Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the Avanza Bank Holding AB I nterim eport January–June 2025 Conference Call. At this time all participants are in listen-only mode. After the speakers' presentation there will be a question and answer session. To ask a question during the session you will need to press start one one on your telephone. You will then hear an automated message advising your hand is raised. To withdraw your question, please press start one one again. Please be advised that today's conference is being recorded. I would now like to hand the conference over to your speaker today, CEO Gustaf Unger. Please go ahead.
Hi and welcome. By my side today I have Anna Casselblad, CFO, and Karolina Johansson, IR Manager. Avanza had a strong first half of 2025 despite turbulent macro. Unpredictable tariff announcements and geopolitical conflicts clouded the near term outlook and net flows in Q2. Long term outlook for increased savings remains positive. We have in Sweden increased real wages, lower interest rates meaning lower housing cost, and also stock markets have rebounded quickly from the early April fall. Bottom left you see that the savings capital is up 4% in H1 and 7% in Q2. That was driven by market appreciation and net inflow. Top right you see that customer acquisition is on track for another strong year with H1 up from last year.
Bottom right we see that net inflows in H1 on the other hand is slightly weaker than last year where the macro uncertainty has put many Swedes in a wait and see mode. I think customer activity held up well in the quarter despite a difficult market environment with rapid changes in the sentiment. Top right you see that the number of brokerage -generating customers remained high in the quarter and bottom left you see that brokerage margin was stable. It was negatively affected by lower share of foreign trading but positively affected by the Standard segment playing a larger role this quarter. Bottom right we see that turnover in foreign securities is still high compared to historical levels but negatively affected by the unpredictable U.S. precedent in the quarter.
The long term trend of increased foreign trading is strong with our customers having a home bias of 77% at the end of the quarter in their equity portfolios. That's not geographically diversified portfolios to say the least. Fund customers were net sellers in the turbulence in April, but net buyers in total which together with the large market fluctuations made the average fund capital decrease compared to Q1. This reduced mutual funds income. In the Q1 results presentation I showed that our customers U.S. exposure in their equity portfolios was 13%. Fund customers are more exposed to the U.S. market due to the popularity of global funds. My estimate is that fund customers hold roughly 35% U.S. exposure. Fund inflows was SEK 5 billion, which is high compared to Q1 but weak when looking at 2024 due to the wait and see mode of Swedes.
Our strong brand is an important asset and competitive advantage that we built for decades through customer focus, innovation, and where the daily interactions with customers are vital parts of the development of Avanza. This has resulted in a loyal customer base with a low churn of 1.7%, and in the quarter Avanza is ranked as one of the highest regarded companies in Sweden together with names like Volvo and IKEA. The strong brand is also important for our employee value proposition, where being able to attract, develop, and retain the best talent is key. This quarter Avanza is ranked one of the most attractive employers among students in Sweden. An important part of our strategy and to reach SEK 2,000 billion in total savings capital is to focus on our core business, which is savings and investments.
In Sweden, two thirds of our customer savings are estimated to be held by other banks, half of which is considered addressable. We have a great opportunity to increase share of wallet where we need to make both smaller and bigger enhancements. One part is to constantly improve the offering so that we also in the future have the best platform. During the quarter, we have added two new European markets, Spain and Switzerland, and launched analyst recommendations and target prices as decision support. An improved mortgage offering is another possible key to free up customers' savings capital with other players who lock in their customer savings in exchange for decent mortgage rates. I think that Stabelo backed by Swedbank will allow us to significantly improve our mortgage offering later this year. Our existing customer base is an important source of future growth.
The Sigmastocks acquisition was finalized first of July, creating an opportunity to increase our addressable market. Historically, Avanza has focused on the “Do It Myself" and “Help Me Do It” segments. To accelerate growth, we need to become more relevant. For those less confident in making their own investment decision, we will develop products to attract the large “Do It For Me” segment while remaining fully digital, starting with the private banking segment. Our focus now is on integrating the new product in the Avanza experience, and the ambition is to launch the new discretionary mandate product around the turn of the year before handing over for a presentation of our financials. I'd like to thank Anna for being a fantastic colleague and CFO, always with a smile, irrespective of workload. I know this will be your last, but I think of 18 quarterly presentations. Over to you, Anna.
