Good day. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Mediobanca full year 2020-2023 results conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listening only mode. After the speaker presentation, there will be a question-and-answer session. To enter the queue for question, please press star one one at any time. You will hear an automated message advising that your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press star one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to the CEO, Mr. Alberto Nagel. Please go ahead, sir.
Good afternoon and thank you for joining this full year results call. This, as you know, was the last year of the plan. We were able to over-deliver compared to the targets of the three years plan. This is, I think, the best way to enter in the new plan that we have communicated, announced to the market in May. We are already working on. The growth has been visible in terms of revenue, where we have achieved a 16% increase to all-time high of EUR 3.3 billion. This is driven by the long-standing work on business diversification. NII has been a positive new this year with +22%.
We have managed to maintain fee resilience, notwithstanding some headwinds, in particular in investment banking. We have also managed to have higher trading and insurance contributions. GOP, so Gross Operating Profit, was up 25% to over EUR 1.6 billion after a core up 52 basis points. Net profit was above EUR 1 billion, but take into consideration, roughly EUR 150 million of negative one-off, which we want to book in the, in the fourth quarter, the net profit could have been in the region of EUR 1.2 billion. EPS was up 15%, adjusted was up 25%, as well as we have had a very important increase in tangible book value per share, + 9, a ROTE of 13.
While CET1, also thanks to the recent confirmation of Danish Compromise, was in the region of 16%. This allowed us to continue to have a very attractive shareholder remuneration, with an increase of 14% of dividend at EUR 0.85, equal to 70% cash payout. We have launched a new buyback, which is part of the buyback plan of EUR 1 billion of the three years, we start with 2% also for a technical reason. Of course, we have been very careful in delivering the targets ESG, we have also increased the target for the years to come.
These results have been obtained through a stronger industrial footprint, which is the base, as I said, for the new three-year plan. For sure, we have had the expected, or even more than expected, positive effect in rebranding and repositioning of our Mediobanca Premier segment. The effective private and investment banking model is leading to an increase in recruitment. We have out of 76 people, salespeople recruited during the year, 2/3 have been recruited in the last six months. TSA up 10%, net profit in the region of EUR 180 million, and return on risk-weighted assets up to 3.1%. CIB started to manage RWA and maintain a very good top line.
Corporate finance, consumer finance saw an increase of 6% in revenue and an increase in profitability, as well as insurance contribution and holding function, which enjoyed a stronger NII trend. The fourth quarter was a solid one. Net of negative one-off was in the region of EUR 300 million, and EUR 808 in terms of revenue, among the highest in terms of revenue and profit. This was backed by basically good net new money of EUR 2.9 billion in wealth management, resilient performance in CIB, and solid growth and profitability in consumer finance.
The gross operating profit peaked at EUR 1.6 billion on page seven, but this is the last year of ongoing growth. If you see our GOP was in the region EUR 1.1, then it went down because of COVID, but then started to go back to go up, and now we have this level, which means a 9% four-year CAGR. I think quite an interesting growth rate. This growth rate has been driven by diversification of revenue. This is another mantra we keep on pushing.
The bank has to be more diversified between different business and between different income source, which is something we are achieving indeed, because basically 16% increase is spread through a 13% increase in wealth management, 11% in CIB, 6% in consumer finance, and 25% in insurance. We already started, because of our new policy of the plan, and also because of market trend, to become more selective in terms of asset growth. Basically, we have no restriction in growing a TSA. In particular, we have no restriction, and we push to grow the AUM/AUA, and this went up 16% from 51 to 59, with EUR 7.3 billion of net new money.
While in loans growth, we've been focusing our attention on the more profitable one and where demand of the market and return are. Basically, more in consumer finance and wealth management and less in CIB. Overlay stock, while we plan to use 50% of this overlays last year, at the end of the year, we saw that there was no need, and for this reason, basically, as you know, we are planning to use part of them in the next three years plan. RWA return is improved and also including one-off, and is basically taking the path we want it to have along the next three years plan.
