Good afternoon. This is the conference call operator. Welcome, and thank you for joining the presentation of Gruppo MutuiOnline First Half 2022 Results Conference Call. As a reminder, all participants are in listen only mode. After the presentation, there will be an opportunity to ask questions. Should anyone need assistance during the conference call, they may signal an operator by pressing star and zero on their telephone. At this time, I would like to turn the conference over to Mr. Marco Pescarmona, Chairman, Mr. Alessandro Fracassi, CEO, and Mr. Francesco Masciandaro, CFO. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Welcome everybody, and sorry for the people living in Italy for having a call at 5:30 P.M. on a Friday. Anyway, let's go to the presentation. It's published as usual on our website, and we start from page 17 with the first half highlights. On the page, you can see that the revenues in the first half of 2022 were basically stable, just down 1% year-on-year, and they were at EUR 157 million, with 43% coming from the broking division and 57% coming from the BPO division. In terms of EBITDA also, we have overall stability.
EBITDA in the first half of 2022 is EUR 46.3 million, and that's up 3.6% compared to the previous year. Here the mix is 55% from the broking division and 45% from the BPO division. EBIT is improving more. It's up 15%, and it reaches EUR 36.4 million in the first half of 2022. The EBIT, as we have already said in the past, is a bit less representative of our operating performance because it's affected by the amortization of the intangibles that are created with acquisitions.
For instance, in the first half 2022, we completed the amortization of the software assets recognized with the acquisition of Agenzia Italia, and that's helping the comparison. Finally, in terms of net income, that simply follows the operating income. Overall, if you look at the performance from this point of view, it's stable or even positive in terms of EBITDA performance. By the way, if you look at the second quarter standalone, you have it in the appendix. You see that the second quarter did more or less even slightly better on a year-on-year comparison than the first quarter.
Basically, it was down almost 2% in revenues, but it was up more, I think 10%, in terms of EBITDA. This is due also to how the comparison is made. The fact that in 2021, for instance, in the second half, we spent some money on advertising in e-commerce price comparison, which we didn't spend in the second half of 2022. It's not so relevant. Anyway, we're quite happy with the results of the first half of the year. What is however important is to understand how the situation is evolving.
This is again a period in which things are continuing to change for a lot of reasons that have to do with the war in Europe, with inflation, you know, a lot of things that are related that create a less predictable environment. So if we go to the next page, we start by explaining what is happening in the Italian residential mortgage market, which is still quite important for us, even if we are much more diversified than you know than in the past. Basically, you know, the Italian mortgage market was contracting already in Q1 2022.
We see a more pronounced contraction in Q2 and especially in July of this year. This is for two reasons. One, that was already known and been very much expected, is that we see a drastic decrease of remortgages just because interest rates are higher, so people have no interest or little interest in remortgaging. That was expected. You know, at the beginning of the year, and this was our original expectation for 2022, you know, we were seeing growth in terms of purchase mortgages. This growth started fading in Q2, and actually, in July, we started having a decline also and then the double-digit one in purchase mortgages.
This is changing a little bit the outlook. You know, you look at the figures for the market, gross originations were down on average around 9%-10% in the second half of the year. They were down almost 27% in July of 2022 on a year-on-year basis. This is the actual originations. The real difference between, say, you know, Q2 and July is that, you know, both in Q2 and in July, remortgages were down by more than 80% year-on-year. In Q2, purchase mortgages were flatter, weakening over the period, but flat over on average. In July, purchase mortgages were down 20% year-on-year. This is changing the outlook.
You know, we expected purchase to compensate or to have to compensate for the drop in remortgages, but currently that's not happening. In fact, if you look at the data from credit bureaus, from CRIF, you see that the inquiries in the credit bureaus are down more than 20% year-on-year in recent months. What is the outlook? Well, the outlook is that, you know, for the third quarter of this year, we will expect a sharper contraction, you know, something like July, I would say, of the residential mortgage market.
Probably this will be on a year-on-year basis, the worst quarter, because it still has comp against a stronger period of remortgages. We have the disadvantage of comping with respect to remortgages. Purchase is declining from the information, you know, that we have from the market. This will be, you know, quite likely a bad quarter for the market. You know, we originally expected Q4 to be up year-on-year because we expected purchase mortgages going up to prevail over contracting remortgages. That's no longer the expectation.
