obviously the numbers have been very good, but this is quite fast given guidance was only given two months ago. I was wondering if you are able to quantify how much stronger this is versus your expectations? On the net sales and client growth in particular, I was thinking of what you think the drivers are of this. I'm wondering if this current growth is sustainable or if it's more been driven by recent volatility in marketing spend. My next question was also on the update on the Germany launch. Wondering if there's anything to say there around timing, when in H2 or H1 next year and anything on variable costs.
I guess how are you also thinking about the competitive environment given commentary from recent peers? Thank you.
Giving a very precise, quantifying it precisely the upgrade of the guidance, it's always is can be extremely difficult to give you an example. Because if we look. For example, as I was saying before, we are using a prudent approach in considering the impact of the interest rates on the interest rates environment. It's difficult to say exactly because of what can be the real dimension of the increase of the financial income for these reasons.
Because clearly it's, if we, if we consider the actual forward record, clearly it can be definitely much higher than we can have, if we are considering just an small uptick with respect to the initial forward record we used for our plan. This is the reason why. What is important to underline that it's what is driving the increase of this guidance is, as we said during the presentation, what is key as a KPI to keep in mind is the evolution of the Total Financial Assets of the net sales.
We considering the business more than the positioning of the bank, every single component of the mix is contributing positively to the increase of the revenues at the end of the story profits. Deposits is pretty clear considering that, these deposits are gathered in extremely healthy way. This means that, the most part of these deposits are characterized by an zero beta, and so, clearly these are incredibly profitable. Second, the Asset under Custody. The reason as we showed during the presentation, there is a very evident correlation between the dimension of the Asset under Custody and the progression of the brokerage revenues.
Clearly, the more Asset under Custody we gather, the more you can expect that the floor of the brokerage revenues is going to keep on moving up. This is the reason why we are confident in expecting for another record here on the brokerage side exactly for this reason. Asset under Custody, it's a great business. Very profitable, fast-growing, and with margins that they are not too different by the margins we have on the asset under management. Finally, there is Asset Under Management that it's extremely easy to explain why it's profitable. The growth, yes, it's absolutely sustainable.
We think on the other end that we are in the position to keep on accelerating even more the growth of net sales and clients. Regarding the marketing expenditures, it's what is very important to underline that the growth is not a direct consequence of the marketing expenditure. The growth is a direct consequence if you are spending your marketing budget in the proper way. The concept is, I think that probably Paolo can be even more precise regarding when you're spending in marketing, it's very important that there is a high probability that someone is listening to you.
For example, if you are a bank that is not correctly positioned, and you are transferring the concept that you are a great bank doing a great service for your clients, this is a complete waste of money. If you are a bank that is perfectly positioned, currently with the messages that you are delivering, the more you spend and the better it is. Clearly this is the real reason behind this growth is the positioning of the bank and exactly that is exactly capturing perfectly the incoming trends. On the I don't know, Paolo, if you want to spend a few words on the-
Yeah.
German launch.
The German launch as we said, we expect to launch the initiatives by the end of this year in the Friends and Family phase. It really depends. Will depends on the friends and family phase. For now, we stay for the final launch to open the for everybody in the first quarter of 2027. Again, the friends and family phase will give us, you know, the exact launch date. It's, we will have more details by then.
Thank you.
The next question is from Alberto Villa from Intermonte SIM. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning, Alessandro and Paolo. I have a couple of questions. One is related to the securities lending platform launch in June. Maybe can you give us an order of magnitude of revenues that you expect in a, let's say, full year of operation, so 2027? Is that gonna be a significant contributor to revenues in your view? It's a, it's quite a new one because it's also for institutional, so it could be interesting to understand. The second question is on the T otal Financial Assets breakdown. There has been a slight decline for the private banking.
Of course, it has been impacted by the market performance, but I was wondering if there is any other specific reason for the slight decline, and if you still expect this part of the business to grow significantly in the future. Yeah, what are your expectations on the, say, private banking part in terms of net sales and future evolution? Thank you.
On the securities lending, clearly what the bank is preparing is an extremely efficient platform because clearly the success of the securities lending business is going to be driven by two components. One, the dimension of the Asset under Custody business, and second, by the efficiency of the platform. In the end, meaning that the platform has to be able to deal with the broadest possible range of counterparties. On security, this platform is going to interact with our internal clients, so asset managers, hedge funds, market makers, prime brokerage desk, and so on.