There's been a visible value creation during the last three years, because basically, EPS, which was up 15% year-on-year, started from EUR 0.93 and arrived adjusted to EUR 1.40 or EUR 1.21, stated. DPS as well, we started with EUR 0.47 and we arrived to double it, basically. As well, we have had a meaningful increase in tangible book value per share. We can say that the target of the last plan were over-delivered in terms of RWA revenues, CET1, EPS, shareholder distribution, and ROTE. As well, we're over-deliver or deliver the target in terms of ESG along the different metrics. I would not mention, but you see them on page 13. Going to see the different sources of revenue, NII.
Let's stick to NII, page 15. NII, the beauty of our story is that NII is growing in whatever interest rate scenario. We've been growing NII when interest rates were going down, from 2016 to basically 2021, in 2021, basically because in 2020, we have had a decrease because you remember that the Compass was not in a possibility to print new loans. We are growing in NII even in interest rates scenario going up. In particular, this year, the 22% has been led by higher volumes of loan, driven by consumer finance and wealth management, widening of the loan funding spread, you see it on slide 15. Basically, we have been widening the spread by 60 basis points.
Banking book, we have increased our banking book by EUR 2 billion, and the better yield, and of course, the dynamic of repricing of our assets and liability was different, so we repriced sooner the assets and the liability, and this means that we reach in the last queue, basically for the first time, EUR 500 million of quarter NII. Basically, if we look back and we look next, in the past, when interest rates were going down, the big driver of NII was Compass. Now, the big driver is more, with interest rates going up, is more wealth management, banking book, and corporate center, so holding function. We need also to be prepared where interest is going to be peaking and even, at the end, going down.
Again, Compass will be a printer of strong growth in NII. Fees. We have been growing fees for seven years in a row. This year, we stall, but next year, we will keep on growing again. The reason of this is clear to everybody, is the fact that, in particular, we offset weakness in the second half of the year of investment banking fees with a good trend, both in wealth management and in consumer finance. Consumer finance is enjoying a new source of fees related to Buy Now, Pay Later. This is a structural trend of growth we will be seeing even in the next in the next future. Cost income down 43%.
This is not cost management, it's more revenue, because on the cost, we have had our inflation, which is basically driven by expansion of business, hiring people, going more digital. All this is gonna cost, and it is costing, but we manage this through a constant increase of revenue. Core flat at 52 basis points. Basically, we have had this quite positive results without taking much of overlays. In particular, we have had only EUR 30 million of use overlay from June 2022 - June 2023, and we confirm a very positive trend of default rates across the different business, as well as prudent staging and asset quality confirming our division, as you can see on page 19 and on page 20.
Capital ratio are on the high level. We have generated a lot of capital, basically, we were able to, notwithstanding, we have had this year more headwinds in regulation than tailwind. The optimization has been could not offset in particular the AGD statement of ECB of IRB model. We have had a -20. Notwithstanding this, at the end, the overall capital ratio were in the region of 16. As we were entering in the new three-year plan, in the new three-year plan, we plan to have expansion of initiative and cost and hiring, we thought it would be good to book in this quarter some non-recurring item. We see them on page 23.
Part of them are coming from external event, so insurance from Generali was positive by EUR 25 million. There are then the contribution to Italian and European funds. Some of them are supposed to stay, some other are supposed to be one-off in this quarter or in quarters. Then we have sold assets and the impaired assets that were not having the value they were supposed to have. When we sold Revalea, we had EUR 17 million of impairment. The rest of this was impairment of RAM for part of the goodwill we have booked. We have also booked a EUR 26 million this quarter of cost, cost efficiency program.
This is basically early retirement costs, and is preparing the group, as I said, to hire different kind of skill set and people, and also lower the average age of the group. Other items were spread among different sources in all cube. All in all, we have had an impact of EUR 140 million. We have had another EUR 19 million, which is related to the fact that there's been a new law, which we're allowing company that I would say, profit generated in country with different fiscality or fiscal treatment to repatriate with a facilitated condition . We decided to adopt this, and this was another EUR 19 million.
All in all, we had EUR 155 million of one-off, which, by nature, we think that they are not recurrent, and they will not be, of course, part of the next year. In sustainable banking, we have set a new target, and we have also had some important achievement in terms of ESG and green credit, total footprint, in terms of sustainable senior preferred bond placed, in terms of our activity in DCM. In social, we have done, we have created this DNI code, which is part of our two-day project, as well as we have decided to exit from tobacco industry.