Thank you Gustaf and good morning everyone. Gustaf already said we are reporting really strong results today and are once again proving resilience to changing market conditions. Operating income decreased compared to Q1 due to lower trading related income while NII increased driven by higher deposit volumes. Looking at H1, operating income increased by 18% compared to last year driven by all income streams except for NII that decreased slightly. Our operating expenses are developing according to plan and increased by 6% in the quarter. This resulted in a net profit of SEK 600 million which is 15% below record quarter Q1 but nonetheless a very strong result. Looking at January to June, net profit increased by 23%. Return on equity for the quarter ended up at 37% and earnings per share at SEK 3.81.
Our income mix is reflecting the events in the world around us and the business model is once again proving resilient to various market conditions with an increasing NII and decreasing trading related income streams, both as a result of customers de-risking. Trading activity decreased compared to Q1 which as usual was a result of the general market sentiment but also a result of 4.5 fewer trading days in Q2. On the other hand, if we zoom out the perspective a bit and compare to last year's figures, trading activity has increased substantially and we are also seeing a higher number of brokerage generating customers. Looking at the trading mix across the customer segments, Private Banking and Pro accounted for 26% of the brokerage which was lower than in Q1.
This is somewhat unusual in a more turbulent market environment where the standard segments are usually the ones who tend to become more passive. Looking at the brokerage margin, it was stable at start one one.4 bps compared to start one one.5 bps last quarter. Slight decrease was driven by a lower share of trading in foreign securities. However, the standard segment accounting for a higher share of trading mitigated the negative effect. When it comes to FX income, this was negatively impacted by 20% lower turnover in foreign brokerage generating securities compared to Q1 driven by customers being more hesitant to use exposures in their portfolios, particularly in the beginning of the quarter. Here we saw an increased share of turnover in foreign securities generated by Private Banking and Pro customers. This also partly affected FX income negatively as Private Banking and Pro customers have better prices for FX.
Net fund commissions decreased by 7% due to lower average fund capital. Despite fund capital being higher at the end of the quarter, the fund margin was stable at 24.9 bps compared to 25.2 bps in Q1 and was 25.1 bps. At the end of the quarter, the share of capital in index funds was also stable, only increasing by 0.2 bps to 48.6 bps. Other income was also negatively affected by the market environment, with lower income from corporate finance due to the sharp shift of sentiment for IPO transactions, and income from abound, the market also decreased. The turbulent market environment is evident also when looking at the NII deposit volume. Looking at the outgoing balance, it increased to close to SEK 10 billion compared to Q1, driven by customers' lower risk appetite and the dividend season, which resulted in higher surplus of liquidity.
Looking at the intraday liquidity, this has been even higher at times as customers at some point have been net sellers of securities in the quarter. Looking at the lending side, mortgage volumes kept growing while the lower risk appetite drove customers to decrease margin lending. The average rate for internally financed lending decreased to 3.27% from 3.4% and the lending income decreased slightly. The policy rate has been kept stable throughout the main part of the quarter, but on June 25th the Riksbank made a 25 bps cut. This has a direct effect on our mortgage rate, which was capped accordingly. We also decided to reduce the margin lending rate by on average 34 bps. Throughout the rate cut cycle, we haven't been more restrictive with capping the margin lending rate.
To make sure that we have a fair offering for our customers at par with competition, we made a decision to make a slightly larger cut this time. Moving on to the interest cost side, our interest expenses increased due to higher deposit volumes on our savings account. The average annualized rates and deposits decreased from 0.97% to 0.91%. The amount of customers' deposits in interest-bearing accounts decreased and amounted to 51% at the end of Q2. Since the policy rate cap in June, we now only pay interest on transactional accounts for the PRO segment and we cut our savings account rate by 25 bps to 1.50%. All in all, NII increased by 8% since Q1 and is contributing well to the overall income this quarter and will continue to do so also going forward, even though we will see some effect of the lower policy rate.
