Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cembra Half Year 2022 Results Conference Call and Live Webcast. I am Sandra, the Chorus 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, Mr. Pascal Perritaz, CFO, and Mr. Volker Gloe, CRO of Cembra Money Bank. Please go ahead, gentlemen.
Thank you, Sandra. Good morning, everyone. Great to be here for our half year results discussion. I'm here with Pascal Perritaz and Volker Gloe. As usual, we'll briefly walk you through the highlights of the presentation, and then we look forward to taking your questions. Before I dive into the details here, just a couple of overarching comments on the first half. We're pleased to report a strong result for the semester. Good performance really across business lines with profitable growth, and have also again achieved excellent loss performance. We're delivering on our strategy. We launched the credit card app on time. We launched our proprietary card proposition with the Certo! credit card family and also the migration program on the Migros portfolio.
In addition, we're pleased to have strengthened existing partnerships with Conforama and Fnac, and also some new partnerships, with Zurich, and cards with Spar. Our sustainability efforts have led to an upgrade of the ratings to triple A by MSCI. Last but not least, we added some new faces with deep expertise to our management team, also adding a bit to diversity, which I'm quite excited about. With that, let me, before I hand over to Pascal and Volker on more details, let me just give you the highlights of the first half performance. So net income came in at CHF 90.6 million, up 15% year-over-year. Financing receivables also grown 4% with growth from all business lines.
Net revenues are up 6% with a strong rebound in fees. Cost-Income Ratio has consequently come down noticeably with a loss rate at 0.5%. Overall, that delivers 15.3% ROE for the first half and strong Tier 1 capital at 18.8%. We're progressing on executing our strategy. On the next page, you know this layout, talking about the products and markets that we operate in. Personal loan is up 2% in a strong market. Here we continue to balance growth with making sure we retain strong margins. We've outperformed the market in auto on the back of a strong used car market and the dynamics in that market.
Cards, we've seen a strong rebound, as anticipated, and we've been able to capitalize on this. Swissbilling, off to a very strong start to the year with significant double-digit growth rates. Overall, I think we're pleased with the performance here to date. Let me just hit a few operational highlights on the next page. As said, overall performance further improved, both in terms of profitable growth as well as risk management. Given the interest rate environment, we've put pricing actions in place on new originations to protect margins. Strategy execution is progressing well across the work streams that we presented in December at the strategy day. Operational excellence, we launched the credit card app.
Per end of June, we had 160,000 users live on the app. We're also progressing with our platform upgrade for the leasing business, looking to start implementation here towards the end of this year, early next year. On the business and growth side, we successfully launched the Certo credit card family and entered new partnerships. As I mentioned, Swissbilling is delivering well on the growth plans as well as on planned product releases. Culture transformation is well underway with the new organization, new leaders in place, and increased commercial focus, which is starting to bear fruit. Look, overall strong first half. Now let me hand over to Pascal and then later Volker for some more detail on the financials and the loss performance.
Thank you very much, Holger, and good morning, everyone. In the first half of the year, we delivered a very strong business performance. We grew profitably in all our businesses. We benefited not only from the rebound effect after the lifting of economic or COVID restrictions, but also from our commercial efforts, as you heard from Holger. We also made a significant progress in implementing our strategy and reached out the important milestone with the launch of our credit card Certo. Let's now dig deeper into the numbers, starting with the P&L. Total revenues increased by 6% to CHF 250 million. The interest income slightly declined by 1% as a result of lower opening receivables and decreasing yield in the personal loan business. I will further comment on this in one of my next page.
The interest expense was 77% lower. The commission and fees increased by 27%, with the credit card fees increasing by 42% year-on-year, due largely to the lifting of the COVID restrictions. The Swissbilling, which you can see on the line, grew significantly in the buy now, pay later, with an increase of billing volume to CHF 191 million, and fee income of CHF 6.5 million, +35%. The ratio commission fees to the net revenue increased from 25% to 29%. We once again recorded an excellent loss performance. The provisions for losses benefited from the prudent and cautious credit risk policies applied during pandemic. This translates into a loss ratio of 0.5, and Volker will further comment soon.
