Nordnet's first quarter of 2024. My name is Marcus Lindberg, I'm the Head of Investor Relations at Nordnet. With me today, as usual, I have our CEO, Lars-Åke Norling, and our CFO, Lennart Krän. Lars-Åke and Lennart will start off by presenting the results, and then we'll have a Q&A session. During the presentation, everyone will be on mute, and then we'll have a Q&A session where you can have two alternatives to ask questions. You can either raise your hand button, press the raise hand button. I'll then unmute you and call your name, or you can submit a question in writing through the Q&A button. The presentation itself is available on our corporate website, nordnetab.com. Okay, let's start the presentation. Lars-Åke, please go ahead.
Thank you, Marcus. You can go to the next slide. So overall, a very strong first quarter. We've seen the highest quarterly revenue and profit ever. We also see continued growth across all of our revenue streams, both brokerage, fund, and net interest income. And also a clear step up in customer growth and net savings versus last years from a strong market sentiment. Very good progress also on our fund-focused strategy, with Nordnet Funds growing by 50%. Net interest income outlook stable despite slightly lower deposits, but we also see slightly higher interest rates compensating for that. Cost growth expected to trend in line with guidance for the full year. Also a very strong capital situation where we have a proposed dividend of 7.2 SEK. And the buyback process is ongoing, and here we've handed in the application to the SFSA.
We also concluded our strategic review of our secured lending business, and we announced a sale of that business to Ikano Bank on Friday. This is a very small part of our business and not core. We also see that this transaction will not have a material impact on our P&L, but it will free up around SEK 3.8 billion then, the portfolio volume in liquidity, as well as lower capital requirements of around SEK 350 million. The transaction is estimated to close within six months after regulatory approvals. Looking at some of the numbers, we see customer growth picking up. We see 10% now year-on-year growth. Savings capital also very strong growth, both from market growth, but also very strong net savings. We have a record high savings capital of SEK 900 billion on the platform.
Number of trades a little bit down versus last year, but income per trade is considerably up due to high cross-border and retail trading. Looking at the revenues, which I said, record, almost SEK 1.3 billion in one quarter. That's up 11% since last year, and good growth then in all revenue streams. Cost is 10% year-on-year, which is a little bit on the high side, but this is due to lower costs in 2023, where quarter one in 2023 was lower. We expect to deliver on the estimate or the guidance of mid-single-digit cost growth for the year, excluding the additional marketing cost. Profit, we still see very good operating leverage in our business and also record profit of almost SEK 900 million for the quarter.
Also very strong development in customer growth and net savings, and there's a clear pickup versus last year due to strong market sentiment. We increased the customer base with 58,000 customers in 2024 and with a net savings of SEK 19 billion. And our geographical diversification, the risks are the smallest that we have, but also enable growth as we talked about before. But especially I want to lift or comment on Denmark this time where we see tremendous growth of 70% in customers and 29% in savings capital. Commenting a little bit about our different revenue streams, starting with the brokerage, we see a number of trading customers continue to pick up due to the macro and market sentiment. Trades per trading customer is fairly stable in spite of the volatility is actually on a very low level.
You can see that on the VIX index up to the right in the quarter. Share cross-board trading is stable at close to 30% this quarter. Like we also commented on before, we see that number of trades per trading customer is still lower than we saw pre-COVID. But in spite of this, the number of trades per day is almost double compared to 2019, and that's because we're more than double the customer base from 900,000 customers to 1.9 million customers now since 2019. And we also see higher income per trades. It's up 34% versus what we saw pre-COVID. That's due to the higher share of cross-border trading due to the country mix where we see higher share of cross-border trading outside of Sweden. Also very happy about the development of our fund business.
