Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the Lufax Holding Ltd Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Call. At this time, all participants are in a listen only mode. After the management's prepared remarks, we will have a Q&A session. Please note this event is being recorded. I'd like to hand the conference over to your speaker host today, Ms. Liu Xinyan , the company's Head of Board Office and Capital Markets. Please go ahead, ma'am.
Thank you very much. Hello, everyone, and welcome to our Third Quarter 2022 Earnings Conference Call. Our quarterly financial and operating results were released by our Newswire services earlier today and are currently available online. Today, you will hear from our Chairman and CEO, Mr. Y.S. Cho, who will provide an update of the macroeconomic and the COVID impact, our latest business strategies and the recent regulatory developments. Our Co-CEO, Mr. Greg Gibb, will then go through our third quarter results and provide more details on our business priorities. Afterwards, our CFO, Mr. David Choy, will offer a closer look into our financials before we open up the call for questions. Before we continue, I would like to refer you to our safe harbor statement in our earnings press release, which also applies to this call, as we will be making forward-looking statements.
Please also note that we will discuss non-IFRS measures today, which are more thoroughly explained and reconciled to the most comparable measures reported under the International Financial Reporting Standards in our earnings release and the filings with the SEC. With that, I'm now pleased to turn over the call to Mr. Y.S. Cho, Chairman and CEO of Lufax.
Thanks for joining. The third quarter has been challenging. Our core small business owner segment, which makes up 87% of our new loans facilitated, excluding customer finance loans, has been significantly impacted by the deteriorating macro environment in the third quarter. In periods of macroeconomic change, small businesses are typically the earliest to be impacted ahead of consumer finance and other lendings. As a result, our profitability has been negatively impacted due to rising credit impairment losses and credit enhancement costs. Ongoing pandemic controls and strong economic growth impacted credit quality in the third quarter. Our lead indicator for credit quality, the C-M3 ratio, which estimates the percentage of current loans that will become non-performing at the end of three months, increased by 0.1% quarter-on-quarter to 0.8% this quarter.
Our C-M3 ratio stood at 0.4% in the third quarter of 2021, indicating that credit quality has worsened considerably versus a year ago. In the third quarter of 2022, data from market analysts suggest that GDP share of cities with high and medium risk pandemic controls increased versus the second quarter, which we believe is having a broader impact on small businesses, given a backdrop of declining business and consumer confidence. While credit quality deterioration advanced across the board in the third quarter, we witnessed it growing differences in economic resilience in various regions, which led to significant divergence in credit performance by region. Taking Shanghai, for example, the C-M3 ratio for general unsecured loans spiked to 2.3% in second quarter this year.
After a short period of time, after reopening, quickly returned to pre-lockdown level of 0.5% in Q3 2022, demonstrating strong resilience. In comparison, C-M3 ratio for some other regions, in particular lower tier cities, were worse and probably will take much longer to recover. Let me provide a sense of this by comparing credit quality for unsecured loans. On average, the C-M3 ratio for top-performing regions, which mainly consist of cities and regions with strong economic foundations, such as Beijing and Shanghai, improved by 1 basis point in Q4 compared to Q2. While the C-M3 ratio for average-performing regions and less desirable performing regions deteriorated by 13 and 20 basis points, respectively, during the same period.
This geographic divergence is fundamentally reshaping the map for where sustainable lending can be enabled, mid-term. Today, about 2/3 of our EBP business is in cities and regions where we believe the economic foundations are stronger and likely to be more resilient in recovery. Small businesses contribute to 60% of GDP and 80% of job creation. While receiving only 26% of financing as of 2021 year ends, we believe long-term demand will remain substantial as the small business owner segment is expected to be agile and responsive when the macro environment improves. We are confident that we are well-positioned to rescale when the time is appropriate, leveraging our existing strengths, including extensive channels and institutional partnerships and a strong capital position.
