Good morning, and welcome to the Fourth Quarter of 2021 Results Conference Call of Banco BTG Pactual. With us here today we have Roberto Sallouti, João Dantas and José Miguel Vilela. We would like to inform you that this event is being recorded and all participants will be in a listen only mode during the bank's presentation. After Banco BTG Pactual's remarks, there will be a question-and-answer session for investors and analysts when further instructions will be given. Should any participant need assistance during this call, please press star zero to reach the operator. Today we have a simultaneous webcast that may be accessed through the website www.btgpactual.com/ir in the platform.
Before proceeding, let me mention that this call may contain forward-looking statements relating to the prospects of the business, estimates for operating and financial results, and those related to the growth prospects of Banco BTG Pactual. These are merely projections and as such are based exclusively on the expectations of Banco BTG Pactual's management concerning the future of the business. Such forward-looking statements depend substantially on changing market conditions, government regulations, competitive pressures, the performance of the Brazilian economy and the industry, among other factors and risks disclosed in Banco BTG Pactual's filed disclosure documents, and are therefore subject to change without prior notice. Now I'll turn the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti, who will begin presentation. Mr. Sallouti, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Good morning to all of you on the call. If we could start please on page three, and we will talk a bit about the 2021 highlights of BTG Pactual. We had in the fourth quarter another very strong net new money, BRL 64 billion, which consolidated an unprecedented BRL 326 billion of net new money in 2021. With that, our assets under management reached BRL 980 billion at the end of the year. We reached BRL 1 trillion right at the beginning of February, which is for us a historic and very important mark. Just remembering a bit of where we're coming from. In September 2020, we had BRL 500 billion. March 2021, BRL 750 billion.
Now in February 2022, we reached the BRL 1 trillion mark. Talking specifically about asset management, we had a year-over-year growth of 47% in AUM, finalizing the year at BRL 553 billion. In wealth management, which includes both our high net worth and retail businesses, a combined 66% growth, reaching BRL 428 billion at the end of Q4, the end of 2021. Turning to page four, we talk a bit about our operational results. Again, we had another quarter of record income, where we benefited from our operational leverage and very strong revenues. Year-over-year, 2021 - 2020, our revenues grew 49%. We finalized 2021 with BRL 13.9 billion in revenues. In the fourth quarter, we had BRL 3.5 billion in revenues.
Our net income grew year-over-year 60%, finalizing the year at BRL 6.5 billion, with BRL 1.8 billion in the fourth quarter. Our Basel ratio by year-end was 20.3%. We finalized the year with an average 200 basis points above our peers in Core Equity Tier 1. Continuing as the most capitalized and most liquid bank in the S1 segment, the largest banks segment in Brazil. In page five, we show the expansion of our funding and credit portfolio, even while we kept a robust balance sheet. Our unsecured funding grew 44% year-over-year, reaching BRL 154 billion. Our corporate and SME portfolio reached BRL 107 billion, growing 45% year-over-year.
BRL 17 billion or 16% of our total portfolio was in the SME segment, and that grew 77% year-over-year. Sorry, I actually confused myself here. We finalized with a capital ratio of 15.7%, 200 basis points above our peers. In the previous page, I was talking about the return on equity, which was 20.3%, even as we did two capital increases of totaling BRL 5.5 billion in the year. If you turn to page six, we talk a bit about the details of the fourth quarter. In the fourth quarter we had 19.4% return on equity, revenues of BRL 3.5 billion and BRL 1.78 billion of net income, an adjusted net income per unit of BRL 0.46.
In the fourth quarter, our cost income was a bit below our historical levels, with a cost income of 38.4% and a comp ratio of 17.5%. We finalized the year with assets of BRL 346 billion and shareholders equity of BRL 37.4 billion. Our shareholders equity increased year-over-year 40% even after the distribution of JCP of BRL 1.9 billion. Turning to page seven, we talk about the year's highlights or details. As mentioned previously, 20.3% return on equity. Revenues of BRL 13.9 billion and BRL 6.5 billion net income. Adjusted net income per unit of BRL 1.69. Our cost income ratio within the historical levels and the lower range of our historical levels, 41.1% cost income, 23.4% comp ratio.