In governance, we are appointing, we are supposed to appoint a new board, to have a new board appointed on the 28th of October, where we want to improve, basically, the composition. We have set a different criteria and a component of the new LTI. Basically, also, we have approved the launch of the first employee share ownership plan. If we go to divisional results, I would, I would go to, first, to wealth management. Wealth management is becoming bigger. It's adding more than EUR 800 million of income, More than EUR 880 million, in the region of EUR 880 million of profit.
It became very material, and is growing at a pace of, as we see here, more than 10% growth a year. This is achieved in an environment which is not easy, because as you see on page 28, it's more an environment of AUA rather than AUM. We have had, as I said, in the year, basically, EUR 8 billion of, between AUM and AUA. AUA were EUR 6 billion, AUM were EUR 2 billion, which is not bad, take into consideration the year at all. This is making that, as you see on page 30, this business is weighing more and more in the group. Basically, it's 25% of the whole revenue. Of course, stripping out QNI, it would be much bigger in terms of, I would say, banking revenue.
In terms of fee, it's 50%. You see how big it's becoming with EUR 450 million. In this component, you see within this component, the so-called more recurrent of management fee is the vast majority, EUR 330 million, we have banking, which is stable. We are adding upfront advisory, which is becoming as well a stable part, because it's also linked to our CIB activity, we don't have basically performance fee element. The marginality stays in the same level, which we have also guided for the three years target, 90 basis points. Here again, I think we were right when we put the emphasis on the title and the spirit of our plan, One Brand, One Culture. Again, we have seen that this is paying off. Why?
Basically, since the announcement of the plan, we have had a clear acceleration of dialogue for recruiting in terms of number and quality of this recruitment. This is exactly what we wanted, but it's happening even faster than thought. This means that our recruitment will be more effective, and the pipeline of net new money will be as good as we thought. This is happening in Premier, but this is happening also in private investment banking model. We continue to hire from the best competitor, thanks to a model which is giving access to a Money in Motion event.
This is seen more and more because basically, I think it's enjoying a unique distribution platform in terms of forces on the ground, with roughly 300 bankers that are covering the most interesting mid-corporate in Italy and entrepreneur. In terms of delivery, we have the plan we have achieved or beaten every single metric, but one, basically, distribution network. We achieved the same results in terms of AUM and profitability without adding the same number of banker we had in mind in the last two years. I think that with the rebranding, the caliber of the new entrants, the number of recruiting, and in particular, the target of AUM, will be more achievable. CIB.
CIB has been quite an interesting year in terms of, A, difficulties, B, results. Difficulties are, in fact, still out there in terms of shrinking market and the deal volume, but the fact that we are diversified in terms of different activities, so client activity between advisory, capital market, lending, and markets, made that some went better, and other went less good than last year. Overall, we managed to have an increase of 11% of revenue, which is remarkable in a year where you have seen some banks going down 20%-30%. The results has been a -9 because of basically no recurrent elements. Basically, we had some write-backs in the past, and those write-backs, by definition, are not recurrent.
Hence we have managed to have a top line and quite a good profitability in a tough year. The only metric here that we missed was the ROAC also because basically the allocation of capital was higher, and the inflation of RWA was higher than expected, which is something that we will manage in a different way, as we said, for the next year's plan. This volume where everywhere down, we managed to keep a very good leadership in Italy, both in M&A, in ECM, and also a very good position in DCM, as you can see on page 37.
Now we have, since already some years, a very good diversification of deal flow from large to mid, to financial sponsor, to non-domestic transaction in M&A, in ECM, and DCM, in financing. Very positive news from our newest partner, Arma. We announced a partnership with Arma in May, where Arma has announced four interesting deals since May, in particular in July. This is giving you the sense of how dynamic this platform is, and how also interesting the potential synergies, the synergies with us will be. Consumer finance prove again to be a solid, highly profitable, steady growing activity.
Total income +6%, this is based on a strong domestic footprint, which is coupled with a non-domestic development, in particular, the acquisition of IDP in Switzerland and the approach of Buy Now, Pay Later activity in the Swiss market. New loans were up to EUR 7.8 billion, basically up 2%, despite a more rigid acceptance ratio, which we have pushed already since more than a year. The name of the game this year has been cars and special purpose, and we have also increased our digital personal loan at 31% of total direct personal loan. Here again, draw your attention on slide 42, which is giving the sense of the journey that the company has been doing.