We put a lot of focus on this, as you know, the last couple of years. We see the fund capital growing 2 times the total savings capital. We have especially strong growth in our Nordnet branded funds where we now have around 25% of the fund capital in the Nordnet funds. Also 40% of the net buying that we've seen the last 12 months is going into the Nordnet branded funds. Also we see that more close to 50% of our customer base now own funds. We also see stabilization of the active share of around 32% versus what we saw in quarter four. Coming a little bit then on net interest income, starting with the deposit, we still see low deposit level versus savings capital. It's all-time low of 7%. Historically, we've seen levels around 10%-14%.
We also see a slight decline on deposits this quarter in spite of very strong net savings and dividends. The reason for this is that the customers have been buying, net buying, both equities and funds in record numbers. It was SEK 22.5 billion net by this quarter, which is, of course, very good for our core business overall. Looking at the different components and on the net interest income, starting with the liquidity portfolio and the snapshot there, and we estimate SEK 1.6 billion revenue from the liquidity portfolio. Assuming then the volume we see in 2024 and also the consensus on the market rates. As you see, we have a little bit lower amount in the liquidity portfolio this quarter, SEK 41 billion versus SEK 43 billion last quarter due to slightly low deposits.
But on the other hand, the interest rates positive have been adjusted up a little bit, and that's market-based. And the main sensitivity here is, of course, the positive development, but as we show, we are on very low levels. We likely have an upside on the deposit levels going forward. And then the lending portfolio, the snapshot for that one is also SEK 1.6 billion, assuming then the volume we saw in quarter one with the interest rates forecast and with the pass-through of mortgage lending of 50% and mortgage unsecured close to 100%. And if you see the development in the lending portfolio, we have a strong growth in mortgage lending and a stable development in mortgage and personal loans or unsecured.
But especially mortgage lending where we want to have growth because we're supporting our core business, but it's also the lending that's least sensitive to interest rate changes where we estimate pass-through of max 50% when the central banks start cutting their interest rates. And here we likely have an upside also on higher volumes for the rest of the years. The rest of the year. Also, as we know, as a low-risk lending portfolio, loan to value is on low levels, around 45% for mortgage, 35%-45% for mortgage lending. And also credit losses are low. It's basically only the unsecured that have credit losses around 2% of the lending volume, which is still on a very good level in this market that we see today. Then looking at the deposit interest that we pay on our different accounts.
The estimate here is that we're going to pay out SEK 600 million based on the volumes we saw then end of quarter and 100% pass-through of IBOR changes going forward. Of course, the sensitivity here is how much more money we're going to add on the savings account for the rest of the year. But we also have to remember a larger part of the flow into the savings account are external money coming from external banks that we also will then have a yield on in the liquidity portfolio. As usual, we see highest numbers in Sweden going to the savings account because there's larger customers there, more focused on interest rates. We see some flows in the other countries, but not at the same level, but in spite of having very good interest rates in those countries as well.
So in summary, on the revenues, it's very good growth in all revenue streams, both net interest income, the fund business, and brokerage business if you look from the period from 2019. Again, what I said, record high savings capital on the platform of SEK 900 billion. And looking at the margins, especially then the brokerage margin, we see a pickup this quarter. And that was due to the higher share of cross-border trading, but also that we see more trading from the retail segment versus the trader segment. Also the fund margin, we see stabilizing around 25 basis points, both from a slowdown of the shift from active to passive. But also when customers buy passive or Nordnet index passive funds, which they do to a large extent, we have a higher margin on those index funds compared to customers buying external index funds on our platform.
So looking at the full P&L then, as you know, we have had a very good revenue growth the last years, around 30%. At the same time, a very scalable business model. So cost growth has only been around 5%. So basically, the entire revenue growth ends up on the bottom line. So it's a true position of profitable growth. And of course, continue to release new features in our app and web in a very speedy manner where we update the web every second hour and the app every three days. And this is just a few select things where we launched new fund inspiration pages to even more support of fund business. And overall, 26 new versions of the Nordnet app during the quarter. And especially a lot of new functions for Shareville. We have also a little bit more advanced order screens.