I think that, you know, if we continue to see a decline in purchase mortgages also, you know, the overall market of course will decline in Q4. We really have to see. It's, you know, by the way, this contraction, the drop of purchase mortgages is to a large extent also driven by some temporary factors. You know, we've already spoken about and explained this. In Italy, in recent years, a good chunk of the mortgages have been mortgages for young people that benefited from a sort of a state subsidy that reduced the risk for the banks and also some transaction costs.
Basically, you know, people below 36 years of age could buy a property, paying less in terms of, like, transaction taxes and also, you know, have the benefit of a sort of a state guarantee that made the banks more willing to lend also with higher LTVs and so on. These mortgages, you know, are by law available. You know, the state doesn't want the banks to profit from this help that is provided to younger people. The law says that these mortgages cannot be sold at more than what is considered in the idea of, you know, whoever wrote the law, the average market rate.
The fact is that, you know, this interest rate cap is calculated with reference to the market rate of the actual market rate of the second past quarter. Today, we are referring to the rates of Q1 of 2022. In a situation of rapidly rising interest rates, it's very difficult for the banks. Just because the interest rates are, you know, increasing, they cannot offer something which is in line with the average of the market of like four months ago. That's not feasible. As long as we see increasing either, you know, long-term rates or even adjustable rate, then the banks are not able to offer these products.
This has created a gap in the market that has affected, for instance, July. You know, this gap could be closed any time soon, you know, maybe due to regulatory changes that are still being discussed or simply because, you know, we no longer have this rapid increase of fixed interest rates. It's not, you know, that we are seeing this decline because people are no longer buying houses, but it's most likely that, you know, a large portion of this decline is just due to the unavailability of these mortgages and people waiting. You know, there are also reasons to be optimistic that this is not going to be such a long-term negative effect. You know, we really have to see.
This is a long explanation of what the Italian residential market looks like. Starting from this, we will comment on the performance of the two divisions, and I start by you know on page 19 to say something about the broking division. For the broking division, revenues have been basically stable, up 2.9%, and EBITDA has been growing. It was EUR 4.3 million in the first half, and that's up 9.3% compared to the first half of the previous year. The EBITDA margin is 37.6%. This is a very fine performance, we think.
This performance was basically possible because with you know we had negative and I would say pronounced contraction of the mortgage business. That was you know we also that we are overweight remortgages. If there is an adjustment that is driven mainly by remortgages, we tend to suffer more than the market. We have this very negative headwind and we have a negative year-on-year performance in mortgages and again it's a significant one. All the other business lines were performing and were growing and you know we were you know and we are a more diversified business than we used to be.
We were maybe surprisingly, because actually that's even better than our expectation, we were able to compensate in the second quarter as well. This is you know the explanation of this you know let's say robust performance in Q2 for broking. Now, what do we expect for the coming quarters? We expect Q3 to be the most difficult quarter, and I'll explain why. You know, we will not. You know, we don't expect to be able to do so for the negative performance of mortgages.
That's you know, that's too strong and the other business lines are you know, still positive, but that's weakening. Let's go one by one. Mortgage broking, you know, we say we are significantly down year-on-year. You know, we keep contracting and you know, that will be driven by the market. The worst contraction is going to come in Q3. Then Q4, still maybe the market will be negative and we'll suffer and we'll be down. At least in Q4, we will not have the negative impact of the comping for remortgages. Where we are still doing pretty well is we have a robust growth in loans.
Now, you know, we are already, it's been, I would say, a year more or less that we have a robust growth, so the comps will be a bit more difficult, but still, you know, we are doing fine here. Insurance broking, that has been strong for many years, now is showing some signs of slowdown. We think it's very temporary. What we see is that, you know, we've grown significantly in the first half. Now, in recent months, we see that, you know, there are fewer, the performance of the new policy sales, and we think it's the market, it's not a competitive thing, it's just the market.
We've seen a slowdown in you know the new policies, whereas we have seen a significant increase in renewals. You know, we also have revenues from renewals, and so we still have growth in revenues, and we'll continue to have growth in revenues for the second half of the year, but less pronounced than in the first half. Also, there are some regulatory changes that are not so favorable.