Basically, some years ago, Compass was producing half of its loans through third-party network and another half through its branch network. This ratio now is totally different. We are now at 78% of personal loan, which are distributed by direct distribution, which is very important to retain marginality and to be able to pass the higher cost of funding to client. Second very positive news is the Buy Now, Pay Later source of new customers. Now it's 16% of Buy Now, Pay Later is the incidence of on to purpose loan. It was 9% or 1% or 3% only a year ago. Basically, this is becoming a very important source of new clients and new purpose loan or personal loan after.
As said, proprietary network is the name of the game, having a different source and cost variable network is very important, not only branches, but also branches run by agents, Compass Quinto and Linkers. This is giving us, as you can see on page 40, 43, the possibility to have an NII marginality net of cost of risk, which stays on a very high level. We were at 5%, we went down to 4.8%, and this year we have reached again, something above 5% at 5.5%. All the metric of Compass have been over-delivered in the last three years, and of course, this is a very strong base to grow also in the next three years. Cost of risk is still very much contained.
We have, as you remember, a guided and factor in our 3 S plan, a contained increase of cost of risk. We are today behind this, and in fact, last year, we didn't to use any, any, overlays. We are perfectly on track, I would say, still behind our, our projection of increase of cost of risk in the next three years. This has been another year where having insurance has been important and positive because of the correlation that this industry and also, intensity of capital is having compared to other business. This was, again, a source of income, of net income, which, clearly, improved the overall results and had a fantastic return on risk-weighted assets.
All the function went better because, as I said, NII and banking book position, everything generated better results. It has been a quite an active year in terms of funding. We were able to issue a lot of bonds. You see from we went up roughly of EUR 4 billion of bonds. We have issued seven. Basically, this was a more than enough to repay bond expiring and TLTRO. Looking forward, our maturity of TLTRO are contained because this year we'll have only EUR 2 billion, and we will have a EUR 3 billion of bond maturity, so we have a need to fund, and we have already started to pre-fund EUR 5 billion. This is against the EUR 7 billion of this year. This led also to quite positive liquidity indicators that you can see on page 49.
As a closing remarks, of course, it's a moment to, on one end, to look backward to see what we've done. I would say that all the metrics are pretty positive. When we started, the plan was considered, three years ago, very ambitious. Most of our observers thought that it was not reachable. In the meantime, we had COVID, we had Russo-Ukrainian War, we over-delivered. Basically, we have achieved numbers across the metrics much higher than expected. This is not enough. Of course, we are not satisfied. We want to do more.
We clearly stated this with our One Brand- One Culture plan. We are now in delivery of this, because basically, we think that what I said about the potential of our wealth management is confirming our target of TFA between EUR 9 billion and EUR 10 billion of net new money. We have also put as a priority to manage in a different way, RWA. We have already started, and we'll do more this year to have a selective loan growth and to act in order to optimize and reduce RWA in within CIB. We will experience a nice growth in revenue. This is coupled by two, I would say, increasing component, NII, which we see going up high, mid-single digit, and fees.
Fees that are going to be boosted by Arma and by new initiative in CIB, as well, of course, in wealth management, so in trade. We see flat Cost-to-Income Ratio and flat core. This is basically on the back of ongoing investment in distribution platform and digital empowerment, which is, on the other way, upset by increase, as I said, in growth in revenue. Core stable, with only partial release of overlays. We are talking about a region of EUR 60 million, out of basically roughly EUR 270 million. We see a growth in shareholder remuneration, because basically going up our net profit, which means that the cash payout, 70%, will be higher.
We have launched our first buyback of EUR 200 million. We think that, notwithstanding buybacks and acquisitions, our CET1 will stay above 15%. Thank you very much for your attention. I leave you the room for questions.
Ladies and gentlemen, we now begin the question-and-answer session. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. Please stand by while we compile the Q&A queue. We are now taking the first question. The first question is from Antonio Reale from Bank of America. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, everyone. It's Antonio from Bank of America. I have three questions, please. My first one is to do with the outlook for next year. If you could talk a bit more about the key PNL line items, particularly with a focus on core revenues and your expectations, into next year. Related to that, my second question is on, on fees and particularly on wealth management. You've been opportunistic with recent bank events in Europe, on the hiring of private bankers. How are you seeing the development of fee margins next year?
