Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the full year 2023 results conference call and live webcast. I am Alice, the conference call operator. I would like to remind you that all participants will be in listen-only mode, and the conference is being recorded. The presentation will be followed by a Q&A session. You can register for questions at any time by pressing star and one on your telephone. For operator assistance, please press star and zero. The conference must not be recorded for publication or broadcast. At this time, it's my pleasure to hand over to Mr. Holger Laubenthal, CEO. Please go ahead, sir.
Yes, thank you, operator, and, good morning, everyone. Welcome to the call, the presentation for full year results 2023. I'm here with our CFO, Pascal Perritaz, our CRO, Volker Gloe, and, as usual, we'll be walking through the presentation here, and then look forward to your questions. So the first page, look, we're, we're two years into the strategy that we communicated to you and shared with you in December 2021, and we wanted to give you an update in terms of where we stand. So a few key messages here for you. Firstly, solid results in 2024, with net income at CHF 158, down versus last year, but a good pickup in the second half.
We're quite pleased with the 3% net receivables growth, continued strong loss performance, stable cost-income ratio, and we're also reconfirming that we're on track for the 2026 targets. Secondly, and including in volatile markets, we're very pleased that the Cembra DNA continues to deliver. You can see that in the decisive pricing action we've taken, the impact that's starting to have, cost management, risk management discipline, and the strong, diverse funding mix. Third, in terms of our businesses, auto and personal loans, we've continued to show profitable growth and focus on profitable growth. The cards migration program, more on that later, is now effectively concluded. Buy Now, Pay Later integration has been a success, and we have a scalable payments platform to grow on going forward. Fourth, we're simplifying organization.
Creating two business lines, lending and payments, which we're very excited about, will give us more focus, better customer base leverage, and efficiencies across the organization. Fifth, as we discussed previously, 2023 and 2024 are challenging due to a couple factors. Firstly, the lag in impact of the repricing measures, where we're now seeing great momentum, though. The expected normalization of the loss performance and some partial delays we discussed in implementing our core banking platform. Sixth, we're on track to deliver against the cost-income target by 2026, with the key building blocks to execute on this in place, and benefits will be coming in as of this year. And last but not least, with all that, we're confirming our midterm targets as well, of course, as our dividend policy and outlook.
So with that, let me, move directly to page 4. In terms of the year, so I've already mentioned a few points here. Net income at CHF 158 million. Good pickup there in the second half. It's great to see our pricing actions coming through in the NIM improvements in the second half, and more on that later as well. We're quite pleased with the growth in net financing receivables overall, and the team executed really well, to deliver on our cost-income guidance. Also, again, strong loss performance, and in the back of these results, we're proposing an increase of the dividend to CHF 4. So let me, on the next page, just briefly, comment on how we delivered across our product lines, in our markets.
So personal loans showed strong market leadership here in terms of decisive pricing actions that we've taken, and look, we continuously manage here the price, risk, volume equation for profitable growth. That means we're quite selective in where we grow, and that's also reflected, of course, in the continued health of our loss metrics. In auto, we had a very strong year. Here, too, good rigor and pricing. We're excited that we launched the leasing platform. Good feedback from part of the dealer base using it so far. Cards migration program. Look, for all intents and purposes, this is now completed. We've converted over two-thirds of the cards.
We made some commitments, a couple of years ago around where we were gonna be, and we're pleased to say that we are, in terms of the financial receivables, on the same levels that we were in 2019. It's all about growth going forward from here. We also grew our co-branding cards portfolio meaningfully, and then with the Buy Now, Pay Later acquisition, which is now concluded and integrated, a great platform for growth going forward, strong fee and volume growth in the year. Mostly, of course, through the acquisition with some organic components as well. That's the overview of the products and markets. Let me hand over to Pascal for a closer look at the financial results.