The operating expense decreased by 2% and the reduction of the Cost-Income Ratio from 52.6% to 48.8% is largely due to the increase of net revenues. I will also explain later on the development of the operating expense. Finally, the very strong net income of CHF 90.6 is driven by both revenue growth and margin improvements. Let's now talk about margin improvement. Once again, with the strategic cycle, we introduced this new alternative metric, which is called the return on financing receivables. I want to repeat why we introduced this new metric. In the past, we mainly have commented on the yield development as an indication for margin development.
As we know, the margin is the sum of many components, including pricing, yield, acquisitions cost, interest expense, provisions for losses, operating expense, and tax. With this disclosure, we decompose our profits by source to better explain the movement of our margin. P-loan, auto, card businesses all contributed to this margin improvements, and in total, the group margin improved from 2.5% to 2.8%, which is usually also driven by the increase in the commission and fees line. You can also see on this page that the net interest income margin reduced slightly from 5.6% to 5.5%. Now with the next page, let's now discuss the net interest income and the net financing receivable by business.
In total, interest income reduced by CHF 2 million from CHF 190.1 to 189, and the assets grew by 4%. Let me explain. In the P-loan, the 2% increase was driven by a strong volume performance in 2022 and an increase in market demand. As a result of lower asset base compared to the first half of last year and the continued competitive environment, interest income in a personal loan business decreased by 6% with a yield of 6.8%. The P-loan business mix was increased towards lower yield businesses, also due to higher demand for online and agent channel. We maintain our risk discipline in higher risk customers and high pricing. These reductions of the portfolio pricing was, however, more than offset by gain in loss performance.
The auto assets increased by 4%, driven by strong volume in 2022 and the normal seasonal peak in H1. Interest income was stable with a yield at 4.5%. In the credit card business, the net financing receivable rose by eight percent, driven by higher transactions volume. Interest income was up 6%, yield 8.1. Let's talk about the cards. The transactions volume rose by 18%, and the cards revenue by 22%, with both commission and fees and interest income increasing. On the right side, you see the month-by-month for the comparison against the pre-COVID level. The transactions volume were 22% above 2021, and the cards revenue plus 5%.
You can see that volume and revenues were impacted in January by the Omicron variant and the corresponding introductions of economic restrictions, which were then lifted starting mid-February. Operating expense. The operating expense decreased by 2%. Let's first talk about the absolute OpEx development and then about the ratio. Compensations and benefits expense were down 2%, which is mainly reflecting the lower number of employees. Professional services increased by 11%, driven by higher temporary resources related to the launch of our strategic initiative, Operation Excellence. The marketing expense increased by 57%, which is really mainly driven by our new proprietary credit card propositions in the first half of 2022.
The cost for postage and stationery increased by 29%, and this is again largely due to the launch of our new card propositions, Cembra applications, QR bills. In other, the decrease is largely driven by lower pension costs due to the U.S. GAAP valuation effects on Cembra Pension Fund. As a result of the 2% reductions in OpEx and the 6% increase in net revenue, the cost-income ratio reduced from 52.6 in the previous reporting period to 48.8. Our full year 2021, I repeat, 2021 cost-income ratio was 50.6, and we guided the market for a stable cost-income ratio in 2022.
I want to reconfirm our guidance on a stable cost-income ratio for the full year 2022, which mean that we anticipate some increase of operating expense for the second half of the year, largely due to the launch of our cards propositions and the ramp up of investments related to our strategic initiatives. On the balance sheet, we already said net financing receivables at the end of the period that amounted to CHF 6.4 billion, which is an increase of 4%. The diversified funding portfolio increased by 3% to CHF 5.9 billion, largely in line with the increase of the financing receivables.