There were some insurance companies that basically were taking advantage of sort of a loophole in the regulation, and basically, they were offering, you know, they were able to be more efficient in the payment of claims because they were settling the claims directly instead of participating in a system-wide claim management system. Now the state has decided, the government, well, not the government, the parliament has decided, or the government, whatever, that, you know, all insurers operating in Italy have to participate in this shared system for claim settlement. This will remove an advantage that a couple of insurers had, and those were online insurers, and they have increased prices.
We lost a little bit of competitiveness on the online channel. And that also will have a little bit of impact of adverse impact. Short term, this is weakening. However, you know, if there is an area where inflation can have a positive effect, we think it's this one. Because, you know, the cost of repairing cars, the cost of used cars, I mean, every in general, the cost of everything in many countries, including Italy, is the prices are going up. Insurance premiums, and people are driving more, insurance premiums really have to pick up. As soon as premiums pick up, we will see more switching.
You know, of course, you know our commission is, the commissions are indexed on, you know, percentages of premiums, so automatically we benefit from that. That's just nominal. Instead, the switching would be a real effect. You know, we hope that finally we will see at least on paper, you know, in nominal terms, an up cycle in insurance, and this could drive growth of our aggregator business. We have reasons to be positive about this. E-commerce price comparison, it's up year-over-year. This is not a great year in general for e-commerce, but you know, we have been up in the first half, in Q2 as well, despite spending less on advertising on TV. We will continue.
We expect to be able to continue growing for the second half of the year. Then finally, a business that has seen a lot of ups and downs is telecom, more importantly, energy comparison. In energy, telecom is okay, it's relatively stable. In energy, we had a very strong first quarter. Then all the energy providers removed their fixed price offers from the market, so they remain only with indexed products. You know, we only have indexed products. You know, after first quarter of record results, the second quarter, this was exactly the outlook that we gave. We already anticipated this. The second quarter was you know, let's say back to normal.
Actually, it was even slightly down year-over-year and, you know, sharply down quarter-over-quarter. You know, despite tremendous demand, there are problems with the supply of products. It's not as bad as in other countries. You know, in other countries, there are no providers taking new clients for energy. In Italy, there are providers, but the products that they are able to provide are, you know, not so attractive in relative terms. This is, you know, not. I would say we are not expecting growth from this. It's also a business that we started doing at scale, you know, with the acquisition of SOSt ariffe.
Now we have been working a lot for the last 12 months on improving all the aspects of the operating machine. You know, we are business operators, and we have been able to improve a lot of aspects of how the business was conducted, and this will possibly help us in you know, going forward. This is overall, and again, I would say the message is you know, mortgages will look worse in Q3, and some of the drivers of growth will also be weaker in Q3. Q3 for broking will probably be the you know, on a year-on-year comparison, the weakest quarter. Then the comping will improve. Hopefully mortgages will also improve.
This problem of subsidized mortgages for young people, you know, will eventually be sorted. It's just in the short term that we have some concerns, but you know, but from Q4 and onwards, we will, you know, really with some uncertainty, but we are comfortable about our outlook. This is about the Broking division, and now I'll hand it over to Alessandro for the BPO division.
Thank you, Marco, and good evening, everyone. I'll try to keep it as short as possible given the day and the hour. Overall, on page 21, you see the key figures for the BPO division. Revenues are down 4% from EUR 92.5 to EUR 89.8 in the first half of 2022 relative to the same period of last year. The EBITDA margin didn't decrease as much, but it was still decreasing by 2.5% from EUR 21.5 million to EUR 21 million. That's driving a little increase of basically a 0.4% increase in the EBITDA margin.
You see an increase in EBIT, but that's basically due to the fact that some of the acquisitions that we did in the past years have finished doing the PPA amortization and therefore finished the PPA. Therefore we see that the EBIT then basically goes back to similar numbers to the EBITDA. But basically, this is not significant in terms of business. By the way, you know, if we look at what's behind these division level numbers, there are basically two very significant trends. One is the one that Marco has already described, which is impacting obviously also the mortgage BPO.
