Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Q&A session for the Second Quarter 2022 DBS analyst briefing. I will now hand the session to Hong Nam to begin today's presentation. Hong Nam, please begin.
Good morning. Thank you for joining our CEO, Piyush, and our CFO, Sok Hui, for our analyst briefing for the first half results. As we've just gone through the presentation, we can go straight to the Q&A. Operator, can we please have the first question?
Our first question is from Aakash Rawat. Please go ahead. From UBS. Please go ahead.
Sure. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Thank you for the briefing and taking my question.
Aakash, we can't hear you. Aakash? Operator, maybe do the next question and come back to Aakash.
Aakash, are you there? Okay. Our next question is from Nicholas Tay, Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking my question. Just two from me. Firstly, just wanna understand, you know, income growth expected to pick up in the second half, but at the same time, the macro environment is pretty uncertain. You know, in that backdrop, would you look to take the opportunity to build up GP buffers further, in the second half? The other thing, just wanted to check on the cost-to-income ratio that you mentioned, reaching sub 40% by year-end. Just the last one, on the private real estate company exposure, could you give us more detail on, you know, how big that is in billions and, you know, how much of that is secured against what kind of property and any LTV information you have?
On the general provision, no, it's very unlikely that we will buffer up general provision further. Actually, what's been happening, as you can see, as we move things to SP, our models wind up releasing GP. Because we normally typically build up about 50% of the thing in GP by the time it moves into SP. At this time, you know, we have a substantial amount of cushion in our GPs. Unlike a lot of banks who chose to reverse GP late last year, early this year, we didn't touch it. We've got SGD 1.8 billion in the GP overlay still there. We think it's more than ample. What we will do is not reverse that. Earlier our plan was if we have.
We've had about SGD 100 billion in SPs or in allowances in the first half of the year. Our original plan was that we would just, you know, reverse enough of that buffer so that whatever we took in SPs we would wipe out. As things are, we're not going to. We'll try not to touch that buffer. That gives us enough cushion as we go into, you know, the later part of the year and next year. On cost-to-income ratio, I said that I think we should be able to get to sub-40% by year-end. You know, because that's really income driven. I do think we'll increase our expenses a little bit from where we are, because I do want to.
We do want to invest in adding technology and technology resources. Aided by the extraordinary increase in NII, we will be able to get a 40 or sub-40 cost income ratio by year-end. Your third question was on the private part of the real estate. I think the privately owned companies in the China real estate book are about SGD 2 billion, just north of SGD 2 billion. They're really half a dozen odd companies, so it's not a huge number. The nature of the exposure is actually diverse. We have some specific project, we have some corporate level loans. It's a mixed bag.
Okay, great. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. Our next question is from Harsh Modi from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi, Piyush, Harsh Modi here. A couple of questions. First on the China real estate. Again, there's huge amount of debate as to how should we look at risk. I'm assuming net worth customers are all right, SOE are all right. In the POE space, slightly above SGD 2 billion, could you give a bit more detail as to how comfortable you are in terms of completion of the project? Are they completed project kind of thing, close to completion, tier one, tier two cities versus tier three, tier four? Your risk assessment lies. Like, how do you assess how good or bad could that portion of portfolio be? A couple of follow-up questions after that.
Yeah. Harsh, I don't have an update on, you know, what percentage of the project are completed, but it's. These are very corporate developers, and so far we're not seeing any problem with their projects and the projects on this thing. They seem to be working fine. They have enough cash flow and liquidity, so they're not stretching. They have almost no refinancing needs coming up till for the next couple of years. So we're not seeing any stress from a liquidity standpoint, and we're not seeing any questions or issues right now from the projects that they have on hand. Now, how much and what percentage are complete, et cetera, I'm not entirely sure.
Right. Out of that slightly above SGD 2 billion to 6 privately owned developers, are there any in the watchlist or what's the total stock of provisions against them? Or you don't see a need for that.
No, no. There's no provisions against them. The whole sector is, you know, my first high-level watchlist I call areas I monitor amber or something. Of course, the whole sector is an amber. You know, you'd be daft not to be looking at the sector. No, we've not had to, you know, really look at this thing. We had some smaller this thing, right? We took one case into NPL with some provisions in the second quarter. You can see that in our numbers, but it's not very big.