Also we released the My Feed, an endless scroll of content that's based on machine learning and finding content that interests you as a customer. Now to Lennart.
Thank you so much. As you all know, we have a very strong capital and liquidity position. Even though we bought back SEK 500 million in Q1 here in March as planned and announced before, we still have a capital base exceeding the requirement of SEK 1.7 billion in risk-weighted and 1.9 in leverage ratio requirements. This all gives us, as you know, the constraint is the deposit, the capacity to bring in more than SEK 38 billion in deposit to not get below the 4.0% as we have set as a target or the SEK 55 billion before we reach the 3.5% as a regulatory requirement.
We have also proceeded with the plans to buy back shares and submitted the application to the SFSA. They have up to four months before they have to reply. We expect it to be earlier than that. After that, we can go further on with our plans on that. The liquidity position is, as I said, very strong as well. We have more than SEK 41 billion in liquidity. That is about 63% of the deposit rate. We feel very comfortable with both the liquidity and the capital situation going forward. That in spite of dividend paying out now in May, SEK 1.8 billion and those buybacks that we plan ahead as well. Thank you.
Yeah, a little bit on a strategic focus. Again, what's next? So we have four key strategic ambitions, starting, of course, with having the most happy customers. And we want to be a one-stop shop then for savings and investments with an outstanding customer experience. And to get there, we are then delivering up on our customer promise to building the best platform for savings and investments. But we also know to have happy customers, you really, really need to have professional and talented employees and where we have also engagement within the employees and also that we can attract and retain top talent, which we can. Then it's a sustainable business. We earn a trust business. We need to earn that trust every day and, of course, manage our risks, both compliance risks and other risks in a good way and overall be a trusted and liked brand.
The last area is profitable growth to capture the fantastic growth potential we have in the Nordics and to continue to take market share in a growing savings market. Also, of course, focus on having a scalable business model also going forward with good cost control. As we've seen, we have had very strong customer growth over the years. It's been picking up the last couple of years. The reason for the strong customer growth is twofold. One is that we now have critical mass, enough customers in all countries to drive word-of-mouth growth, but also that we continuously improve the customer experience. We also see that the savings capital is increasing even on a higher rate than the customer growth from both market growth, but also, of course, from net savings. We are taking market share in a growing savings market.
We have around 7% market share now in the customers in the Nordics and around 6% market share of the addressable savings capital in the Nordics. And that's 14 trillion SEK today in the addressable market, which is big. But that's estimated to grow to around 20 trillion SEK in 2026, both from underlying market growth, but also that we launch new products like the Livrente product in Denmark. And to the right, you see we have highest market share in equity trading and lower market share in funds and pension. And that's why we also put a lot of effort in the fund and pension area. But we also see quite good growth in market share in those areas today.
We also see here a stable cost development in spite of more than doubling then the customer base since 2019 from 900,000 customers to 1.9 million customers today. We have a very scalable business model, but also very good cost control overall. The main levers for the cost control and the scalability is that we have a very modern, scalable, cloud-powered tech platform that can onboard a lot of new customers without driving costs. And also that we work extensively with automation and simplification of all of our processes, which is a win-win. It works better for the customer, but at the same time, we scale better. Very highly efficient customer growth mainly based on PR and word-of-mouth, so low acquisition cost and overall also low churn and high lifetime value.
We also work very extensively with our third parties to manage costs via them. Looking at the financial targets, we are basically in line with all the medium-term financial targets. So we were now picking up slightly above 10% on the customer growth where we were a little bit below before. But otherwise, we are in line. Key priorities for 2024, we work hard now to prepare for the launch of the Danish Livrente pension product. We have sent in the application to set up a branch in Denmark. We plan to launch this product end of this year or beginning of next year. We're going to continue to expand our Nordic branded fund offering. We launched a Swedish small-cap index fund this quarter. We continue to work hard then to integrate Shareville in our app and web. We've come very far.