As mentioned previously, 37.4 net. Going to page eight, we see the revenue breakdown by business unit, and here it evidences the growth of our investment management franchises and of our corporate and investment banking businesses. Roughly speaking, we go to a distribution of 36% revenues from corporate investment banking, 31% from markets or sales and trading, and 20% from investment management. This continues to go the direction that we've been signaling to the market, and actually we expect this direction to continue over the next few quarters and years. We're very happy, especially with the growth. I mean, investment banking 74%, corporate lending 63%, sales and trading 38%.
What really calls our attention is the growth in wealth management, 80% year-over-year in revenues, which shows that all the investments we've done in this segment are paying off. On page nine, we talk a bit about our ESG accomplishments for the quarter. We received various awards in the fourth quarter for Global Finance, Environmental Finance, and Institutional Investor, being elected the best research team in ESG. We are part of the Sustainability Index, or ISE, of the B3 for the second year in a row. We received a very solid B rating for our carbon disclosure program. We released our first green financing report, where we had already allocated 71% of the BRL 550 million we raised in renewable energy, water, and sanitation projects. We expanded our eligible credit portfolio and launched a sustainable deposit program.
Our eligible credit portfolio reached BRL 10.2 billion, growing 57% year-over-year. We already raised BRL 1.5 billion in deposits in the phase I of our sustainable depositors initiative, which is the first one of its kind in the country. We distributed for our clients another $350 million in sustainable finance instruments, totaling BRL 5 billion in 2021. We signed with Delta Air Lines a sustainable fuel agreement, where it's a way for us to contribute to a more sustainable future in the travel industry. Moving on to page 10, we want to highlight basically one year after we launched BTG Plus, which is our consumer banking portfolio.
We think that we have consolidated ourselves as the best digital banking experience for high income retail customers in Brazil. You can see this not only in the grades in the App Store, Google Play or Reclame Aqui, where we are the top evaluations, but in the various awards we got rewarding the client experience we give to clients. The good thing is that we have a complete product offering with various credit cards, checking accounts, credit instruments, a unique personal financial management tool, a loyalty program, and a cashback way for our credit card, which is very well received by the markets. We're very, very satisfied with the engagement, but especially with the satisfaction from clients. If you remember, we built our platform for the A and B segment in Brazil.
It's a very distinctive, exclusive, and tailor-made product offering for that segment. Probably the only one of its kind, which is tailored to the high income market in Brazil. On page 11, we talk about the next steps of our branding. We noticed that clients were a bit confused by the various retail brands we had, BTG Plus, BTG Pactual Digital, BTG Plus, Empresas or Business. We have decided to consolidate our brands. We want to offer clients an integrated and full experience. Basically we will have one brand, BTG Pactual, and we will have one subsegment, which is BTG Pactual Empresas or Companies. And our apps, which were already integrated, but it was not obvious that they were integrated. Now it will become very obvious.
This will, we will do the shift as we launch our new investment app, the 4.0 version. We'll have three apps for individuals, investments, banking, and the home broker trader for active brokers. We will have one app for companies, corporations, and SMEs. Eventually, the SME app can also be integrated with the individual, the personal app, if that is the desire of the client. We're very happy. We think this is the maturity of our step into the retail segment that we started in 2016. This consolidates one brand. We think it will make it easier for clients to understand the offering, and we will get a bigger bang for our buck in our marketing investments.
Finally, on page 12, we talk a bit about 2022 perspectives. We've talked to a few of you individually that we have built BTG to be an all-weather equity story. We do expect for the next year, probably 2023, some changes in the revenue mix that we've been having, as we are entering a higher interest rate macro scenario. However, our business will continue to benefit from the investments we made in the last three years and the scale our current franchises have achieved. Consequently, we will continue to show significant growth in our asset and wealth management revenues and in our credit and interest income. This allows us to expect for 2022, strong top line and earnings growth, resulting in a return on equity of around 20%, even as we keep the well capitalized and liquid balance sheet.
We're very happy because as the scenario changes, the revenue makes changes, but we can continue to deliver to our shareholders very solid returns. With that, I'll turn the floor to Dantas, who will talk about each of the individual business lines, and then we can open up for questions and answers.
Thank you, Roberto. Good morning. Good afternoon to all of you. Let's move to page 14 to start with the comments on the business lines by investment banking. Starting with the quarterly revenues, we reached BRL 450 million of revenues in the fourth quarter for investment banking. It's a quarter where our business performed very well, measured by the rankings. We rank at the top of M&A, ECM and DCM markets. We operated in a weaker market, especially on ECM volumes. If we look at the yearly revenues on the right part of the page, it's a remarkable full year results for 2021 for our investment bank. We have been delivering consistent growth over the years, and the growth, especially in 2021, was really remarkable.