Our costs are developing in accordance with our communicated plan and increased by 6% compared to last quarter. Personnel costs increased by 10% compared to Q1 due to a higher average number of employees. Other costs also increased, mostly connected to the cloud migration, and marketing costs were seasonally lower. The cost growth guidance of start one one% increase for the full year stands. As you can see from the table, we have further strength in our capital position, especially looking at the risk-based capital surplus. In May, we successfully issued AT1 capital of SEK 800 million, and this is something that we have aimed to do for a long time as we see it as a natural part of our capital structure. That also paves way for future savings capital growth.
The issue was heavily oversubscribed, and we paid 3 months STIBOR +32 5 bps, which was the lowest spread, and in other words, the lowest perceived risk for investors that an unrated Swedish bank has issued at since 2008. That also shows the strength by Avanza. With the AT1 capital, we are now better prepared to cater for increased deposits and the leverage ratio requirements. As you know, we are in the process of closing our external savings account product, where we now know that partners that account for approximately half of the external deposits today will not migrate to their own platforms. That means that if customers don't actively move, the deposits will stay at Avanza. As I mentioned earlier, we have seen increased deposits this quarter and this year due to customers de-risking as well as dividend inflows.
The pressure on the leverage ratio was mitigated by issuance of AT1 capital, implying a strengthened ratio compared to last quarter. We still have good headroom to the total leverage requirement of 3.5%, including the Pillar 2 Guidance. We can handle increased deposits of SEK 38 billion before breaching it. I would also like to emphasize that we didn't audit the quarterly figures for Q2. It's only the Q1 results that have contributed to the capital base. With that, since this is my last quarter with Avanza, I would like to take the opportunity to thank you all for good collaboration and interesting discussions during the years. I also thank Gustaf and the Avanza team for an excellent time here at Avanza, and I wish you all the best.
Thank you much, Anna. To sum up, before we open up for questions, I'd like to summarize my view. I think we deliver a solid result despite turbulence in the world around us. I think we're making good progress with our strategic priorities, and I think we have strong employee engagement around the direction. The long term outlook for increased savings in Sweden remains positive. Last but not least, Avanza is well positioned to capture future savings market growth and to handle short term possible uncertainties. Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, to ask a question, please press start one one on your telephone and wait for your name to be announced. To withdraw your question, please press star one and one again. We will now take the first question from the line of Jacob Hesslevik from SEB. Please go ahead.
Good morning. If we start with your CEO letter, Gustaf, you wrote that circa half of the deposits in external savings accounts are today with partners. That will allow the deposit to remain at Avanza, while the remaining 50% will be up to the customer. Is the 50% referring to current deposit volumes in FX accounts or is 50% of the number of external partner banks left on the platform?
Thank you, Jacob. The customers of Sparkonto Plus, they are both customers with Avanza and with the partner bank. What we have tried to settle and managed to settle with all seven of our banking partners is what happens if the customers do not make an active choice before we reach the end of lifetime of this product.
With roughly half of the volumes in Sparkonto Plus today, we have come to the agreement that if the customer is not doing anything, the volumes will remain with Avanza. Does that clarify, Jacob?
Yeah, I mean, that sounds positive. That is on the volumes. The second question is on the divestment of Stabelo and how it will affect Avanza. Will you continue to distribute their mortgages and do you expect the LTV level to increase when the funding now comes from Swedbank? Lastly, how will the profit sharing setup look between you and Swedbank?
I think having a good mortgage offering is key in the Swedish savings market. As I mentioned in my presentation, many of the incumbent banks lock in savings capital by only giving this mortgage rate contingent on the customer keeping his or her savings with that bank. That has been a challenge from our side.
That is one of the reasons why we have a very attractive mortgage offering to our private banking customers. To our standard customers, we have had two external offerings with Landshypotek and Stabelo. If we focus on the Stabelo offering, it allows LTV only up to 60%. Now, the majority of our young customer base cannot afford a house or a flat only going up to 60% LTV. We have been thinking hard for months and months how to improve our mortgage offering. One unlocking was an improved LTV from Landshypotek, I think a few months back, up to 75% if I recall correctly.
