CaixaBank, S.A. (BME:CABK)
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Investor Day 2022

May 17, 2022

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

I think, we can get started. Good morning, and welcome everyone. Welcome to the Investor Day, and welcome to CaixaBank's presentation of the strategic plan for 2022, 2024. It's a real pleasure to see so many familiar faces, particularly after having been locked down for such a long time and social distancing. It's the first event of this nature that we hold in person. I would also like to extend this welcome to the members of the management committee of CaixaBank who are here with us, and to the CEO of BPI, João Pedro Oliveira e Costa, who has joined us, as well as people who are watching this event live streaming. Let me run through today's agenda.

We've prepared two presentations, one from the CEO, Gonzalo Gortázar, and another one from the CFO, Javier Pano, followed by a Q&A session, during which we will take questions from the room and also remotely via streaming. Note that we need to finish the event by 11:30 A.M., but we will also have the opportunity to chat outside with some light refreshments in the hall. With that, let me hand over the meeting to Gonzalo Gortázar, the CEO.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

One day I'll pronounce your surname in Spanish, O'Loghlen or anyhow, good morning, everybody, and thank you for your time. Thank you for being here. Special thanks to the management committee for joining us today. I'll try to go immediately into the substance with a few comments on where we are.

Most of you know well where we are, but I think it's worth just having a brief summary before we get on to what we want to do, which is obviously the core of the presentation today. Where we are is we are clear leaders in retail banking in Spain through organic growth and integration. Over the last decade, we've moved to a clear leadership position. You know well our market shares.

We have also changed the weight of our businesses in the sense that capital allocated to non-core businesses has been reduced from 24%- 2% during this period, so we've become much more of a pure play over the last decade. We have grown internationally with the integration of BPI. I'll have a few words later on BPI, but clearly a very successful acquisition for the group. We have also changed dramatically the balance sheets. Remember what it used to be at the end of 2013. Non-performing loans have obviously gone down in a major way. We're now at 3.5%.

We have reinforced capital, almost double the levels that we had a decade ago, and we have also reinforced further our liquidity levels with over EUR 170 billion of liquid funds, which is obviously very significant. Beyond that, we have over the last six quarters really announced and then closed and then done most of the integration of CaixaBank.

This is since 95% of the employees that we had expected to leave have left the group, 95%. This is just over a year after closing the transaction. We have also integrated 90% of the planned branch closures that we were planning to. It's not finished, but we're almost there from that point of view. We have done it. It's always difficult, a large integration.

We're very happy that we've done it not only very fast, but also reasonably well with minimal disruption. You can see how we have been growing our relational client base over the period. I can say that our internal net promoter score, our quality levels at the end of April are again, not just at, but above the levels that we had pre-integration.

Bank integration done. Just a final consideration on what we've done during thes e years where negative rates have been a big problem for retail banks. We've actually managed to increase the weight of fees and insurance income as a percentage of total revenue from 1/3 to 44%. We have reengineered the business, and obviously you're all familiar with the success of that part of our business, long-term savings, protection.

The reality is that our business is very different today than what it was ten years ago. We're much better positioned, but at the same time, we still have the sensitivity to the interest rates and hence the value of our franchise, of our zero cost deposits, which are obviously very significant. The value of that franchise is gonna be really materialized, and we're gonna make the most of it as we expect over the next years to regain positive rates. No, we'll have the best of both worlds. All the reengineering we've done of the business to offset that negative rates together with the fact that now rates will not be negative. We'll have, I think, tailwinds on both wings.

With that, I will get into the priorities for this period, which is the main core of the presentation. We have selected three big priorities. The first one is growth. We want to see this business as a growth opportunity. We are used to look at the banking business in the last decade as a business that has to retrain, restructure, and be more efficient. Yes, we want to be more efficient, but we want to grow the business.

We think we are in a position to grow the business. Second is obviously we want to make sure that we provide the right customer service model to our clients, and we do that in an efficient way, but also that we make sure we have happy clients with the way we serve them. Finally, sustainability.

We want to become or consolidate our position as a real benchmark, not just in Spain, but in Europe. I'll make a few comments on two we call here enablers that are critical for financial institutions, technology and obviously people. Growth, growing the business. We have a leading financial supermarket. I will not extend myself on that because you know it well. During 2022 to 2024, we think we can do two things.

One is increase the penetration of our products in our customer base. Obviously, the integration of Bankia is a big opportunity for us. Second, we think we can improve the offering and take another leap in terms of the build out of ecosystems. Ecosystems is a word that is much used.

I'd like to provide you with a few examples during the presentation on that front. To start with, we talk about our customer experiences. We have, over the last four years, this is more internal language, but I think it's appropriate to share it, a day like like this, how we see the products and services we offer to clients. We talk about retail. When we talk about retail, we look at four customer experiences.

As you can see,[audio distortion] or think of the future, where we group all our savings and retirement investment solutions, all the advisory business. The customer experience of sleep soundly is our protection business. It includes mostly our consumer and mortgage business, but all the solutions, products and services that we have built around creating a real ecosystem.

The day-to-day, which includes the basic transactionality and payment experience, which is so important for clients and obviously a key to get loyal clients that are operating with us on a daily basis. You have some statistics on the level of penetration we have on this customer experience along our customer base, very significant.

We obviously have all the business we do with businesses and corporations, which I will discuss as well. I start with the first one, very well known, our very strong position in the long-term savings market.[audio distortion] What do we have here? First of all, very strong starting position. Scale EUR 227 billion of AUM with very significant growth. You can see 10% organic growth over the last seven years.

Second, we have segmented our business. You can see on the right hand of this slide how many premier customers we have, 2.8 million, 200,000 private banking customers, 6,000 of them in the wealth business and a pure advisory model. Very significant segmentation. The scale and segmentation, absolutely critical. Third, we have a big focus on advisory. We have 30,000 of our employees certified in advisory, as you can see on the page. A good example of that is our market share in managed portfolios, where we're really offering the highest value add for this part of our clientele. Our market share there is 43%. It's a good indicator of how much we have emphasized advisory. We have a very broad product range.

Obviously, our own products, including, naturally long-term insurance solutions, which are very complementary with other investment products, but obviously also have significant distribution of third-party products. We have launched and will continue to launch sustainability related products and services.

You can see how 35% of our mutual funds are Article 8 and 9 according to the Sustainable Finance Disclosure Regulation, even more so on the long term. These are, I would say, the tools we have today, including, by the way, our largest robo-advisor in Spain, which is growing fast for us and being very complementary to our overall product base. This is where we are. Now, let's look at what the opportunity is.

The opportunity, despite the fact that we're very large and we have exploited that opportunity to a large extent, is still there. You look at long-term savings as a proportion of total household savings. We're at 29%, even lower than that in Portugal, obviously well below the levels of the Euro area.

That's a macro sort of top-down consideration. Bottom up, look at the difference of proportion of clients that own a product between CaixaBank origin and Bankia origin, and you see the tremendous opportunity we have to make that convergence. Certainly, we are in the process of doing it. How are we going to do it? We're gonna continue to focus and push discretionary management products with explicit charges, so really putting in value our advisory capacities, developing new products. I mentioned some of them, sustainability-related.

We have a huge opportunity on the retirement market. I'll discuss that later on. We're gonna keep growing our private bank in Luxembourg for the top end of the private bank is offering good solutions as well. As I mentioned, continue to developing digital automatic solutions like our robo-advisor, Smart Money.

Over these three years, we expect to gain market share. We have put a target of 70 basis points of market share and certainly would like to not only meet that target, but also exceed it if the circumstances allow us to do. That's the first one, long-term savings. Second, big customer experience is protection business, where we include life risk and non-life. Again, where we are, if you look at the left-hand side, life risk, we multiplied by three over the last 10 years.

The gross premiums, non-life risk, we multiplied by two, with market shares over 10%, now. Success of MyBox has been critical in the last years. You can see how, in 2021, basically 2/3s of our new premiums were under the MyBox wrapper. Just a brief reminder, MyBox is a three-year product with a flat monthly rate, which allows for a higher level of coverages and for bundling different non-life or protection insurance product.

It is allowing us to basically increase per capita sort of average premiums, and it's also allowing us to have a substantially higher retention rates, which is obviously a critical part of how you create value in an insurance business. That's where we are. Great success. Still great opportunity if you look at where we are with penetration versus the Euro area on the life risk is particularly striking. We're still at half the level of the Euro area.

We're also well below the Euro area in non-life. Again, same picture, comparison of penetration for CaixaBank customers with Bankia customers is indicating that we have a lot of room to grow. Life risk is almost double penetration. We have for one category of clients in health is actually 7x . In auto, it is 3x . Clearly, we have here a low-hanging fruit. Well, it may not be so low, but it is certainly reachable during the next three years. Javier will discuss how we see those revenue synergies accruing in the next years.

How do we do it? More MyBox is a tremendous success. More products for seniors and for business. We will extend our offering there. As I said, the synergies, revenue synergies with Bankia. We think we can achieve 9% revenue growth in the protection business, which is obviously very significant as you compound it over three years.

A brief note, as I said, on the senior ecosystem, mentioning long-term savings and protection, which are two experiences that we certainly offer to our senior business, to our senior citizens, our senior clients. The comment I would like to make here is this is a growth market. We have currently a 44% penetration of people that are over 60, 43% if we talk about over 70. These are customers that have their income coming into our accounts, 60% of them, as you can see, and actually of a good level, 30% on average are premier customers. This is a great client base. It's not a client base that is being reduced. It's quite the opposite.

We have more and more people above 60 years every year. We have a great position. We are by far the leaders. Here we're offering things that other people are not offering. When we look at our over EUR 30 billion of business we have in annuities on VAUL, which we--it's Valor Activo Unit Linked, but again, it's a product for the seniors planning inheritance, succession giving wealth protection, combining it with life protection as well. We have created a number of solutions for our seniors that include a bit more sort of work behind but actually solve client needs in a way that other people are not. This business is not finishing in my view.

This business still has a lot to go in the next years, and we are in a great position. We will develop new products. We mentioned here retirement care, what we call Dependencia. In Spain, there are great opportunities. This also allows us to grow our revenues, but it also requires us to invest. We mentioned, as we presented the first quarter results, that we are going to invest EUR 50 million in measures related to supporting our senior clients. As you will see when we discuss the plan, we find plenty of revenue opportunities, but we need to invest in to make sure that we materialize some of them.

At this point, we are and we want to be the benchmark, the reference for our senior clients in Spain as the bank to go. It means that we want to give them the best customer service that we can, and that obviously implies some associated costs. Third experience, enjoy, Disfrutar de la vida, all our retail lending business. A comment on the mortgage side, MyHome ecosystem. This is working very well for us this year. You see in the center of the slide how we have managed to double new production in the months of March and April. Actually, we're doing similar rates in May as well.