Okay. Thanks for that. Second bit on the CET1, we are at 14.2%, and if I read your guidance correctly, you are almost guiding for almost 30 bps Q-on-Q increase in margins in third quarter, fourth quarter, on top of it. Just the amount of capital you are accreting with that is quite humongous. The point is. Is that 12.5%-13.5% CET1 range still a target? Or do you think given multiple other bits, everything other than margins, there can be some question marks over the next 12, 18 months? Would you prefer to keep a buffer above 13.5% for a period of time?
How should we then think about, let's say, capital level end of 2022, end of 2023, because this, there's massive amount of capital accretion going through?
Harsh, I don't think we need a lot more capital than our guided range. Our guided range is 12.5%-13.5%. You know, if you look at it, the last thing, we've tended to be closer to 13.5%-14%, right? It's not, I mean, I've got a little bit of cushion above the guided range, but I don't think we need a lot more capital than that. Again, from my assessment of our portfolio and where we're going forward, I really don't think we need large capital buffers. As I've said before, our, you know, portfolio quality looks good. We've got enough general provisions. Our total allowances are SGD 6.9 billion. I don't think we're going to have to dip into capital.
The outcome of that is that what you said is correct. I think we'll be sitting on a lot of capital. As long as we have a certain degree of greater clarity, we will have to start thinking about you know how we can return that capital in an efficient way. It's something we will get around to looking at maybe at the end of the year.
Right. Do you sense that regulatory approval for any sort of buyback will be forthcoming? Because as you said, base case is all right, just about. There are some tail risks emerging. In case you want to do meaningful capital return or buybacks, do you think you'll get regulatory approval for that, at least in size? Because getting from 14.5% thereabouts to 13.5% is a lot of capital return.
I don't anticipate a problem if we wanted to go that route, honestly. I've not discussed this with regulators at any length. Again, given the assessment of what we have, if we want to do that, I think we would be able to get regulatory approval. Actually, Harsh, let me tell you the reality is that when Basel IV kicks in in early 2024, the way Basel IV rules work, it's extremely advantageous to a bank like ours. Our capital adequacy goes up even more. For the transition period from 2024 to 2029, your capital adequacy will be up by another 1-2 percentage points when that happens. It's not just the capital that you're seeing we're accreting, it's the Basel IV rules adjustment will further help our capital adequacy.
At some stage, I don't see anybody having a problem with, you know, allowing us to think about efficient ways to return capital.
Okay. Really looking forward to that, Piyush. The final question, if I may. If you think about 2023, 2024, I know a bit too early, but as you think through those couple of years, how should we think about provision ranges? Should we keep closer to normalized? Or you think it makes sense, even if you're not getting a lot of SPs, to just keep padding up GPs just because things appear tougher and 2023, 2024, we may end up having above normalized provisions?
Harsh, again, you know, I've first of all, I gave guidance the last time that I used to say our provision range, you know, 20-25 or 22-25 basis points. I think on a secular basis, I'm a lot more confident that we're looking at more like high teens, you know, 18-20 basis points. That just reflects substantial improvements in our credit processes. If you look at where we are right now this year, we had 8 basis points for this quarter, 11 or 12 for the first half. I don't see it going materially up for 2022. 2023, if you go up from 10-12 basis points, you know, if you get back to the guidance we've given, you'll get to 18-20 basis points.
If you get substantially above that, you could get to 25, 30 basis points, 40 basis points. The GP overlay that we have, that's worth about 80-90 basis points. That eighty, either you've got to assume that we have another episode of 80, 90 basis points, right, in which case you got to, you know, start buffering up and more. At this point in time, I'm not seeing it.
Right. Yeah, I'll tell you briefly what I'm trying to do, is I'm trying to triangulate. There is huge amount of capital accretion. Provision completely agree. Let's say 2025 seems top end of a normalized range over the next two, three years. Yet, dividend. Then the dividend number becomes the. Either you do a huge acquisition, which in your media interview you said probably, comments you said probably not looking at it right away. It means the only way of managing, balancing that is massive pay-out. That's exactly where I'm trying to understand how we should think about next couple of years. Something's got to give between these three.