The shareholder equity has decreased by 2% after Cembra paid out a dividend of CHF 113 million for the financial year 2021 in April 2022, and which was partially offset by the net income contributions of CHF 90.6 million. Some details on the funding. The funding mix was 56% deposit and 44% non-deposit. The deposit base increased by 6% to CHF 3.4 billion, and the non-deposit debt remains stable at CHF 2.5 billion at June 30. In March 2022, we paid back a CHF 250 million auto lease asset-backed securities, and we issue an unsecured bond of CHF 250 million, so the same amount as the ABS in May 2022.
The weighted average durations decreased slightly from 2.5 to 2.3 years, and the pricing and funding cost amounted to 46 basis points compared to 44 in December 2021. As you can see, we have strong liquidity metrics, and we maintain CHF 400 million of undrawn committed facilities. Interest rate sensitivities. As we all know, the capital market has been very volatile since beginning of the year, and interest rates increased sharply. For the full year 2022, we expect interest expense of CHF 28 to 30 million, compared to CHF 26 million in 2021. For the year after, and as disclosed in our investor presentations in December 2021, the net interest margin is expected to decline slightly, mainly due to the shift of business mix and ongoing competition. Our ambition is to offset the increase of interest expense by asset repricing.
As you can see on the left side of this chart, the slightly negative duration gap, repricing gap shall support the projections of the net interest margin over time. We also introduce timely some repricing measures following the SNB policy rate change announced in June 2022. I would like to hand over to Volker Gloe to comment on our excellent loss performance.
Thank you, Pascal. Good morning, everyone. Yeah, loss provisions for the first half came in at CHF 15 million, corresponding to a loss rate of 0.5%, which is the same level as last year. Last year contained a one-off, so that's also the reason why we kind of deemed the loss performance for the first half of 2022 to be really strong. Same is valid for the credit quality indicators, such as 30+ delinquencies and NPL ratios. They remain very robust. 30+ delinquencies at 1.6%, NPLs at 0.6%, so slightly better than actually in prior reporting periods. Let me provide some more explanation for the strong loss performance. In the beginning of the COVID pandemic, the bank tightened its credit risk appetite, which led to onboarding, on average, better quality customers.
As these customers have a lower default probability, we now see the benefit as lower losses in this segment. Although these measures are reverted back in the meantime, we can still temporarily benefit from this effect. There are also a few exceptional items that influence the loss result in H1. One example for that is the environmental reserve. We booked that back in H1 2020, in the beginning of COVID, to be prepared for the expected worsening macro environment. The need for the reserve has actually never materialized because payment behavior remained very strong in the portfolio. Therefore, we could now release in H1 this environmental reserve, which contributed to around CHF 2 million lower losses.
Another factor are also cautious write-off procedures that we applied during the pandemic when we took a rather conservative look on the collectibility of some, especially individual and larger exposures. Now, in the first half, we were able to benefit from that as we could recognize strong recovery performance on these written-off exposures. That's probably especially in the area of auto financing, where also the relatively high car prices helped in addition. It's a bit of a bundling of favorable items in the first half, but if one would need to give an estimate for a normalization of this H1 number, it might be rather closer to 0.7% actually in the core. These exceptional items then brought it down to 0.5%. One more comment on losses.
Despite the strong loss performance as loss provisions, we maintained our level of allowances for losses in the balance sheet. Relative to the receivables, the ratio of allowances, the coverage is stable at 1.4%, so it's the same level of last year. Allowances will first materially change when the expected loss concept, the so-called CECL, will be implemented under U.S. GAAP in the beginning of next year. The latest estimates confirm the ones that we have been communicating earlier with a day one impact in a range between CHF 50 and 70 million, which impacts the opening reserve balance of 2023 under U.S. GAAP.