Again, some of the products and services that we have, you can see on the left hand, this is a real ecosystem. We're not talking about the mortgage product, but about house appliance, electronics, home insurance, alarms, solar panels, etc., etc. This is the way we look at our business. Increasingly, we cannot just offer a product, but develop a solution, offer a solution within an ecosystem. We expect to increase mortgage production by 50% in these three years versus the previous three. Again, as you can see, from the first months of this year, we are on the right track. Consumer lending ecosystem is very notable.

You can see here how we do direct financing, but we offer mobility related products. What we've done in Wivai, which I will get into some details. Our offering of Buy Now, Pay Later for our clients through MyCard, where we have already 7 million of our customers with MyCard, which basically serves as a multipurpose card, debit, charge, credit, and certainly gives the opportunity for clients to decide to defer payments when they want during the process of the acquisition of services and goods. We have a very good business with mobility, as I mentioned. We have been selling over 20,000 cars in what we call renting in Spanish leasing. A good strategic agreement with Arval on that front.

Over the last five, six years, we call it a select place, because rather than a marketplace, we are having a select portfolio of products, which we think combine the right characteristics to be offered to our clients. We expect to produce over 30% more during these three years than what we did over the last three. Obviously, last three were affected by the pandemic. But certainly even in today's environment, we think that there's a lot we can do. You can see on the right how the trend started to move again upwards in March 2022 versus the fall after the pandemic. A few details on Wivai, the select place Wivai. We have it operating.

Last year, we sold 500,000 products through Wivai. This is not, it's not a plan, it's not a PowerPoint presentation only, it's a reality. We are planning to multiply that by 2.3 in the next three years to reach 1.2 million units sold. The EUR 110 million revenues that we had associated to this business in 2021 are obviously expected to grow accordingly. The business is going to move increasingly from a sort of retail physical distribution to digital. Our expectation is that over 50% of sales will be digital in 2024. That's what we're working for. Scalability is obviously much more efficient from a cost point of view.

We have the offering, electronics, home appliances, urban mobility, protection, many others that we're thinking to add. We have a large customer base. We have a very good analytics and data, and I will refer to that later on, so we can understand well what is the propensity and the likelihood that certain clients are going to be interested in certain products. Hence, the business is again growing fast. You see how over the last six years, it's been actually multiplied by five, and we expect more or so. We will be investing in Wivai, but we will be collecting revenues from that as discussed.

Finally, the fourth retail experience is what we call the Día a Día, the relational-based strategy, basic transactionality, account, payment, obviously is a key element for clients to be with us. Clients need to be satisfied on how they work on the day-to-day banking, otherwise they will certainly move away from us. We see how relational clients have been going up. Just to be brief, but this is the core of our business. I mean, some data, we have over 9 million clients that have their income with us, be it payroll or a pension. Every day we have over 5 million payments with our cards and more than 4 million accesses to our digital platform. No? Our clients are with us, they are operating.

By the way, they are operating. This is going to have implications also when we look at what happens to the funds that they have with us when interest rates go up because they are operational funds in a big way and have no sensitivity to interest rates in a very large part. Moving on to businesses. It's a lot of information, apologies. Anyhow, it's a long presentation also to be using as a reference of what we want to do over and where we are, and what we want to do over the next three years, you know? On the business side, we have a tremendous track record because we are so often associated to a retail bank. Our very large market share, sometimes we forget what we have achieved, and it's very impressive.

You look at the last decade in terms of market share, moving from 9%-24% with 7% organic growth in business lending without any meaningful accident. We've done that growing the portfolio, growing our clients, but with a very low risk. We have a specialized increasingly our offering, our customer service and verticals like food and drinks, pharma, feel good, health-related matters. We still have a big opportunity here. We have 60% penetration in Spain, but only 27% as the primary bank. Very importantly, we have a huge investment. 164 business centers throughout Spain. 164, another 87 business store centers. Over 4,000 employees fully dedicated to serving our businesses, which obviously no one else has in Spain.

We're convinced that this is going to continue to bring very good results and growth for us. There are some other opportunities, you know them well, including Next Generation EU funds for growing the business. This is something where we think we're gonna be doing very well in the next three years. A few words on CIB and also on our international strategy there. CIB has been a growth story. You can see there over the last three years, moving from EUR 19 billion to EUR 54.8 billion. Obviously, in the last year, the incorporation of Bankia has helped.

Even if you leave that aside, the basic decisions we took to reorganize and reinforce the business realigned our customer coverage through sector and product lines have yielded fantastic results. We have also developed gradually, and we will continue to do so gradually and prudently, our international banking investment. You see, we are as I mentioned in a number of European countries, be it London, Paris. We are opening now in Milan a full branch, Frankfurt, Warsaw, obviously big presence in Portugal. To grow this business again from €27.7 billion we have to approximately double the international portfolio by the end of this three-year period.

What we're doing here is basically lend and work with investment-grade corporates that have a presence already in Spain through their subsidiaries, where we have a great operating relationship already, and where we obviously have a natural sort of a step-up in providing financial solutions to parent companies. This process is not a process that is starting today. It's a process that started a few years ago, and it's been gradually gaining some traction, and today I thought it was worth mentioning. Again, low risk, focus on no accident, asset quality is an absolute priority here. But we have already achieved over 10% return on tangible equity on this activity.

As we see, the next few years, this will continue to have a slow but consistent growth, slow in terms of the overall dimension of the group, obviously very relevant for the unit, which is doing extremely well. To finalize this section, a few words on Portugal. We have João Pedro here. You can have the opportunity to speak to him after this event. I think BPI is in, as you can see on the right-hand side, in a virtuous circle. It's growing its businesses, it's growing clients, growing revenues, fees, NII, even more so because it has a similar sensitivity than us on interest rates. This is allowing BPI to invest more in actually gaining more and more market share.

Over the last five years, it's been approximately 200 basis points of market share gains. In some parts of the business, even more. This is accelerating rather than slowing down, and it's a result of a fantastic team, a fantastic bank in Portugal, and also very significant investment effort that we made, started to make five years ago, and that is continuing. Obviously, the evolution of the cost income ratio speaks by itself. As Javier will mention later on, in this three-year period, we expect that BPI will completely converge towards the efficiency and profitability levels of the group. A great story. Second area I wanted to address is the customer service model.

I'll try and not extend myself much, but we have clients that operate with us in different ways. I would start with omni-channel that basically operates with the relationship managers and actively use our digital channels. This is 29% of our customers. The next category is the people that we have served through inTouch. This is the projection by the end of the year after we do a number of changes we're doing as a consequence of the integration of Bankia and CaixaBank. 22%, people that actually are digital and interact with us through a remote advisor, but do not normally go to the branches.

We have imagin, the mobile bank, mostly focused on young people with an offering that is actually financial and non-financial, where we already have 19% of our customer base, obviously younger customer base. You can see both inTouch and imagin are new sort of customer propositions, or new in terms of how we interact with them that five, six years ago we didn't have, and they now account for 41% of our client base. We have our purely digital clients and obviously our pure physical clients, and then some specialized services. When we look at all these interactions, these type of clients, we want to be making sure that we offer them sort of the best service through the channel they choose.

Obviously, depending on their behavior, we are directing them towards one service model or another, that suits them better, no? Imagin, brief comment, 3.7 million in the community now, which 2.1 are banking clients over 18-year-old, 22 years average age. As I said, this is a financial and non-financial offering, including products and services outside the banking world like leisure and entertainment, sustainability related ones, and it's basically a lifestyle community with a differentiation between what we call kids up to 12, teens, teenagers, and then the main imaginers. It's been growing very fast. You can see it on the page.

Obviously, a lot of it has to do with us transferring these type of clients onto this, customer service, model, but it also been attracting clients. Great customer satisfaction, and importantly, it aims to be the main bank of our clients. This is not the second bank you have to do some, fancy things, here and there, like some other neobanks. It' s the main bank. You see 50% of customers have their direct deposits of their recurring income within the bank, and obviously digital onboarding is gaining traction. A few figures. 30% growth in users over the last three years.

We expect 30% growth not over the last few years, three years, but for the next three years over the life of the plan, and an even higher growth of banking clients over 18 years old. This is going to be achieved obviously by continuous attracting clients and by increasing the product offering services that we have in imagin. You can see we have an active portfolio pipeline here with mortgages, Smart Money, some of the saving solutions that we offer in a simplified manner that we are rolling out during this year, and more solutions that will be coming on 2023 and onwards.

I would say it's been a period of heavy investment into imagin, and it is coming of age now, as we see the next three years, I think you're gonna like what you see. One of the figures I have here is the gross income, which we expect to move from EUR 100 million- EUR 250 million, a 2.5 increase over three years. Obviously, there will be some impact here from interest rates because this customer base again has a very large deposit base with us. inTouch, a remote service for digital channels with a personalized relationship manager. It's again growing very fast.

We have 2.4 million clients at the end of 2021, and this is going to almost double by 2024 to 4.6. Here, obviously there is some transfer of clients as a result of the integration of Bankia, which is happening in 2022. That's why we have this very big jump between 2021 and 2022 here. Scaling up the business, growing it, and obviously focusing on the customer experience, the simplicity, the convenience. It's a very efficient model. As you see, our managers can handle 3x more customers. Besides that, business volume and gross income per customer are also higher. The retail branch network, we expect to have around 3,850 branches by year-end.

This is post the integration. Importantly, 40%, well, 39% of them are rural branches. When you look at our branch network, you have to compare it to most of our listed peers, you have to take into account that we are competing in a market where they have a minimal presence and where branches are very important. That's why we have this differential number of branches on top of having obviously a very large market share. This differential number of branches is not a problem. We want these branches. We like these branches. We make money in these branches in rural Spain, and we plan to make more. Again, we have basically concluded the big transformation of the branch network.

We are not anticipating any other restructuring of the branch network. There will be obviously the normal evolution, business as usual. Importantly, obviously, when we look at branches, also the omni-channel customers on average are three times as profitable as the customers that are not omni-channel. Store branches and our approach to urban centers, yes, is known to you. We'll continue to grow the store format so that in 2022, actually, we already have 50% of our business volume in the store branches, 835. It's allowing us to provide a specialization, extended opening hours, a better customer experience, a focus on advisory services, and I think worth mentioning, a very big reduction in low-value transactions.

You can see how ATM and digital absorb over 99% of the operational transactions at the store center. Basically, we are achieving what we wanted. It's not just about increased productivity, which we obviously have, but also about quality. You see our NPS mark at 59% is actually well above the average of the bank. We have really a model that is working very well, and it's close to completion. Again, we expect to have the store branches that we need by the end, in broad numbers, by the end of the year. Rural network, I will not mention other than what I said. It's light in terms of people. Average people this network are three employees per branch.