What do you want me to say?
No, I mean, just is that the right way of thinking about it?
Yeah, it's the right way to think about it. We will continue to deliberate on this with our board, and then you'll probably hear more towards the end of the year.
Got it. Thank you so much.
Thank you. We have got Aakash Rawat on the line at UBS. Please go ahead.
Sure. Thank you. Can you hear me all right this time?
Yes. Yes.
Okay, great. Thank you. So first question just on the credit cost issue. I think if I'm hearing your guidance correctly, you're saying that for this year, it should be in the range of 10-11 basis points or so, and the next year it could go back to a new normalized level of 18-20. Is that correct?
Yeah, I think so.
Okay, got it. The second one is just under your base case, when do you see, you know, the majority of your NIM increases behind us? Would this be, let's say, like Q4 of this year that, you know, majority of the NIM increase would be done?
Well, you know, I think on the one hand, you gotta figure that the pace of NIM increases has exceeded our expectations because the flow-through pass-through rate into Sing Dollar has been on the high end. As you know, my general rule of thumb is for two cycles, you should get about 60% pass-through from US dollar to Sing Dollar. That is above it. When the Sing Dollar is weakening, the pass-through goes up to 80-85, and when it's strengthening, that comes down to 40-odd%. Right now we've been in the 80-85 range, and we've seen a lot of pass-through. The Sing Dollar started strengthening now, so my anticipation is that while rates continue to go up, the pass-through will come off a bit.
Also, as rates get much higher, what you have to pay up for deposits also starts increasing. Net-net, you will continue to see improvement in NIM, but not at the same pace that you saw or you're seeing so far, right? I think you'll see a moderation in the growth of NIM, but NIM will still increase. The flip to that, you know, all of the sensitivity we give is always first year impact. In reality, there is a meaningful second, third year impact as well. You know, our entire fixed rate portfolio, for example, and you know, between actual fixed rate loans and the interest rate hedging that we do, we have $40 billion-$50 billion of fixed rate, which will reprice in the next 2-3 years, right?
With the reprices, more of the NIM flows through at that time. FHR, the mortgage book, we have SGD 25 billion priced off our deposit rate. We made two adjustments to that so far this year. In fact, the second is happening only in August. That tends to lag by at least 3-6 months. That will flow through also eventually. What that means is that while the pass-through will be low, the third thing I would say is HIBOR pass-through was very low so far because, you know, coming in at 30, 40 basis points. HIBOR pass-through should actually be at 80, 90.
It's a lot of moving parts, but I would say while the pace of the pickup will slow down, you will continue to see fairly robust pickup in NIM into next year.
Okay. Got it. Thank you.
Okay.
The next question is just on the SME side. You've mentioned before that, you know, that would be one sector that you'll be watching carefully, and if any risk arise, it will be from there. Any early signs of anything happening in Hong Kong, Singapore, which is making you a little bit worried?
No. Delinquencies haven't moved. 30-day, 90-day, nothing's moved so far. Like I said before, you've got to understand that the SME sector and obviously market is coming off two, three years of lot of belt-tightening already. You know, they've been operating at a level where their cash flows are impacted, they weren't getting revenue, they couldn't sell, et cetera. They were already very tight, and they were quite resilient. So far I'm not seeing it, but it will come. I think the cost of goods is going up. As the cost of goods goes up, you'll see more pressure on the margins. Unlike some of the big companies who can pass it through, I think SMEs won't be able to pass through all of it.
I think you'll see a pickup in delinquencies, without a doubt, but haven't seen it so far.
Got it. Just a last question on asset quality. I mean, your own outlook is, you know, quite, moderate, benign, but I think the stock market is obviously taking a very different view. You know, it's not giving any benefit to DBS or other banks, any valuation benefits from the higher NIMs. Just from your perspective, like, what do you think the market is getting wrong on the asset quality this time?
I think the whole banking sector piece, you know, in a deep recession, first two things. One is, you know, in a lot of the other portfolios which are large. Oh, I'm getting an echo.
Aakash, we're getting some echo from your side. Can you mute your line when you're not.
Yes, I'm doing that.
Thanks.