This has to be a platform, is going to be a platform able to give real-time interaction with all these extremely broad range of players. It's clear that we are moving in a kind of, we are extremely confident. It's clear that until so far, the contribution of securities lending has been pretty small, and we remain quite positive. In our plan, as we said, we took a reasonable conservative approach because we are entering in a kind of an unchartered territory, a very promising unchartered territory. In any case, it remains to be tested.
We think that, to give to you precise numbers by the end is in the guidance we are giving just to be extremely transparent, in the just recent upgraded guidance for 2026 and the plan, we are not embedding any gigantic contribution by the securities lending, but not because we are not confident that we can achieve that, because it's a brand-new activity that we are entering. The combination of the dimension of the Asset under Custody we have, the granularity of the business we're running, because this is another very important component, and the usual state-of-the-art capability of the bank of building up very efficient platforms is making us extremely positive and confident on the evolution.
On the private banking, as you is exactly what you are aware underlying, is just being driven by the market performance because it's clear that there's more clients. By definition, the percentage of liquidity that tends to be much bigger than the big clients. By definition, when you have a decline in markets, by definition, liquidity is performing well. We don't expect that. The trajectory in terms of growth of our private banking is remaining absolutely intact and very promising.
Okay. Thank you. Going back just to understand to the securities lending, from what you are saying, the assumptions underlying also in your, in your midterm guidance are not particularly aggressive. That could be an area in which, if things go in the right direction, there might be some potential positive news flow. Is that correct?
It, it-
Understanding that.
is exactly that.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question comes from Ian White of Autonomous Research. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my questions. Two from my side, please. Firstly on the AI enhancements that you've talked about, can you just say a bit about what usage you're seeing on those so far, and how will you incentivize that usage among your own advisors? Relatedly, what KPIs should we look out for to see that those tools are having the desired impact on the business? That's question one, please. Secondly, just on the theme of competition within European brokerage and distribution, why do you think that's less evident for you in Italy versus some of the listed peers over the first four months of this year?
What do you see as the main structural barriers, to competition, that will support your business over the next few years, please? Thank you.
I don't know, Paolo, do you want to start with the AI announcement? As for giving some colors and.
In terms of usage, the usage right now we deliver the AI platform just to the financial planner, and they are able to use it to build a portfolio, check portfolio if they're in line with the MiFID, for example, or with the risk profile of the client. They can use it to check on the news that have an impact on the client's portfolio. They can use it to build a pitch for new clients or maybe new portfolio, new allocation for clients they already have. They can do multiple things with the AI right now, and the usage is just massive.
90% and more of the net used already used the system, the engine. Every day we see a growing number of financial planner. They get used to the platform. They keep on using more and more and more. We were, of course, we're very happy with that. It's probably the, as I said many times, is probably one of the highest adoption we experience in our journey here in Fineco since the beginning. It's quite impressive.
In terms of how we incentivize the usage, actually, until now, at least, we didn't incentivize much because they just used spontaneously the platform. Also, having said that, we have a training program for the financial planner in place here in our academy training hub that we have here in the headquarters. We plan in the future to, you know, train more financial planner using the AI that we're releasing every month, more or less, new pieces of the platform.
As I said before, we just released the customer relationship management for the AI CRM, for the financial planner, which is in my opinion, is going to be even bigger in terms of impact than that we already have in place. In terms of KPI, we monitor different a list of different KPIs. One of the KPIs, one, the one I mentioned during the during the presentation is the number of proposal that financial planner are using AI are proposing to the final client, which is the number is quite impressive. It's 20% and more. This is a clear sign that is they have a higher productivity. They're more active.
They use the AI to be much more, you know, in contact with the final client. We use also another KPI, very important, is the number of new clients that financial planner using the AI are having. Different KPIs. Still, in my opinion, it's too early to share all these KPIs. They're all very good. We are very happy with what we see. Again, it's we need to wait for at least, you know, probably six months, one year since the launch and, you know, give the possibility to all the financial planner to get used and use every day the technology.