However, mid-medium term, we must first adjust our business strategies by deepening our focus on well-rated small business owners in more resilient cities with increased resilience on our direct sales force channel. The increased focus will result in reduced gross revenue in midterm, but will improve the profitability and sustainability of new business. We must go through a period of digesting credit losses on the existing vintages as they run down, while building up the more sustainable and profitable new portfolio. This process will likely result in U-shaped recovery pattern for our business. In the near term, we expect this adjusted strategy will generate new loan facilitation volumes at approximately two-thirds of the volumes we have generated in recent years. Exact volumes will be determined by the overall timing of macroeconomic recovery, which remains uncertain at this moment.
While we hope that recovery will come sooner, our immediate plans assume a status quo in the current operating environment. Our optimization of resources, including further cost restructuring, will be completed over the next several quarters. During this time, we assume that our credit impairment losses and CGI credit enhancement cost will remain at elevated levels, while the underperforming portion of existing vintages run down, clearly impacting profits. Taking uncertainties into account, we believe that timing for a notable improvement in our bottom line performance is more likely in 2024 than in 2023. This is clearly a challenge for us, but we are confident in our ability to execute. We'll use this business reprioritization to continue to upgrade our technology, operations, and the risk management with the objective of strengthening our long-term market leadership in the small business owner segment.
Given our resources, given our customer access, strong balance sheet, and long-term partnerships with financial institutions, we have the necessary advantages to navigate through this difficult period. While the operating environment demands change, the regulatory environment is now stabilizing. The 429 rectification process led by PBOC and CBIRC has now transitioned to normalized regulation oversight without substantial outstanding issues for the company. Our bank guarantee model, under which we bear 22.5% credit risk on the outstanding balance of loans we facilitated as of the end of September, is distinct from a lending facilitation platform and in line with prevailing requirements. Looking forward, we expect our portion of risk sharing with financial partners to increase to at least 30% over the next several quarters.
As stated before, the use of our guarantee company also allows us to share required data directly with funding partners. On October 25th, the CBIRC released a report regarding the P&C industry, where credit guarantee insurance, a core component of our business model, is recognized as playing a positive role in helping small businesses increase their funding availability. Finally, I have an update on change to our board. In consideration of potential Hong Kong listing requirements and to improve our ESG standing, we have added two new female directors, namely, Miss Cai Fangfang and Miss Xin Fu to the Board. In addition, we are pleased to welcome Mr. Ji Guangheng to join our Board as a Director again. All three new directors are Ping An executives, reaffirming the ongoing support from our largest shareholder.
The new board structure continues to be made up of nine members with four current independent directors, two current company directors, myself and Greg, and the three new directors who are Ping An executives. Under the new structure, we are reducing one independent director and adding an additional director nominated by Ping An. I will now turn the call over to Greg for more detail on our operating results and business priorities.
Thank you, Operator. I will now provide more detail on results and our operational focus. Please note all figures are in RMB and all comparisons for the third quarter on a year-over-year basis, unless otherwise stated. Third quarter results were negatively impacted by deterioration in credit quality. As a result, third quarter profit was RMB 1.4 billion, declining 67% versus a year ago. As a result of progressively tightened credit standards, new loan volumes were RMB 123 billion, declining 27% versus a year ago. Credit impairment losses totaled RMB 4 billion, increasing 137% year-over-year. Overall profitability has also been negatively impacted by higher insurance premiums. Total expenses, including credit impairment losses, asset impairment losses, finance costs, and other losses decreased by 12.7% as a result of tighter cost control.
Third quarter revenues declined by 17.2% versus a year earlier to RMB 13.2 billion, and our outstanding balance of loans facilitated declined by 1.3% versus a year earlier to RMB 636 billion as of September 30, 2022. We've entered what we expect to be a U-shaped profitability pattern driven by the credit quality issues that Y.S. detailed. Our historical loan vintages are now experiencing higher credit losses given the macro environment. As a result of progress credit tightening, new business initiated in the last several quarters is demonstrating better performance. We must now follow a path of continuing to strengthen our collection on existing vintages while building up more sustainable and profitable new portfolio.
At the same time, we continue to refine our channel management through optimizing our direct sales force that we can be more nimble and efficient in selecting and targeting a higher quality customer base with the most productive workforce. This will mean reduced new business volumes and gross revenues in the medium term, new business should be able to generate better results as compared to the historical loan vintages as a whole. We believe bottom line profit recovery will be driven by three factors: evolving credit performance of the historical vintages, runoff speed of the historical vintages, and growth rate of the prioritized new business. At this stage, we can't accurately predict how long the historical vintages will see elevated credit impairment as the drivers are fundamentally macro in nature.