Hello. Testing, testing. Okay, that works. I think the general view is that cost of credit will go up. I think a lot of people are concerned about the consumer books, particularly in places like the U.S., if you remember the, you know, subprime crisis, et cetera. When the U.S. is a particular thing where they don't do either, you know, this TDSR stuff, the debt-to-income ratio calculation. They don't look at cash flows at all when they do mortgage financing. A large number of Western countries do mortgage financing purely based on the asset. Then when the customer can't afford to pay, they have the Jingle Mail phenomenon. They return the keys, right?
A large part of the concern is therefore the consumer books in the U.S. and where, how much will they get impacted if rates really rise? That's what impacts the banking sector by and large. My own view is even for those countries, the doom and gloom is overdone. I think the benefit that all long deposit banks get from NIM more than outweighs any asset quality concerns. I think the sector is mispriced even in the West. But certainly when you come to this part of the world, you know, like I said, the whole mortgage book, we're pricing it on cash flow, assuming 3.5% rate. If rates go up, you know, well beyond that, you'll see some pain but not a lot. Our loan to value is very low.
Our loan to value in the Singapore book is 49% on the mortgage book. It's not only based on cash flow, it's also very well cushioned from loan to value ratio basis. Which is why I'm quite confident that that's, you know, relatively secure. The large corporate, we've done this repeatedly in the last two, three, four years. I think they have enough liquidity and financial strength. That leaves the SME portfolio where I think you will see some pain. Second, it's not such a big portfolio for us, and I think it's manageable. When you say what is the market's pricing in, there's a second order impact of it, which is harder to call.
It could be that the markets and investors are pricing in what happens here from now, which is a deep recession. If you assume you're of course Paul Volcker situation, rates really go high, but you then have wind up with a serious deep recession and large scale unemployment, then that of course is a different bearing, right? If you assume large scale unemployment, then you can see other kinds of stress coming in your portfolios. That's not something that I'm forecasting at this stage. Certainly an issue.
Got it. Thank you so much. That's all for me.
Thank you. Our next question is from Yafei Tian, Citi sorry. Please go ahead.
Thank you for taking my questions. I have two. The first one is on the net interest margin forecast. Clearly there's quite a number of reference rates in Singapore. You talked about this in the media call, but would it be possible to give a little bit more granular breakdown what percentage of loans are linked to each of those reference benchmark rates so that we can forecast going forward the pace of margin expansion a little bit better based on those different reference rates? So that's the first one. Along with that, on the Hong Kong net interest margin, so HIBOR has come up quite a bit as we get into second half of the year. So should we start to see HIBOR being a meaningful contributor for you guys?
What is the Hong Kong CASA ratio that we should be or deposit beta, if you will, that we should be assuming to forecast that Hong Kong margin? I have another question on the net new money and the fee income. The SGD 6 billion net new money number you mentioned is actually quite strong, compared to many other wealth managers in the region. I just wanted to understand a bit more, if you can, give a bit more color which region drove that expansion and is there anything that DBS is doing that attracted a bit more net new money compared to some of your peers? Thank you.
Yeah. Hi. Let me just say that we run a fairly complex model which tries to sort of take into account a lot of these planning assumptions. How much are in fixed rate, how much will kind of reprice, you know, and how much of our deposits that are sort of low cost might switch to FDs, how much might flow out. It's a complex model. To simplify all of it, we have tested the model quite extensively and that's why we are comfortable giving you a number so that you don't have to make all these varied assumptions. We are quite confident that taking into account all these assumptions, the interest rate sensitivity at 18-20 basis points.
SGD 20 million, sorry.
Yeah. SGD 18-20 million per basis point is actually quite robust. Therefore I think that takes care of a lot of the planning that you would have to make. It's good enough for up to a Fed rate hike of about 3-3.5%. Of course, beyond that, we actually think that the number might come down a bit from the SGD 18-20 million range per basis point.
Okay.
The-
How about the Hong Kong part?
The Hong Kong CASA.
Okay.