With the rationale from our side to sell our shares in Stabelo to Swedbank, it's partly that it looks like a good financial deal for us, but mainly that we think and hope that this will significantly improve our mortgage offerings towards our customers and hence unlocking savings capital with other banks. The short answer to the question is yes and yes.
If Delta V's then can come up to 85%, 90%, your Stabelo offering should be quite attractive towards your customer base, which has an average age of just around 40, correct?
Exactly. 37 is the average aged customer. When it comes to the financials between us and Stabelo, that's something that we haven't communicated and will not communicate.
Is it fair to assume that the existing margins or the existing contract will continue in the future with Swedbank as a new owner, or is it up for renegotiation?
I think no. I have no new information there, Jacob. We have a distribution agreement with Stabelo today, we have it tomorrow, and as with any contract, it's renegotiated every three years or something like that. We will continue to be a distributor. I have high hopes with the constellation of Swedbank and Stabelo to make this proposal product much more attractive and hence I hope for much higher volumes.
That sounds good. I have a very last question on net inflow. It was negative for both Private Banking and Pro in the quarter. I would have thought that these clients were slightly more sticky compared to the retail clients. If you could provide any more color on what's going on here, it would be appreciated.
I think there are two factors that are important here.
One is related to the market environment where a number of larger customers have decided to get an exposure now outside the stock exchanges. Those money I think will come back when we have a different sentiment in the market. The other factor is that how we calculate net flows for Private Banking and Pro segment is not consistent with how the market does it. If a big saver becomes a customer with Avanza and does not sign up to become a private banking customer day one, he or she will be registered as a net flow, positive net flow into the standard segment. If that person then after a year or after a week decides to become a private banking customer, that is not shown as a net flow into private banking.
If I were you, I would look a little bit more at the development of the savings capital in this segment. As you can see, the Private Banking and Pro segments, savings capital grew much faster than the standard segment.c Okay, that was new information for me. Thanks for the clarification.
Wish you all a good summer and thanks Anna for these years.
Thank you, Jacob.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Ermin Keric from DNB Carnegie, please go ahead.
Good morning. Maybe I can continue on the flows. Actually, do you see any tendencies of increased competition? Also, you mentioned that kind of regular flows you have are SEK 2.9 billion per month, roughly. Then on top of that we have the pension premiums of SEK 400 million, so we're almost up at SEK 10 billion. I mean, is there basically no discretionary inflows then? Or have you seen some breakages of the recurring ones? Because I think that the numbers I just mentioned are on a rolling 12-month basis.
Yeah, that's a fair observation, Ermine. I mean, you constantly have an outflow for consumption which you need to fill with inflow. If you would look at the gross numbers, so the gross inflow and the gross outflow, those numbers are much larger than when we look at the net inflows. Mathematically, you are correct.
When it comes to competition, do we see tougher competition today than a few years back? I don't think so. I hear and I read that a lot of players are focusing more on the private banking segment. I think that's understandable. It is a large segment, it is a profitable segment, it is a segment that is growing faster than the overall Swedish market. I'm not surprised. Do I see it in the day-to-day interactions with customers? Not really.
Okay, thank you. If we look at the cost line now, you've beat consensus expectations in both Q1 and Q2, but you keep the guidance of 11%. How should we think about that? Because then implicitly you'll have a quite high exit rate of the year if you think in year-over-year terms in like a Q4.
Does that mean we should have a much higher cost inflation in 2026 and 2025 or is there some seasonality or something that's causing this kind?
The trajectory
now is that the seasonality among costs is rather in Q3, where we have lower costs due to people taking out summer vacations. I would say that we are focusing more on the cloud migration, which is in line with our plan, and also the acquisition of Sigmastocks, which will now take on even further work since we have, since the beginning of July, started working more closely with Sigmastocks and integrating it on the platform. Those are the two main focuses for the second half of the year, implying also that the cost for the last six months of the year will increase. That's why we iterate the overall.
Cost guidance and bear in mind the communication from our side that the average cost increase during the planning period will not exceed 8%. That limits our cost increase next year. I wouldn't be very worried about a lot of hangover of late cost increases in 2025, making the cost increase in 2026 unmanageable or something like that.