As you can see, actually, in many cases, we have two or one employees, almost half of these branches. The business is a good business in terms of the customers that we have, the income, the premier banking part of that business, which is obviously more profitable. We plan to continue investing in the business. We wanna maintain these branches, and actually, we are making good money, certainly above the cost of capital, and in line with the rest of the bank. A few words on digital. You know our leading position, 43% of our clients. No, not of our clients. Sorry, that's over 70. Say 43% of digital clients in Spain bank with us, and we have. I guess this is a core part of our business.

We have made a lot of progress in terms of the functionalities, what can be done digitally, and third party conducting a study on how we rank vis-à-vis European banks. We see we are 80% ahead in individuals and SMEs. In terms of the number of functionalities, we're also 27% ahead. We have strong digital capabilities, and we have, obviously, very importantly, a scalability, no? The reality is that in November last year, we increased the number of operations or customers, et cetera, by 50%, and it worked seamlessly. Digital sales, you see on the right-hand side how they account for a very important part of certain customer experiences, and we'll continue to invest on that. Quality is a key area of focus.

We want to be the best retail bank in Spain. We want to be the largest retail bank in Spain, but also the best. We need to make sure that we provide the best quality. We have re-engineered the way we measure quality to what we call this near real-time NPS, which allows us to measure the satisfaction of clients immediately after providing them a service. As they receive a message from us, and they basically answer a big simple question, would they recommend this bank to someone else, no?

Obviously, when they do not recommend or they have an issue, it allows us to, that same day or the next day, immediately have the relationship manager calling on the client, trying to understand why he or she was not happy with us and how we can actually make him or her happy. This is changing the speed at which we can manage quality, which is in line with, let's say, other businesses, other sectors, and something that is actually, I think a competitive advantage in order to make sure we address quality as a key mission for the organization.

We've seen actually, when I mentioned that NPS levels are above pre-integration benchmarks, this tool is clearly absolutely an essential one, no? To finish with the strategic priorities, ESG sustainability, I think we're well-known because of our origin for our social commitment. Our leadership in microfinance is worth mentioning. We have the largest MicroBank microfinance institution in Europe. We've been the largest bank in terms of issuance of ESG bonds in Europe. We've been carbon neutral since 2018. I think we have a great position to build on that because this has been achieved not because someone told us that we had to do this because this is the right thing to do. This has been done because it's part of our DNA.

Now we have to build on that, and we can. Looking at ESG considerations, we want to, on the environmental side, the basic name of the game is to assist our customers in an energy transition, so we're gonna be funding them and helping them in that transition, on social impact and financial inclusion, and we want to be also a sector benchmark in governance. On the environmental front, we expect to channel EUR 64 billion of sustainable funds over the next three years. We have many initiatives on this front. Increasing our product offering to include the appropriate range of ESG products, raising awareness, providing advisory to our clients, providing training internally, externally.

We have, as I said, been carbon neutral for now four or five years, but looking at Scope 3, looking mostly for us in our case is at the emissions of our clients when we lend them money. We've been signatories of the Net-Zero Carbon Alliance and expect to provide some detailed decarbonization targets for the carbon-intensive sectors during this year towards the fourth quarter. On the social side, I mentioned what we're doing. In the interest of time, I will not get into the detail. On governance, again, I think we have made a great progress over the last decade, and we feel very well and very good about what we are.

We're gonna have to continue to integrate ESG criteria to continue obviously focusing on transparency, accountability. All the reporting that we have to do on sustainability is a big effort for us. We do want to be a benchmark and be at the top and at the front looking at how the world is becoming much more sensitive to this consideration. Again, I think it plays to our strengths, and we certainly plan to keep making inroads on this front. Two final words before I move on to the financial targets. Technology. I wanted to discuss or at least make a few points about technology. We all know it's extremely important.

Many of us know that there's a lot of things we do not know about technology because it's a big technical complex world. I think at least I will say some things that I do understand, and I think are easily understandable. We have a single core banking platform in Spain. This is very important. We have the largest operation in Spain. It obviously needs the appropriate support from a technological point of view. Having, after so many integrations, just one core banking platform is critical. It provides us also with a very high functional coverage. It's 200 billion transactions a year that we do through our systems, and at peak time, during an hour, we do 25,000 transactions per second. During an hour, every second, 25,000 transactions.

This is not small. It's not easy to create a FinTech with this kind of scalability. It works very well, and it was tested in a big way in November because we had to increase by 50% its capacity, and it happened without any noticeable disruption, no? We feel very good about what we have, no? Now we need to evolve from where we are, but certainly, it's great to be in a very solid position from that point of view. Where do we want to evolve? I would say first, AI, analytics, data at the core. We made a lot of progress. In the first three-year plan I presented back in 2015, we said we had a single data pool already, no?

It was quite remarkable at the time. In fact, we have been working on that now for seven years. We made great progress in three big areas. One is commercial. Our approach to clients is completely different. We now very often know which clients are likely to want which products. Obviously that is a huge advantage because we spend much less time calling the wrong client on the wrong product, and we get to the right client at the right time. Over the last three years, it's over 184 million commercial impacts. This is not small, this is not a small thing. Our people in the sales network, our advisors, our relationship managers, have the tools to understand who needs what.

Obviously you put onto that the human touch, and that makes a big difference. Risk management. Our risk scoring models have been improved greatly over the last years, thanks to precisely what AI and machine learning can offer in terms of modeling. We have also improved how we manage the NPLs in the branch network by knowing which situations require action and which situations will solve by themselves. Control areas has been a huge help, and it's again compliance, audits, monitoring all what is happening in the bank in terms of payments, behavior through AI tool makes a big difference.

Having said this, been working for six years, I think we're only looking at the tip of the iceberg in terms of what we can achieve here. This is, I would say, the number one priority for the bank in terms of technology. We now have 1,500 people using information systems in 35 functional areas across the bank, and obviously this is growing, and we intend to keep it growing. Second big priority from an IT perspective is the cloud. Cloud absorption, we want to move from 21%-32%. Beware of comparing this with other financial institutions because it is calculated in very different manners. We're just providing the one that we think for us is most useful.

We wanna continue moving to the cloud. At the same time, and as I said before, we have actually currently state-of-the-art IT that we want to keep, and we need to keep working as it does currently very well. This is a long-term process, but one where we need both the right speed of this journey, but also just making sure that what we do while we are on this journey continues to be absolutely top, no? The cloud is gonna improve time to market, gives us more flexibility, gives us more capability to integrate with third parties, to adopt software as a service, where that is the right strategy.

It's also going to increase the computational capability of our AI models, particularly when incorporating sort of non-structured information and others that require computational capabilities that go beyond what is reasonable to offer on-prem. Very important priority for the organization, and again, one where we will make significant progress over the next three years. People just looking backwards, I'd say it's been a very significant change, and I'll say a few things. Specialized workforce. I discussed this last plan three years ago, how important it was to continue to specialize people moving from generalist positions where actually we're gonna have increasing excess capacity to specialized functions.

Basically almost double over the last three years in terms of sort of relationship managers, premier business, private banking, CIB, inTouch. Quite a lot of works that are perfectly prepared to face the future. Talent assessment has been critical for us during the integration. Everybody was assessed by an independent third party. All difficult decisions that we needed to take at the time of the merger were taken on the basis of meritocracy. In fact, we reduced management levels by approximately half. 48% of the merger structure is compared to the number of managers that we had. If we added the two organizations, the number of managers we have today, it's 48%. We've gone beyond what was the pure integration.

To rationalize and simplify our corporate structure, we've reduced the number of layers in that corporate management structure from seven-four . We have made significant inroads in terms of diversity with women in management positions above 40%. Much more to go, but clearly in a very good position at this stage. We have made great efforts to more and more work as one firm, as they would say, with the right collaborative tools, agile models where appropriate, et cetera. Substantial change in the last three years, I have to say. More has to come, but this is not allowing me to go beyond now. It's kind of a stopped. Am I moving to the next one? No.

I'm sorry, but maybe I need some help here.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Do you have any backup?

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Maybe it's a manual problem. Let's see.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

See it. Yeah.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Okay.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

That's what we have to--

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Remind me at the end, Eddie. This was saving my Investor Presentation. Okay. Sorry for that. It's also probably it's a signal that I am being too long and boring today. My apologies. It's quite a lot of content. It's the style of the house. We'd rather provide a lot of content. I haven't commented on all of it, but anyhow, I'm sure it will provide for discussions after this day, and we're at your disposal from that point of view. To finalize, people, what do we need to do? Obviously, is complete the final phases of the integration. We're almost there, but we're not there yet.

What is relevant is to make sure that once that's done, and for the majority of us, it's done, is just make sure we focus on business, on our clients, on growing the business. That's absolutely critical. No distraction. That's how we've always been and how we certainly are. Intensify upskilling and reskilling of clients. This process that I mentioned about the specialization is gonna continue, and we wanna help our people and help ourselves on that front, and promote a close and motivational leadership. This is obviously very relevant. It's not just about the top management, but obviously people these days need to be motivated in a different way than in the past. Fortunately, we have been making that evolution over the last years.

We need to continue always to focus on how we motivate people. It's everybody says that, but it's a reality. No, they are the secret of our success. With that, financial targets. Just one page, refreshing? Just one page, and we're done. Well, no, then you have Javier, eh? I know I am being a telonero for Javier, but anyhow. I don't know how to translate telonero, Eddie, but for Q&A maybe.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Opening band.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Okay. Well, these are our targets. Profitability. Return on tangible equity above 12% in 2024. Cost income below 48%. Expect revenues to grow at 7%, mostly aided by NII. As a result of growing revenues and costs that are gonna be flat because all the synergies that we have to deliver and we will be delivering will offset other initiatives. Hence with that, revenue is growing 7% and cost being actually below zero, then we get to +15% in pre-provision profit. This is obviously big numbers, no question.

I hope that all what I said at the beginning of how this sort of where we are now and with this change in negative rates being or disappearing, hopefully from the planet, is no surprise. This is the consequence of where we are today. Obviously, as a result of that, we will be generating quite a lot of capital. It's around EUR 9 billion, and this capital includes the buyback we are announcing today, EUR 1.8 billion. The cash payout, you know, for this year is 50%-60%. For the next years, we're saying above 50%, but we're not putting a limit on that. The board will be deciding on an annual basis like it has been decided in the past.

Obviously, we will be generating capital depending on that payout policy, over and beyond the 12%, which we have, as target, given where market levels indicate we should be. No? The addition of all that is EUR 9 billion, and it's obviously, as you can see, is available for distribution, and it will be distributed. Cost of risk-

Expect it to be below 35 basis points on average for the three years. Bear in mind that we have obviously a large unused COVID reserve also for Ukraine, so we will be using that on top of it, and as Javier, I'm sure will elaborate. We expect to actually reduce the level of non-performing loans. It may be counterintuitive given what's going on in terms of the macro risks and the fact that we are at 3.5, we're pretty convinced that we can do that. I think we have the tools to be able to manage non-performing loans from that point of view much more actively and obviously expect to be below that 3%. That's why we're committing to it at this stage. That's really it.