Do you have the number somewhere? I think it's still 70% the last I saw it, the Hong Kong board. Does somebody have the Hong Kong CASA number? Okay. We're just checking. If I remember, I think it's still in the order of 70%, but we'll just reconfirm. And your net new money question on T&M. Look, a large part of the money, majority of the money is from North Asia. And I think it's, I mean, anecdotally, you know, the money coming in from everywhere. From Taiwan, from Hong Kong, from the Mainland, large flows into Singapore. And we continue to be beneficiaries of those flows. You know, I think partly our positioning as a very safe bank helps.
I think partly the digital capabilities and solutions we have on the website help. Finally, we do believe that we bring what everybody calls one bank, the investment banking and the private banking together quite nicely for some of these, you know, entrepreneurs who are relocating or, you know, rebasing themselves. I think all of those things have been quite helpful in our being able to get a fairly strong net new money flow.
Cost ratio for Hong Kong 72%.
Can you hear me?
Oh, Sebastian's there. Sebastian?
Yeah. Basically, referring to your question on Hong Kong. Yes, our LDR ratio is above 70%. In the second part of the year we will have a substantial positive impact on NIM as our HIBOR increases. Yes, we should-
You mean cost ratio.
We should-
You mean the cost ratio, Sebastian. I just take it 72%. Yeah.
Our cost ratio is about 72%. Yeah.
Cost ratio. Yeah.
Thank you. Thank you. All participants with questions to pose, please press zero one on your telephone keypad and you will be placed in the queue. To cancel the queue, please press zero two. Our next question is from Melvin, HSBC. Please go ahead.
Hi.
Melvin, we have lost you. Melvin, please press zero one to be put back in the queue. I'll take Melissa Kuang from Goldman Sachs first. Please go ahead, Melissa.
Hi. Thank you for taking my question. Maybe just a little bit on the ROEs. What are we expecting for the end of the year? I remember back in 2017 when, you know, we're looking at rate hikes and we're giving guidance. You know, we talk about cost-to-income ratio coming down as the rate hikes go up. We can reach 15% ROEs. Do you think we would do more than that, than the 15% given the wealth portion has grown substantially since 2017? Also that, you know, in terms of cost-to-income ratio, you're talking about it coming down to the levels that you wish it will be during that period. Can we get a sense of where you think that ROE can go?
Secondly, just in terms of the mortgages, you know, you stress test TDSR at 3.5%. Some of the banks are giving fixed rate loans close to almost 3% or low threes now. You know, as we go higher above that, at what point in terms of the interest rates do you think we'll see stress? Or do you think that mortgage rates perhaps maybe in terms of the pass-through will slow as the rate rises and maybe we won't, you know, even get above the 3.5? Thank you.
I didn't follow your second question fully, Melissa. But let me answer the first question. I think our ROE for this year will be well north of 14%. I think based on our current projection, unless there's, you know, the base case assumptions I have, I think we have a decent chance of getting close to 16% ROE next year. You know, 15.5%-16% ROE, I think is definitely achievable. On the mortgage rates, it's saying. Can you repeat the question from here?
You know, you say you stress test at 3.5%. Just wondered, like, you know, as we go up higher above the 3.5%, given some banks' fixed rate mortgages are already close to 3%, where do we see the pain in terms of asset quality forming?
Yeah. Okay.
What kind of mortgage pricing? Yeah.
Yeah. Okay. Okay. Understand. Actually, we don't stress at 3.5. There's just business as usual. Every time we give a mortgage, we're supposed to do a Total Debt Servicing Ratio calculation to see how much the borrower has the capacity to service from cash flow and income. In that, we already assume a 3.5% rate. We don't stress. To stress, we would actually take a higher rate and stress it at a higher rate. The first is that we have a cash flow projection at 3.5. The second, you got to remember that the Singapore mortgage, it's got one big advantage that a large part of repayments come from CPF. It's actually many people use the CPF account to account free, etc.
To actually fulfill some of the things. That's quite helpful. It's all not coming from cash flow. The third is that a large part of our portfolio, 80% plus, is all owner-occupied. The owner-occupied portfolios, people are very loath to actually renege on the mortgage payments in those portfolios. Historically, if you look back over 30 years, the delinquencies and the NPLs in the mortgage book have been de minimis in Singapore. It's been very, very stable, right? Outside of Singapore, we really don't have a mortgage book of any consequence.