The way that the division has been able to cope with the significant and sharp contraction in the refinancing market is basically by instead a significant growth in the real estate services BPO, which was driven both by organic growth, mainly in the Ecobonus segment, but also by the acquisition of Europa Centro Servizi, which we completed in March, and then obviously we see the impact in Q2. By the way, if you look at Q2 numbers, just to give you the idea of how they look like, they are on page 41, but they have, you know, what we have seen here, basically stable revenues, but increasing margin is also very clear in Q2.
In Q2, we see that the revenues went down 1.9%, and the EBITDA actually grew or basically stable, grew 1.5% from EUR 11.8 to EUR 12. The EBITDA margin growth is basically a full percentage point from 25% to 25.9%. Now, if we go and look at the single lines, business lines, you know, I've already commented on mortgage BPO. There, you know, the contraction is significant, and it you know, as you know, there in mortgage BPO, we have our traditional services, so that's outsourcing of underwriting, of commercial sales, of the closing phase, of mortgages, but we also have the para-notary services.
The para-notary services are focused mainly on refinancing. They have a lower margin than the rest. Even in the mortgage BPO, the EBITDA margin in percentage is actually better than last year. If you look at the overall margin, we've had a very significant you know reduction both in revenues and in the overall you know turnover and therefore also in the absolute margin. What we are seeing in H1, we will see it also in H2, although as Marco said, the contraction in the refinancing market started already at the end of Q3 last year. The comparison in the second part of the year will be a little better.
Overall, you know, at the end of the year, we will see a contraction of this business line, you know, over 30%, both in terms of revenues and margin. The margin a little less, but you know, in terms of revenue, it will be significant. Fortunately, we will be able to compensate it, although, you know, not completely, but, you know, as we have done in H1, also in H2, the real estate services BPO, you know, grew over 40% on, you know, about 40% relative to last year, to the same period of last year. This is, you know, thanks again to the Ecobonus services that is basically organic growth.
It's something built from scratch, and impact to the second half of last year and the first half of this year, and will continue at least until the end of the year. Obviously not only this. It's also thanks to, you know, the fact that we have now purchased the Europa Centro Servizi, which, just as a reminder, is a company focused on collecting and preparing data, real estate data and cadastral data and para-notary data for the NPL workout process. Our clients here are both bank and NPL services.
We expect this, you know, compensation between the BPO and real estate service to play out also in the second part of the year. As Marco said, there is a slowdown also in the purchase mortgages, which obviously impacts also the mortgage BPO. We expect that to be a little bit more temporary than the structural reduction, the cyclical structural reduction in refinancing due to the interest rates. Obviously we'll see. As of today, we expect the gain to play out similarly. Actually, the comp will be a little better because the last quarter of last year we already had seen not much extra financing than in the first part of 2021.
Now, if we look at the other business lines of the BPO, then basically there we have a less volatile situation. More or less all the lines, the business lines are stable or growing. If we look at what's happening, you know, growing but maybe growing single digits. You know, loans BPO has been, you know, since 2021 when it had a big jump relative to 2020, it keeps growing or, you know, I mean, although single digit, and that's what we expect to happen also by the end of the year. Insurance BPO is growing both organically and thanks to the acquisition that we've done, especially the Onda acquisition, the Onda Group, June 1st.
You don't see the results, you know, you don't see a significant impact of this acquisition in the first half, so that's basically organic growth. You will see it instead in the second part of the year. By the way, fortunately, this is a completely unrelated cycle here. Just as a reminder for everyone, what we do, we process claims. And we process claims which are not linked to the automotive sector, therefore, obviously the frequency of claims is not really impacted by, you know, generally speaking, it's not impacted by the economic cycle or, you know, the confidence of consumers, but more by, you know, weather factor and things like that.
Investment services, it's growing. The growth is basically due to that new contract that we got in H2 2021. It will be instead a little less favorable comparison in the second part of the year. Overall there will be, for the whole year growth, H2 might be a little less positive comparison. It will also depend on the financial market because part of our compensation is linked to the asset under management, you know, in euros. As you can imagine, asset under management has gone down as for most investment companies in the first half of the year.