We do have a challenging 2022 ahead of us, but it's important to remember a few things. Number one, over the years, the mix of revenues produced by investment bank have changed. DCM revenues now are the biggest contributor for the whole pie. DCM revenues, they are less volatile and more recurring. While companies don't access equity capital markets on a recurring basis, they do access debt capital markets on a recurring basis to reduce their liabilities. Our business takes these companies to the market. This creates for a less volatile, bigger portion of the revenue pie of investment bank going forward. Number two, again, looking at the yearly revenues. The reason for this big growth year over year is the fact that we are bringing new companies to equity capital markets, debt capital markets.
When these companies access capital markets for the first time, they become recurring clients, even for M&A activity. As we brought new companies, we have a wider capital base in 2021, and this gives the business momentum to face, to go through 2022. Finally, M&A and DCM markets continue active. While we have less activity in the start of 2022 for ECM, we do have M&A and DCM markets to continue to be active and present good volumes. Moving to page 15. Here, the comments on corporate and SME lending. Starting on the right part of the page, you see the growth of the corporate and SME lending portfolio on the year.
Comparing the fourth quarter of 2021 to the fourth quarter of 2020, our portfolio went from BRL 73.7 billion- BRL 106.6 billion. As Roberto already highlighted, it's a 45% growth. While looking at our large competitors in Brazil, what we see is a lending portfolio expansion of around 10%-12%. The reason we're growing more than the market, number one, is due to the SME lending. Today, SME lending is about 15%-16% of our total portfolio and is growing 80% year on year. Number two, we have about 20% of our corporate lending exposure to LatAm countries outside Brazil, LatAm companies outside Brazil. In part, deployed in local currency and in part deployed in international funding for the international business of the LatAm companies.
That 20% market, that 20% stake grows more than our market share in Brazil. Since our market share in these other countries is still small and have a tendency to grow. Just remembering, we just have obtained a banking license in Colombia. Now, like we can do in Chile, we can raise deposits locally and lend to local companies. These are drivers for the outsized growth in our LatAm credit exposure. Finally, our corporate lending continues to expand its market share in Brazil. Those are trends that we expect to maintain for 2022. Looking at the revenues, we reached record revenues of BRL 743 million in the fourth quarter.
Which has a strong contribution from corporate and SME lending, not only due to the expansion of the portfolio, but also due to the maintenance of the average spreads. Also maintenance of the average quality, which is marginally increasing over time, which requires us to build up less provisions, register more accrual income. On top of that, we also have the contribution of revenues from the special situations. Special situations now is a diversified business with various different streams of revenues, which have built an additional capacity of revenue generation for our corporate and SME lending which we should continue to see also going forward. Moving to page 16 on Sales and Trading. A few comments. Revenues of the fourth quarter of 2021 reached BRL 917 million, less than the third quarter of 2021.
If you exclude the contribution of revenues from CredPago, the fourth quarter was actually stronger than our third quarter of 2021. Also, if you look at the yearly revenues on the right part of the page, you see a continuous trend of revenue increase in Sales and Trading with less use of balance sheet, which we show here, measured by the average VaR and also measured by the percentage of the capital, the required capital of the bank dedicated to market risks. These trends on one side, the continuous growth in revenues, and on the other side, the lower usage of capital and balance sheet, they derive from the fact that Sales and Trading is building different and diversified sources of revenues, which depend less on the use of balance sheet and more on the flows from clients.
To give examples, we have stronger revenues from brokerage, fees, stronger revenues from the insurance business, stronger revenues from flow trading and intermediation. We have more diversification as we have different sources of revenues inside Sales and Trading. For example, energy trading, corporate credit and bond trading, which is a revenue stream that has been added in the recent years and has been grown inside the revenue mix of Sales and Trading. Besides the traditional fixed income FX and equities business. The trend is one that we like very much. Just to finalize, one important remark regarding CredPago. As you know, on the third quarter of 2021, we registered a part of the revenues from the sale of our stake in CredPago, which totaled in the third quarter BRL 520 million.