As Y.S. stated, timing for a notable improvement in our bottom line performance is more likely in 2024 than 2023 as new business volumes replace vintage volumes and policy changes potentially lead to improvement in the macro environment. Recently, we have witnessed positive signals around commitment by the banking system to support some key industries, including real estate. We believe these developments could potentially bring positive impact to the macro environment and our business, although the exact timing, impact is yet to, difficult to predict. As we navigate through the current downturn, we will continue to strengthen our operating capabilities and financial institution partnerships. We have recently launched our new small business owner ecosystem. Its intent is to engage potential customers at an earlier stage, deepen our interaction with existing customers, and create both new cross-selling opportunities and a new source of customer referrals.
As the first step, we launched the testing version of our LuDianTong app in October 2022. LuDianTong has an open platform design and is being populated with digital operating tools and industry-focused content for SBOs to operate their businesses more effectively. LuDianTong builds a WeChat Moments that's like a social network, connecting our direct sales force with existing and prospective SBOs, and helping these SBOs to better serve their existing and prospective customers to deliver more impactful marketing, more frequent engagement, and more direct feedback with their customers. Compared with other players, we believe that our extensive offline direct sales network would allow us to acquire users more efficiently and offer more differentiated value to users. We are also continuing to develop LuJinTong, which helps banks with strong risk capabilities acquire borrowers directly through dispersed sourcing agents nationwide.
Under this model, the company does not provide or participate in credit risk sharing. Year-to-date, LuJinTong provided online services to more than 10,000 active agents in their efforts to facilitate loans to partner finance institutions. For funding partners under our risk-sharing model, we have increased 16 new bank partners compared to the same period last year. We continue to explore development of new data and technology solutions to share with our partner institutions in the areas of efficient customer matching, risk analytics, portfolio management, and collection services. Our risk sharing reached 22.5% of the total portfolio as of September 30th, 2022. The guarantee company's net capital stood at RMB 47.8 billion at the end of the third quarter, operating with a leverage ratio of 2.1x .
More broadly, our net assets stood at RMB 95 billion, with RMB 46 billion cash on hand, figures which provide confidence to our financial partners in this otherwise challenging environment. Our current guidance for the full year 2022 is total income RMB 57 billion-RMB 58 billion, with net profits ranging RMB 8.5 billion-RMB 8.9 billion. New loan sales for the full year are expected to reach RMB 490 billion-RMB 495 billion. Wealth Management client assets are expected to end the year between RMB 390 billion and RMB 430 billion. These projections are below our previous estimates and reflect both the macroeconomic environment and our strategy to be more selective in credit selection. These forecasts reflect our current views of the market and operational conditions, which are subject to change.
Finally, we would like to thank our shareholders for their continued support to our business. In October, we distributed our first half 2022 dividends of RMB 0.17 per ADS. We will continue to deliver value to our shareholders. We also continue to stay close with regulators and remain ready to initiate a Hong Kong listing plan as soon as permissible, subject to regulatory approvals. With that, I would like to hand over to David to elaborate on our financial performance in greater detail.
Thanks, Greg. I will now provide a close look into our financials. Please note that all numbers are in renminbi terms and all comparisons are on a year-on-year basis unless otherwise stated. Our total income for the third quarter was RMB 13.2 billion, while net profit was RMB 1.4 billion. Our total expenses for the first quarter grew by 11.5%. The de-increase in the total expenses was primarily driven by the increase in credit impairment costs, while our operating related expenses actually decreased by 12.7% due to operating efficiencies and optimizations. Let's take a close look at our revenue. Our revenue was negatively impacted by economic environment, resulting in a 17.2% decrease in our top line this quarter.