Right. Okay. Thank you. Can I just go back to the ROE part? You said, you know, next year, 15.5%-16%. Can you give a little bit more in, like, I mean, is it margins above two? What's your cost-to-income ratio? What kind of credit cost are you looking at to get to that number?
No, actually, it's just based on, I mean, if you just watch the math and assume that you have margins over 2% and cost-to-income ratio of 40%, you wind up with that number. I forget what we put into our projections and models. We've obviously made some assumptions on fee income and non-interest income, but none of them are off the charts. They're, you know, again, calibrated to where we think the markets are likely to be next year.
Right. Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question, Nick Lord from Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead. Nick? Oh, we've got Jayden Vantarakis. Nick has actually dropped. From Macquarie. Please go ahead, Jayden.
Hi, everyone. Can you hear me okay?
Yes.
Great. Thanks for taking my question, and thanks for the call. Just a couple of follow-up questions. First of all, on the overlay, which you said I think was SGD 1.8 billion, and it's basically unchanged. I guess qualitatively, if you had to sort of think back to when we were at the start of the pandemic and today, which sort of macro situation do you think is better or worse and why? I'm just wondering why we're leaving exactly the same overlay in place, you know, sort of first of all. My second question is just around the NIM. I note that your sort of blended LDR is still, you know, very healthy at about 80% and you've got plenty of liquidity.
Is there some point where you would sort of stop competing for deposits and just let some of it flow out, you know, which would sort of help with revenues and profits? Just curious for your thoughts on that. Those are my two questions, and thank you very much.
Actually, the second question first. You know, right now, all our deposits make money on the margins. Letting deposits flow out would not improve our revenues or our profits. They would deteriorate both. It would only make sense if my marginal use of the deposits was lower than my cost of funding, and that's not the case at all, right? On risk-free assets, I'm able to actually put the money out without actually even credit margins. I'm making money at the term, so I wouldn't do that. When the situation changes, if I have to start ending up paying more for our cost of funds, then I can put the money to work, you know, the risk premiums are not worth it, then of course, we'd rethink that.
If you saw in this quarter, we actually took a lot of fixed deposits in. That was for two or three reasons. One, we were able to bring in fixed deposits cheaper than commercial paper. We let some of our market borrowings run off into fixed deposits. Second, we actually continued to grow the loan book, so I needed to fund the dollar book. The third was really the most important. Normally, we swap from Singapore dollars to U.S. dollars. Right now, the Singapore dollar surpluses are giving me a really good return with MAS. I don't think I really make a very good positive return on risk-free assets. We figured we'd just get the fixed deposit, and we make a positive return on that as well.
Your first question on the overlay. Maybe Sok Hee wants to take a stab at that question, right? It's a lot about scenarios and scenario planning, but.
Yes. A lot of that overlay. Overlays are put on over and above what our model our baseline model tells us. It's typically modeled on a stress scenario. You're right that in a pandemic situation, we actually went back to look at the worst that we had seen in terms of specific provisions. We tried to calibrate that. I think we've shared that with you that our initial calibration was very conservative. We said maybe SGD 3 billion-SGD 5 billion. The government sort of came in to support and we saw that the government grants were in, the companies were being helped by moratoriums, et cetera. We then decided that what we had built up, the SGD 1.8 billion, was sufficient.
Last year, we communicated to you that if we don't need so much, and if the markets open up, that would be one point where we would consider some release. Even before that happened, we had the Russia-Ukraine crisis, which caused us to rethink how we should recalibrate this overlay. We're in the midst of the exercise, more stress testing to calibrate how much we might need. Until we are happy that we have sufficient buffer, we are likely to release this SGD 1.8 billion. That's our thought process.
Actually, one way to think about it, if you look at DBS's history now over the last 20-25 years, we've had two episodes of 12-24 months where our SPs hit the 80-85 basis points range in that period. By and large, as I said, they range between 20-25, but there were two episodes when it bumped up there. What we have in the overlay right now allows us to cushion for a repeat of something like that.
Okay. That, that's very helpful. Thanks for the color. I appreciate it.
Thank you. Our next question, Nick Lord from Morgan Stanley. Nick, please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Yes.