Apologies again for the long speech here. Your turn, Javier.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Let's do it.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Okay. Thank you very much. Well, first of all, thank you for joining us today here. Also would like to say hello to my colleagues of the management committee, João Pedro. Well, first, let me give you a brief summary on the main assumptions for this strategic plan in terms of macro volumes and obviously rate projections. In terms of macro, we have already taken into account the new circumstances and the impact of the high inflation situation, the impact of the uncertainty from the war in Ukraine. You know that several weeks ago, we already downgraded our GDP growth forecast for 2022 to 4.2% from 5.5%, and also, we have revised it the following years. In this case, it's economic recovery.

It's in line with the figures we had before the pandemic crisis. We expect the economic recovery to continue, and the signs we have as of today are as is. In terms of inflation, something very important, our main assumption is that, inflation will gradually converge towards the targets of the central banks. Here you may see core inflation, which probably measures better the long-term trends converging towards 2%, no? Well, on volumes, here we're making quite the conservative assumptions in our view on performing loans, this positive growth by 0.5% CAGR. On customer funds, but more importantly for our business, long-term savings, also we are making a conservative assumption with no contribution from market valuation, expected to grow by over 3%. We have done better in the past.

In terms of interest rates, clearly there is a much different backdrop. We have a base case scenario, which is the blue yield curve. Actually, it's the yield curve by the end of the month of March. We also have run the numbers for a more conservative scenario. As you may see, currently, the yield curve at the short term is at the same levels, but steeper at the long end, actually. Let's go to the details. In terms of financial targets, this is the same slide Gonzalo has just commented. This target for ROTE over 12% by 2024 clearly results into a much higher capital capacity distribution. It's EUR 9 billion cumulative for the three years.

This measured step today of this EUR 1.8 billion share buyback announced. Also, a normalization in terms of asset quality and cost of risk with cost of risk expected to be below 35 basis points on average. We want to keep reducing our NPL exposure. We have updated our CET1 target between 11% and 12%, well, this is a comfortable position. Now let's go into the details. This journey from 7.2% ROTE last year to over 12%, you may see that the main drivers are revenues. On that front, I would like to remark an important contribution of circa 1 percentage point from lower contributions to the resolution fund and the deposit guarantee fund from 2024.

We have this pretty clearly will be the case. Then it's about the rest of revenues with strong growth on NII, cannot be any other way, but also fees and other insurance revenues. Costs are gonna have a neutral impact, as we are expecting that the cost base by 2024 will be slightly below the cost base in 2021. That normalization on cost of risk will have a negative impact of circa 1 percentage point. We have other impacts mainly related to high capital distribution. Among those, today's announced share buyback is adding 70 basis points. With this much higher profitability, we expect the cost to income to come down by more than 10 percentage points to less than 48%.

At the same time, in Portugal, as Gonzalo was commenting, we expect that BPI will fully converge in terms of ROTE and cost to income to the ambitions at group level. Let's have a look at revenues, now, into further detail. Let me first draw your attention to the right-hand side chart, where you may see that, our, pre-provision profit has been pretty much stable in recent years, despite, operating in negative rates. We have had a strong NII headwind, but, during those years, we have been able to build up, businesses, in order to diversify our revenues. Well, clearly, there is a key business, in banking, which is, customer loans and deposits that actually it was an engine that was not, firing on all cylinders, no?

Now, merely by returning to positive rates, this is a very powerful driver of our profitability. Actually, you can see this on the left-hand side chart, where, precisely, customer loans and deposits will grow in revenues by circa 12% CAGR during the next three years. And then also, sorry, keeping a strong focus on long-term savings and protection, growing those revenues by circa 5% and 9% CAGR respectively. We have that extra boost from lower contributions to the resolution fund and the Deposit Guarantee Fund, and also we have other headwinds. The main one being that the TLTRO funding benefit goes, so we need to absorb that during the next three years, and also the changes you know well in our stakes.

With this, the ambition for revenues for 2024 is EUR 13.5 billion. This is a 7% CAGR growth. Looking at it by the breakdown in the P&L, that is, NII growing by circa 8% and fees, ex deposit fees, you know that we have a part on fees about negative rates that actually are accounted as fees, expecting to grow by 3% and other insurance revenues by 11%. Some further details on the key engines. First, long-term savings. Our ambition is to reach balances of EUR 250 billion by 2024. That's more than 3% CAGR growth. At the same time, gaining market share by more than 70 basis points. It's in terms of revenues, we expect those to grow by circa 5%.

We have a very well-established record on this business. You know that we have done really well in the past. Obviously, that chart also includes some inorganic growth, but organically, we have been growing by 10% CAGR. On protection, on that front, our ambition is to reach EUR 1.7 billion in revenues by 2024. That's growth of 9% CAGR, the main driver being life risk insurance. On that front, this also supported by the acquisition of Bankia Vida. That will result into growth of circa 17%. But even not including the inclusion or acquisition of Bankia Vida, growth is circa 10%. Our credentials in this business are also really strong, and as you may see, also, growth of 17% organic during the last six, seven years.

On loans, on the loan book, here, the message is quite simple. We expect that lending dynamics from now on will trend towards the pre-pandemic mix. Remember that is strong growth on consumer lending, business lending, but this time, much softer deleveraging on mortgages. We expect our consumer loan book to grow by more than 2.5% CAGR, our business lending book by more than 1.5%, and we expect that the market share of the new business on mortgages to be circa 20%. That is more than five percentage points compared to our recent market share. This will still result into some deleveraging on that book. You know that is a very large book with a strong seasonality.

Deleveraging will be reduced to circa 1.5%. Now let me talk about rates, because obviously this is a major change in the situation. We have quite a specific differentiated situation in terms of the structure of our balance sheet, and let me give you some details. Here you have on the left-hand side chart the breakdown, a simple breakdown, of our rate sensitive balance sheet. You may see that on the asset side, we have a very large pool of floating rate assets. That's mainly our mortgage portfolio that is at floating and also other loans at floating. Then there is a minor part that is at fixed rate, basically some fixed rate loans, obviously, but also the fixed income portfolio.

The most interesting part is on the liability side. On that front, you may see that we have a small part at floating. This is basically wholesale funding and money markets. We have a very large pool of client deposits with very low sensitivity. Those are very stable and highly granular deposits. Actually, you know that as rates go up, to some of those deposits, we will have to start paying some interest. Due to this stability and granularity, there is a very large part of it that actually will have zero cost. As you see, in this balance sheet structure, there is always a larger part on the asset side that floating compared to the liability side. This is highly gearing us towards higher rates.

The situation is pretty much similar in the case of the balance sheet of BPI. As I said, this is quite a unique situation. According to our internal research, we have 78% of our deposit base that are retail deposits, that this is individual clients plus very small SMEs. This compares to 61% the pure average. In order to give you some more details about the characteristics of this deposit base, circa 60% of our total deposits are from relational individual clients. It's circa 10 million clients with an average balance per deposit of approximately EUR 20,000. This is actually the liquidity buffer of those households.

Those deposits are highly operational, so we have more than 9 million deposit payrolls and pensions, and this results into a EUR 14 billion deposited monthly into sight deposits. Moreover, in recent years, we have increased, or actually it's the clients that have increased the exposure out of deposits. So, we have now long-term savings according to our definition. You know, this is life insurance, savings insurance, sorry, and mutual funds, et cetera, represent 37% of our total customer funds. So from now on, clients will have lower willingness to be paid for deposits because they are already used to save by other means. It has been a long time since we have not had an interest rate cycle in the Eurozone.

Actually, you need to go to 2005-2006. We may have some insight. Obviously, circumstances may be different, but we may have some insight on what happened in the U.S. from 2016 to 2019. Back then, rates went up by approximately 200 basis points. You see the cumulative beta of deposits back then reached approximately 30%. In the current environment, you know, it's an environment with excess liquidity, so we are not expecting that the central bank will start draining liquidity and reducing the size of the balance sheet for a while.

With rates that are expected to be between 1%-2%, our estimates, and we think that is a conservative one, is that the percentage of deposits that will have a cost will reach between 30%-35% in our base case scenario. Now, let's see what happens to our NII after with different impacts on the yield curve having this balance sheet structure. Here you have three different yield curves. The blue yield curve is the yield curve of the base case. We have a lower rate scenario that is actually the yield curve that was at some point during the month of February, once the CB already made clear that they were planning to hike rates.

You have the year-end 2021 yield curve. On the base case, figures that you already know, as we have said, NII expected to grow by circa 8%, and this results into a ROTE over 12%. As I commented on the previous slide, the percentage of deposits with costs between 30%-35% and a percentage of the pass-through to deposits around 70%. This is the percentage of the market rate that is actually paid to the client. It's lower than 100% because actually the reference rate for start paying to deposits is not 12-month Euribor, but is the ECB deposit facility or €STR. There is always a difference between those two rates.

On the alternative lower rate scenario, you have NII growing by circa 5% and ROTE over 10%. In this case, the percentage of deposits with costs is estimated to be lower, between 20% and 25%, as we are in a lower rate environment. The pass-through is estimated to be the same. You have also plenty of details about NII sensitivity. We have been talking a lot recently on this. This is the sensitivity to a move of 100 basis points on interest rates. On the base case scenario, it is circa 20%. On the alternative case with lower, the percentage of deposits with costs is circa 30%.

Remember that always to estimate the sensitivity, you need to look at what happens to rates the year before, because you always need a full year to reprice all the portfolios in the balance sheet. Let me remind here that in order to estimate 2023 NII, you should be using the 30% sensitivity because in 2023, we are still in with lower rates, and then the percentage of deposits with costs is still lower. Well, in this situation, we expect to have an expansion of our customer spread to circa 250 basis points. Well, with this structure of the balance sheet, there is still potential for further NII growth should rates go beyond the base case scenario. The ALCO portfolio. We have been talking recently about opportunities on the ALCO portfolio.

You know that for several quarters we have been on hold waiting for better market levels. Now we have better market levels. It's not only about market levels, it's also about something more structural. You may see on the below, on the left-hand side chart, this trend towards lower loan to deposits, actually clearly below 100% for Eurozone banks. Comparing to peers, not only in Europe but also in the U.S., you may see that the percentage of the [audio distortion] portfolio as total assets is on average 15%, clearly over that figure in the U.S. Over time, our ambition is to reach under those circumstances, an ALCO portfolio of a size of approximately that 15%. This is EUR 90 billion.

Clearly, it looks like we will be able to build this portfolio at much better levels than in at any year in the recent past. We are expecting to grow this portfolio, but also to diversify this portfolio, while maintaining a very prudent risk profile. I think that finally on revenues, an update on our revenue synergy plan. The key message here is, the revenues that we were targeting by 2025 when we announced that, the merger with Bankia remain the same. We are now estimating EUR 220 million net. We were estimating EUR 215 million back then. We have identified more synergies, and also we have identified some negative synergies. Also, we have identified synergies beyond 2025.