Thank you, Holger, and good morning, everyone. Today, we report solid results for 2023 in a challenging environment with rising interest rates and uncertain economic outlook. With the decisive pricing measures, the net interest margin stabilized and even slightly increased from H1 to H2. We continued our disciplined risk selections and diligently managed our costs. This translate into the robust loss performance and an improved cost-income ratio from H1 to H2, and we grew our net financing receivables faster than GDP. Let me further explain. We first focus on the P&L, and then in a few minutes, on the balance sheet.
The net income amounted to CHF 158 million, so this is a decrease of 7%, and this is due to the temporary reductions of the net interest margin, the normalizations of the provisions for losses, and the continued strategic investments, particularly in our strategic program, Operational Excellence. The net revenue increased by 1%, with the commission and fees income more than offsetting lower net interest income. The net interest income declined by 3%, and, as the interest expense increased to CHF 75 million, reflecting the increase of the funding cost, and it was partially offset by the repricing measures. The commission on fees income were up 10%, mainly driven by the growth in Buy Now, Pay Later, both organic and inorganic. The loss performance remained robust at 0.8%, and Volker will comment very soon.
Finally, as you heard from Holger, return on equity 12.5, Tier 1 ratio stood at 17.2. On the next page, the net revenue increased by 1%, with increase of interest expense more than offset by additional revenues, namely as with the interest income and the commission and fees. In the second half of the year, the gap between the interest, between the increase of the interest expense and the interest income declined compared to H1. So the gap was 6, as at H1, you see here, 18 - 12, and, at H2, as so the gap was 2. Q4 was a turning point, with the additional interest income more than offsetting the increase of interest expense. Since June 2022, we successfully increased the monthly pricing for new business in all businesses.
The net interest margin stood at 5.2%. It stabilized compared to the first six months and the year, or even slightly improved since June or July last year. We expect the net interest margin to rebound to around 5.5% in the midterm. On the net financing receivables in the year, we are pleased with the 3% growth in net financing receivables. We aim for profitable quality growth. We grew our secured auto business by 6% and selectively increased our personal loan business in challenging market environment. By taking decisive pricing actions, we deliberately focused on more profitable areas of the market and less price-sensitive customer segments.
This is our Cembra DNA, to proactively manage our portfolio, trade-offs, pricing, risk, and volume, depending on market and segment situations, and optimize use of capital and returns. Of course, our strategic and commercial ambitions remain to keep market at least stable compared to 2021. Since H1 2023, the yield improve across all products, driven by the pricing adoptions in response to the changing interest rates and environment, as you can see. Credit cards. Our migrations program from Cumulus to our proprietary Certo! card is concluded. More than two-thirds of the transition portfolio was migrated. We move now to business as usual. We are pleased with our stable cards assets and our revenue very close to the pre-COVID level. We have now a well-diversified cards portfolio, with 58% B2C and 42% B2B2C.
As you can see on the right side, we retain our highest valued customer group, the customer segments. Shown on the open right chart, we segmented our migrations program by customer segments, targeted CRM activities, and achieved high migrations for prioritized customer segments. As a result, we estimate the retained profitability on the migrations portfolio to around 85%. Regarding operating expense, the operating expense increased by 2%, and this is also driven by the acquisitions and the integrations of Byjuno and strategic investments, and partially offset by diligence costs and hiring management. The lower numbers of FTEs was driven by the BNPL integrations and diligent hiring management during the second half of the year. This results into a stable cost-income ratio of 60.9%. From now on, we expect the Cost-Income Ratio to gradually as a decline in line with our strategic plan by 2026. Now, I hand over to Volker for an update on the provisions for losses.
Thank you, Pascal. For the full year 2023, we report a loss provision of CHF 56.9 million, translating into a loss rate of 0.8%. This is an increase versus the prior year, but at the same time, in line with what we have been expecting and communicating. The loss performance is gradually normalizing, as certain precautionary measures that were implemented during the COVID pandemic were lifted and credit risk policies reversed to pre-COVID levels. If one would try to illustrate the main drivers behind the development from 2022 to 2023, and again, it's the expected normalization, one would need to consider that the 2022 number had some specific effects still relating to the COVID pandemic. Excluding these, underlying core losses for 2022 would rather have been around 0.7%.