When it comes to the outlook, I think it's fair to say that the macro outlook for 2022 and probably even next year, especially when it comes to unemployment, remains quite strong, but there might be a heightened level of uncertainty around these forecasts. Consequently, we remain cautious with our outlook for the loss performance. We stick to the midterm target level of less or equal than 1% loss rate. We would expect that the loss performance will normalize over the next periods, but not kind of instantly, but as a gradual move. It would be a surprise if the loss rate for the full year 2022 immediately jumps to a level of 1%, but it will not stay on 0.5% either for the full year, so we can probably expect somewhere in between.
With that, I hand it back to Pascal to guide us through the capital position.
Thank you, Volker. On the capital positions, we remain very well capitalized with a strong Tier 1 capital ratio of 18.8%. The risk-weighted assets grew in line with the development of our financing receivables. As you just heard from Volker, with the implementation of CECL as of January 2023, we expect a total one-off impact, which will also impact the Tier 1 ratio between 0.6 to 0.9 points, as previously communicated during the investor presentations in December. Thank you very much, and I would like to hand over to Holger for the 2022 priorities for the second half of the year and the outlook.
Thanks, Pascal. I'll just make a few comments quickly on the cards business line here on this next page. I think the key messages here are the programs that we had presented to you and that we've been working on are on track. We have multiple actions and growth avenues that are at our disposal that we continue to deliver on. Priorities remain as presented at our investor day. I focus on the strong value proposition, operational and service excellence, strong customer focus, and of course, effective migration of the portfolio of Migros Cumulus-Mastercard card customers, and communications around this.
We will return this business to growth through the leverage presented both on the B2C and B2B side and see opportunity to leverage significant customer base. On the B2B side, our model continues to deliver well, both with extending existing relationships as well as adding new ones. The successful launch of the Certo! credit card families is really a significant step forward for us. The product's been well-received based on the feedback we have received so far. The transition of existing customers is as simple as we have previously discussed, and so as such, the migration is off to a good start. Overall, on this basis, we are reiterating our guidance for assets and revenues to return to pre-COVID levels from 2023 onwards.
Next page, a bit on the broader outlook for the year. We expect continued resilient performance. Clearly, delivering on the cards transition program continues to be key, and we do recognize there's some uncertainty around this given the competitive dynamics, but as we've said before, we've got strong programs in place to address this. Clearly continued focus on delivering against our strategic roadmap, coupled with, strong operating vigilance is something you can expect from us. In terms of performance, as articulated, we expect resilient results, in line with the guidance we have provided in February with the cards transition and operational excellence initiatives ramping up in the second half as planned. Overall, a strong start of the year, confirming outlook for the second half, and now we're 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 touch-tone 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. Questions on the phone are requested to use only handset that are asking a question and to turn off the volume of the webcast. Anyone with a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from Máté Nemes from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes, good morning, and thank you for taking my questions. I have three of these. Firstly, on personal loans, I would just like to better understand what happened, the yield there. I think, Pascal, you alluded to the fact that there has been some change in the mix there and a change in the competitive dynamics. The yield, the lower yield, has been offset or more than offset by lower cost of risk or lower loss rate. Have you actually shifted towards lower risk or higher quality customers? And thereby accepting a lower rate or lower yields, compensated by an equally lower loss rate. Is that a fair characterization?
This is just simply the result of perhaps a more stringent lending standards and lower risk appetite in 2020 and 2021, so the COVID years, and eventually the situation here could change. Second question is on the repricing measures that you mentioned on slide 14. Can you elaborate on where exactly you can implement repricing measures? I believe perhaps in personal loans that there's not so much room due to the regulatory rate cap, and the same goes for credit cards. Is this comment really on the order book? Lastly, a question on buy now, pay later. Could you talk a little bit about your traction with the BNPL this year? I see the Swissbilling receivables are stable.
I think you mentioned a low single-digit million CHF revenue contribution from this initiative. I would love to hear a bit more on this. Thank you.
Yeah. Very good, Máté . Good morning. Thanks for the questions. We'll let Volker kick off the first one, and then I'll tackle the pricing and the buy now, pay later on Volker.