As we are dedicated to build up a more sustainable business model, the total income mix of our credit, Retail Credit Facilitation business continued to evolve. During this quarter, while technology platform-based income decreased by 13.3% to RMB 6.7 billion, our net interest income grew 21.5% to RMB 4.6 billion, and our guarantee income grew by 44.1% to RMB 1.9 billion. As a result, our Retail Credit Facilitation platform service fees as a percentage of the total income decreased to 47.8% from 57.1% a year ago. As the trust funding model provided lower funding costs through the use of asset-backed securities, we continued to utilize them more in our funding mix. As a result, income from consolidated trust is recognized as net interest income.
Our net interest income as a percentage of total income actually increased to 35% from 23.9% a year ago. We continue to better utilize our guarantee company's abundant capital to bear more credit risk ourselves instead of through our P&C insurance partners. As a result, we generated more guarantee income, reaching 14.1% of total income compared with 8.1% a year ago. In terms of Wealth Management, our platform transaction and service fees decreased by 22.1% to RMB 364 million in the first quarter from RMB 467 million in the same period of 2021. This decrease was primarily caused by the decline in fees generated from our current products, partially offset by the increase in fees generated from platform service.
Our other income, which mainly includes account management fees, collections, and other value-added service fees charged to our credit facilitation partners as part of the Retail Credit Facilitation process, was negative RMB 129 million in the third quarter of 2022 compared to RMB 997 million in the same period of 2021. Majority of the decreases were due to a refund of account management fees to our primary credit enhancement partner as a result of worse than expected collection performance and narrowing down of service scope, the change of fee structure that we provided charged for our primary credit enhancement policies this quarter. Turning to our expenses, we continue to prudently manage our operational expenses.
Our total expenses, excluding credit and asset impairment losses, finance costs, and other losses, decreased by 12.7% year-over-year to RMB 6.7 billion. In the third quarter, our total expenses grew to RMB 11.1 billion from RMB 9.9 billion a year ago. This was primarily driven by an increase in credit impairment losses of RMB 2.3 billion year-over-year. Our total sales and marketing expenses, which mainly include expenses for borrowers and investor acquisition costs, as well as general sales and marketing expenses, decreased by 11.7% to RMB 4.1 billion in the third quarter. This decrease was driven by the decrease in the new loan sales and optimization of our commission-based compensation structure. In addition to that, the continual optimization of productivity of our direct sales force also provides us with flexibility in our cost structure.
Our general and administrative expenses decreased by 36.8% to RMB 592 million in the first quarter from RMB 537 million in the same period of 2021, thanks to our stringent cost control measures. Our operation and services expenses decreased by 3.6% to RMB 1.6 billion in the first quarter from RMB 1.7 billion a year ago, mainly due to the decrease of trust plan management expenses and our effective expense control measures. Our credit impairment losses increased by 137.7% to RMB 4 billion in the third quarter from RMB 1.7 billion a year ago. This was mainly driven by two factors. One, the professional indemnity losses driven by the increased risk exposure as we move towards a more balanced risk taking model.
Second, as a reference, the company bore risk on 22.5% of its outstanding balance, up from 14.8% as of September of 2021. Second, the change in credit performance due to the impact of COVID-19 outbreaks also contributed to the increase in credit impairment losses. Our asset impairment losses decreased to RMB 68 million in the third quarter from RMB 410 million a year ago. The number for the third quarter of 2021 was unusually high, mainly due to impairment losses of intangible assets and goodwill. Our finance costs increased by 82.1% to RMB 306 million in the first quarter of 2022 from RMB 168 million in the same period of 2021, mainly due to the increase in interest expense.
Other losses were RMB 7 million in the third quarter compared to other gains of RMB 36 million a year ago, mainly due to the foreign exchange losses. As a result, our net income decreased to RMB 1.4 billion during the third quarter from RMB 4.1 billion in the same quarter of 2021. Meanwhile, our basic and diluted earnings per ADS during the third quarter were both RMB 2.55 or $0.08. On the balance sheet side, our balance sheet remains strong and solid as our cash at bank balance increased. As of September 30th, 2022, we had a cash balance of RMB 45.8 billion in cash at bank as compared with RMB 34.7 billion as of December 31st, 2021.