Then in the walk to the 2023 number, there were several factors that deserve mentioning, such as the full year consideration of losses stemming from the Byjuno acquisition, higher upfront allowances due to the implementation of the CECL standard under US GAAP, but also the general impact of increased cost of living and its effect on debt servicing capacity in certain customer segments. As this temporarily, slightly more adverse macro environment is currently still pervasive, we continue to actively manage credit losses and related mitigation measures to ensure the financial soundness in all customer segments. This picture is also reflected in asset quality, where we see a small uptick on 30+ delinquencies and BNPLs, and generally, asset quality numbers are on a continued sound level.
The same goes for the level of allowances for losses, where there might have been some movements in or between individual product lines in the course of 2023, but the overall level has been very stable. Looking forward, so while in other European countries, there might be some more visible impact of macro trends on credit quality, we would, in the current Swiss environment, rather expect that the loss performance remains solid, with a loss rate in line with long-term trends and in line with our midterm target of less or equal than 1%. With that, I hand it on back to Pascal.
Thank you, Volker. Regarding balance sheet, the total assets grew by 6%, and this is mainly from the increase of the net financing receivables, as well as the cash and equivalents, following our continued disciplined funding management. The funding increased by 8%, and I will comment though very soon. And finally, the shareholder equity decreased by 2%, including an impact of CHF 54 million from the adoption of the current expected credit loss in US GAAP at the beginning of the reporting period, as already communicated in the past. Regarding funding. So the funding balance increased by CHF 470 million, this is +8%, and this is driven by the strong business growth and higher liquidity buffers.
H2 was marked by the turning point in interest rates expectations, and here we observed that institutional investors and lenders expanded their investment horizon. In January, May, and September, we took advantage of favorable capital markets with the issuance of three longer-dated unsecured bonds with a net growth of CHF 210 million. We increased the ABS segment by CHF 275 million. Retail fundings also increased by CHF 220 million, with many new clients buying our attractive cash flows. The remaining terms of the portfolio increased to 2.4 years, and the year-on-period end-of-period funding cost increased to 1.47%. Our average cost of fund was 1.18%. Our net average cost, meaning the net of income from our cash and repo facilities, investment facilities, was 1% as expected.
In 2024, we expect to continue to grow the retail funding further with new digital retail fundings products already launched. We are pleased with our funding profile and liquidity positions. On the capital, our capital ratio is reported for the first time on US GAAP basis, including the Buy Now, Pay Later operator legal entities. We remain very well capitalized with a strong Tier 1 ratio of 17.2%. The risk-weighted assets increased by 3%, and this is in line with the increase of the net financing receivables. And given all the solid financial performance, the board of directors will propose a dividend of CHF 4 at the next general meeting on the 24th April 2024, and this will present an increase of CHF 0.05 compared to previous year. With that, I hand over to Holger for the update on the strategy executions.
Very good. Thank you, Pascal. So, we go to page 17 directly. Look, as mentioned, right, two years in, we wanted to give you an update where we stand, right? So this is the page that we shared with you in December 2021. Clear ambition to continue to lead in consumer finance in Switzerland, based on a strong set of core capabilities. We launched four programs, which we're now executing on, and a clear set of financial targets, with one adjustment on the timing of the ROE, in terms of getting back to 15% or more. So all of this, from a programmatic perspective, still in place. So let's take a look on the next page, how we're doing so far. So DNA continues to deliver, right?