You know, I don't know whether they will be stable, but the comparison to H2 of the second part of the year relative to 2021 will certainly not be positive. You know, for leasing and rental BPO is growing single digit. You know, we expect that to continue also in the second part of the year.
Overall, despite the you know negative impact on the remortgage market and the uncertainty of the macroeconomic environment, thanks to you know some organic growth in most business lines and to the acquisitions that we have done, we expect that you know in the second part of the year, we basically hold both in terms of revenues and in terms of margin as we have done in the first part. That concludes my part, and back to you, Marco, for a quick look on our new businesses outside of Italy.
Okay. Yes. Yeah, we will give you some information, some more details about our recent acquisitions. You know, after many years of telling you that we, you know, we were sticking to Italy and so on, we came across a very unique opportunity of acquiring some very nice businesses that we have been following for more than 10 years. This was something that, you know, was a bit of a surprise. This is an opportunity that, you know, that appeared only in the spring, and it was all very quick. Now, of course, we have to go through some regulatory approvals and so on, but they shouldn't present any particular risk.
Also because, you know, we are an Italian business, so that there are no, like, competition concerns in going to other markets. On page 25, you have some highlights on Rastreator. You know, these are all information that are well known to anybody in the market in Spain. Rastreator, the website is Rastreator.com. It's an online insurance broker. The focus is on motor insurance, but it really, you know, compares a lot of products, and it's been pursuing diversification, especially in recent years, and there is a lot of potential there. In terms of market position, this is really the number one player.
You know, Spain is a country where there is a clear market leader, which is Rastreator, say, in the key category, at least of motor insurance, because other categories are less developed, like energy is not very well developed. Even mortgage is not well developed. You know, the category that is the best developed is really motor insurance, and Rastreator is a strong number one. It operates as a broker, so it's a licensed broker. It's been around for almost 15 years. It used to be part of the Admiral Group, then it was recently sold together with other assets by Admiral.
Then we were able to, you know, to sign this deal that, you know, from the beginning of 2023 makes us the owners of Rastreator. You know, in Spain, you know, you ask any Spanish people, they know Rastreator, very high brand awareness, very well known, really the operator has really created and defined the category. It has a partnership with over 300 product providers, insurers, banks, and utilities. You know, it's a well-structured organization. The way the business operates is, you know, the key markets, this is like a brand-driven aggregator. Basically, you know, you advertise so that people will know Rastreator as a brand.
Whenever they think of buying insurance, they think, you know, Rastreator. They go to their computer, and they type Rastreator in the computer, and they go to the Rastreator website instead of doing like a generic search or going to any insurance company. This is the idea. This is very much the same model of Segugio.it. By the way, Segugio.it, you know, started slightly after Rastreator and was partly also inspired by Rastreator at the time. That's just to say that we have known them for a long period of time. Same revenue model, I mean, similar revenue model to ours because this is a commission-based remuneration, but it's all upfront. We are upfront, and then on renewals, here it's all upfront, almost all upfront.
Of course it's higher, but you know, there is no trailing part. As normal, this is a free service for consumers that find the same products that they find in other places without any markup, so it's super consumer-friendly. From a regulatory standpoint, this is a broker, an insurance broker, under the supervision of the insurance regulator. You know, they operate, they are developing a mortgage broking business, and this is under the regulation and supervision of the Bank of Spain. In terms of figures, these are the figures of last year. Just to give you some idea of size, it's more than EUR 30 million of revenues. EBITDA last year was EUR 4 million.
Headcount is about 150 people. It's based in Madrid. On the next page, you have LeLynx.fr. LeLynx.fr is mostly an insurance aggregator, and also this company operates as a broker. It has motor insurance, but it also does health insurance and other insurance products. It's diversifying now in some other verticals, starting from energy. What is interesting, by the way, is that both in Spain and in France, insurance, also for aggregators, is not only motor insurance. In Italy, there is only motor insurance, and people are not buying other products.
In you know in France and in Spain for instance health insurance is also a category that you know it is relevant where people you know lots of policies are sold and people are you know comparing products and so on. These are interesting markets. LeLynx.fr here we are cautious with the wording but LeLynx.fr is a let's say leader or co-leader in you know since it started in France. Basically in France there are two players that are similar. They started at the same time. One is LeLynx.fr that you know that there is it's again it's a name of the Lynx. The competitor is LesFurets.com which is another similar animal.