Yeah. Thanks Máté, for the question. I think first of all I want to answer in a way that it's obviously always a combination of items, so it's not yield only, which is also the reason why we like to see the return on financing receivables. With your characterization, you're actually absolutely right. During the COVID pandemic, we have been tightening our risk appetite, and especially on people and customers that are more exposed to macro stress. As we apply risk-based pricing, we are typically by that kicking out more of the customers that before would have paid a higher rate. It would have generated a higher yield.
Consequently, on average for the vintages that we have been writing during the pandemic, we also were accepting the lower yield because we didn't want to take the risk on the loss side. It's paying off as we can see, because we see the lower losses. Obviously it comes also then for these vintages with a slightly lower yield on these personal loan accounts. This will be, as mentioned, to a certain extent, be a temporary effect as we revert back our credit risk appetite, after kind of COVID would be declared over, so basically from mid to late last year starting into that. I think your characterization is absolutely correct. It's kind of the combination of yield with the cost of risk.
Yes, there is this temporary effect, where we have been tightening our risk appetite and consequently we see the effect in the numbers.
Thanks, Volker. Let me spend a minute on pricing. Look, Martin, this is something that was also personally for me, quite important that we tackle this very proactively given the market that we're in. You know, we've been around the block a few times to know that these things do happen, even if we've had a bit of break here from the market perspective. We tackle this proactively. You're right in the sense that auto is the most straightforward one in a way, and that's been implemented throughout the business line. We also do this in personal loans. You know, you are right about the cap being in place. Obviously, you know, our pricing range is quite wide here.
We manage this through an internal process and system adjustments in the background. You know, I don't wanna go into too much detail here because obviously that's also a bit competitive information. You will notice this, and you should notice this in both of these product lines, card's a bit different to your point. Again, on auto and personal loans, we've tackled this proactively. Buy now, pay later, your question on the traction there. Look, we're very pleased with the progress that the team is making, the business is making. You know, the number of invoices processed has grown significantly by over 60% in the first half, and the billing volumes are also up over 35% to 36% actually.
You know, we also talked about some product and service improvements and launch that the company is planning and those are as well delivering. We're very pleased with the progress here. Important for me to note as well, you know, given perhaps a bit of the macro discussion beyond Switzerland, you know, this is a profitable business and we continue to see that profitability going in the right direction. We're quite pleased with the progress, Martin. Hope that answers your question.
Absolutely. Thank you.
The next question comes from Daniel Regli from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thanks for the presentation and for taking my questions. I have a couple of those. First, really high level, quickly, your full year guidance for 2022, you're obviously guiding 13% to 14%. If I take the H2 shareholders equity, obviously this is probably a little bit too low a base, but still I'm getting to CHF 153 to 165 million for the full year, which would mean kind of CHF 62 to 74 million for H2, which would be a gap of CHF 20 to 30 million compared to H1. Can you maybe give me some kind of a bridge on what do you expect in terms of top line and operating expense changes H2 versus H1?
Is my math completely off? Secondly, maybe similarly on your interest expense guidance, you're saying CHF 28 to 30 million for the full year, meaning CHF 16 to 18 million for H2. Again here, can you maybe explain to me where exactly comes this CHF 4 to 6 million uplift in interest expense? And then, thirdly, on Certo!. Can you maybe comment on how the launch was of the Certo! program? Can you maybe comment about, I don't know what numbers you have, but how many cards you have already sent out to previous Cumulus-Mastercard customers, and how good was the pickup or so any kind of qualitative comment would be very much appreciated.
Just maybe last, but not least, a little bit of a nitpicky question on page 10, where you show the credit card volumes and transaction volumes. When I look at the lower chart on the right-hand side, honestly to me, if I just add all these bars together, it seems to me a bit that 2022 should actually have been higher than 2019, but credit card commissions have been much lower than 2019. Can you just tell, is this just a visible dilution or what is the point which I'm not getting?