We're close to our partners, we're close to our customers, deeply embedded in the markets that we operate in, and you can rely on us for cost, risk, discipline, and decisive pricing actions. We're also progressing on our strategic initiatives. Operational Excellence, the Lending Platform is out. We like what we see so far in terms of efficiency improvements and the partner reactions we're getting. And we've done a lot of foundational work in terms of infrastructure consolidation, cloud readiness, to move forward across the business with these platforms. We're continuing to build our app, and we launched our digital savings product suite earlier this year. Excited about the prospects there. Business Acceleration, we talked about the successful cards migration, further growth in our co-branding partnership portfolio. We're also excited that we came back to organic growth with a strong profitability focus across product lines.
On new growth, the Byjuno acquisitions completed, the TWINT partnership is live, and we're expanding on that. We more than doubled commission fee income this year with the acquisition and organic growth. Cultural side, again, good, good progress here. We significantly strengthened our commercial organization and repositioned ourselves as an attractive employer with a refreshed branding. So on the right, you see the metrics that we track. I think they reflect this performance. We're quite pleased with the receivables growth. Obviously, the ROE, we talked about and the trend going forward there in terms of getting back to the targets we committed. Cost income on track in spite of the investments that we're making and reliably strong loss performance. So let's focus on the going forward on the next page.
We talked to you about two years ago, we discussed the market trends, and so I'll just be brief here, 'cause in a nutshell, this continues to be an attractive market, right? It's a resilient economy driven by a strong consumer, low unemployment, and the long-term fundamentals are healthy and quite conducive for consumer finance. Digitization, obviously, continues to play a big role, data analytics, AI, and others, and we're seeing first use cases on that. But by and large, in a nutshell, attractive market that we like to operate in. If you look at the lending and payments a bit more closely, in lending, we continue to see very strong long-term fundamentals, and with the positive interest rates, I'd say a return to a healthier environment, right?
Where a focus on business model resilience comes back in the picture, and that certainly plays to our strength. In payments, we continue to observe cashless convenience continuing to gain in relevance, and clearly also product proximity around different cards, products, invoice payments, Buy Now, Pay Later. And in addition, it's good to see the underlying need for credit that continues to be intact. So the next page, as you look at this, right, the business characteristics from lending to payments are indeed a bit different, but quite consistent within themselves. So lending is more stable, more predictable. The use cases are much more distinct, whereas in the payment side, it's a bit more dynamic. There's higher frequency, typically more transactional, and it's more capitalized.
So look, we want to fully capitalize on these trends and really drive growth in these two areas going forward, and therefore, you know, we're organizing ourselves into these two business lines to really drive synergies across the organization. We have the lending business line led by Peter Schnellmann, who has several decades of deep experience in these markets, built a great leadership team. And we're equally pleased to have Christian Stolz to lead the payment side of the business, who joined us, as of course, as the founder and CEO of Byjuno, with previously multiple years leading the Mastercard operations of Switzerland in the country. So two very strong leaders, great prospects for the business going forward, supported by the functions here on the right.
What this gives us is a stronger focus on cards and Buy Now, Pay Later customer base leverage, now that we successfully concluded the migration. And, and you've heard me say this before, it's, it's important for me to have firepower at the front end, and, and we're clearly establishing that here as well, the more intense focus on customers and partners, a simpler operating model, and an opportunity to continue to be lean on the enabling function. So to reflect this, we'll also introduce segment reporting on this level. So let's take a look next few pages on the priorities in these two areas. So this is lending, and, so personal loan and auto businesses, right? Strong and leading positions that continue to deliver well.
We talked about the triangle between pricing, risk, and volume that we manage quite deliberately, and you should expect the same going forward with a clear focus on profitable growth. In addition, we're excited about the continuing rollout and the full rollout this year on the Motor Solutions platform and leveraging the respective capabilities with our entire distribution universe, the 3,700 dealers, platforms, and distributors, which will give us significant simplification, value add for partners and customers, and efficiencies per our strategic plan. Next, we'll be initiating the same for personal loans with expected similar benefits aligned with our strategy. So on payments, so post-Certo! migration, we're combining two strong business lines into one. And let me tell you why we are so excited about this business and its prospects.