It's like a sort of a meerkat because LesFurets.com is owned by the guys of Compare the Market in the UK. You know, they've been competing against each other. LeLynx.fr is I would say better in terms of economics and more or less the same in terms of visibility, volumes, et cetera. They've developed and built a business in this category in France. I would say in France, aggregators are not as developed as in other countries. France is behind other markets in terms of you know the usage of aggregators, despite the fact that these guys have been around for quite a long time.
By the way, these guys, as well as LesFurets.com, they spend every year many millions on television. You know, they're well-known brands because they've been on TV for 10 years. The model is, again, a model of brand-driven aggregator. Now they are starting to use also consultants. Also they're doing the same in Spain for some more complex products, like energy or other things. They are experimenting a little bit with, you know, a modeling. There is also some people helping to close transactions on the phone. Revenue model is the same as for Rastreator, and this operates as an insurance broker. Revenues in 2021 were EUR 25 million, with an EBITDA of EUR 2.5 million. The headcount is 50 people.
The big difference is that in Spain, they started, you know, part of the headcount are people that are now working in some businesses where it makes sense to have, like, people on the phone providing advice, like consultants, helping to convert some leads into sales. Like, you know, we know, you know, we do that for mortgages, for instance. It makes sense for a product like mortgages. In Italy, we do it now also for energy because people don't understand it so well. In Spain, they started earlier to develop this side of operations. That's why you have more people in Spain. LeLynx has less of that.
Finally, we have some figures that we have taken from a McKinsey presentation with a sizing of the different markets. Here you can see that Italy is you know a market that has developed quite well in the last 10 years in terms of you know relevance of insurance aggregators. This chart is about insurance aggregators. In Italy, more than EUR 1 billion of premiums are going to insurance aggregators. No, this is already French. Anyway, we took the data from this presentation. You know, the scale is the one on the left.
You see Italy has grown, and it's much bigger than France as an aggregator market. France, by the way, is a bigger economy than Italy. France should be normally like 10%-15% greater than Italy. You know, the other things being the same, France is less developed. Spain is also, you know, smaller and especially the growth of aggregators slowed down in recent years. You know, we don't have a solution to this, you know, let's say, underdevelopment of these two markets. We do think that there is potential. We know that some of this, the difference between Italy and other places has been to a large extent on the supply side.
In Italy, we had more players, more direct players with a higher level of competition. On the supply side, Italy was a better environment in the last years. Actually, Italy, after the U.K. and Germany, is probably the best market in Europe. Again, here, the only thing we want to say with this chart is to give you an idea that, you know, these are markets that, you know, are untapped to a large extent. In France, like 2% of the entire market goes to aggregators. In Italy, it's 6%. In the U.K., it's like 50%. Spain is a bit better.
You know, we think that, you know, at a certain point in time that there are no, you know, inflection points on the horizon. At a certain point, we believe, you know, aggregators will become quite relevant also in these markets. Aggregators today, in our mind, are the best model for the distribution of simple financial products, including in particular motor insurance. Eventually, you know, maybe it's in five years' time, but eventually, there is a lot of potential to, you know, for aggregators to catch up. This ends our presentation, and we are ready for questions. Please, operator, you know, if you
Thank you.
Yes.
Thank you. This is the conference call 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. If you change your mind and wish to remove your request from the question queue, then you may press star and two. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question is from Aleksandra Arsova with Equita. Please go ahead.
Hi, good evening to everybody. Just thank you for taking my questions. A couple of questions from my end. The first one is a follow-up on the latest M&A deals. II recent Sole 24 Ore article, I read that you were thinking to improve the marginality of these two businesses up to maybe 20%, from the current low teens% levels. If you can give a little bit of color on how you think it will be possible to do this. The second question on the organic business.
If the situation we are experiencing in the mortgage market and the slowdown, if it's reasonable to assume a decrease in mortgage market also, at least in the first part of 2023, on top of course on the situation we are witnessing in 2022. Thank you.