Okay, that's great. One last question would be going back to the partnership now with Swedbank and Stabelo. As you said, I think many of the incumbent banks have used the mortgage to kind of lock in the savings capital as well. What's the incentive for Swedbank here? I suppose you'll now then have a stronger competitive offering on the mortgage side, which can lock in quite profitable savings capital.
Will you need to share anything there in terms of the rest of the capital you get from those users, or what's the incentive for them then?
We have no side agreement with Swedbank. What's their rationale? I think this will be, I think this would clearly be positive for us and we'll have to wait until November or something like that when the deal is expected to close. Hampus and his crew in Stabelo, I think, are very motivated to have a much improved offering by then. When it comes to Swedbank's rationale, I think you better ask them.
Fair enough. Thank you very much. Have a nice summer. Thank you, Anna.
Thank you. Have a nice summer.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Enrico Bolzoni from J.P. Morgan. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for taking my questions. The first one is on customer growth. You historically have been very, very strong and the print in May and June was perhaps a bit softer than in the past. Can you just give some color on what might have caused that and whether you expect customer growth to accelerate again perhaps in the second half of the year. That's my first question. My second question, just a clarification on cost. Thanks for what you already said. Can you confirm therefore the total cost in the third quarter will be higher than in the second quarter despite the typical seasonality of the summer. Finally, on the external savings account, just a clarification.
You say that 50% of accounts will be allowed to remain on Avanza, but then for the other, you say we require an active decision which implies that this money is not on Avanza but is on the third party banks. I'm just trying to understand the technicality. Are actually all this money technically all on Avanza and some will be able to stay and some not or does it work in a different way. Related to that, I wanted to ask you what proportion of these savings once they move to Avanza you think will remain in deposit and what proportion you think will be instead invested near term? Thank you.
Thank you, Enrico. I'll try to remember all your questions. The first one, on customer growth. Thank you. Especially in May and June, why was it weak?
I don't know where you are, how the consumer sentiment is, but in Sweden it has been very soft, both consumption and in our terms, savings. I think a lot of us in Sweden are a little bit shell shocked from what's happening around us when it comes to trade wars and when it comes to geopolitical tensions. My view is that we are a lot in a wait and see mode in Sweden. When I have friends who are out selling their houses, there are very few people coming and looking and showing interest, which is very unusual in Sweden. When you talk to other firms in the consumption sector, the consumption is weak. There was preliminary GDP data coming out just yesterday around May, which was very weak in Sweden. I think a lot of Swedes are in wait and see mode now. What does that mean?
Because the Swedes have more money available this year compared to last year and compared to 2023, where my guess is that those money remains on their salary accounts with the big banks, and the step to move them from there to long term savings with Avanza, that drive has been less strong in May and June. I think that will normalize when we get a little bit less shell shocked population here in Sweden. Your second question was, we are very transparent guiding on cost for the year. We do not guide on cost quarter to quarter, so you need to do the math there when it comes to Q3 and Q4. When it comes to your third question, that was external deposit, the customer is a customer with Avanza but legally the money is.
Deposits are very well protected in the law in Sweden, and technically that customer is a customer with his or her deposit with that partner bank. We have been very mindful to clarify with all our partner banks what happens if the customer does not take a decision, and at the last day when the product ceases to exist, what happens then. That is what I clarified. If the customer does not act, then half of the volumes will automatically be moved from Avanza and half of the volumes will stay with Avanza. I hope and we hope that the customers have chosen this product not because of the partner bank, but because of Avanza, and they want to gather all their savings and have it readily available for going into risky assets and hence to keep it with us.
That all depends on how the customers will react during these coming quarters. There was a fourth question, I think.
Yeah, it was related to this one, on what proportion of these deposits you think might be invested once they are on Avanza? Rates are lower in Sweden, so perhaps I was just wondering whether you think that they will be converted quite quickly in equities or in funds.
I can give you some, I don't know, but I can give you some data points to guide you in making up your own mind. By the end of the quarter the customers held on average 8.9% of his or her savings capital in cash with us. So 8.9% that gives us this SEK 88 billion that the bank has as deposits. In the end of the last quarter it was 8.4%. A year ago it was 6.9%.