Going forward, the remainder revenues will be recognized along the lines of the next two years. About eight to 10 quarters in which we will recognize over time cash that we receive, assets that we receive that will materialize. These revenues will become immaterial quarter on quarter, as it is relatively immaterial also on the fourth quarter of 2021. Moving to page 17, the highlights on the asset management business.
I'd like to start on the right bottom part of the page where you see the evolution of our assets under management and administration of the asset management business over the years, starting with the year-end of 2017, where we had BRL 145 billion of AUA and AUM, then BRL 208 billion, BRL 273 billion, BRL 377 billion, reaching BRL 553 billion of assets under management in the end of 2021, with a net new money of BRL 160 billion, which is about 2.5 t imes our net new money in 2020.
This trend of expanding asset base and stronger inflows in asset management is a trend that we have been maintaining over the years, pushed by in part financial deepening in the country but also by the investments that we have done in all of our platforms, including the digital retail platform that contributes in investments into our asset management franchise. Most of the net new money in 2021 comes from fund services. We have strong contribution of net new money for our LatAm funds and for our alternative funds, which encompass real estate and private equity instruments. Looking at the revenues, we have reached BRL 360 million of revenues in the fourth quarter, which is 22% above the third quarter of 2021.
If you want to look at a deseasonalized view, you compare fourth quarter of 2021 to the fourth quarter of 2020. The fair comparison should exclude performance fees, which are part of the revenues that we show here. Excluding performance fees, we also have a 24% revenue growth from the fourth quarter of 2020 to the fourth quarter of 2021. The ROAs by asset class during the quarters of 2021 have maintained and slightly increased from the third quarter to the fourth quarter. There's some decompression in the asset management industry in Brazil, but this isn't a trend for our business as we already charge very competitive ROAs in all of the products that we offer.
It can be evidenced by the fact that the ROAs have been maintaining themselves by asset class in the last years. Moving to page 18, wealth management and consumer banking have a few interesting highlights. The main aspects of the growth of the business are very strong net new money and increasing higher ROAs. Also on the bottom right part of the page, you see the evolution of our wealth under management. Starting in 2017 with BRL 87 billion, reaching BRL 428 billion in the end of 2021, following a net new money of BRL 166 billion. Also strong growth along the quarters of 2021, as you see on the top right chart, with very consistent and strong net new money over the quarters.
As you can see, our net new money in the fourth quarter was stronger than the net new money in the third quarter. This represents a growth in wealth under management of 66% during 2021. If we now look at the revenue chart on the top part of the revenue of the center of the page, we have reached BRL 447 million of revenues, which represent an 81% increase compared to the fourth quarter of 2021. This means that our revenues are growing above the pace of asset expansion, and asset gathering, which is a very healthy sign on the growth of wealth management and consumer banking, and the performance of that business. Because as we add more assets, we are adding assets with increased revenue generation capacity.
Since the growth is more accelerated and predominantly coming from our efforts in the digital expansion into upper income retail. Growth is being pushed by the successful launch of the consumer banking platform. As Roberto already mentioned, I won't repeat it, but we have several new features and functionalities that have been attracting more clients to this ecosystem of BTG Pactual. Moving to page 19, we have some remarks on principal investments and participations performance. We reached BRL 77 million of principal investment revenues in the fourth quarter. There are three drivers for this performance. Number one is the equity pickup from our investment in Eneva, the energy company in Brazil, and Prime Oil, which is the Petrobras Africa, the oil company in Nigeria in which we invest.
Even though the equity pickup from these two investments was stronger in the fourth quarter, here we also have the counter effect of the increase in interest rates. Since, as you know, we post the results of the businesses that use balance sheet already net of the internal funding cost, which then gets registered as interest and other. As we have stronger interest and other revenues, we have a bigger deduction of funding costs, internal funding costs from the principal investment revenues. Also, there's an impact here of the negative performance of a few equity seeds inside global markets in the fourth quarter.
Looking at the participations earnings, here, this is the sum of our equity pickup from Banco Pan and Too Seguros, which have increased from the third quarter to the fourth quarter, which depicts the good performance of these two investments over time. Moving now to page 21. Let's see here some of the trends for expenses and the efficiency ratios of the bank. There is a growth in costs that we see on the comparison of the full year of 2021 and the full year of 2020. Basically, driven by salaries and also in part driven by administrative and other expenses. This is all related or mostly related to people that we added to the workforce, and also some costs related to the technology investments we're doing, be them related to consultants or third-party service providers. The growth has been about 40%.