Thank you for raising the point of the competition E.U. brokerage arena. First of all, it's not completely correct saying that the competition has not come in Italy because the competition has come in Italy by many years. Here in Italy, by many years, we have here in Italy all the most aggressive players in the brokerage arena. We have Trade Republic that is operating in Italy. We have flatexDEGIRO that is operating in Italy by many years. Revolut as well. Interactive Brokers on the other end. There is all the broad range of the most significant and aggressive players operating all around Europe are here in Italy by many years.
It's not for which reason are we the Fineco model, it's keeping on growing, and it's a great business. We have several reasons. Number one, clearly there is the concept of the one-stop solution. Fineco is offering to the clients an extremely broad horizontal experience, and this clearly is extremely important for making the big clients very sticky because the big clients with the big money that they are using the brokers platform, clearly they are appreciating a lot the fact that Fineco is offering such a kind of a broad and great experience. Second, the experience we are giving, it's incredibly robust.
It's because at the end of the story what is very important to underline is that for a client it's important it's very important for example the reliability the robustness of the platform because clearly when you have particularly fast market and so on it's very important that everything has to be very strong and Fineco has an incredibly robust infrastructure. Third and this again is driving back to the concept of the big clients only or in case of clients with a decent amount of money Fineco is the only one player among the most relevant brokerage players in Europe that at the same time is a significant bank. Fineco is the only one. All the other platforms are small.
This clearly it's important for clients being sure that you can get your services by an extremely robust, solid, trustful bank. Also on the terms of offer pricing, Fineco is incredibly competitive because we during the presentation, we stressed the point that how Fineco is advanced in the direction of a business model similar to the U.S. one, which you are managing the flows. Fineco is internalizing a lot of the activity. It means that we are able to offer right now a quite significant range of solutions characterized by zero commissions, for example. I think that this is a fast-growing component of the business. I'm just thinking about it today.
I don't know, Paolo, it's.
Yeah. This is totally true. I mean, the product most used from traders like, for example, the most aggressive, the CFDs, are commission-free. The ETFs, a basket of ETF are commission-free. Certificates.
Commission.
Where we are issuer, fixed leverage and variable Leverage Certificates are commission-free. Our own, we internalize our own products. We on the trading side, a big range of clients are already commission-free. They're already profiting from the model that we have, that we are able to internalize flows and give commission-free business to the final client.
Summarizing, it's a unique combination where you can get a very broad experience and great services, robustness provided by a large, significant, and trusted bank with a level of commissions that are absolutely incredibly favorable and can match also the most aggressive offer by the, let me say, new brokers or something like that. This is what is making our position incredibly strong and continuously growing. The competition is here. It's not. We are facing this competition by many years. We have some of these players that entered Italy going back to 2014. Going back to 12 years ago, offering, for example, zero commissions.
Thanks for those very detailed answers. Much appreciated.
The next question comes from Oliver Carruthers with Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Morning. Thanks for the presentation. It's Oliver Carruthers from Goldman Sachs. On the kind of recent comments from your international peers, I think the marketing comment, and the cost of marketing per unit return I think has been well covered by you. I think one of the other interesting comments we got from another one of your peers is they were making the point that the cost of software is coming down in part due to AI making international expansion easier. I'd love to hear your thoughts on that, what you're seeing and really, how you're thinking about domestic and international growth priorities for your retail brokerage platform with that in mind.
Second question, could we potentially double-click on the, you know, the comments you made around growing the systematic internalization and the, and your market making activities? Really, you know, what's driving, what's driving this? It sounds like that's a little bit incremental today as well. If you've moved to becoming more of this principal agent model in brokerage, are there any capital requirements associated with this that we should be thinking about? Thank you.
The first answer on AI is clearly making much easier the international expansion. I'm just thinking about the I remember that a few years ago, there was a big hurdle represented by the CRM, for the languages. Now clearly it's something that you can manage incredibly well and easily, because theoretically you can build a CRM that is speaking a local language with also with a local dialect and without having the need of a physical person. It's, I don't know, Paolo, if you want to make some comment also on this point.
Yes. I mean, it's everything it's easier with AI. Not only for the expansion abroad, but for sure for the expansion abroad, the translation of the front ends was, you know, quite a problem a few years ago. Now we can translate our front ends in as many languages as we want in seconds. It's much easier. It's for many thing, for many different reason.
Also, it has made incredibly easy to go through, to navigate through the just small, a little bit different regulations because we know that we are in the European Union, but for example, the way compliance is working is not exactly the same.