When looking a year back you can say that currently customers are risk averse, they have a lot of cash, they have a lot of money readily available to invest in risky assets. That would speak for that when we get money from, say, Sparkonto Plus, that they would invest it in risky assets. If you look further back, the five-year average is 8.6% and the 10-year average is 9.8%. Maybe customers are neutral now with their allocation. I cannot give you a better answer than that, Enrico. It really depends on customers' decisions.
That's helpful. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question. One moment please from the line of Martin Ekstedt from Handelsbanken. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. I just wanted to check around index funds. They have now been relatively flat for three, four quarters at around 48.5%. By the way, thank you for giving us that number now and not just delta from one quarter to the next in the report. Do you think the shift from active to passive or index funds has plateaued now, or do you think it's temporary?
My view, Martin, is that if you look, if we start with the Swedish market, I think the Swedish fund market still has a fairly long way to go in reallocation from active to passive. That is, a higher proportion will in Sweden be in index funds in three years than it is today. If you look at Avanza, I think our customers have made the majority of that shift.
I think we will still see an increase, but I think we're plateauing slowly. The delta is still negative, but I think we're flattening out. That's my personal view.
Okay, then if I could do a follow-up on that one. Net fund commissions are almost three quarters the size of brokerage income if you look over the last three years, say in your OPNL. Given the importance of this line item, there's kind of an information skew in your monthly data towards brokerage income and we don't get a lot of information around the fund income. Do you think you might consider reporting this on a monthly basis? Fund volumes or, yeah, just fund volumes would be helpful.
Yeah, fair point, Martin. We'll notice that and we'll think about it.
Okay, great. Thank you. Just a final one for me, if I may.
Do you have any comments at all on the takeover rumors in Swedish media on July 2?
It's hard for me to comment on rumors in the market. My job and Anna's job and Karolina's job is to continue to develop Avanza as a company and to develop the customer experience and to keep customers as happy as possible. Who owns and how the ownership structure looks like is not a question for us. That's a question for the board and the shareholders. I think that Sven, our founder and largest shareholder, was pretty clear in media here last week when the rumors, I think it was last week when those rumors came.
Yeah. Okay, thank you for that and have a good summer.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Andrew Lowe from Citi. Please go ahead.
Hi, thanks for taking the question. I've got two. The first is on your net interest income and specifically the interest income that you earn on your liquidity book. Things are a bit higher than most people have been expecting, and you hopefully give the period start and period end size of your liquidity book. We could take the average of those two, for example. If I apply that average to the average 3 month STIBOR rate, then you come quite a lot short of what you've reported. The question is, is there anything funny going on with the margins this quarter, or is the higher than expected interest income related to the fact that the liquidity book over the period of the quarter averaged much higher than you would be if you did the simple average?
Maybe that's to do with the sell-off at the start of the quarter and people holding higher cash balances around then. If you could give, for example, the average size of the liquidity book in Q2, that would be really helpful. The second question is just relating to comments that Anna made on the margin lending, and the path through was higher than it's been running at. I'm just curious if you can give any forward-looking comments about how you think the competitive dynamic there will evolve in the coming quarters. Thanks very much.
Okay, first starting with the flows, I would say that it's more we cannot see any shifts when it comes to the yield on the treasury portfolio. It's rather that certain days we have seen quite high liquidity. For example, a bid offering related to a corporate event in June, maybe deposits go up for a couple of days and we also have had the dividend season. It's definitely higher volumes that have had a positive effect on the treasury portfolio. You cannot only just look at it, it depends also because we want to have an evenly matured maturity structure, implying that it's not that we just buy to hold and we find it like a five-year or five-year bond. We can, if we feel like we need to, for example, invest with the three-year maturity, that could also affect the yield for the quarter.
That's why we don't disclose that. I think it's hard to say that we can just say that we can see that the overall average liquidity has been higher in the quarter.