Excellent. Daniel, good morning, and thanks for the questions. I let Pascal lead into these. I'll take the Certo! launch question, and then Pascal, if you wanna take the others, go ahead.
Yeah, certainly. Thank you, Daniel. First questions on the outlook. Your math are not at all totally wrong. I think what is important is first of all to reiterate our guidance we set for 2022 as to 13% to 14% ROE, as well as the stable Cost-Income Ratio. Again, stable Cost-Income Ratio of 40.6 was in 2021. It means that for the second half of the year, there is no doubt that we'll have at least some costs related to our cards or the launch, which will increase particularly in the marketing area. We clearly have now a ramp-up of some investments related to our strategic initiatives, operational excellence.
The first half of the year, we had a lot of focus in our organizations on launching as with the new app, so Cembra App. We had also the launch of our proprietary card with Certo!, and obviously in the second half of the year, we are doing prioritizations on our operational excellence initiatives. At the same time on the revenue, obviously, there are some uncertainties related at all to the development of the card's revenue. We also indicated to the market with the termination of the Vivigo contract that we will have a temporary some impact. In that sense, I cannot exclude also some impact on the revenue side for the second half of the year.
This is why at this point in time, we are guiding with the 13% to 13% ROE and the stable cost-income ratio. On the funding, your second question, yes, it means from CHF 3 to 4 million increase in the interest expenses. Obviously, we issued an unsecured amount in May of CHF 250 million, which has a one-month impact for the first half of the year, and we'll have then a full impact for the second half of the year. But we also have a regular deposit inflow, which basically means that for the second half of the year, we expect this increase.
Obviously the rollover of the deposits obviously are costing higher if you look at the capital market and interest rate and development over the last couple of months. Certo!, you want to comment?
Sure. Thank you, Pascal. Certo!, I think, Daniel, I would split this into two sections or two parts, if you want. The first one is the launch of the program, right? If you look at this, you know we discussed this with you before. I think you know making sure that we launch this to the date on the first of July, getting all the external communications in place, all the CRM metrics, the prioritization of the communication, et cetera. We could not be more pleased with having achieved that and the outstanding work that the team has done. Maria is really proud of this. Why am I stressing this? Because that is the foundation for everything that's going on now and that's to come, right?
If you wanna look at it that way, the ingredients are in place, and they're in place, you know, as we expected, to high standards. Now, around sort of phase two, which is now the migration that we're working on, again, what I can confirm is that there is a full plan in place. That plan was kicked off on the first of July, and that plan continues to be executed and delivered on for the rest of the year, and beyond, if you want. In terms of CRM campaigns, in terms of mailings, in terms of outbound measures that we take, in terms of contacting customers, in terms of marketing and others. All that is in place, and you'd see more of that as you go through the second half.
I hope you'll appreciate, you know, we can't give you details on how that's progressing and what we're doing for competitive reasons, and we're also three weeks into this. What I would say, Daniel, the migration program has started well. I think that's a fair statement at this point where we sit a few weeks into this. Perhaps, last question, Pascal, back over to you on the page 10, the volumes and credit cards.
Thank you for asking questions. I think the good news is basically that clearly as we show that the card revenues are back to pre-COVID level, respectively higher than the pre-COVID levels. Obviously, as compared to 2021, although very strong improvements from CHF 3,347 million in other commissions and fees, and +5% if you compare in total the interest income and commissions compared to 2020 to 2019. It remains competitive in a market environment. In total, we are pleased with the rebound we are seeing in the cards revenues.
You know, just quickly, the card fees shown on the slide below on the right-hand side, this is credit card commissions, the line you show as CHF 47.5 million in the credit card commission line. Correct?
It shows the total revenues, meaning the commission and fees as well as the interest income.
I see. I see.
The interest income, we are quite stable, yeah.
I see. Okay, thanks.