A few years ago was a mess because it was necessary having in place a team of people that taking care of considering the different kind of compliance requirements in the different regions. Now, this can be done in really in a in few seconds by artificial intelligence. The timing of our decision of moving abroad is also, has come also thanks to the confidence now we have, thanks exactly to the presence of the artificial intelligence. The growing internalization market, it's this is a worldwide trend. If you look to the U.S. market, now the U.S. is clearly a completely quote-driven market.
It's a market where when you see the prices flashing on the screens are the prices provided by the market makers, that they are collecting the orders. That is different by what has been until so far the prevailing situation of the European market, where you have an order-driven market. In U.S. now, practically, this model is the results that the brokerage industry is an industry which practically there is the numbers of players that they are charging zero commissions is incredibly large, and the most part of the revenues are coming from the management of the flows. This clearly is an extremely easy, also very easy to be understood by clients process.
In Europe, it probably is going to be this approach is even more robust because in Europe, there are extremely strict rules on the best execution side. This means that you don't run the risk to have a little bit situation which you get a zero commission trade, but there is a question mark on the quality of the execution. In Europe, you can get both. Zero commissions and at the same time, an extremely fair and transparent execution. This is the reason why this approach is growing popular. What is key in order to play big in this arena? Number one, having the right kind of clients, retail clients are perfect.
Second, you need to have also the dimension, because clearly this is a business of dimension. If you are big, you can play this game. Otherwise, there is no way. Third, technology and infrastructures. Try to imagine what does it mean to just in a small fraction of seconds match clients' orders, fulfilling perfectly the best execution requirements, and so on. This is what is driving the growth. This is going to be the market of the future in Europe. This is one of the main point of strength on which we can leverage in our, for example, plan of expanding abroad. This is what is making us extremely confident. This is going to make our offer extremely distinctive.
In terms of capital requirements, no, not at all, because this is a kind of, let me say, smart market making that is not implying any usage of capital. It's a completely capital-light activity.
Thanks a lot. Really appreciate the detailed answers. Thank you.
The next question is a follow-up from Enrico Bolzoni with JPMorgan. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thanks. Sorry, just a small follow-up. In one of your slides talking about ETF, you say that you will have a platform fee going live the first part of this year, in 1H 2026. Can you just clarify, is this the fee that you will charge ETF manufacturer to distribute their products on your platform? If that is the case, are you able to just give a rough quantification of how much that is gonna be and how many players have already agreed to pay this? Thanks.
At the moment, we have the arrangement is going to include the, probably what are the, can we say, the three largest players in the industry. We cannot give you a disclosure on the dimension of the agreement because there is, as you can imagine, this is an extremely delicate point. We sign a no-disclosure agreement with them because this is an inflection point in the industry ETFs because it's marking the point in which clearly the industry is recognizing that more and more who is on the driving seat of this business are going to be the platforms. They clearly the ETFs world is an ocean. Just to give you an idea, on our platforms, we have 400 different MSCI World ETFs.
It's for the clients that apparently are all the same. Clearly the way the clients are navigating the platform is key and so on. This is a clear line that the issuers are fully aware of this. This is an incredibly important point in the evolution of the industry, and we are extremely positive and on the fact that clearly we are in that kind of position. Again, it's a business of scale, it's a business of volumes. Clearly the more we grow in terms of volumes, and the more clearly we can leverage on that. This is going to become important and relevant and giving us an edge.
It's going to be in the region of several million euros. Clear we cannot give you precise numbers right now. Clearly, these numbers are going to keep on evolving because it's not going to be a number that is going to be fixed this year for the future. It's going to continuously be managed and negotiated with the counterparty accordingly with the evolution of the volumes and the business. I don't know, Paolo, if you want to add a few words on this point.
We cannot say much more. As Alessandro said, we have a very, you know, hard NDA signed, we cannot say much more.
That's very helpful. Just for clarity, these additional millions will be booked on the brokerage commission? So w e will see that part of the brokerage commission.
Yes. Yes. I am looking to the CFO because she is in the driving seat for the accounting of the.
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Thank you for attending our results conference. Thank you for the usual, extremely interesting questions. As usual, every one of you that is interested in deep diving a little bit more in numbers, concepts, please call us any time for a follow-up. Thank you again, and see you soon.
Thank you very much.
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