So I just hit a few items here in terms of the trends. Some of them we talked about in the past, right? Offering convergence clearly is a major trend that we're seeing, and as a player with the product breadth that we have, we believe we're uniquely positioned to benefit from that. The importance of the merchant interface and one-stop shopping, we talked in the past a lot about embedded finance, and flexibly combining payment and financing options at that point of sale, at that interface, is critical, and again, we believe we're well positioned here. Data and customer insights are getting more important. Capabilities to work with that data are getting more and more important. And look, we have well over 2 million customers, and we're quite excited about leveraging these connections.
So overall, I think we're well positioned to play in this space and to continue to win. So let's go to the next page. We'll talk a bit about the game plan for the payments business line. So again, combining cards and Buy Now, Pay Later and invoice payments. Look, I think we have an excellent foundation, right? Well over 2 million customers, but if you think about it, the majority of them in the Buy Now, Pay Later side, so far, we've mostly dealt with transaction, right? What this combination gives us is an opportunity to significantly enhance interactions, to significantly enhance propositions, and to really cross-sell from one into the other channel for a much deeper and meaningful customer relationship with values both for customers and also our P&L. We've been a leader in the B2B2C business for decades.
And here, too, with the addition of Buy Now, Pay Later, there's well over 1,000 retail relationships that we're adding. And the same that goes for the consumer also goes for the retailer, right? We have an opportunity, given our product set, given our capabilities, to significantly broaden our product offering to that retailer group, strengthen relationships, and again, I think we're uniquely positioned, given that strong, that product set. And look, we're thrilled about this combined new organization. It's great to see how this is coming together under a single leadership. So look, to deliver on this, three targeted programs. One is increasing product density. I mentioned the significant cross-sell potential that we see by combining these businesses for the well over 2 million customers.
We know these customers on the Buy Now, Pay Later side of credit affinity, and we believe we have a unique channel for access to these customers here that we'll be using quite intensively going forward. We wanna, on that basis, accelerate customer engagement. We've talked about our app. We're adding functionality to this. We wanna make this increasingly a tool to communicate in one-to-one fashion with customers in a way that's more meaningful for them. And then also, I mentioned the opportunity with the retailers. So we will revamp our partner proposition here, under one leadership, extend the embedded finance solutions, not just for a finite number of co-brand partners, but for overall retail partnerships.
With that, we're looking to achieve a 5%-10% top line growth for a year, and I'm quite excited about the prospects for this business. Let me conclude on the next page here with a word on the cost-income ratio, which is, of course, a key driver for the 20%-30% EPS growth we discussed through to 2026. And the composition here, you know, you can see there's obviously the first element is growth, right? Which is based on everything we just talked about for the two business lines, and I think we're poised to deliver on that, given how we set ourselves up. And then secondly, of course, there's operational excellence.
We talked about Motor Solutions, we talked a lot about automation, digitization, much more efficient service delivery, and a stronger strengthening our base, infrastructure, IT infrastructure. In that respect, as we discussed, we will see benefits coming in as of this year. Headcount management, look, we've been diligent in this, in the past. We've gone from about 950, as you may recall, mid-year 2023 to about 900 by end of year 2023. And we're planning for a further reduction in FTE, aligned with our strategic programs and delivering against the cost income roadmap, to around 830 by year-end. And we're expecting about CHF 3-5 million associated one-off costs with that. So with that, let me move to the outlook.
So 2024, I think some clear priorities for lending in terms of profitable growth. I talked about the three programs for payments and accelerating growth in that business line. Operational Excellence deliverables are clear in terms of the rollout of the Motor Solutions platform and increasing benefit realization focus, really here. For the year 2024, you can expect continued resilient business performance. We expect net revenues to moderately outpace GDP. Clearly continued loss discipline, cost-income ratio below 49%, with benefits from transformation coming in. ROE, we're looking at 13%-14%, and from an H1 versus H2 perspective, a bit of a similar trend to what we've seen last year, with a better second half.