If you can give us a bit more color on your guided EUR 9 billion-EUR 10 billion growth that you expect in TFAs, among which asset class, for us to get a sense of the fee margin outlook, and at what costs, if you're buying assets, this will come through. My last question is on cost of risk. You're guiding for flat cost of risk next year at around 60 basis points. Can you maybe just share with us what are you assuming in terms of utilization overlays next year, and what will be the underlying cost of risk? Thank you.
Okay, good afternoon, Antonio. I will start on the second, because the line was a bit unclear when you asked the first question, so I will ask you to repeat. Starting from fees, in wealth management, marginality, we consider it flat, being in the region of 90 basis points. As opposed to the EUR 10 billion, the EUR 10 billion are broken into, I would say, three pieces. I would say the Premier and Private are basically not far one from the other. Premier is going to be like EUR 3 billion-EUR 3.3 billion, while private is going to be EUR 4 billion-EUR 4.5 billion. The rest is going to be asset management.
I have to say that the level of on one end new recruitment, the caliber, the first weeks of the new year and the Money in Motion that we are having visibility, and we are booking, are supporting this EUR 10 billion, and in particular, are supporting the EUR 7 billion of both Mediobanca Premier and Private Banking. Core, as I said, we stay in the region of 50 basis points, which industrially means 60. Why? Because we think that we will use EUR 60 million out of 270 in consumer finance. Now, we said that we would have used this over the last many years, and we were not able to. We said that this cost of risk is going to go up.
I think it will go up maybe more slowly, but we see the tendency of it going up very slowly, and hence, we think that this EUR 60 million will be more than enough. Can you repeat the first question?
Sure. The first question was more to do with the sort of the a guidance for next year with respect to some of the key PNL line items. You answered me around cost of risk, I guess it's mostly on the NII outlook for next year. How do you see it play out? If I look at what you've posted in Q4, looking at your customer spreads, on my maths, you had a 35% deposit beta, which I guess will define your NII next year. I wonder how you see that play out.
Look, to give you more, more color on, on the guidance, we have concluded the year higher in terms of revenue, 3.3. If you rebase this 3.3 to the 3.8, we have to reach, we want to reach, we will reach in 2026, this is basically a 5% CAGR, and we plan to grow exactly by 5% this year. In terms of NII, I said that we're going to have high, single digit growth. This is on the back of a growing beta, because beta, we already said when we present the plan that will go from 2022 to 35, 40. This is happening, but the repricing of the assets is faster than this.
This leads to the nice increase in NII, higher than expected, higher than even expected two months ago in terms of progression. Basically, if you see this, you take out the one-off, because one-off, by definition, we never had, and this is something that we had this year, sometime also in part on purpose. You arrive at the conclusion that our EPS, starting from this year, will continue to grow at the same pace, taking also to consideration the buyback, at the ratio of 15%, we have basically guided to be achievable in the next three years.
That's very clear. Thank you.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. Please stand by. The next question from Christian Carrese from Intermonte. Please go ahead, your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon, Christian Carrese from Intermonte. Thank you for the presentation. My first question is on the Corporate Investment Banking division. I would like to understand what kind of trend do you expect in Italy in terms of deals and the mix. Do you expect more M&A or DCM in 2023, 2024? What do you think will be the contribution of Arma to revenues this year? Second question is on the slide 46, the insurance business. We saw a quite relevant increase in the contribution of the insurance business in the fourth quarter due to Generali strong earnings. As far as I understand, the last quarter results was driven by some capital gains, you pointed out real estate, but also different accounting principle application, IFRS 17, IFRS 9.
My question is, should we look at generally contribution going forward on a reported basis, or there will be some adjustment for, you know, capital distribution? So those are cash items, or so it's distributable or not? For the question on net interest income, high single digit growth, you expect in 2023, 2024. Looking at single division, the growth will come from the holding function, so asset liability management in, do you expect some growth also in, it happened this year with management and consumer finance? Finally, on cost of risk, on consumer finance, in particular, you said that you're gonna use EUR 60 million overlays this year.
When do you expect to use the vast majority of overlays in the business plan, so in 2025 or 2026? Sorry, the last one, the tax one-off you booked in the fourth quarter, do you expect some positive impact in terms of tax rate in the coming years from this action? Thank you.