I'll take the questions. On the margins of the companies of Rastreator and LeLynx. You know, the truth is that, well, these companies have lower margins than what we are used to in Italy, but, you know, these are also different markets and at a different stage of development. I think that, you know, it's a bit premature to give an indication of any type. What we can say is we think, you know, revenues can grow and with the growth of revenues also margins can expand.
You know, we will be in a position to, you know, to be more precise once we obtain the regulatory approvals and we start, you know, working in more detail, you know, with the companies and so on. I, you know, I agree that directionally, you know, and this is probably what they asked in the interview, but, you know, the sense is directionally we can improve the margins, but there are no specific things that, you know, that we can say now, and the improvement will come with revenue growth. That will be, let's say, the main driver.
In terms of how we see the mortgage market at the beginning of 2023, I think, you know, but this is really a guess. It's not, you know, a forecast, but I think it's quite possible that we will see growth in the market because, you know, the remortgage effect will have disappeared. You know, it really depends. It will really depend on what will happen with real estate transactions. If we will have growth in property transactions, then the mortgage market will go up. Or, you know, if they're stable because people are scared about the future, then it will be stable or even decline.
I think that by the beginning of 2023, the problem of you know subsidized mortgages for young people will be sorted, possibly by itself, but because you know we will finally have some stability in interest rates, and that will solve the problem automatically. I you know would say it's very hard to say. I would put equal probabilities on a small decline or on you know I think that most likely scenarios are you know anything between -10%-+10% year-on-year in the first half of 2023. But it's really a guess for now. It's our my best guess personally, but you know it's very hard to say.
Okay, thank you.
The next question is from Marco Cristofari with Intesa Sanpaolo. Please go ahead.
Good evening, and thank you for taking my questions. First of all, again, on the acquisition, you also bought an Indian IT center. So just to understand if there is any room to exploit this IT center also for your Italian activities. Also, just understand if, in your view, there are any synergies between being with a company acquired in Italy, and if you consider further acquisition outside Italy in future. Secondly, I have a question on BPO business.
It seems that next year Superbonus 110% should end, and what could be the impact for your business, and how do you see the development of real estate services? Thank you.
Okay. I'll take the broking questions. Well, regarding India, I think, you know, this is an opportunity also for our Italian business and possibly even for our BPO division. As soon as we have a chance, we'll go and take a look at, you know, this India software development center. You know, it's like 150 people already, all engineers near Delhi. We will see if we can use that in a beneficial way for other projects within our group. Let's say it's an option, but, you know, we don't know yet.
We would be happy, you know, if we are able to use it for other stamps because recruiting IT people in Italy is becoming expensive, and also it's, you know, it's difficult to scale. We always have needs for, you know, new software and new things and so on. That's a good suggestion, let's say. In terms of synergies, there are no hard synergies. You know, we cannot have like a shared operations or shared things. We will not be able to find any real overlaps, but we will have a lot of transfer of know-how. We will learn. It's clear that, you know, we've seen it already in the due diligence.
There are areas where we can learn from what they've done in other countries, and there are clearly areas where our practices are, you know, practices that could be beneficial to the other entities. I think that there will be value creation there, but again, it's not in straight cost reduction. It's really sharing of best practices. We think that, by the way, you know, the more we look at different markets, et cetera, the more we, you know, we become a state-of-the-art operator in these broking businesses.
The fact that we have had always a lot of competition in the last 10 years in Italy, maybe it helps us, you know, to become stronger and innovate and so on. You know, there are lots of things that we know from our market that are useful and could be applied to other situations. Again, we are also learning from the other side, lots of interesting lessons. In terms of other acquisitions, I would say it's very, very premature. I mean, this is already going to be, you know, quite demanding for us.
Our objective is really to, you know, first see how we are able to, you know, to help these companies to grow and improve, you know, and consolidate their leadership. We would not rule further acquisitions out, but you know, that would be the last of the priorities. The priority will really be to make the best of, you know, the new opportunities. You know, otherwise it. You know, this is already. We already have a lot of things on our plate and, you know, we don't want to be, you know, too distracted by too many things.
This is for the broking questions, and then for BPO, Alessandro is the one that knows.