With that, the targets through 2026, so you can see on the right, remain in place with one adjustment on the ROE, but overall, a clear outlook for 2026. So, summary, solid 2023, groundwork and operational excellence is progressing well. Initial benefits will come this year. Our DNA continues to deliver in terms of cost and loss performance. Pleased with our position in the markets, strong pricing, NIM recovery, and great opportunities in payments with the new organization. So with that, happy to take your questions.
We will now begin the question-and-answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on the touchtone telephone. You will hear a tone to confirm that you have entered the queue. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Questioners on the phone are requested to use only handsets and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. Our first question comes from the line of Andreas Venditti from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you for the presentation and for taking my questions. Maybe firstly, on the new guidance for 2024 on the return on equity, not totally surprising. Already with half year, you mentioned that this target would be challenging. Now this is stated at 13%-14%. Maybe you can remind us of you know the main drivers of this, and especially also you keep your at or above 15 target for 2025 and 2026, which you know is gonna be quite a nice jump from the 13-14 level. So maybe you can also give a bit of color where you see this coming from. Then maybe on the guidance for the net interest margin, 5.5, I guess, based on repricing measures ongoing. You said midterm, is that correct? That by midterm, you mean 2026? And then also on the cards, you have reached the 2019 level, as was the target in terms of receivables. O n revenues, you're slightly below. Maybe you could add a bit of color there, what the main reasons were. Yeah, I'll stop here, and maybe I'll ask a few more questions later on. Thank you.
Yeah. First, good morning, and thanks very much for the question. Let me start with the ROE guidance, and then we'll have Pascal talk about the NIM, and then we get back to the cards question as well. So look, the ROE guidance, you're right, 13%-14% is what we're now guiding on, and it's really a bit of continuation of some of the temporary trends that we explained, right? One, the temporarily the pressure that we're seeing on the NIM, given the delayed impact of the pricing actions that we've taken, and that continues to feed a bit into the year. But again, I think the good news is, right, we are seeing the NIM coming back up.
So, from that perspective, that also gives us confidence in terms of the, you know, the second part of your ROE question, in terms of the guidance going forward. The second one is the, as we expected, continued normalization of the loss performance that Volker talked about. And then, you know, we had mentioned this during the year, some partial delays in the core banking platform transformation, right? There, too, we're making good progress now, and we have some good line of sight in terms of what's coming this year and the efficiencies associated with that. And so I think with that, and with also then, you know, some of the growth problems that we've explained and the, and the repositioning of the business lines, that, that gives us, in combination, good comfort, in terms of where we're, where we're heading going forward, and also the improvements in the, in the ROE coming through. Both again, through the commercial actions and the, and the cost actions that we're taking. Pascal, do you want to take the NIM question?
Yeah, on the NIM question as well, from a timeline standpoint, when we refer to mid-terms, yes, usually we refer to up to the end of the strategic cycle, 2020-2026. For the NIM improvements and the rebound, I would say latest to 2026.
Yeah. Look, on the card side, indeed, right, net financing receivables on the level of the revenue is 2% below. I would say this, right, when we first discussed this challenge, well over two years ago, you know, we put this out as an ambition. Clearly, we had some perspective on what we were gonna do, but we still had to build all the programs, right? We had to build the products, we had to build the communication campaigns, we had to build the CRM managers, et cetera, and we had to get smart in terms of the data analytics. You know, so I would say we're quite pleased with the way that migration went. You know, again, given versus the ambition, I think indeed slightly off on one metric, but spot on on the other. Now it's for us to shift to growth in this business, right? And I think we've done the groundwork, we've got the organization in place to do that.
Our next question comes from the line of Mate Nemes, UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for the presentation. I have a couple of questions. The first one would be on the net interest margin, the 5.5% guidance. Could you clarify, please, if you're factoring in any improvement in the funding costs, perhaps down the line in 25 or 26, given the expected rate cuts in Switzerland in the next couple of quarters? That's the first question. Second question, still on funding costs. I see that the exit funding cost run rate is close to 1.5%. Is that a good guide to use for 2024, or you would expect perhaps somewhat of an updrift still from current levels? The third question would be on the auto business.