Liquid assets maturing in 90 days or less amounted to RMB 46.5 billion as of the end of September 2022. As of the end of September 2022, our guaranteed company's leverage is only at 2.1 x, whilst regulatory requirements allow to us to leverage up to 10 x. All these provide strong support for the company to remain resilient in the face of economic downturns. That concludes our remarks for today. Operator, we are now ready to take questions.
Thank you very much. If you're ready for to ask a question, please press star four by one on your telephone keypad now. If you change your mind, please press star four by two. When preparing to ask your question, please ensure your phone is unmuted locally. We now have our first question from Alex Ye of UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking my questions. I have two. First one is on your asset quality. Can you give us some color in terms of your C-M3 growth rate into October and November? As well as the outlook for the coming few quarters. Understand that there could be, you know, substantial uncertainty around the macro front. Perhaps can you also talk about how is it likely to evolve under different scenarios? For example, assuming the current lockdown, rolling lockdown across different city states as it is today. Second, perhaps assuming we have a material easing or reopening from Q2 of next year. Second question is on your tech rate outlook. Understand management has been tightening the criteria.
When shall we expect the tech rate to bottom and start to improve? I guess there are different moving parts to that equation. For example, the CGI premium has increased a lot this quarter, given there could be some lagging effect on the CGI pricing. Should we expect a further material uptick in Q4? In terms of your loan pricing, which have been declining for over one year and has been quite stable, like, lately. Is there any room for us to maybe roll back some of the pricing cut and maybe perhaps somehow offset the tech rate pressure? Thank you.
Okay, let me answer your question. If I miss any, please let me know later. The first question about asset quality and our C-M3 net flow trend. Our flow rate increased by 0.1% - 0.8% in third quarter this year from 0.7% in the second quarter. Considering the resurgence of COVID-19 and regional lockdown recently, the flow rate in the near term and midterm, we believe it will stay at a relatively high level. Looking at October, November number, it seems like it's stable. It's just there, does not change much. We believe the relaxation of COVID policy and then reopening, it will surely boost up consumption and investment.
Both are critical for the economy that is driven by confidence level. Given we are SME focused, we understand that small businesses are typically the earliest to be impacted ahead of consumer finance and other lending in a downturn. They are more sensitive to COVID control measures as shown in our C-M3 net flow fluctuation recently. Likewise, we believe their credit performance will respond to the relaxation of COVID control policy quickly. Once policy get loosened, and then we believe their performance will improve relatively quickly. The second question about our take rates in relation with the CGI premium. We hope a recovery will come soon.
For example, in Shanghai, where we experienced almost three months consecutive lockdown, our current performance is one of the best among 35 branches we have. The regional economy, the regional debt, the FTO environment is now hugely different. In overall, we hope, like Shanghai, the other region can recover quickly with the relaxed pandemic control measures. We assume, it's uncertain, still uncertain, we assume a status quo in the current operating environment. In fourth quarter and early 2023, we assume that our CGI credit enhancement costs will remain at high levels. It affects our take rate for sure. To mitigate this impact on take rate, we continuously optimize our funding costs, which is now less than 6%.
We also keep reducing our operating costs to offset the impact from rising CGI costs. We believe the timing for a notable U-shaped improvement in our take rates, in particular, relaxed COVID-19 control policies and then if we see real actions, then we believe we'll see more likely in 2024 than 2023. That is our fair estimation. The last question was about loan pricing. Our portfolio API by loan balance is well in line with the policy guidelines. It's now 21% in the third quarter, which is reduced from 21.4% from the second quarter. If you look at new loans, it's already less than 20%.
By now we strongly believe we are in full compliance with the regulations and window guidance given from CBRC regarding API. We haven't received any further notification on reducing our API further. In addition to comply with regulatory requirements and guidance, the decrease of API is also driven by our own strategy to target higher quality segments. In near term, we'll maintain our overall API level for new loans while we focus more on high quality SME segments in more economically resilient regions. Okay.
Alex, any follow-up question on that?
Thank you. That's all for me.
Thank you. We now have our next question from Emma Xu of Bank of America. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my question. I have three. The first one is about your third quarter result and fourth quarter guidance. We noticed that your third quarter result is much weaker than previous guidance, and you also revised out your full year guidance and now implied losses in fourth quarter. Could management explain them a little more detailed, what lead to the weak business performance in third quarter and the weak 4Q guidance? A weak 4Q guidance now. The second question is about the outlook. Management just said that you expect the recovery to happen more likely in 2024 than 2023. Could you give us more details? For example, do you still expect this business continue to decline in 2023?