We expect to close the old Shareville during quarter two. We also see that this integration of Shareville to the Nordnet app and web has been very successful. It's been driving engagement. We see a clear pickup in customers signing up, but also a lot of big increase of posting in the Shareville forum. We're going to continue then to strengthen brand position with the marketing investment that we've announced. We have selected now brand agencies. We started working on a new brand concept. The rollout of the new brand concept is going to be from H2. We already step up our marketing spend in quarter two, especially in Sweden where we have more tactical marketing during quarter two. Of course, maintain focus on cost control and scalability overall. With that, I hand over to you, Marcus, for Q&A.
Great. Thank you, also for Lennart. So now we'll open up for questions. So like I said before, if you want to ask a question, just click the raise hand button. I'll then announce you by name and unmute you. Or you can submit a question in writing. So let's start with Jacob Hesslevik from SEB. Please go ahead.
Good morning. My first question is on slide 10. You have raised a three-month IBOR forecast since the last quarter, but still expect the liquidity portfolio to generate SEK 1.6 billion. Does this reflect the divestment of the unsecured portfolio, or what is the reason you haven't raised the guidance?
No, it's not. Everything is as is until the deal is closed. So it's no change in the unsecured lending. So the reason is that we have a slightly lower deposit compared to what we had in quarter one. But on the other hand, we see higher than market rate pass, IBOR pass.
Okay. Thank you. And then on slide 32 and 33, you show the share of savings capital by cohort and asset type as well as the share of customers trading during the first quarter. So deposit is at 19% for the 2024 cohort, which is a record amount compared to earlier years, while number of trades amount to an impressive 58%. So have you seen more inflows into savings accounts in recently joined customers, or is it just a timing aspect and that these new clients haven't had time to build its portfolios yet?
Yeah, I mean, of course, but new customers coming in are normally trading more actively in the beginning. That's why you see also a high margin for new customers. But we also know that the majority of the increase on the savings account is also coming from external deposits. So part, of course, of net savings going to savings accounts as well.
All right. Thank you. And then on the unsecured portfolio, which you announced on Friday, did you divest it at 101.5% of the lending book? That would imply a price book of 11x or price earning of 29x. I'm sure I'm missing something here. So if you could help us better understand the pricing, it would be helpful.
Yeah, the final pricing is, of course, set at closing. But if you would have closed the portfolio end of March, that would give 101.5% versus the lending volume that was SEK 3.8 billion. So it's around, yeah, what is it, Marcus, SEK 50 million-SEK 60 million impacting P&L. But then, of course, you have transaction costs, and we need to write down goodwill. So the one-time effect on the P&L is slightly negative if you include goodwill. But goodwill, as you know, also the write-down of that is not impacting capital base because it's already deducted. And also going forward, there is not going to be any material impact on the P&L since we can reinvest the freed-up capital, SEK 3.8 billion, in liquidity portfolio and also in additional lending.
Yeah, because I guess the NII is going to come up somewhat, and then you get rid of the loan losses as well. So I mean, in the long run, it should be slightly positive then as well, right?
Yeah, I would say it's a give and take. So it's not going to be just minor effects on the P&L, both one-time and effects going forward. So the main benefit from this is that we free up SEK 350 million then in capital requirements. And of course, it enables us to focus more on our core business.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thanks.
Thank you. Next question comes from Ermin Keric at Carnegie. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thanks for taking the question. Maybe if we just start on the deposits as a percentage of savings capital, as you show, that's been trending downwards, and it's quite a bit lower than it's been historically. How confident are you that it should normalize given that we have a different rate environment currently?
Yeah, but I think last quarter, as you've seen, that it's stabilizing, especially in light of high net savings. But then again, it's been record-high net buy of funds and equities. But we see stabilization. And I would say it's more likely to have an upside on this than a downside.
Yeah, I mean, my question was more how likely it is that you will see a recovery to the historical level, or you think that this is sort of the new going great?