I was wondering if you could give us a bit of color, what you're seeing in that market at the moment, given perhaps some softening in used vehicle prices. How does that affect you? What do you see in terms of competitive dynamics? Clearly, the market is still expanding nicely. Your receivables also grew in line at 6%. So I'm just wondering, what do you see in terms of activity now, perhaps towards the end of the year, early this year? What do you see in terms of pricing and so on? Thank you.
Very good morning, Mate, and thanks for the question. Pascal, you want to take the NIM and the funding, and then I'll come back on the order side?
Yes, definitely, yeah. For the net interest margin, as on the guidance of the 5.5%, so first, so obviously, as the net interest margin are several elements which are to take into consideration. So obviously, on one side, the overall pricing of the book, the commissions level, obviously, at the same time. We earn money as again, on our cash, cash equivalents and investments portfolio, and finally, as the funding cost. So clearly, it will be a dynamic, we are managing the net interest margin as a key KPI, so for us, and depending on how all these elements develop, also as a capacity to implement pricing actions, as an example, but also development of interest rates, SNB policies, we have to take some more or less actions.
So once again, the net interest margin is a very important KPI, and on the funding side, back to your second question. Look, at the end of the year, the funding costs are 1.47%. If you have the SNB policy at 1.75, so basically, as of yes, we would expect the funding cost as well to continue to slightly increase. Over time, certainly as of the speed of increase of what we have seen as between 22 and 2023 will be lower. But, but once again, as we are managing more, the overall net interest margin, with the funding cost as well, being only one part of the equation.
Thanks, Pascal. So on the other side, I look, I think obviously this market has been, I would say, quite volatile over the last few years, right? Through COVID and then coming out of COVID. I think here, too, we're seeing a bit of a normalization as everywhere else, right? We continue to benefit from what we saw in the market last year, right? We, as you know, we continue to focus predominantly on, to a larger part, on the used car market, and have been able to grow quite nicely in spite of the price increases that we pushed through. We also, I'd say, Marta, we haven't seen a significant change in dynamics in terms of the market. There's always a bit of cyclicality, right, one way or another.
But I think the strength that we bring to Cembra is sort of leading to your second point as well, right? We're really deeply embedded with our partners out there, the 3,700 dealers, and increasingly also with other distribution platforms and others. You know, so look, I think as I've said, more generally, right, it is an attractive market that makes it attractive for others as well. I think we have a strong position, and we continue to build that, but we don't really see a significant change in terms of what we observed sort of at the end of the year and going into this year.
That's great. Thank you.
Thank you.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one on your telephone. Star followed by one. Our next question comes from the line of Daniel Regli ZKB. Please go ahead.
Good morning, and thank you for taking my questions, and congratulations for the good results. I have a couple of questions. First, my first question is on the reporting. Obviously, you said you will kind of consolidate your divisions into two main divisions, but will you kind of continue to report revenue separately for credit cards and Buy Now, Pay Later, as well as personal loans and auto leases and loans, or will you just merge everything together in just one line for both segments or divisions? Then the second question is also a bit on net interest margins, and obviously we have seen a nice pickup in yields, particularly in auto, but also personal loans in H2.
Can you give me some sense about exit yields in these business lines and kind of your expectations where these yields could go in 2024, given the current price increases we have seen? And maybe also on the net interest margins, what do you expect in terms of maximum rates for 2025, given current expectations are that central bank will cut the rates to 1.5. It could be that the SARON drops back to below 1.5, which should naturally lead to kind of a reduction of the maximum rates to 11-13% again in 2025. Have you kind of baked this into your guidance or your expectations, or what is your thinking about this going forward? And then, my third question would be on costs.