Christian, thank you for your good level of question, good number of questions, which means that you follow us with passion. CIB, I would say that in CIB, in Italy, what we're seeing quite a still a good level of mid-corporate activity, good level of DCM. We have seen already since a couple of years intensifying dialogue on large M&A, we expect this to materialize in the coming quarters. M&A is always a process that requires two, three, four quarters to become real in terms of booking of fees, the outlook is improving. IPO, as you know, is a bit more cautious the market. I was saying this before to a question.
This is related to, not to the number of possible IPO, but to the market feedback and the investor stance, which is still in Europe, but not only in Europe, as we know, prudent in the waiting for better macro picture, no. IPO, I think we have to be more cautious about predicting meaningful contribution. Arma. We are supposed to start to consolidate Arma during the second quarter, so can be October, can be November. We have in mind to have in the region of between EUR 60 million and EUR 70 million of revenue for the three quarters of consolidation. This is going to be, as you can imagine, a material support to the fee of CIB.
In terms of Generali, yes, this, we think that given the nature of Generali, which is predominantly life, the new standard, this is our impression, of course, we are not insurer. The new standard are such that we will continue to benefit from positive improvement of the bottom line of Generali, no? Part of this, I would say, positive results are more linked to one-off, like the real estate, as you pointed out. Part, I think, are there to stay because it's linked to the new accounting criteria and the predominant component of life. I think it's related to the value in force, and it's very technical. I'm not as technical as you, Christian, but I understood that this is a positive that can stay. NII.
NII, you mentioned one element of NII growth and holding function. The second element of growth is gonna be wealth management, and it's gonna be material, the growth of wealth management, NII. There will be also an increase in consumer finance, more contained, because as long as interest rates keep on growing, its Compass is like a follower. Basically, it is charged immediately by holding function of higher funding cost, and it takes some quarters to pass this to customer. The moment where interest rates are gonna stay stable or going down, as we said, Compass is printing much more of NII. Core, you said, when are you going to use and how the overlay? Our plan is to use basically 70%, 60% of the overlays in consumer, spread in three years.
We have done this hypothesis of spreading them basically proportion in the quarters, then maybe some quarters more, some quarter less, but I gave you, I think, more than a broad picture. Tax one-off, no, this is linked to the fact that, as you may imagine, in private banking in Monaco, we have been producing a lot of net profit in the last few years or in the last decade. Thanks to a new law passed recently or some months ago, basically, it was possible to repatriate those kind of profit at any decreased tax rate. We decided to pay for that, and we repatriate part of this profit. This is not changing the ordinary tax rate. This year, we had a one-off negative.
Net of this, the tax rate will stay as it is today.
Very clear. Thank you very much.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. Please stand by. The next question from Azzurra Guelfi from Citi. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Hi, good afternoon. I have two questions for me. One is on net capital. You have announced a buyback for around EUR 200 million for next year, but if I square it with your guidance for net profit growth, this would result below 100% payout, and it's a bit below what I was expecting. Is that to be considered a minimum level that could be reviewed during the year, given the profitability trend and capital generation over the year? The second one is on governance. There is the board renewal in October. There has been some development in your shareholder base. Could you give us some color on what do you expect coming into this board renewal, and what could be action taken? Thank you.
Azzurra, thank you for the two questions. If I got it well, the first is on buyback and the second on governance, the line was not clear, confirm that if I got it well?
Yes, correct. Thank you.
Okay. This year, we had a constraint in terms of buyback. Why? It's a technical constraint. Basically, if I remember well, but I'm asking also my colleague to correct me if I'm saying something stupid, is that basically you have two kind of possible buyback scheme. The buyback where basically is a generic buyback, where you can buy and use the shares to do several activity, like paying your employees because you need to pay them in shares, A, acquisition, B, C, cancel the shares. This kind of authorization of buybacks, which is a multipurpose, define this, is capped to 3%. We have already 1% in our books, we couldn't buy more than two, as we need to use them for different purpose.
For this year, we are capped at this technical two. Next year, we don't have that cap. In fact, we have planned to have EUR 400 million, that we hope that this is going to be less than three, because this means that the share price would have gone up again or more. This is the reason why this year we had this temporary limit. Is some sort of self-inflicted, because we wanted to use those shares for different purpose. We know that there is an attention that between payout and buybacks, this is not going to go above 100, no? We need always to stay within 100.