Yeah. I mean, that's, of course, very hard to tell. But what we say is likely to have an upside from where we are today. How big that is, that's another question. I think that remains to be seen in the coming quarters how this develops.
Thanks. That's helpful. And then.
But again, I mean, if you have a market event, a crash, for example, in some way, then we know that we have a very fast and big pickup on deposits. And that we, of course, need to be prepared for when we look at the leverage ratio.
Got it. Thanks. Staying on the deposits as well. In your assumption for NII, you've assumed that you pass on IBOR rates 100% on deposits. How confident are you that you could do that? And I suppose, especially in Sweden, given the competitive environment.
Yeah, of course, we need to look at the competition a bit here since we're not the price setter. It's different outside of Sweden where we're more the price setter. But I think we're going to see a pretty fast pullback also on interest rates on savings account, especially for the ones which have very high rates that we have. I mean, we are already one of the highest in the market today. But it depends what competition do, especially our main competitor in Sweden.
Understood. Then the final question was just if you could talk a little bit more about Shareville and kind of the customers that are active on Shareville, how they compare to the other customers, I don't know, in terms of trading, turnover, etc.?
Yeah, but they are more active overall than, of course, what's the hen and the egg. Because they're active, they sign up to Shareville. But clearly, they are more active, and they have almost double amount of trades and traded value compared to normal customers. But what we're happy to see now when we transferred or migrated the platform into our Nordnet app and web, that we also see pickup now in new customers signing up, which we didn't see on the old platform. So that's very nice.
That's super helpful. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Nicolas McBeath at DNB. Fingers crossed.
Hi. Can you hear me?
We can.
Yes. Wow. Great.
Great. It's working. So starting with a couple of questions on net inflows. So we saw a quite nice increase in inflows in Q1, up almost three times year-on-year. So what do you think accounts for the large inflow improvement we saw here in the quarter?
Yeah, it's a few factors. One, of course, is that we have higher customer growth. We know new customers normally also bring new money in. But also that we've seen good flows from all the segments, both from retail and private banking. And as we know, it was mainly private retail has always been stable. But private banking, as we know, especially part of last year, did big reallocations into other instruments like bonds and also paying back mortgage, etc. But that's stopped now. And we also see, I mean, private banking coming in and dipping their toes into the market again.
Okay. Yeah. Encouraging net savings trends overall. But if we look at the country split, we see it's below SEK 1 billion in Sweden in the quarter. While Avanza, for instance, they had over SEK 20 billion in Sweden. So what do you think Avanza has so much larger inflows than you in Sweden? I mean, we know you've been trailing Avanza when it comes to growth in Sweden for some time. But if anything, it seems that your underperformance seems to be widening versus Avanza. Is this a concern to you? Do you think, or do you think it's more profitable to kind of continue to increase your focus on the other markets and kind of leave Sweden to Avanza more and more?
Now, of course, we're going to give Avanza a fight in Sweden. But as we know, we are very strong in the high-end segments in Sweden, so investor traders and private banking. And we want to then broaden also our focus onto the savings segments, basically, with the fund business and pension business. But looking at Sweden, since we have the customer mix there with more high-end, you see also a little bit more one-offs from time to time, larger flows in either direction, so to say. But there were some larger flows out also during the quarter in Sweden. It hasn't impacted revenue, but it, of course, impacted net savings. And we also see, I mean, private banking is still, I mean, now it's positive with flows, but it's still retailers pull the heaviest loads on net savings. Since we have less retail in Sweden, that's probably the answer.
Overall, a very good customer base in Sweden.
All right. Then a question on the brokerage fee per trade, which saw a quite nice increase in the quarter, up 16% versus Q4. Could you comment anything on what you see in terms of drivers for brokerage fee per trade from here, what you think about outlook, and how the brokerage fee per trade, if you could say anything on the kind of evolvement through the quarter, did it increase month by month? And maybe say something about where we are currently versus the average level in the quarter. That would be interesting if you could comment on that.