The main drivers are long-term savings and protection insurance, as before, the convergence of the penetration rate on those products for Bankia clients. We have identified the new synergies on payments, consumer lending, and some others. We have identified some negative synergies. We already commented on those on our last first quarter results presentation. We have identified negative synergies basically related to the conversions of loyalty programs. Now let us move to costs. Before going into the detail, let me stress the following. The new rate environment further underscores the value of our omni-channel network.

We saw a few slides before the high importance of those very large pool of retail deposits at very low cost, the major part of them at zero cost. This is thanks to our relational clients, who you saw that 60% of those with relational clients. That means that to keep our deposit gathering capacity intact, what we need is to keep investing into the business. We need to keep improving our commercial capabilities. We need to do so in order to continue being the one-stop shop for financial services in Spain. Here is what this connects to with this cost bridge, where you may see that we have identified EUR 300 million of incremental IT and strategic initiatives. That precisely is what we make.

We need to invest. We need to do so to make our positive choice sustainable. At the same time, we have cost synergies net of inertia. There is some embedded inertia during the three-year plan. Actually, it's circa 2% only. The combination of both those savings of EUR 400 million and those incremental IT strategic initiatives, EUR 300 million, I will go into the detail on the following slide. This results into negative growth of our cost base by circa 1% CAGR. Then we have some non-organic impacts. I would say that the main one being the impact on costs of higher rates on credit facilities for employees. Actually, this is compensated with more NII. Actually, in terms of net income is neutral.

We have an impact from the amortization of intangibles related to Bankia Vida. Considering everything, our cost base is expected to be circa EUR 6.3 billion by 2024, compared to 2021 at EUR 6.4 billion. This will allow us to keep widening our operating leverage. You may see here our pre-provision profit growing by circa 15%. At the same time increasing our productivity, sorry. In this case, you see here different KPIs with a clear improvement across all of them. The details about those EUR 300 million and those specific initiatives we have identified, I think that the CEO has been pretty clear on the revenue opportunities we have.

It's about spending on improving our long-term savings and protection platform, our consumer and payments platforms, including the Wivai and Buy Now, Pay Later initiatives, our retention model, including imagin, and the renewed focus on seniors, and clearly on CIB and our international expansion, and also obviously on BPI. In terms of IT, it's the evolution of the cloud program and of our omni-channel platform and the deployment of artificial intelligence and machine learning. CapEx will remain at high levels, EUR 700 million-EUR 750 million by 2023-2024, and about 70% of this CapEx on IT. I think that now finally on the P&L, a few words on cost of risk. The starting point is quite strong. We have this 63% coverage ratio.

With that, at the beginning of the year, EUR 1.4 billion unused COVID reserve that is expected to be used during the horizon of the plan gradually. This will result in a cost of risk on average below 35 basis points. Not including the use of this COVID reserve, cost of risk could be below 45 basis points. At the same time, we expect to continue reducing our NPL exposure. Our target is the NPL ratio to be below 3%. Well, you know that in the past, we have a good record on NPL management. For the next three years, clearly, portfolio disposals will be a key part of the program. Let's move now to the capital plan.

On that front, here you have the CET1 bridge. There is capital accretion during the next three years of circa 335 basis points. That includes organic capital generation and other regulatory impacts. Among those, the impact we estimate on IFRS 17. After this capital accretion, we would reach a year-end 2024 CET1 ratio before distributions of 16.2%. From there, it's capital available for distribution. Up to our upper bound target of CET1 at 12%. We have this first step taken today with this EUR 1.8 billion share buyback that has a negative impact on CET1 of 83 basis points.

We are guiding today for cash payout over 50%, 50%-60% this 2022, and 12% being the threshold for considering further buybacks. This 11%-12% CET1 management target is a comfortable MDA buffer between 250 and 350 basis points. A key driver of our organic capital generation is the fact that we are not expecting much risk-weighted asset growth. We're expecting organic growth of approximately EUR 5 billion. This is the result of the change in mix of our loan book, basically.

We expect negative impacts or let's say a reduction of risk-weighted assets by approximately EUR 3 billion, among other things, thanks to a lower capital consumption from DTAs. Beyond 2024, the only major regulatory impact expected is Basel IV, but in our case, you know that is not much material, and we are estimating a negative impact of circa 10 basis points. To wrap up, higher profitability or over 12% ROTE that results into a strong capital generation. Combining the share buyback announced today, the more than 50% cash payout ratio and any excess over 12% for potential additional distribution, this results into a EUR 9 billion distribution capacity through cash dividends and buybacks.

This is circa 40% of our market cap as of today. At the same time, we are expecting that the tangible book value per share plus dividend per share will have a positive evolution of circa 8% on an annual basis. To finalize from my side, a few words on MREL and liquidity. The message on that front is that we are aiming to maintain an ample MREL-MDA buffer and a high level of subordination.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Actually we're already complying with this. You know, this MDA as of today, over 350 basis points. We have a comfortable wholesale funding maturity calendar, and that includes potential call dates for callable instruments. A funding plan for the next three years of EUR 17.5 billion across, I would say all asset classes. EUR 2.5 billion already issued. So this is approximately between EUR 5 billion and EUR 6 billion per year. We are aiming to continue our currency diversification in terms of funding and also with an intention to issue ESG bonds on a regular basis.

In terms of liquidity, you are very familiar with our ample liquidity situation, but I would also like to stress that after the redemption of the TLTRO, our liquidity position will continue to be very ample. Here you have some pro forma figures by the year-end on the liquidity coverage ratio and the net stable funding ratio that would be circa 200% and 145% respectively. That's it from my side. Thank you very much and probably we'll have some questions.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Sure. I'm sure we have some questions. Thank you, Javier. Thank you, Gonzalo. We'll take some questions from the floor. Remember, we also have people who are viewing this remotely. We'll try and switch between one audience and the other, and I'll just start from the left and gradually move my way to the right. Could we get this gentleman a microphone? Daragh? Yes.

Speaker 16

Hi, it's Daragh Quinn from KBW. Thank you very much for the presentation, curtain raiser included. My first question would be maybe just on costs and on inflation. I know you focused maybe with a good economic background on core inflation, but the reality is for employees and I'm sure the heads of the unions, they're looking at headline inflation. I know there's a wage agreement set out to 2023, but there's now such a massive gap between that wage agreement and inflation. You know, at what stage, A, will the unions kind of say, "Look, we need to revisit that agreement"? And what kind of assumptions are you assuming for underlying wage growth? I might just ask a second question as well.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Yeah.

Speaker 16

If that's okay. Just on capital distribution. So you've very clearly set out, you know, what your policy is on dividend for this year and the share buyback. Maybe just if I could ask for a little bit more color about, you know, what happens next. Are you looking at a total payout ratio, you know, split between cash and share buyback depending on circumstances? You know, maybe just your thoughts around what that total payout ratio could be and you know, at how quickly do you want to reach the 12% CET1 level? Thank you very much.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you, Daragh. On the first point, obviously we have thought through our cost base in detail for the next three years. This time we have this uncertainty around inflation levels. I would like to think that the worst time for inflation perceptions is now. Not me, but economists talk about an inflation peak already. We expect that maybe core inflation will continue to go up, but certainly Javier showed some numbers on core inflation for 2023, where it goes from the 4% level to just above 2%.

We'll see what happens, obviously, because I think people that are much more authorized than us have made sort of very wrong assessments of inflation over the last six to 10 months, both in Europe and the other side of the Atlantic. I will not claim to have the crystal ball on what inflation will be. I think we need to take some time and expect that the very clear actions of central bankers are going to have an impact, no? When our wage agreement, it's a 5-year agreement, expires at the end of 2023, I think the environment may be quite different, no? We will obviously have a discussion.

We will always be open to listen onto what unions want to say to us. At this stage, we have an agreement signed up until the end of next year, and I think it is then when we have to discuss 2024. Time will tell. I don't think it's in our interest now to discuss the details of the dynamics of that potential negotiation in a year and a half for obvious reasons. We feel we've made a reasonable assumption of a reasonable and not overly optimistic assumption of what will happen. Again, we're looking at an environment in which we think inflation is coming down. Maybe it's still above 2%, so we just.

It's not only that we want inflation down, we want inflation down to a level below 2%, no? Certainly the dynamics that we expect to have at the end of 2023 and 2024 will be different. Bear in mind that these agreements tend to take a long time to negotiate, and very often they're not signed until well after the deadline, no? Last time, I think we signed over a year after the expiry of the previous agreement, no? It will take time. In terms of capital distribution, if I may, clearly we're saying a number of things. First, is the capital that we're gonna generate over and above 12% is for shareholders. We've been saying that for a while, and there's absolutely no difference this time. That is very clear.

Second, we're actually saying it's a large amount. It's EUR 9 billion, including the EUR 1.8 billion that we're gonna be paying back. It is a large amount because the dynamics of RWA and profitability are leading us to be there. Now, how do we split that capital generated? There is a minimum payout, + 50% plus something, okay? The rest is going to be a decision for the board between raising payout, share buybacks, or a combination of both. At this stage, the board prefers to retain that flexibility, and I think it's the right thing from that point of view. Obviously there's pros and cons from dividends versus share buybacks, and different shareholders prefer different payments.

Some of them would prefer them to sort of very low stock price, where share buybacks become more attractive, while when the stock price is at different levels, it may become less. There's pros and cons, and we are retaining, meaning the board, is retaining some flexibility for 2023 or 2024. It is my expectation that there will be a combination as we're introducing today that share buyback, and this will not be the last share buyback that we do, certainly. That's my expectation. At the same time, how do we finally present capital distribution between one method or another is to be decided in due course.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay, thank you. We'll take one from Carlos, the gentleman just behind.

Speaker 17

Hello. Thank you. Carlos from Société Générale . A couple of questions from me. One is on a follow-up on this one. There is some sense among the investor community that Caixa runs on a high cost inflation momentum. You know, on the other hand, you have a sizable capital surplus as you just discussed. Are you ruling out any usage of that capital for capital sort of cost optimization in the future? Based on what you said, it's not in this plan, but long term, is this something that you envisage or not? The other one second. Yeah, the MyBox strategy, could you please explain how it matures and how the strategy to roll that over is gonna be applied?

Is there any execution risk on that, or it's pledged to mortgages and therefore people will probably take the new product that you offer? Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you, Carlos. Maybe I answer the first one and leave Javier for the second one. On the cost side, again, what I think is for us most relevant is to say we believe in the business. We think we can grow the business, and we think we need to invest in the business. I think these simple three statements are not necessarily shared by everybody? Because we believe in the business, we're gonna have to invest in the business. Not in every part of the business, not sort of throw money away. Invest selectively and with big prioritization. When we find places like Wivai, like imagin, like Seniors and many others, AI, cloud, cyber, we wanna invest. We wanna invest.