Can you give me a sense about the non-recurring part of costs in 2023 and kind of the outlook for investments into operational excellence for 2024? And then, last but not least, on your guidance, you're saying you expect revenues for 2024 to only grow modestly above Swiss GDP, which is expected at 1.1%, given your receivables have increased 3%, and we should see some kind of net interest margin expansion during 2024. Yeah, what is kind of the gap between, let's say, modestly above 1.1% and let's say a receivables increase of at least 3%, which could lead to 4%-5% if we add on to it the net interest margin expansion? Can you maybe help me on this bridge here? Thank you.
Sure. Daniel, good morning, and thanks for the question. Let me start with the last one, and then I hand over to Pascal on the other one. Look, I think sometime in the past we said to slightly outgrow, right? And we choose the wording deliberately. Moderately, it's a bit more than slightly, right? In that sense, right. And so you'll appreciate we don't guide on a specific number. But if you're expecting GDP to grow at about 1%, then moderately certainly would be more than 1.2% or 1.3%, right? And then, you know, hopefully it gives you a bit of sense, right? So it's slightly more bullish than just the outlook of slightly outgrowing. Hopefully, that helps a bit, but let me hand over to Pascal on the other questions on reporting them in cost.
Thank you, Daniel, and thank you first for the questions on the segment reporting. So you might have seen, so in the presentations, investor presentations, we added in the appendix the pro forma segment reporting, so just to give a bit of color of the lending as versus the payments. Generally, you can assume that the overall of the presentations of our financial results will not fundamentally change. So in the sense, so what we have disclosed today, so in 2024, we'll continue as well to disclose. We'll certainly add as a one page with as all the pro- the segment reporting, so the lending and the payments. So no big changes so that we expected in this area.
The second one regarding the yield and the pricing as well, then, first, we are pleased with the repricing actions we have taken, as we are also pleased to demonstrate that the yield as well further develop. This is a very dynamic market environment, so both on the interest rates, the timing of potentially the rate caps as well as from the SMB, but also in terms of competitions. So this is why we are more guiding, so basically at the overall net interest margin, with management taking appropriate actions depending on how the market develops, both as a macro and competition standpoint.
But generally, especially on the auto business, we are moving a bit more to the top of the market, of the pricing cycle, and certainly as in personal loan, the card side, with the change of interest rates cap, which was implemented January first, then this gives some upside. Look back to your questions now around more 2025, we don't know. So in a sense, it's really highly depending on the SNB as well policy decisions. So the timing on potential decisions from the government, on the change of interest rates cap. Basically, depending on the decisions made, then we will adapt.
Finally, as all your questions on the cost income what was recurring, so in 2023, respectively as of 2024. So certainly, as in 2023, we had, so basically, the integrations costs related to Buy Now, Pay Later. We gave indication CHF 3-4 million between 2022-2023 in the context of the integrations of Buy Now, Pay Later. So certainly here, so we are in this guidance, probably around CHF 2-3 million, so that we spend in 2023 for the integrations of this business. So obviously, as these are costs, which will not recur in 2024. For 2024, we also indicated as well as part of the roadmap, how to come to the 39 cost-income ratio, that we might have some one-off personnel costs related to the reductions of workforce. So in that sense, the CHF 3 million-CHF 5 million we mentioned, that could be a recurring cost in the context of 2024.
Thank you. Very helpful for the details. Thank you so much.
Ladies and gentlemen, that was the last question. I would now like to turn the conference back over to Holger Laubenthal for any closing remarks.
Very good. Thank you, operator, and thanks everyone for the questions and your time this morning. Look, quick summary, right? I think a solid 23. We're pleased with the groundwork that's now in place and operational excellence with benefits coming into this year as we speak. Strong DNA continue to deliver price, loss, cost. We're pleased with the market positions we're having. We talked about the NIM recovery, given the strong pricing actions we've taken and, and, and, and a good set of opportunities ahead of us in the business lines, particularly also in payments with the new organization. So with that, thanks again, and wishing you a great day.