Yeah. I mean, the reason for the pickup in the brokerage fee or income per trade is mainly that we have retail accounting for a larger share of the trades, so we have higher commission. But also then that we have a higher share of cross-border trading, especially cross-border traded value that we saw in quarter four. I can't comment specifically how it's looking now. We'll see that over time. But there's been a strong development over the quarter, I would say.
Sure. But do you think?
It's a little bit market-dependent, of course. I mean, if it's also based on a fairly positive market sentiment, which is important.
Yeah. I guess you have two drivers. You have, first of all, the kind of structural driver that when you grow more outside of Sweden, those customers in Denmark, Finland, Norway trade more cross-border. Then you also have the cyclical component. But would you expect you see potential for net brokerage fee per trade to continue to climb higher, or do you think we are kind of due for a normalization for the next few quarters with lower cross-border trades?
Yeah. I think cross-border is probably going to be on a higher level than if the value is going to be also higher if it's larger trades. But now we're seeing quite a pickup on the income per trade. So let's see how that plays out in the coming quarters. I don't want to project that it's just going to continue in a linear way going forward. So I think it will be nice, of course. But I think we had a good pickup now. So let's see how this plays out in the coming quarters.
All right. So that's all my questions. Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Michael McNaughton at UBS. Please go ahead.
Hi there. Good morning. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Can.
Great. Yeah. Just following on on the net brokerage income per trade, obviously, a decent amount of that is the higher cross-border, particularly in Sweden. That was quite a big increase. Can you say anything on how much of that is taken up by new customers in the quarter? Because we are seeing that's quite large as well, or if it's across the mix?
Now, I would say it's quite a bit across. Okay, Sweden had a pickup. But the main contribution to cross-border trading is Denmark, Finland, and Norway. Not least, Denmark had very strong activity levels overall, both domestically but also, of course, cross-border during the quarter.
Okay. Great. And then another one just on the leverage exposure. Obviously, deposits were down a little bit, but leverage exposure seemed to continue to increase. Just wondering if there's anything we should be aware of there for the drivers.
Do you want to comment on that, Lennart?
Sorry. Once again.
Why leverage exposure is increasing?
The leverage exposure.
The deposit will increase by number of customers, of course, but not in the extent that we will jeopardize the leverage ratio or anything like that. We have plenty of room for that. And as I said, I mean, we can take on more than SEK 38 billion of new deposits before jeopardizing anything of the capital constraints with that. So we're very confident with it.
Sorry. No, yeah. The question was more, I guess, deposits were down Q & Q, but the leverage exposure continued to increase.
Oh, sorry. I missed that one. No, that was just a one-off because the month-end or quarter-end was during a weekend. We had a lot of trades before that. A lot of other comes into other assets and liquid funds in transfer. Sorry.
Okay. Great. Thank you.
That's why. Sorry.
That's all from me.
Thank you. Next question comes from Eric Strand at Nordea. Please go ahead.
Hi. Can you hear me?
Yep.
Hello? Thanks and good morning. Starting off with the net flows, just coming back to the very strong net flows in, yeah, basically, Finland, Norway, and Denmark. Is there any sort of one-offs or unusually strong seasonal patterns that we should keep in mind, or is it just the effect of sort of strong customer acquisitions?
No, it's no big one-offs in those countries. There were some one-offs in Sweden in the wrong direction, but in the other countries, it's been normal flows. Of course, partly due to that we have a strong market sentiment now as well, driving customer growth, but also driving net savings. But also, like I said, a stabilization of reallocation in the private banking portfolios.
Coming back to Sweden there and the somewhat weaker trend there for net flow, is it also bearing in mind your sort of ongoing or upcoming marketing activities? How should we see that playing out? Do you expect to see sort of a clear improvement throughout 2024, or is this expected to see the effects later on?