That's part of our what's happening now. We feel we have the right size now. I have to say five years from now, we'll have to see. I don't like to just discuss this for such a long time horizon. When we have looked at this plan, no, we do not see any cost restructuring during this period. We have done it now. It's over 6,500 people that have left the group. It's 1,500 branches being closed. It's not a small thing. It may happen to be perceived as a small thing because we've done it in 12 months, no. It's kind of done. It's actually a huge effort.

Through this huge effort, we've prepared ourselves for the next three years, and hence we're not seeing that during this time period, no? Javier?

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Yes, on MyBox. Well, MyBox is the weight on the new production of insurance products is increasing. We are now at approximately 65%. That pace is expected to continue or even increasing gradually over the years. Actually, if you look at the stock of premia on our insurance business, still those premia originated with the MyBox bundled offer is expected to reach more than 45% or 50% by the end of 2024. The key aspect of this product is that it significantly reduces the churn. You know that the client is committing for a three-year period.

What we have observed is that the cumulative churn during the three-year period is well below in the case of those clients with MyBox insurance product compared to the non-MyBox. I was consulting some figures on this, and actually, for example, for home insurance

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

The churn is like 24 percentage points lower. On auto is like 16 percentage points lower, and on life is like 10 percentage point lower. We have now started to have some maturities on this product because we started like 3 years ago. What we are observing is that the churn is in line with our expectation, with our initial expectation. On the contrary, we are quite a bit of this commercial solution. You know that is one of the key drivers of our growth on insurance products. We expect that over time, let's say, the portfolio effect of this product is going to be substantial, no?

As I say, the weight of the part of insurance premia originated by MyBox to keep gaining weight on the total portfolio.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay. Could we have a microphone over to this gentleman over here, please?

Speaker 14

Thank you very much. Max from JB Capital. I have two questions. The first one is on loan portfolio. Given your share in payrolls in Spain and the current market share in mortgages, I was wondering if you could provide more color on why you don't want to accelerate new production more than just to 20% of total. Do you see more competition or you simply see more returns in other segments? The second one is on the ROTE target. I was wondering if it includes the complete repricing of the loan portfolio, given your base case assumption for interest rate curves. If not, looking beyond 2024 and assuming all the revenue synergies you expect beyond 2024, what would be the longer term going concern ROTE ambition for CaixaBank? Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Second one is higher, isn't it? Maybe you wanted a bit more detail. Maybe I'll let Javier discuss that, but I don't think we're prepared to give you a number when we're moving from 7.8% to over 12%. We're doing enough of sort of a step up to think beyond that level. Certainly, the trend hopefully will allow us to continue on that front. On the new production of mortgages, we'd love to do more. We'd love to do more than 20%, and I'm not saying that is not possible.

What happens when competing in the mortgage market is, there are many more players offering to sort of provide the product at the time someone decides to get a mortgage. People tend to compare. Not everyone, but people tend to compare. Having as much as 25% market share in new mortgage production is particularly complex because it's not just your natural share of people that come and say, "Do you have the right product?" Okay, in which case we will certainly aim to have that market share or higher. It's these people or part of these people at that time are comparing you and are looking at price, I would say, with a strong interest.

Obviously, in that moment, I think capturing 20% is ambitious enough. We do have the best offering, and we have the best offering not on the price of one single product, but the whole service that we do. I'd love to see that our market share is higher than that. I don't think we want to set targets that we feel are excessively ambitious or not conservative enough, and that's why we left it at 20%.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Well, I'm glad to see that you are so bullish on rates, no? Well, we have done some numbers, no? Let me first comment the following. You saw that the percentage of deposits at cost grows as rates go up. This at certain level stops, because at the end of the day, you have still a very large pool of deposits, so granular, that are paid zero whichever is the level of rates. With a slightly higher percentage of deposits at cost, that probably would be the case in case rates were even higher. We have run some numbers, for example, because you know that the yield curve, during the last week or the last 10 days has come down a little bit, no?

At the highest, we saw like 10 days ago, our NII would grow by over 9% CAGR. Just to give you a little bit of sensitivity, no? This is already assuming, to some extent, some slight increase on the percentage of deposits to be paid, no? Well, we have gone to 2024. Beyond this, you saw when I presented that balance sheet structure that we will always have a larger proportion of assets at floating compared to liabilities at floating, and this always results into gearing towards higher rates.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Alvaro, we'll take you afterwards, but we're gonna try and get a question in from some of our remote viewers. Operator, can you please put a question through?

Operator

Question is from Andrea Filtri with Mediobanca. Please go ahead.

Andrea Filtri
Managing Director, Head of Research, Mediobanca

Thank you. Scatter questions. The first is actually a detail. We spotted a - 8% CAGR for non-life insurance. What is the negative impact here? Given your bullish stance on interest rates, how do you reconcile that with the 17% CAGR in life risk insurance? And then finally, a question on digital euro. Over the course of the plan, the digital euro could become a reality. How are you seeing this potential transformation of the industry, and how are you getting ready for it? Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you, Andrea. I'll start with the second one, and let Javier deal with the first one. On digital euro, obviously, we follow very closely how it is evolving, and certainly, we think it is, one, likely to happen, and then second, very relevant for us. I don't think that during the period of this plan, we're gonna have the digital euro. I have to say my view, it will take some time. Hence, it's not going to change much the next three years, but over time, it's relevant.

I personally think that there will be a limit, in terms of, how much people can hold in digital euros with the ECB so that the banks will be protected from deposit flight. I think that's kind of a given. Once that happens, then it's a great means of payment for many people. To what extent it coexists and other people develop alternative mechanism to protect the business or to stay ahead of the game is something we will see. I think it's more the second half of this decade when this is going to have an impact. I think certainly it will facilitate intra-European payments, to start with, which other initiatives do not seem to manage to really accomplish properly.

We will follow that very closely, Andrea, and we want to be obviously at the forefront of any development on that.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Well, on protection, to have all the figures clear. We are expecting a revenue growth of 9% CAGR. Of that part, it's 17% from life risk, and then the non-life part has a lower growth. On that part, we have. You can break it between what is accounted in fees. On fees, we're expecting non-life in fees to grow between 3%-4%. On equity accounted, we have a negative impact because you know that, on SegurCaixa Adeslas, the profitability of the company is on year-on-year impacted negatively because SegurCaixa Adeslas is paying for the compensation with the agreement with Mutua, remember, no?

You have this slight negative impact on equity accounted, but then growth on fees between 3% and 4%, and life risk 17%, and overall 9%. This is the summary.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Okay. We'll go back to the room. We have a question over here. This gentleman over here, please.

Alvaro Serrano
Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

Thank you. Alvaro Serrano from Morgan Stanley. Two questions, please. One on loan growth. It's kind of a bit of a follow-up, but maybe on the non-mortgage side. Even using core inflation, you've got 6% average nominal inflation, nominal GDP growth. I think in consumer, you've got 2.5% CAGR in loan growth and 1.5% in corporate. Can you just talk a bit sort of your thoughts on the general growth environment? Is it your high market share that's limiting? Or are you just, given the current environment, you think loan growth will be a bit lackluster considering the nominal GDP growth?

Second, on costs, you obviously have that EUR 6.3 billion number for 2024, and you've also got the 48% cost income ratio. If we think about sort of what if scenarios you don't have the full sort of rate hike that you're baking in your base case, maybe I'm thinking about that alternative scenario. Should we also think that you're gonna modulate costs as and when sort of the revenues sort of unfold? Or is that EUR 6.3 billion a hard number? How should we think about the flexibility or how you're gonna deploy those investments? Thanks.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Well, first one, we are not expecting to lose market share. Certainly, Javier can elaborate. On consumer, we're taking a conservative approach, not on our ability to produce, but on what is the market likely to do. I think as in many assumptions in this plan, there is an upside scenario in which the market and ourselves do better, no? On costs, I would say there's always flexibility. We were asked the same question in last plan, no? We were presenting a 3% growth rate compound annual growth. Probably by you, no? Although you're saying I had it. Probably we said, "Well, we want to do this," because we were so fixed. The reality is the world changed, and we actually delivered a 0% growth rate, no?

which over three years is a 9% gap. It's very different. Certainly, if the environment changes, our strategy will be to adapt to that, and we will have to revisit what we're doing. There's no question, no? Yes, there is some flexibility on that. There has to be.

Alvaro Serrano
Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

Sorry, in the alternative scenario, do you flex just the other costs as well?

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

No, only rates. It's a pure sensitivity case because obviously, many other things could change, no?

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay. Could we take a question behind the gentleman?

Speaker 13

Thank you. Hi, I'm Pamela from Credit Suisse. I have two questions around the revenue outlook, and then a follow-up on the capital distribution plans. On the revenue part, you were talking about earlier about the preference of your customers to allocate part of the savings into investment products. Now we're looking at different interest rate environment. We've been living in a very low, long interest rate environment. How are you thinking about the potential migration away from asset management and into bank deposits? Is that embedded in your fee 2% CAGR expectation, or how should we think about that? Another question around revenues is, you were talking about the strategy, reiterating your intention to grow the ALCO portfolio to EUR 90 billion eventually or gradually. Is that already the benefit of putting the excess liquidity into now higher yielding securities?

Is that benefit already embedded in your 8% NII CAGR? Lastly, on your capital distribution plans, we now know that the intention is to consider excess capital at anything above a 12% CET1 ratio, but the management target is still 11%-12%. How should we think then about that buffer? Is it for a rainy day? In that case, you're talking about very limited risk-weighted asset inflation, a very limited Basel IV impact at only 10 basis points, or is that buffer potentially leaving you flexibility or room to explore maybe more M&A? Would you be willing to be looking at something maybe in Portugal? How should we think about that buffer? Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you, Sarah. Maybe I start with the third question and leave Javier. On capital distribution, I think having that range is, you call it, for a rainy day. It is the difference basically between what our own internal analysis says in terms of the sort of expected losses, unexpected losses we may have, the stress test we do, where we feel very comfortable internally. That obviously has to be the 11%. That's why we're saying we want to be above 11%. Above 11%, we are with the internal information that we manage with our risk models, we have enough buffer to withstand whatever degree of severe stress that you can apply on us in exercises of this type, and we're very comfortable.

When we look at the outside world, the market for some reason has taken for a bank like us and others, the 12% is a magic number. We say we feel comfortable above 11% from our own internal point of view. We think beyond 11 and 12, we're in a zone of comfort. We would not necessarily be taking any decision to distribute between 11 and 12, because while we're comfortable, not every market participant or somewhat certain consensus would feel that we are not being prudent enough, at least as of today. Things may evolve in the future. Above 12%, then we have a clear view, both internally and externally, that is a clear signal for capital distribution. No. That's the way we feel.