There are some other effects if customers sell off on a larger scale. Like was it April 7 with the turbulence? They typically wouldn't place it with their savings account because it's really money that they want to have available to go in next hour or next 24 hours. The interest cost for us is much lower if they have it with a transaction account. That effect you also have. On the other hand, Oliver, our Treasurer, did not really dare to invest our treasury book in higher yielding paper because we didn't know and he didn't know how customers would react. Would they want to use their deposit next day? There are certain positive effects on the net interest income and there are certain negative effects. Thanks.
Maybe to summarize on that point, should I take away that the sort of big pickup is a volume thing, not a margin thing? Is that the conclusion
if you disregard the margin effect of customers increasingly holding short term money on transaction account instead of savings account where we pay less interest, but on the asset side of the balance sheet. I would rather say that during the quarter Oliver was careful and conservative in placing that additional deposit coming in because we didn't know would customers go risk on again. That means that he didn't get the extra basis points of replacing them with bonds or longer term commitments.
That's really helpful. On the margin point, that would be really helpful as well. Sorry, margin lending?
Yes. We have always said that we want both the margin lending when it comes to pricing of all our products except for the mortgage rate, which is linked to the policy rate. We say that we want a competitive offering, and that is always the competitive landscape. That will be the most important part when we decide which rates to offer. We decided that we wanted to do a more aggressive decrease in prices because we saw one pricing point where we thought that we could be more competitive. That is why we decided to do that. On the other hand, since we have higher volumes today, I would say that it's quite compensated by volumes.
Great. Thanks so much.
Thank you.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Markus Sandgren from Kepler Cheuvreux. Please go ahead.
Morning, guys. I was a bit late, so maybe you've already explained this, but I was thinking about your brokerage income is down 14% and the number of trades are down 7%. Does that mean the average price is obviously 7-8% lower? Is that just related to that there's fewer trades in crypto and U.S. stocks and so forth, or is it something else that I'm missing? The same goes for the currency income that also seems to be lower price on average.
Yes, as we said, the brokerage margin was quite stable in the quarter, but it's always a mixed bag of which customers that are trading in what market, the size of the trades, and so on. Of course, on the total we had 4.5 fewer trading days, but we could see the overall turnover decreasing.
Okay, okay. Then secondly, I was thinking, can you say anything about how your plans for another country is going? I mean, have you done anything during the quarter? Anything that you can share?
That's one important part of our strategy 2030. We have a team in place looking at this to decide how, where, and when. A lot of work has been done during the quarter, but nothing specific or concrete that I can share with you, Markus.
Okay, very good. Thanks.
Thank you. We will now take the next question from the line of Ian White from Autonomous Research. Please go ahead. Hi there.
Thanks for taking my questions. Three from my side, please. First of all, can you just clarify for us to what degree is the decline in FX margins in the quarter due to the introduction of currency accounts for private banking clients back in February? Maybe you could just call out what shift share of FX volume was done in those new currency accounts, please. That's question one. Secondly, what has been the retention rate of maturing third party deposits so far? I know it's relatively small numbers, but are you able to provide us with a split of the deposits that were recycled into, say, Avanza savings, into transactional accounts, and that left the bank altogether? That would be interesting too, please. Just the last one, I just wanted to follow up on the comment you made earlier, Gustaf, around the disclosures.
Did I understand correctly that basically a new large customer could be treated differently from a stock and flow perspective when it comes to the reporting? The flow might end up being reported under standard, but that same client's stock of assets might be in private banking? Did I get that right or did I misunderstand? Please. Thank you.
If I start with your last question, you have flows that are in typical traditional banks called retail referrals. When customers move up from being a retail customer to a private banking customer, that is reported as a net flow for private banking in the market and with other banks. With Avanza, we do not add that to the flows of private banking. If you become a customer in January to Avanza, you bring in $100 million, and in May you decide, I want to be a private banking customer.
Those $100 million did show up in January as a net inflow to the standard segment, and it does not show up as a net flow to private banking in May. However, the savings capital is of course reflecting this $100 million. That's why I mentioned that it can be good to look also at the development of the savings capital. The reason for not changing this to market practice is that we didn't want to destroy our long time series for you, but does that clarify that to you?
Yeah, it does. That's very clear. Yeah, I understand that. That's crystal clear. Thank you.