About 38% on these two lines year-on-year. Looking at our revenue growth, which was 49% year-on-year, and if you look specifically at the revenue growth of wealth management and consumer banking, which are the businesses that benefit more from these additional investments, this is where we are hiring more people and investing more in technology. The revenue expansion is much above this cost base expansion. This means that while we invest, we're generating additional revenues that contribute to additional bottom line and additional profits. This is a very healthy way to invest and to grow our cost base. Even though we are freeing up capacity to expand the business, the business already is generating additional revenues which grow and surpass the expansion of costs. It's a disciplined way of investing and growing these retail businesses.
To comment here, costs in the fourth quarter are impacted by the effective income tax rate reduction. From 21.1% in the third quarter to 18.8% in the fourth quarter. Basically driven by the fact that we were able to distribute additional JCP, which is the tax-deductible dividends that we can pay in Brazil because of the increase in interest rates in the short term, which impact the long-term interest rate that dictate your capacity of JCP distribution. Moving now to page 23, a little bit of balance sheet analysis and some explanation. Since we have a 7% reduction on the total assets of the bank, which went from BRL 372 billion to BRL 346 billion. This reduction doesn't mean that we're pulling back on growth.
On the contrary, we're deploying capital and growing the structural part of the balance sheet. Here, this reduction is only a nominal reduction. Brazil, as you know, banks in Brazil operate their accounting standards on a trade date convention, which has a grossing effect on repo and reverse repo transactions and also on deliverable forward derivative transactions. Both are trades that we do frequently with the Central Bank of Brazil, which have been doing less on the derivative markets of FX towards the end of last year, which implied in this reduction, both on the assets financed through repo line and also on the trading portfolio of assets. Assets financed through repo against the central bank and derivatives inside trading portfolio of assets, also predominantly against the central bank.
The structural part of the balance sheet, which is the banking book, has expanded not only in terms of the assets, but also in terms of our funding base, which we'll talk about in the next page. Also, our cash has expanded. We now have 1.4 times our equity in cash. We had a little less than BRL 1 billion of cash quarter-over-quarter, which is a very solid amount of cash to be maintained by any bank by global standards operating anywhere in the world. Also, we have increased the total assets coming from Banco Pan consolidation from BRL 43 billion-BRL 46 billion. Banco Pan continues to grow their credit portfolio as well.
Finally, to comment, our corporate lending portfolio now represents 2.9 times our net equity, which is, even though we are growing, it is still a measure that we consider we can expand over time, and the corporate lending portfolio can grow more than our net equity through P&L. Moving to page 24. Almost coming to the end of our presentation is the unsecured funding base. Significant achievements in terms of the funding evolution for the bank. We have an expansion, a growth of 44% in our unsecured funding year-over-year, comparing the picture at December 31st, 2021 with the picture at December 31st, 2020, going from BRL 107.2 billion - BRL 153.9 billion. Significant progress and increase in market share during the year.
The average of the financial system in Brazil expanded their funding base around 10%, 10%-12%, while we were able to grow our funding base 44%, predominantly by instruments and deposits that we issued or raised in local markets. We increased significantly our market share in tax-exempt instruments like LCAs and LCIs. We raised and issued new deposits, such as the green deposits that we issued in the end of the year. We increased significantly our penetration on corporate counterparts, and we now have a significant larger number of Brazilian corporates that deposit with us in a recurring basis. The share of our retail funding continues to expand inside the total funding base, reaching 19% of the total funding base.
If you consider Banco Pan funding base as well, the total retail funding is 30% of our total funding base. Demand deposits have reached close to BRL 10 billion, a growth of 16% year-over-year, representing 6.3% of our total base, regardless of the fact that interest rates are going up in Brazil. There's significant progress, and the unsecured funding base evolution makes us confident that we can continue to grow our business with a fortress and very liquid balance sheet. Finally, on page 25, a little bit of what Roberto already commented. Our total capitalization is at 15.7%, 40 basis points down from the previous quarter, which implies that we're deploying capital.