There's absolutely no sort of M&A hidden reserve here. If at some point we were to do something, which is, I would say, fairly unlikely, we're certainly not contemplating anything on the M&A front along this plan. I've always said, and we've always said that if at some point there's a transaction that has merits, then you have to do it on market basis. If capital is needed, then look at your shareholder and see if they are willing and able to provide it. Otherwise, it means that it doesn't make sense. Given our position, again, in Spain, obviously we have a very large market share, and we're present where we want to be in terms of various capacities and skills and segments, no?

In Spain, we have a lower scale. Sorry, not Spain, in Portugal, we have a lower scale. But pretty good scale. We have moved from number fifth to number fourth in the market over the last two years. I said, and I mean it, we have a virtuous circle of profitability and growth, no? If BPI has grown its market share as it has in the last five years, I think when we look at the next three, it will be in a position to continue doing that, and that is certainly what is most value enhancing for shareholders, no? Long answer for that, but no, no hidden reserve here.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Okay. Well, from my side on off-balance sheet products or long-term savings, well, first thing is that rates are gonna go up, but still at a very moderate level. Rates between 1%-2% are not that high. This is not like 2005-2007, when rates were at 4%-5%, or during the sovereign crisis 2011-2012, when we had a deposit war and we had to pay 4% for deposits. It has nothing to do. We firmly believe that with that level of rates, the pace towards long-term savings will continue. Actually the plan is assuming like EUR 7.5 billion per year into long-term savings.

We have done in the past, like EUR 5-6 billion per year. Now it's a larger size. We have the synergies from Bankia, and we think that we are pretty conservative on our assumptions, no? This is not a level of rates that will make clients rethink about their process into long-term savings. Even more as actually we are gonna be the last bank in town to start paying for deposits. Why? Because we have very large liquidity situation, so we don't need to pay for deposits. And on top of you know that this very large pool of deposits comes from mainly relational clients that do all their banking business with us. So actually this is like the operational account, their household buffer, et cetera.

It's not like, well, we need to start saving through deposits. No, at this level of rates, for sure, the pace of inflows into off balance sheet is not gonna be affected. On the ALCO, yes, there is an assumption about asset purchases. Look, actually, in terms of accretion on NII in 2024, there is not that much because actually short-term rates are already expected to go up. This will be deposit facility by 2024, approximately between 1.25% and 1.5%. If you look at sovereign bonds around, so yields are pretty much at the same level. In terms of accretion, you are not adding that much with the ALCO portfolio right now.

We will need an even steeper yield curve or wider spreads in general, not only in the sovereign, but also at corporate level in order to have an accretive effect in terms of NII in 2024. By investing the ALCO portfolio right now, what we are doing basically is to lock the current market rates. You are not adding much extra value if at the end of the day, rates, forward rates end up happening, which is our expectation. Yes, there is an assumption basically on sovereign bonds. I mentioned that we were willing to diversify the portfolio, and diversifying means towards lower risk, not towards higher risk.

We want to reduce the weight of the ALCO portfolio into Spanish government bonds, into core economy bonds, and also into corporate bonds. This is basically the plan.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Okay, we're going to take a question from a remote viewer again. Operator, could you please put a question through?

Operator

The next question is from Borja Ramírez with Citi. Please go ahead.

Borja Ramírez
Director, Citi

Hello. Good morning, and thank you very much for taking my questions. I have two quick questions if I may. The first one is a follow-up on the mortgage market. I would like to ask what are your views on the potential competition for new mortgage production going forward in terms of any potential evolution of the spreads? My second question would be regarding the ICO loans, if you could provide more details on assumptions regarding the default rate of the moratoria that is ending this quarter. Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you, Borja. In terms of the mortgage market, I think it will stay as a very competitive market, and that the spreads obviously, I think are unlikely to increase. A different story is the fixed rate mortgage that the rate there will obviously have to follow in due course what sort of fixed rates are doing in the market. I would-- and we assume it's gonna stay as a competitive market. With respect to ICO loans, I would say, and maybe Javier would like to comment, we continue to see ICO loans performing very well.

During this month of May, we have had already 50% of the expiries of the principal moratoria that we had. We had a total of EUR 6 billion expiring in May. The sort of the bulk of what remains to expire in terms of moratoria and half is 50% actual non-payment or late payment because, well, it's not been produced as 1.5%. The impact has been very low. We need to be prudent because, obviously this has not finished. Now we have a very relevant part of these loans that again are starting to behave as we had seen with the moratoria in mortgages and consumers and really paying very well.

We'll have to see how this trend consolidates over the next few months. In any case, pretty good news there. Javier, anything you'd like to add?

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Just to add that, on that ICO portfolio, we have, as you may know, as we have commented in the past, approximately one-third of that portfolio classified in Stage 2. We have already taken one step in terms of prudence on that front. As Gonzalo is commenting, we are quite a bit on the evolution, no?

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Okay, let's go back to the floor. We could take a question there. Down here, please, the lady next to Jesus. Thank you.

Britta Schmidt
Senior Analyst and Bank Equity Research, Autonomous

Yeah. Hi, thanks. It's Britta from Autonomous. I've got two follow-ups on capital and one on cost of risk, please. On capital, Gonzalo, you said that whole EUR 9 billion will be available for payouts, but on the slide, there's a little bar that says excess capital, and if the chart is to scale, it isn't that small. Why is that still left on the chart as it is? Also follow up on the organic impacts, if I try and reconcile the 16.2% pro forma pre-distribution CET1 ratio, am I right in assuming there's about 50 basis points of other in there? Maybe you can give us a little bit of hints as to what the other capital impacts are that we should include.

Coming to the cost of risk, you obviously see a cost of risk increase due to weaker macro, I presume, the less than 45 basis point that turns to less than 35 with the COVID provisions that you intend to use. Can you give us a little bit of an insight as to what are the biggest movers there? What should we assume as normalized cost of risk underlying if you didn't have the COVID provisions in there? How is that gonna change with the change in loan growth assumptions that you said versus the past? Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

I think, well, Javier, I'll leave it to you, but the EUR 9 billion is the number, no? I don't know about--

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

No, EUR 9 billion is the number. What Britta is asking is that on the chart, the excess capital over 12% is narrower than the more than 50%. That's right. Well, we are assuming that the amount actually paid with a cash payout ratio over 50% is gonna be more in euro terms than the capital left over 12% available as share buyback. That's right. As Gonzalo was commenting before, it's an open option, no? We'll decide in due time. You mentioned impacts on this, on that chart in terms of accretion of capital. One is that we have probably not commented on in much detail previously is the impact that we estimate on IFRS 17.

We're expecting up to 20 basis points of maximum impact. This is not yet finished 100% because it's actually really complex. This is our estimate as of now, no? No more than 20 basis points. Where does this come from? This you know that currently under the current rules there is what is called like a liability sufficiency test at consolidated level where you can compensate in sub-portfolios at the insurance company level, some excesses in some portfolios with some deficits in others. With the new norm, this goes so you can no longer compensate excesses with deficits. We need to register a deficit of some of the portfolios, no?

This is an impact on reserves and on OCI combined that will result also into a slight lower risk-weighted asset consumption because you know that the insurance company is weighted at 370%. The net impact of all this is gonna be no more than 20 BPS. Well, you know that this does not affect actually the economic value of the company. The future cash flows are still there completely unchanged, no? You know that on that front there are other changes in terms of the breakdown of the P&L. I'm not gonna go now into the detail, but there are changes in the sense that in NII from the insurance company will move to a specific line on the P&L for insurance revenues.

Fees from Unit-Linked will move to that line, and also costs estimated to generate the business also will have to move from costs, actually reducing the cost base to that line, no? This is actually not having an impact on net income, so there is no expected net income impact. We have this upfront impact from 2023 that is already included into that capital accretion on the chart, no? Then you mentioned something else, actually. There is not much, because as we have been commenting in recent quarterly presentations, we have still some pending regulatory impacts, positives and negatives, but our view is that will be broadly compensate each other.

What we don't know is exactly the calendar, what will land into 2022, what into 2023. It's IRB models in Portugal, it's about the removal of some limitations in internal models. It's the homogenization of some other internal models, et cetera. Broadly neutral. I mentioned, I remember during the last call that if it's at the end of the day negative by no more than 15-20 basis points. That's the message and nothing else. Remember that there is the AT1 coupon also deducted into this capital generation.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

There was a question as well on cost of risk.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Also--

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Wasn't there? On cost of risk.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

On cost of risk. Well, the normalized cost of risk, it's always a good question with well risk people. We have said that in the past that is between 30 and 40 basis points. You see that excluding this the use of this COVID reserve, it's gonna be less than 45. Actually it would be in line with a normalized situation.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay, we're going to move back to our remote viewers. If we could take another question, operator, please.

Operator

The next question is from Benjie Creelan-Sandford with Jefferies. Please go ahead.

Speaker 15

Good morning, everyone. Thanks for taking the questions. Just two quick ones for me. Well, one quick one and one broader strategic one. The quick one was just to follow up on the last comments on the RWA waterfall. I'm just wondering within the kind of pending model approvals, whether you had assumed any recovery on the low risk portfolio that was a material drag on CET1 in 2021. So I was wondering if there's any model approval still pending there that could add some capital relief. The second question was a broader one. Just looking at slide 27 on imagin. You know, very broadly, you know, imagin represents about 2% of the group deposit base, but is only about 1% of the group revenues.

I was just wondering, you know, do you think there is a challenge to turning some of the digital channels from, you know, a funding acquirer into more of an asset growth driver in their own right? So perhaps if you could talk a little bit more about the loan and revenue growth opportunities that you see there and the challenges relative to the traditional bank. Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Sure. Javier, you wanna start with that one?

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Yes, on with risk-weighted assets. Well, you saw that there is expected growth of circa EUR 5 billion. This is actually a mixed effect as we are gonna grow in segments with a higher risk-weighted asset density. This is SMEs, corporates and consumer, compared to a situation where still the mortgage portfolio, as you saw, at a much moderated pace, but still will keep deleveraging somehow, no? There is a mixed effect actually that results into this approximately EUR 5 billion in terms of organic growth. Then we have some reduction in terms of risk-weighted assets. I mentioned on the presentation a lower consumption from DTAs.

This is basically lower time differences that you know that are risk-weighted at 250%. Then we have the impact I mentioned on IFRS 17 that results into lower risk-weighted assets from the insurance company, as this is risk-weighted at 370%. Then what I just mentioned on the previous question, no? We have ups and downs or plus and minus in terms of risk-weighted assets due to different impacts on internal models. But at the end of the day will be not that significant.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Sure. On imagin, obviously, imagin is a key part of the business, but because of the nature of its customers, average 22 years, we cannot expect that to be contributing proportionally to the profitability of the group, no? Well, I think every financial institution, but certainly ourselves, have been investing heavily in the past to make sure that the kids and teens and all this generation get familiar with CaixaBank, so that eventually continue with CaixaBank when they become sort of 25 on and then become real clients. We really go and accompany the client through its life cycle. That is the effort. Imagin logically has to have a small contribution compared to the rest of the bank.