In terms of governance, we are quite advanced in terms of our process, the board process, which is a very structured process, started in February, where we want to increase the quality of our board in terms of skill set, in terms of independence, in terms of gender composition. For this reason, a, we have done a selection with the help of headhunters of CV and profile. B, we have engaged with our shareholder, the small and big one, and we have told our two big shareholder that we like the idea to have a common list where they can participate. Basically, we would like to have a board as inclusive as, as we can.
This has to cope, of course, with the process, with some legal framework, which is not, you know, a legal framework we have decided, but is basically given, and the timeline, which is a timeline whereby we need to basically to issue our list of director more or less by mid of September.
Thank you for your question. We are now taking the next question. The next question from Britta Schmidt from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Your line is open.
Yeah, hi there. Thanks for taking my questions. Just two brief ones. Firstly, could you just confirm that the consumer IRB model update is still expected, I guess it was in the first half of 2024 at around 30 basis points? The second one, I'd be interested in your view on the development of the loan and funding spread by the end of 2024, given what's going on on the asset side, also your pre-funding that you've done for the 3%, where do you expect to see that by the end of this financial year? Thank you.
Thank you, Britta. Yes, you are right. This year, we will have some positive and some negative in terms of RWA inflation. In the negative, we are putting also the IRB in consumer, which will be offset by what we are going to do on factoring and other initiatives. All in all, we think that RWA this year will stay stable. We will not have an inflation of RWA. In terms of loan yield, spread between loan yield and funding cost, our assumption is that, in terms of loan yield, we will stay in the region of 6.5, moving from 4.8, you see that on page 15. While funding cost will be in the region of 3.4.
Basically, we will have, you know, a good spread, an increased spread, a slight increased spread compared to today. Today, we have three, we mention it on page 15. We can go to 3.1, 3.2. This is the assumption as of today, Britta.
Thank you.
Thank you for your question. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one one on your telephone. There are no further question. I will hand back the conference over for closing remarks.
Thank you very much for your patience, your question, and your time. We hope to have you all in October, when we will have the first quarter results. Thank you very much, and wish you nice holiday if you go. There is someone else, sorry, Marco Nicolai.
Yes, we are now taking his question.
So I was giving-
Sorry.
I was wishing you nice holiday, but you wanted still to ask questions, so sorry for that.
Just on time, let's say. Thanks for taking my question, even if a bit late. You mentioned during your comments, the hiring is going well. You are having good traction, in fact, this quarter, we saw pretty good numbers again, in terms of net new money. My question is, this quarter, the net new money number already has had some benefits from the hires you did from Credit Suisse that you mentioned in the last conference call. Another question on the Danish Compromise. What's the latest update on this front? I've seen that now you're factoring the benefit already in your fully loaded capital, albeit is a pro forma.
When do we expect to see it in kind of, you know, to drop the pro forma mention? Also a quick one: What's your level of ECB mandatory reserves? Also, last one, can you please remember me the cost of your deposits in the wealth management division? Last question. The timeline for your buybacks, when do you expect to start them? Thank you.
Marco, thank you. Yes, you got it right. In this quarter, we have a partial, already visible contribution of new hires. I would say this is something in the region of between 200 and 300, so it's still very much contained. It's only part of what we are going to have, of course, during the year. Danish Compromise, Danish Compromise, the latest are that trialogue approved the overall set of rules, not only the one that it's applicable to, to our case. The full package has been approved by the three bodies. We are waiting for the assembly, in Brussels, to approve everything. Normally, we think that this is going to be there by the end of the year.
By, I would say, first of January 2024, this will be done according to what we know. The level of mandatory reserve is, of ECB, is EUR 250 million. The buyback timing is immediately after approval and authorization, so basically something in November, December. While I'm asking the cost of wealth management deposit to my colleagues, because I don't remember it by heart, it's in the region of 1.5%. I don't know if I answered.
Thank you.
If I answered all your questions.
Yes, yes, very clear.
Thank you very much. Sorry again, and thank you for your attendance.
That conclude the conference for today. Thank you for participating. You may all disconnect.