Yeah. So the main bulk of the marketing step-up is going to be in H2 when we have the new brand concept. Then we're going to roll it out in all the countries. But already in quarter two, we step up tactical marketing in Sweden to push growth a little bit. But again, net savings, I don't know how much the one-offs in Sweden were in the quarter, but I think we announced that in February. But it was quite large. You shouldn't look too much on the net savings in Sweden. There was some negative one-offs.
Okay. And then just the final one on the launch of the Livrente product in Denmark. Is that still expected year-end 2024, or has that been further delayed?
No, I'd say either year-end or beginning of next year. But we really push as hard as we can to make it this year. But it might be that we launch it beginning of next year, so according to what we said before.
Yeah. Thanks. That's all from me.
Great. Next question comes from Panos Ellinas at Morgan Stanley. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi. Thanks for taking my question. It's just a clarification on the brokerage income per trade, which was about across the markets. But I wanted to specifically ask on Denmark, where you saw the smallest increase quarter-on-quarter despite the similar trends with strong growth in cross-border trades and value. So is there anything specific there?
I don't know, Marcus, if you have any specifics on Denmark?
No, I don't think. I mean, Denmark's been very strong for I think it started picking up in Q2 and has just continued to be pretty strong. So these trends were already fairly strong in Denmark. But no, it's a similar story.
Okay. And then on the marketing, things you just mentioned that we should see a step-up in the second half, particularly in Sweden. How do we reference that to the customer growth? Do we expect more back-end acceleration in customer growth?
Yeah. So like I said, we have a little bit extra tactical push in marketing in Sweden in quarter two. But from H2, we're going to have the new brand concept that we're going to roll out, of course, across all the markets. And this is to drive brand awareness and preference and ultimately customer growth. But of course, it will take time before you see the effects of a push in brand awareness and general brand marketing.
Thank you.
Great. Next question comes from Nicolas Vaysselier at Exane BNP Paribas. Please go ahead.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yep.
We can.
Very well.
Hi. Thank you very much for taking my question. I just have one. On the mortgage rate in Sweden, so we saw Avanza recently cut its rate. I know they have a different product and different indexation than you, but they did so even ahead of central bank doing anything. So I was wondering, how do you see your own mortgage rate in Sweden? And how do you see your competitive positioning and competitive pressures there?
I mean, they have very good rates on the mortgage assets compared to the markets. We don't see any real pressure. We have a fairly stable development mortgage in Sweden. We don't see a need to lower and push volume further in this market.
All right. Thank you very much.
Thank you. The next question comes from Enrico Bolzoni from JP Morgan. Please go ahead.
Hi. Good morning. Thank you for taking my questions. First one is, can you just give some additional color on the strong customer growth in Denmark? Is it just driven by improving sentiment over the quarter or anything else? And then I also wanted to ask you, I'm referring to your slide 35 where you give us the distribution of new customer by age cohort. Is this quite consistent across all the markets where you operate, or in any specific market, you see more younger people joining, for example? So that's my first question, maybe.
I mean, I think the growth in Denmark, of course, is partly sentiment, but also that we have an extremely strong position in Denmark with a clear number one. We've seen for a long time now both customer satisfaction by a Net Promoter Score and brand awareness and brand preference really go trending very well. That's also part of the story. When it comes to customer growth, I think it's fairly consistent. In all countries, you see a spike at 18 when you can sign up for a new account, of course. You see a spike at zero years as well when the parents open an account for you. Then I don't know exactly the average age per country, but I assume Marcus is about similar, perhaps a little bit older in Sweden since we have a little bit different customer segment.
Yeah, that's right. The average is mid-30s, I think.
Yep. Okay. Thank you. Another question was on your target of customer growth between 10%-15%. It has been for a while now closer to the lower end. Is the expectation that it can go closer to the upper end once you have the new marketing activity and efforts fully rolled out, or in a way that is independent so that could be on top once you fully launch with a new marketing campaign?
No, like we said, when we announced initial marketing, the ambition with that is to push the customer growth up to the upper range of 10%-15%. So you won't see another push on top of that, so to say. But it's going from the more 10% levels up to the higher end of that span.