As the customer base of imagin grows, not just in numbers, but they grow in age, and in income, it will become more and more profitable. We are aiding that by adding more and more products and services to imagin. Obviously, when we look at revenues being multiplied by 2.5. Over this three-year period, that gives you the indication of the growth on the marginal growth on revenues, and I think is going to become quite a significant contributor. That's the way I would look at it.

Speaker 15

Thank you.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Benji, just to add to Javier's point, the RWA release related to the model approvals you were referring to is already included in the plan.

Benjie Creelan-Sanford
Associate Portfolio Manager, Algebris Investments

Okay.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

All right, we go back to the floor now. We have a question here at the end, from the gentleman with a pen in his hand.

Francisco Riquel
Partner and Head of Equity Research, Alantra

Yes, thank you. Francisco Riquel, Alantra. First question is about the target of 8% growth in tangible book value per share and dividends that you have set. You can help us reconcile with the 12% ROTE target? I understand AT1 coupons deduct probably 1 percentage point, so there is still a gap. I wonder if you are leaving room for another early retirement plan and some restructuring costs that could be charged, or market headwinds, but I also see that you have a short duration portfolio, so you should be able to recover part of the headwinds. Or the 12% ROTE target is back-loaded or, I mean, or is the IFRS 17. You can help reconcile.

Second question is about in the event that you could consider further share buybacks, and you mentioned that probably this one is not the last one. If there is any limit in terms of the shareholding structure and governance balance within the group when the CriteriaCaixa stake will go up, if there is any regulatory limit, the proper stake could also go up. They could ask for another board representation. If you see any limit at all in the event of further share buybacks?

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you. Back on the second one, I don't see any relevant limit, to be honest, if there were to be more buybacks. Anyhow, we have one buyback on the table for the next 12 months. This is, I think, something that we'll need to get into at the right time. I personally don't see a problem from that point of view. Obviously, you know that the only relevant threshold upwards is 40% ownership for CriteriaCaixa, which was the limit that was put by ECB when they took the decision to deconsolidate both groups, and we are far away from that situation. On the first question.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Well, just to remark that the 12% ROTE target is for 2024. Okay? This accretion for the tangible book value per share and dividends is for the CAGR for the three-year plan. I think that probably this helps to reconcile. There is not any kind of buffer, just in case, restructuring or whatsoever. No, no.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Also one is average equity, and the other one is equity point in time as well. There's a difference on the denominator and the numerator. You also mentioned that the AT1s are deducted from the numerator. We can go through it afterwards if you want, Paco. Let's take another question from the gentleman next to him, please.

Ignacio Ulargui
Analyst, BNP Paribas

Ignacio Ulargui from BNP Paribas. Just have two questions. One on the deposits, competition and whether I mean, you have gone through it, several times higher, but, I mean, we have seen in the last two weeks, two banks raising the deposit costs. To what extent your rural network is a bit of a defense in that context, if you could just elaborate a bit on that. The second question is if you could clarify a bit better, what are the new synergies on the revenue side, on payments? I mean, are they coming sort of, like, soon, later? Also, if the EUR 75 million of the synergies are related to the homogenization of the loyalty programs in Bankia and CaixaBank that you were commenting in the 1Q results. Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Okay, maybe I take the first and Javier can add there and take the second. On deposit cost, I think obviously every competitor will follow its own strategy. By looking at history, there will be competitors that are more aggressive, normally because they have a higher appetite for having liquidity, and they fund themselves to some extent in this way. We have the opposite position. We have too much liquidity, and then we have a very different nature of relationship with our clients, relational, transactional. The EUR 14 billion of cash a month that is paid into our accounts through payrolls and pensioners speaks for itself, no? I think that's mostly the difference, no? Obviously the rural presence adds to that, but it's not that because of rural, then our business is different.

I think the whole of our business is different in terms of having relational clients with us, and we acting as really the bank for payments and transactionality in Spain, which is clearly the case. Rural helps, but it's all of it. Javier, on synergies, no?

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

No, yes, and just to add on to this, well, the fact that we have so many clients that are relational precisely is what makes a difference. This is not that our clients will start shopping for the best deposit in town. Because they already do all their business with us, and once you have all the business, it's really difficult to move around then. I think that this is the key difference. The average size of the deposit, the average balance is EUR 20,000. EUR 20,000, well, it's a decent size, but it's not like you start shopping for this because this is actually like the household buffer for the day-to-day, no? This is a key difference, and actually what we are aiming is to do even more relational clients.

This is the plan, no? Actually, our business plan, the trend will be towards reinforcing this, no? When looking at differences on the performance on what the balance sheet will do on that front, I think that you need to take this into account, no? Back to synergies. Well, we have revised it, I would say, all our synergies. You know, I was consulting here the figures. What we have done is in terms of long-term savings, actually, we have reduced slightly the amount of synergies initially contemplated, and this has to do basically with the pension plan business.

You know that we have had some changes in terms of legislation on that front with the caps in the amount potentially being invested and having a tax benefit, and we have had to adapt to this. On the contrary, on protection and everything related to life insurance and non-life, we have increased the pace of revenue synergies. On that front, remember that what we are targeting is a gradual convergence of the penetration rates of Bankia clients or former Bankia clients to the levels of CaixaBank clients, but not 100%. It's the target is 60% on average, depending on the product, it's 55, others it's 60-something.

We are conservative on that front, so we are not assuming that we are gonna be at the same level by the end of the synergy plan. We have identified further synergies on credit cards. We have, for example, observed that the use of the financing in terms of credit card among Bankia clients was much lower than among CaixaBank clients. An initiative on Wivai that has been clearly commented by Gonzalo, but well, this is something completely new for former Bankia clients. In terms of consumer lending, a global convergence in terms of pricing and in terms of the use of those credit facilities, no? This results into extra synergies.

What I already commented on our first quarter results presentation is that after the IT integration, we have been able to fully understand all the overlaps we could have on loyalty programs, et cetera. This results on the main part of the negative synergies that we have been identifying.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay, I think we have a question over there at the far end. If we could please take that question.

Speaker 12

Thank you. Fernando Gil from Barclays. Two questions, please. First one, what are the assumptions in the plan for the Single Resolution Fund, deposit guarantee fund? How much are they going down in your assumptions? This is one. The second question is about sensitivity. If you have done any sensitivity on how much interest rate to go up to trigger an asset quality, let's say, issue in your customers. Have you done that? And if you can provide some clarity there. Thank you very much.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Yeah. On the second one, I would say we have plenty of leeway here. One thing is the overall macro environment, and when interest rates go up generally for the economy, there may be second-round consequences. The direct impact obviously we always look at the mortgage portfolio, and here we have a floating portfolio that is very well seasoned. While in the last five years, we have been producing mostly fixed rate mortgages. The combination is pretty attractive from that point of view. Our average installment in our mortgage is EUR 350, round number, per month. 200 basis points takes the EUR 350-EUR 400. It's EUR 50 extra, 200 basis points, and then you can extrapolate, no?

Every 100 basis points, EUR 25-EUR 30. We have quite a lot of leeway before we have a problem. I don't think the problem will be that one, huh? Javier.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Yes, on the Deposit Guarantee Fund, well, we have pretty clear that the targeting size of those two funds will be reached as expected, as initially expected, by the end of 2023. You know that, in the case of the Deposit Guarantee Fund, the target is 0.8% of the guaranteed deposits. There may be even an extra 10% add-on that we are already included in our estimates. We had a contribution last year of close to EUR 400 million to that fund.

From 2024, this is moving to a contribution of approximately 17 basis points over the total stock of guaranteed deposits to 0.8% of the marginal growth of those deposits, no? As a consequence, we're expecting this contribution to be much lower, approximately EUR 150 million. On the resolution fund, the situation is pretty much the same. In this case, the target is 1% of the total guaranteed funds in the banking union. This is not eurozone, it's Banking Union. We are expected to reach that level by late 2023, so according to the latest figures released by the Single Resolution Fund.

From 2024, the contribution will be also over the marginal growth into guaranteed deposits instead of a larger figure because we were on this build-up process of the fund, no? This is very clear. It's set up in European Union regulation. We don't have any information that this is gonna change. On the contrary, the authorities are fine with those sizes and levels. We are expecting that we will be reducing our contribution significantly, no? I didn't mention the size of the contribution we are making on the resolution fund. It was, like, EUR 160 million last year. It's expected to be circa EUR 70 million.

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay. Do we have any more questions in the room, or should we give way to the audience? I think we have a question over here at the other end of the spectrum here. The gentleman with the beard.

Speaker 17

Okay. Very quickly, Carlos from Société Générale again. One would be on how much of the EUR 990 billion target of the ALCO portfolio is embedded in your forecast, if it's full. The second one is when you work around the lower disposable income coming from high energy costs, higher fuel costs, mortgage prices also rising, which kind of corporates do you expect are gonna be most affected, sectors? That is on top of whatever they have impacted from the energy crisis and everything and inflation. In that sense, that is probably the second derivative effect that we haven't really seen, and if you could guide us a little bit on your thoughts, it'll be helpful. Thank you.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Sorry. Well, on the first one, as I think I answered in another question. Yes, we have made an assumption on the ALCO portfolio, but I insist. Current market levels for fixed income securities are actually at the same level where forward rates will be in 2024. The accretion in terms of NII in 2024 is not that much. What you are doing now, investing into fixed income securities, is locking the market rates, but you are not adding an extra spread significantly. Okay?

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

On the second one, we have conducted a bottom-up analysis precisely on the impact of the current inflation and particularly high energy and raw materials scenario in our clients. Obviously, the sectors that are more affected include agricultural, fishing, transportation, and generally industry affected by sort of high energy consumption. Clearly, the critical part is to what extent the industry or the activity is diversified or not, and to what extent they can pass on these increases in prices to customers. Our perception is that there is a good ability to do so, but obviously some players in some industries are gonna suffer more. We made EUR 214 million of provisions in the first quarter, precisely, taking a first look at what we think it may be the impact.

Obviously this is something that we will continue reassessing as the situation evolves, no?

Edward O'Loghlen
Head of Investor Relations, CaixaBank

Okay. I said at the beginning we have to be very strict with time. It's 11:30, so it's probably we need to call it a day. Thank you very much for your attendance. I would also like to thank especially the internal team who were involved in preparing this Investor Day. Now we have a chance to go outside and have some light refreshments. Thank you.

Gonzalo Gortázar
CEO, CaixaBank

Thank you very much.

Javier Pano
CFO, CaixaBank

Thank you.

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