When do you expect the performance to bottom? Yeah. The third question is about your share buyback. We noticed that your share prices has dropped a lot this year, but it seems that the buyback activity has stopped in recent quarters. Could management tell us why the buyback activity stopped recently? A related question about your dividends. Do you still think that you can maintain a stable dividend or DPS? Or is there still room for you to increase the payout ratio and then maintain a relatively stable dividend? Yes. This is my three question. Thank you.
Thanks. Thanks, Emma. Yeah, regarding your first question on our third quarter results, you see this is weaker than expected. Our main challenge is purely macro challenges on our SBO sector due to pandemic control and then macro uncertainties. The operating environment has been fundamentally reshaped for our SBO segments. This is also expected to continue in the near and then near to midterm, we think. COVID resurgence in various key cities, it affected our operation in sales and collection. It affected lots of branches, our country centers, and their customer confidence level remains low, indicating overall weak market demand. Basically, we got quite immediate direct hit from the macro environment change.
Having those in mind, we adjusted our risk policy and growth plan, focusing more on quality segments. As a result, decreased our new sales volume recently. What coping measures we have to deal with the situation, we will continue to prioritize quality over volume in the meantime, and then focus on sustainable profitability. Meaning, less scale, but we go after profitable and then sustainable segments. We tighten our credit standards policy and focus on customers with higher risk rating and then, particularly customers in more developed regions, where we see less low potential net flow and low charge-off ratio, and then also, customers in our better performing segments.
Lastly, channel-wise, we develop more direct sales channels and then leadership dependent on other channels because we see higher customer quality from our own DS channels. Some questions about the outlook.
On the outlook, as we put forward this morning, we do think it is a U-shaped pattern. Let me explain a little bit more how this plays out. The existing portfolio, which was acquired as early as 2020, which is still in force. We have 2020, 2021, 2022, which makes up our existing portfolio. Over the last three quarters, we have progressively tightened our credit standards. There is part of the portfolio which was brought in to pre-tightening. That part of the portfolio is experiencing elevated levels of impairment and credit cost. That will continue to play through over the next couple quarters. The business that we have acquired in the last couple quarter, as Y.S. outlined, has been done at a much higher credit standard, right?
That part of the business is performing better. What you have to kind of visualize is that we have, if you will, the legacy book, gradually running off over the next 12-1 8 months. Then the new book that we've been building up over the last couple quarters as well, will grow with a higher level of profitability. As we have tightened our credit standards, the absolute volume in the near term will be less. You can envision the legacy running off, that's one line, and the building of the new book with new credit standards increasing, that's another line. When those two lines cross, that will determine, if you will, the turning point, in our U-shaped, bottom line, profit recovery.
Now, the exact timing for that really depends a little bit on whether there is real progress on policy change, including COVID, because we believe as soon as you have any policy change, the small business owners will respond quite quickly. Two things will happen. The first is that the quality of the legacy business, if you will, the business initiated over the last couple of years, should actually show, you know, demonstrated improvement. That's number one. Number two is our willingness to accelerate new business growth at the higher standard will also increase. You know, it's very hard to call right now which quarter is going to be the bottom.
If we, if we think about this over, the next year, to 18 months, we know it's somewhere in that period. For us, what is most important, is to make sure that even if we assume the worst case, which is nothing changes for the next 12 months, that we are in a very good position in terms of our capital base, in terms of our funding partners, in terms of the network and how we're prioritizing our channels. That as soon as it does change, we can step on the gas pedal again, and be very strong, financially, and fundamentally in our footprint and in our chosen segment.
We are doing a lot of preparation for that day that it comes, where we have confidence that we have hit that bottom in the U, and it's really time to accelerate. We do believe that if we look around the industry, that at that time, our competition will most likely be less. And our relative leadership in the market, it will be intact, and our ability to extend it should come at that time. It's very hard to call, as you know, in a market, the bottom. But we are relatively clear that it should be within the course of 2023. And therefore, 2024 is really where you should see the notable improvement.