Thank you. My final question was slide 22 where you show your market share on different metrics. There's a statistic where 18% of the population currently owns shares. I just wanted to understand, where do you think that number can go? Do you think it can grow materially higher, or actually, over time, you will have more people owning funds as opposed to shares? I was just thinking about whether I can get some color from you on how you think it will evolve.
No, but I think it will evolve over time. It will increase, I think, in all our markets, the number of customers that own shares or equity. But that said, also, we continue to see strong fund growth in all the countries as well. But if people get interested in funds and start saving and see the impact of that, part of those customers also get interested in equities overall and start buying direct shares.
Thank you.
Thank you. Next question comes from Patrik Brattelius at ABG. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Just a couple of follow-up questions. If we start with this launch in Denmark, it's been slightly postponed compared to the original plan. Can you please share some more details? Why is it postponed?
The Livrente you mean, or?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I don't think we postponed it. I think we said through that we're going to launch either end of this year or beginning of next year, but with the aim of really launching it this year. So nothing has really changed. We sent in the application out to set up the branch. We have the branch manager in place. The product is well under way. So yeah, I think we are on track, and we push as hard as we can. Of course, it's a very interesting product for us to launch since it's a large addressable market. Looking at that market with the pension business we have there, the bank pension, which is a smaller part, is also doing extremely well for the time being. So that's given us good expectations for the Livrente.
Okay. That is fair. I just had in my notes from last year that you had an ambition to launch in Q3. But yeah, minor details. Given the divestments of this lending portfolio and the capital you are free up, can you please elaborate what you aim to use that capital for, or should we think that this should be used for the buyback program?
I don't know if you want to comment that, Lennart, but still, with the guidance we have on leverage ratio, that's still where we're going to have the limit. But of course, it at least helps a little bit on the normal capital requirement. But still, for the buyback program, the limitation is still going to be the leverage ratio.
Yes. As you can see now, we have a higher requirement in risk-weighted capital requirement than the leverage ratio. Now it reduces to the leverage ratio level, and that's where we're going to be. We can always handle the risk-weighted. The leverage ratio is the constraint in both the cost of this deposit, but also, that is something that we don't control ourselves. So we have to have a greater buffer in that one. So it's not something that we want to take risk on. We're going to use it for lending, of course. And those are higher risk-weight than liquidity portfolio, but still less than the unsecured lending.
Perfect. Well, that's all for me then. Thank you.
Thank you.
Thank you, Patrik. Great. Sometimes I have some written questions. This one's, I think, for Lennart. So in liquidity portfolio, with rates coming down, is there a possibility to perhaps increase the risk or adjust the investments to get a higher yield?
I think we don't prefer risk, to say, in the liquidity portfolio. It should be rather risk-free. But of course, it makes room for risk-free, risk-weighted assets. But now, that's not what we're going to aim to have it. We're quite prudent with what risk we take on in that portfolio. It's low-credit risk and low-liquidity risk and also low-interest-rate risk. All those are main parts of our ambitions at all times. The yield, yes, of course, we like it. And if we see an opportunity where we see it's quite risk-free anyway, yes, then we can use it. But it's not like increasing the risk weight or risk appetite.
Thank you. And then one final question about cross-border trading. So is the income coming mainly from trades in the U.S., or is it more cross-Nordic trading?
I think the largest share is, of course, from the U.S. and then partly Germany and then also, of course, Nordics. But the U.S. is the largest share.
Okay. Great. That was the last question for today. Thanks, everyone, for attending the presentation. Please visit our website, nordnetab.com, or reach out to me if you have any questions. Before we go, I just wanted to remind everyone of our tech briefing, which is going to take place on May 14. It's going to be an interesting afternoon where we're going to zoom in on our tech journey and talk a bit about the benefits of cloud technology. I really hope to see all of you there. Great. Thank you so much. Have a good day, and bye-bye.
Thank you.