Yeah, perfect. I just want to dig a little bit more on the cost income guidance. I hear what you say by year-end, you hope to be below 40%. I just wanna confirm what you're saying is that at the year-end, you'll be below 40% and not that that is your second half cost income or your full year cost income.
Yes, that's correct.
Yeah. Okay, perfect. Then, my sort of question is that as we look into 2023 and, you know, given everything you've said about fees potentially recovering and margins still going up as we go in 2023, that implies that we will be below 40% in 2023. I'm just asking, I mean, that's sort of a holy grail to get below 40%. I'm just asking if that is realistic or, you know, given the comments you made in the media call, you know, will you choose to take that slack and invest? I'm trying to get a feel for where cost-to-income ratio could go in the 2023-2024 period.
It's hard to call. I think we could drive cost-to-income ratio with a three handle next year through the year. If our predictions are right, that will still give us the cushion to be able to make the investments I want to make. I don't think we'll compromise. We can do both of those concurrently. I don't have a specific number on how low it can go, but I do think that, you know, the sub-40% is achievable and sustainable next year.
I think very much depends on the interest rate scenario that I think we are all trying to sort of make out. If rates go up and then the Fed cuts rates a lot earlier, then we'd have to replan the scenario. I think those would be the guidance that we would give, right?
All right. We should really think of it with interest rates. That's the right way to think of it, rather than you will absorb.
Yeah.
All the cash flow best investment. Brilliant. Thanks very much.
Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you. Our next question, Melvin from HSBC. Please go ahead, Melvin.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Hello. Go ahead.
Hello. Can you hear me? Oh, okay. Hi. Yeah, so can I just ask about how you see Singapore liquidity? I think you mentioned during the media call that you were raising the Multiplier account and all that. Is it like kind of a preemptive raise of your-
It is.
Cash deposit sits in Singapore?
Yeah, I think it's fair enough to say that it's a preemptive move to increase some of our fixed deposits.
No, but most of our fixed deposits we raised are in U.S. Dollars. If you look at the thing, the Singapore liquidity is quite good and our Singapore loan deposit ratio is still very low. It's in the low 70s%.
70%.
70%. Liquidity is quite flush. The flip we've done, which is to raise fixed deposits, really we need to cushion the U.S. dollar book because that's where our loan growth is. That's where we fund in the commercial paper market. The LDR on the foreign currency book is much higher than on the Singapore dollar book.
Okay. It's starting to cross into USD and fund.
Yeah.
Okay. Can I just clarify one more small thing, which is about this, the floating to fixed hedges. Can you just elaborate on what those are for and then how big they are? And do they actually impact your NII? Like, do they mute your sensitivity now to the interest rate rises?
Yep, you've got it. That's exactly what we do. What we do is that where we can get hedge accounting treatment, and a large part is the SORA-based loan book, we can convert the floating rate SORA loan effectively to a fixed rate where you get a yield pickup over time. That dampens our sensitivity to interest rates and stabilizes the interest rate. By the way, we factored all that into our guidance of SGD 18 million-SGD 20 million. That's already in there. It's not over and above that. It's in that number. That's what it does. What it does is that over time you see the revenue accreted at a higher level over time, whereas the hedge itself gets mark to market right now.
Okay. Right. All this is already, it's sort of net off on when it comes to.
Yeah.
management, right?
It's in that SGD 80 million-SGD 20 million. We've already factored that in.
Okay. Sure.
Those under the size that will be repriced in subsequent years. Remember we give you a guidance of SGD 18 million-SGD 20 million for the first year, and then there'll be a portion like fixed rate loans and like just cash flow hedges. That portion will reprice in subsequent years.
Okay.
We said it's actually 8% of our floating rate book. It's a small number.
Okay. Sure. Got it. Okay. That's all the questions I have. Thank you.
Thank you. Our next question, Gurpreet from Goldman Sachs. Please go ahead. Gurpreet, are you there? Please go ahead.
Operator, as we've had a call. Operator?
I'm afraid Gurpreet. Yeah. Gurpreet line is,
I think we had a-
Yes, we've had a call from Goldman. We've had a question from Goldman's already, so we think we can end it here.
Okay. Thank you. We have now come to the end of the Q&A session, ladies and gentlemen. This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
All right. Thank you.
Thank you. Bye-bye.
Thank you very much.