I really wanna emphasize when we face an environment like this, the first thing to do is to really make sure that you assume the worst and are going to not only survive but prosper when it recovers. That is the way we prioritize who we're selecting to serve now, how we're managing costs, where we're putting resources. In light of that, to your follow-up question on buyback. We have bought back, over time now, about 110 million shares. Represents more than $800 million that we've bought back progressively since being listed. You know, in the current environment, we believe we wanna place, obviously liquidity is number one.
Obviously we have a lot of it, which is important, I think, just in giving confidence to our financial partners. Two, we would then prioritize dividends. Three, we would look at other ways to create value for shareholders. In terms of dividends, you know, obviously our policy is a cap of 40%. You know, that's something we will look at if needed, over time. We will prioritize dividend over maybe other aspects, in the near term. Emma, does that answer your questions?
Yes, that is very helpful. Just one quick follow-up. You mentioned that the U-shaped recovery partly depends on the running of your legacy portfolio, which is extended before the tightening of credit policy. Could you tell us the percentage of this legacy portfolio in your existing portfolio?
We haven't disclosed those specifics, but I think Y.S. gave a pretty good indication of the following concept, which is, even in our legacy portfolio, we have seen a greater regional differentiation in credit performance. As we look across the existing book, even within the existing legacy book, we think about two-thirds of it is placed in geographies which are reasonably economic resilience. Which means that of the existing book that was initiated back in 2020, 2021, it's gonna be in regions which are poor performing, right? That doesn't give you an exact number because we haven't disclosed it, but it gives you a sense of magnitude, right? We're not saying the entire legacy book is bad. A lot of it is actually quite well-positioned.
As we build the new book, it is actually prioritized in those stronger geographies as well. If we've done our strategy right, with the way we've tuned our credit policy, the way we're doing new business, that should help us on the upside of the U, as soon as the environment improves.
Understood. Thank you.
Thank you. We now have our next question from Yada Li of CICC. Please go ahead.
Hello, management. I am Yada Li from CICC, and thanks for taking my question. I have two questions for today, and the first one is regarding the cost side. I saw the growth of the lower origination volume has been slowing down. How are you able to control the operational cost of the large direct sales team in the future. Additionally, looking forward, what is the trend of our credit insurance cost specifically? The second one is about, can you give us more color on the updates or any potential timeline on the HK secondary listing? Thank you so much.
Thanks, Yada, for the questions. I guess you mentioned about how to do the cost control, operating cost, and also about the CGI track, right? First, simply put, for the cost control in particular for DST, I think, keywords is to keep focused and be nimble and efficient. We have been placing increasing focus on optimizing and improving the quality of our direct sales team. We've also observed more significant improvements in our productivity in regions where we are successfully hiring high-quality DST. We're nimble and efficient as we are now getting more selective in targeting a higher quality customer base.
In terms of the CGI percentage and the cost, I think I, we have mentioned before, while we do hope a recovery will come sooner, but as of today, we are now still assuming a status quo scenario, which in medium term, we assume our credit enhancement costs will still remain at elevated levels and our CGI percentage will be at pretty much the same level we have right now.
On the question of a potential Hong Kong listing, we still see it as a very important thing to be ready for. You know, getting ourselves ready is something that we have been focusing on. In terms of earliest timing, we would have to do it off of the back of our 2022 financial results. We're staying very close to, you know, regulators and understanding whether or not any other communication is required before actually initiating the process. I think that the as Y.S. talked about, the rectification completion, the 429 rectification completion, I think has created greater certainty. You've seen some other movement in the industry on this front.
As soon as this is, you know, viable from both our financials, being ready in terms of year financials, that's something we would, we would obviously prioritize.
This concludes.
Operator, any other questions?
Thank you. This concludes our Q&A session for today. I'll now hand the call over to our management for the closing remarks.
Okay, thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you for joining the conference call. If you have more questions, please do not hesitate to contact the conference team offline. Thanks again.
Thank you.
Thank you. This concludes today's call. Thank you everyone for joining, and you may disconnect your line now.