Then the first question I forgot.
Now, it was related to FX.
Oh, okay. So the decline in FX, is that attributed to the introduction of the currency account? I would say no, to a very, very little extent. We still see customers slowly but surely starting to use that product. That has had very little effect. In Q2, you had a second question, also
retention grade over.
Yes. Oh yeah, yeah. What's our experience so far with retention rate of the external deposits? It's very difficult to draw any conclusions from what we have experienced so far because one of the banking partners acted to get the volumes out by reducing the rate from north of 2% to 1% and then even down to 0%. Yes, we have data on what happened with those flows, but that's not representative for what will happen in the
future where these partner banks will want to retain the volume.
I think the best we can guide you is what we have agreed will happen by the end of the period, which is 50/ 50. Okay, thanks very much. Also, trying to say thank you to Anna and all best wishes for the next challenge.
Thank you.
Thank you. As a reminder, if you wish to ask a question, please press star one and one on your telephone. We will now take the next question from the line of Nicolas Vaysselier from BNP Paribas S.A. Please go ahead.
Hi, can you hear me? Yeah. Thank you very much for taking my question. Just two quick ones. The first one on cost. It's a bit tweaked slightly in a different way. Could you concretely tell us what you expect is going to drive the acceleration on costs in H2 given that the run rate for H1 is significantly lower than your guidance and the guidance is reiterated? Is it depending on cloud migration or H2 dating or something like this or some inflation from contract renewals coming in H2? My second question would be on the deposit side. The markets are still pricing one rate cut towards the back end of the year. If I do a review of your current 1.5% remuneration on the saving account, yes, it kind of screens okay versus the incumbent players.
If we look at savings platforms or even non-net, you seem to be lower. I'm wondering whether or not you would have some willingness to not do a 100% pass through on that cut in order to try being more competitive and attract more of those external deposits that you're looking to re-internalize. Thank you.
I mean on your last question, with every rate change that we make apart from the mortgages where we 100% follow the policy rate because that's an agreement with our customer. When it comes to our deposit product and when it comes to the margin lending product, every decision we take is based on factors that you mentioned.
If you look at the market, who offers better savings account rates than we do, it's essentially banks who have very risky asset side, that is consumption credit banks and banks that have an expensive alternative funding source. We have no appetite to be on par with those risky banks. We want to have a good offering to our customers. It's a little bit of a blah blah answer, I know that, but we'll have to wait and see. I think we have a pretty good offering today when it comes to savings account. We've been thinking a little about what's the term deposits to have an even better offering for those who want to put money aside for three or six months.
If you look at the Swedish krona yield curve, it's almost inverted so it's hard to give very good rates even when you lock it in three or six months.
Thank you. On the cost for H2,
I think we guided fairly transparent when we delivered the Q4 report that we expect cost increase for this year to be 11%. We also guided that of those 11% around 3% would be eaten up by inflation. That 3% would be investments in our core business, private banking, and pension, and that 5%, so that's majority, would be investments in making us as digital on the inside as we are on the outside, including the cloud migration. If you look at those line items, inflation is going on all the time.
When it comes to the second item, growth in Sweden, basically we have the acquisition of Sigmastocks that was finalized first of July, meaning that their company is now in our books, which they were not in H1. We are making the investments in pension as we have talked about, where we have made investments in the experience of the corporate, and that we would not invest in more sales capacity before we feel that the offering towards the corporate is good enough, and that's something that we will ramp up during second half. That's just examples of costs.
Could you just give us the impact of Sigmastocks on a full year basis in the cost impacts?
The cost impact of the company that we bought is not big, but still there's number of.
We're making investments in the product now, and we really want to make that a world class product towards the customers who do not want to make their investment decision themselves. We see a big opening in the market where the competing products are not up to customers' expectations today.
All right, thank you very much and have a good rest of your day.
Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you. There are no further questions at this time. I would now like to turn the conference back to Gustaf Unger to conclude the call.
Thank you so much for all the questions. Thank you, Anna, again, and have a great summer to all of you. Bye. Bye.
This concludes today's conference call. Thank you for participating. You may now disconnect.