Yeah. By the way, if I can just a little comment also on the acquisition. You know, these opportunities are. In our view, the opportunity is really big, and we will have to work on it. I mean, the fact that we had a transaction on Facile.it in Italy with that, you know, very significant price that was paid, it tells you how big the opportunity can be. I mean, these are players that are leaders in their market, and market there can be the size of Italy. Therefore, we might, and we hope to have our hands on things that can really grow. I guess, as Marco just said, the priority is to unlock the potential that we believe this business will have. Back to BPO.
Yeah, it's true, the Ecobonus 110%, will end. Will end probably, you know, by the end of the year. Yeah. Other bonuses will not end, and therefore that will continue. Another thing that I might say is that some banks and some institutions have dealt with these bonuses, you know, using services like the one that we offer. Other players in the market have been a little bit more aggressive, as you know and you can read in the newspapers. I believe there will be an interesting opportunity to look at the huge stock of this thing and help people who will be.
You know, we'll have the unfortunate task to sort out, you know, the good things from the bad and, you know, potentially there is still gonna be a market there, and we might be able to focus on that. By the way, you know, there is still, you know, not to say that we are entering the market because it doesn't exist yet. You know, the same partners and the same distribution channels that we have used for the Ecobonus, you know, are gonna try to work also on the things that will stem from the PNRR.
You know, the recovery plan has a lot of projects that will have to start, and banks are looking at financing these projects. You know, a lot of due diligence will be needed. This is what we are looking at for 2023 to substitute the business that we have done in 2021 and 2022 on the Ecobonus. You know, some of the processes and some of the partners are similar, and you know, this can be done. Not to say that it's already in the bag.
For sure we'll have to cope with a reduction of the Ecobonus business, at least in its most extreme form, the one of the 110%.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. The next question is from Paolo Cipriani with, I'm sorry, a private investor. Please go ahead.
Good afternoon. Just a quick one from me. I just wanted to help me to understand how inflation and rising interest rates affect the insurance broking?
Yes. Well, inflation will have an impact as expected. Nobody has seen inflation in the last 15, 20 years. What we expect to happen is, first of all, that we will see increasing insurance premiums, because otherwise insurance companies start losing money on the contracts. If premiums go up, even if it's just nominal. Let's say, you know, inflation is 10% and premiums go up at 10%. In real terms, nothing's changed. Consumers, they will still receive renewal notices saying you have to pay 10% more. We expect people to shop around, to, you know, to really be interested in, you know, what the market to offer. If you...
Every year, even in the last seven, eight years, people have always seen insurance premiums that were either stable or sometimes the renewal was at a lower premium than the past year, because there were fewer accidents, fewer frauds, lots of things that were improved. Also, you know, by chance because we probably stopped driving or, you know, that kind of stuff. Now that's no longer the case. People will see premium increases, and the real benefit will be that, you know, this is our hope. This is what we know from the history of the early years of the market in the UK. If premiums are going up, people shop around more. If people shop around more, we are very happy.
Okay. Thank you.
The next question is a follow-up from Aleksandra Arsova with Equita. Please go ahead.
Yes, a quick follow-up question. You continued during the first half of the year to buy shares in Moneysupermarket. How the big stake plays out in your M&A strategy then? It makes a financial investment or you seem to, let's say, you have other plans for it.
No, no. We don't have any particular plan. By the way, we are also, I would say, you know, we will need money for the acquisitions we have made. Really, you know, I would see this just like a financial investment. This opportunity of acquiring, you know, Rastreator, LeLynx.fr, et cetera, was, you know, quite recent, you know. It will absorb resources. I think that, you know, it reduces our ability also to invest more maybe in other things. Again, I would say see this as something financial. It's even more so after the recent acquisitions.
You know, it's like a reserve that we have. You know, we really like the company. We think it's worth more than you know the stock price, based on outside information, of course, than the stock price. But you know, we might at certain point want to use these resources also for other things. It's as I said, you know, to be seen as something financial.
Brilliant. Thank you.
Once again, if you wish to ask a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Gentlemen, there are no more questions registered at this time.
Okay. If that's the case, we thank everybody, and we apologize again for you know, the call on Friday evening. We are available as always for one-on-ones in coming weeks. Thank you.
Thank you, everyone, and have a nice weekend.
Thank you. Bye.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for joining. The conference is now over, and you may disconnect your telephones.