Our Core Equity Tier 1 ratio is 13.4%, as Roberto mentioned. This is about 200 basis points above the average of the segment one banks in Brazil. Both measures makes us confident that we can continue to deploy capital over time, maintain our fortress balance sheet, strong capitalization. Looking at the average daily VaR, it reached 0.18% of our average AUM in the quarter, which underlines the comments we've made on the change of the shape of the Sales and Trading revenues as we deploy less capital and generate more revenues. With that, we pass now to the Q&A session. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The floor is now open for questions from investors and analysts. If you have a question, please press star one on your touchtone phone at this time. If at any point your question is answered, you can remove yourself from the queue by pressing star two. Questions will be taken in the order that they are received. We will ask you to please pick up your handset when you ask your questions in order to ensure optimum sound quality. Please hold while we poll for questions. Our first question comes from Tito Labarta from Goldman Sachs.
Hi, good morning and good afternoon, Roberto Sallouti, João Dantas. Thank you for the call and taking my question. A couple questions. My first, on your guidance this year around 20% ROE. So wondering if you could help us just try to get there. I mean, it doesn't require, you know, very strong year. I mean, you have to do better, very strong year in 2021. We're getting, you know, maybe around BRL 8 billion in earnings to get to that 20% ROE. I just wanna understand the drivers of that because, I mean, you would expect, you know, some relative weakness this year compared to last year for investment banking and Sales and Trading, kinda, you know, some even, you know, what we saw in 4Q.
I know, you know, corporate lending, asset and wealth management and interest and other are all, you know, growing pretty strongly. You mentioned this should be driven by strong revenue growth. Is it because these other lines will continue to grow much faster that could offset any potential weakness in investment banking and sales and trading? You know, do you expect investment banking and sales and trading to be even stronger than 2021? You know, just given the macro, that seems a little bit more challenging. You had a low compensation ratio this quarter. Do you expect, you know, costs to kind of be maybe closer to what we saw in Q4? Just to try to understand how you think you can achieve the 20% ROE for this year.
I have a second question you can ask after.
Thank you, Tito. As I mentioned previously, we built BTG so it could be an all-weather story. The truth is, when real interest rates go above, let's say 4%, the dynamics of the markets change. Probably that means you will have weaker equity capital markets. That means that the investors will shift how they invest their portfolios. Probably market activity will not grow as strongly. What probably will happen in the revenue mix. Very likely investment banking will not grow, maybe decrease a bit. Sales and Trading will not grow probably at such high levels, only if we expand into new business lines, which we're always trying to do. The benefit we're getting from, let's say, volumes of the B3 diminish. At the same time, we have an opportunity for higher spreads.
We have an opportunity for higher fees given the level of interest rates, and we benefit from everything that we've been investing over the last three years. We still expect very good growth in corporate lending, good growth in asset management, strong growth in wealth management. We will also benefit on the interest rate side in our interest on capital and also on deposits. It's the first time that we're going into a higher interest rate environment with a much larger demand deposit base than we had in the past. When you put all this together, you changed significantly the revenue mix, you changed significantly the dynamics of each line, but overall, you're able to give a very consistent and solid 20% ROE to our shareholders. That's a bit of what we are seeing and expecting for 2022.
Okay, that's very clear, Roberto Sallouti. Thanks for that. My second question on B2B digital and your initiatives there. I was wondering if you have or plan to disclose more KPIs to help us think about the potential for that business. I don't know if your revenues or revenue per client or credit card CPQ. But any data or KPIs that would help us think about some of the potential for this business, how much they can contribute eventually to revenues. Is there any color you can give or is that something that you think you may disclose in the future?
We don't look at it the way that you're talking, you're mentioning. Basically, we see that we have different channels for different profile of clients. We have our B2C channel or digital B2C channel. We have our B2B channel via our investment advisors. We have our advisors channel via our brokers. We have our wealth management channel via our bankers. These channels offer different products, more specifically investments and now banking products. The truth is, at the end of the day, this is all relationship with individuals, and you're producing fees either in the distribution channel for investments or brokerage fees or in the banking products.
To avoid confusion and misinterpretation, that's why we have chosen to just be showing the revenues in wealth management, which includes all of the revenues of the investment and banking products we have with individuals.
Okay. We should think of it, of the growth in asset and wealth management, whether that's gonna help drive the growth in those two revenue lines.
Yes. As we expand, we're gonna expand our product offering, and we've expanded tremendously our sales force. Over the last few years, we have onboarded a series of brokers, bankers, and IFAs, as well as brought in clients for digital platforms. There's always a ramp up as the clients come in. We expect to continue stronger growth from this ramp up.
Okay. That's clear. Thanks, Sallouti. Sorry, one follow-up going back to my first question. Yeah, I know you talked about the revenues, but anything on the compensation expenses, you know, especially particularly compensation ratio, which was low this quarter. Was that a one-time thing? How do you expect that to evolve throughout the year?
Well, you always have to look at it on a yearly basis, right? We accrue the same historical metric that we've always done. When you get to the fourth quarter, then different business lines have different, quote-unquote, payouts. We're able to do the fine-tuning. I think the good thing is that as we gain scale, we are benefiting from this larger scale and diluting our costs, including bonuses in the larger businesses. This generates value for our shareholders.
Okay. That's clear. Thanks a lot, Sallouti. Congratulations on the strong results.
Thank you, Tito.
Thank you.
Our next question comes from Thiago Batista from UBS.
Yes. Hi, guys. Hi, Sallouti. Hi, Dantas. Congratulations for the results. I have one question and one follow-up on Tito's questions. Starting with the question. Do you see any change in the competitive scenario with the possible end of the exclusivity of the financial advisors or no big impact of this possible change is expected in the wealth business? The follow-up, and I need to ask again about the ROE of 20%. This number implies an EPS growth of, let's say, 20% or even more than that. In my view, it's not feasible to believe that the top line will expand in this magnitude.
My question is, do you believe that this type of EPS expansion will come more from cost control or better cost to income, more from revenues growth, or even, let's say, a silver bullet, lower taxes or any other thing that should really drive this very strong and much above consensus EPS expansion?
Thank you, Thiago. On your first question, with the end of exclusivity, given the dynamics of how what happened in the IFA market over the last three years, where first we brought many IFAs to our platform, locking in long-term contracts and incentives, and then the competitor defended themselves, locking in longer-term contracts and incentives. I don't think that at this moment there will be any significant change given the end of exclusivity. I think the market dynamics changed before this regulation changed. On your second question, we expect both top line and earnings to grow almost 20%+. At the same time, we expect to continue having operational leverage. We expect probably our tax rate will not be as low as in the fourth quarter, probably a bit higher, but maybe a bit lower than what it was in 2021.
When you put all of this together, you end up with this 20% ROE that you mentioned or that we mentioned.
No, very clear. Thanks for the clarification.
Thank you.
The question comes from Thiago Batista from UBS.
Hi, guys. I'm back if there's no other question. Can you talk a little bit more about the trends that you guys are expecting for the net new money? Looking in 2021, net new money was, let's say, in the wealth only, about BRL 13 billion or so per month. Do you think that this is a good proxy for 2022? And the second one, in Sales and Trading, only to confirm, the BRL 1 billion, let's say, in the past you used to indicate something close to BRL 1 billion of revenue is a little bit lower than that. But this BRL 1 billion is a good proxy, BRL 1 billion per quarter is a good proxy from the Sales and Trading going forward.
Thanks, Thiago. It's very hard to give you an exact number of net new money. Maybe it slows down a bit, maybe it keeps up. Given naturally the level of interest rates and how aggressive I think the commercial banks are being on the fixed income instruments they are issuing. We're seeing a more competitive market, but still a very healthy net new money. Given what's happening in the asset management industry, maybe it shifts a bit of what was happening in the fund administration business, even though we are gaining market share. It's really hard to give you an exact number. We think that we will continue with very healthy net new money for the year.
Most of that we will have an average AUM or wealth under management, which will allow us to see significant growth from 2021, right? Because the truth is, when the amount of net new money reflects on revenues much more on the next year than in the current year. On the Sales and Trading, yes, I think that probably continues quite similar. This BRL 1 billion ±20%, which we've always indicated, seems to be a good guideline for now.
Yeah. Thanks.
Thank you.
That brings us to the end of the question and answer session. I will now return the floor to Mr. Roberto Sallouti for his closing remarks.
I'd like to thank all of you once again for joining the call. I'd especially like to congratulate our team for a fantastic 2021. I'd like to really thank our clients for their trust and partnership. Reaching this 1 trillion mark of AUM was, for us, a very significant milestone. I'd like to thank all of the investors here on the call for your trust, partnership, and the confidence that you place on us. We hope to continue delivering the results you all expect. Thank you very much and have a great day and rest of the week.
This does conclude today's presentation. You may disconnect your line at this time and have a nice day.