As a reminder, if you wish to register for a question, please press star and one. Star followed by one. Gentlemen, so far there are no more questions from the phone. Sorry to interrupt. We have a question from Andreas Venditti from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Yes, thank you. Good morning from my side as well. I have, well, only two things left. Firstly, on the cost side, maybe you could provide a bit more color in terms of your expectations there. I mean, you mentioned already some investments that you plan, maybe more specifically on the IT expense side, and also maybe on the other expense line, you could maybe provide a bit more color also, whether that was one-off basically in the first half or not. On funding, in terms of ABS, I've seen the switch, if you want, from basically replacing the ABS with an unsecured. Is ABS not a focus anymore, or are you planning at some point to issue a new one? Yeah. Thank you.
Thank you.
Yeah. Andreas, good morning. Thanks for the questions. Pascal, I think you'll take this, right?
Yeah. Just one second. Thank you, Andreas. Look, on the cost side, though, and particularly on the operational excellence, we indicated to the market with our Investor Day that we would expect roughly CHF 10 million of P&L impact related to the strategic initiatives for operational excellence in 2022. If you look at the first of those six months, I would simply say that basically, you know, the P&L impact of operational excellence was not really material. Clearly, as we will see a ramp-up in this investment for the second half of the year, also broadly in line as well with the message we give during our Investor Days.
On top of that, certainly as we'll have the marketing income, marketing campaigns related to our new card propositions. Obviously, as with this marketing campaign, could only start it as of July 1 after the termination of the contract we had with our partner. It's really in the second half of the year where we'll see some further material impact on the marketing line. On the other hand, it's largely driven as well by the new valuations of our pension fund. Under U.S. GAAP, we calculate the pension's actuarial profit or losses, and then as well needs to be amortized over a period of, on average, usually five years.
We have seen those significant reductions in 2022 as a result of the strong performance we had on the pension fund as of 2020 and 2021. The impact here was CHF 2.4 million as a positive, which is booked and reported in the line over. Finally, on the asset-backed securities, we like asset-backed securities, so simply in the current market environment we decided to go with an unsecured bond. We are very pleased with the placement of the unsecured bond, but we are evaluating as regularly, and at which point we might go as well with secured bond as well.
It doesn't mean that ABS is not an interesting instrument or it's simply a matter of market timing.
Thank you.
We have a follow-up question from Daniel Regli from Credit Suisse, please. Go ahead.
Hello, good morning, and thank you. Again, sorry, coming back to the guidance for the full year, and obviously you now explained that it's about CHF 10 million coming from this operational excellence initiative, and the cost line but then there's still like kind of CHF 10 million lower revenues, or at least this is the conclusion I would make and can you maybe just give me kind of a... Yeah, explain this to me why you're expecting CHF 10 million lower revenues. What part is obviously the Certo!
offering coming at a lower margin as the previous cards, but I think volume should kind of offset a bit this impact, and then maybe higher interest expense, but I still struggle a bit to kind of see the picture you're painting for H2.
You are right. Ultimately, this is the sum of many aspects. You mentioned the interest expense. We mentioned also the normalizations on the loss line, which is expected for the second half of the year. The potential uncertainty related though to the revenues after Migros terminations and finally, although the operating expense first, related though to our strategic initiatives, but as well as related though to the launch of our card propositions. That's the sum of everything. Both numerators and denominators, there are some sensitivities. At this point in time as well, we are guiding as well based on this, ROE 13% to 14%, and a stable Cost-Income Ratio.
Yeah, Daniel, just to add to this perhaps, right? I think that's in my mind also the important takeaway here. We're confirming the guidance that we've given in February. The year is going to plan. You know, the expenses that Pascal is talking about in terms of operational excellence, you know, will be going in as planned. You know, the fact that there's different distribution between first half and second half again, is something that we had reflected in the planning and you're just now seeing this play out. Again, confirming the guidance, you're going to plan.
Okay. Thanks.
Thank you.
Also, the next question is a follow-up from Máté Nemes from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for taking my follow-up. Just a very quick question regarding the operational excellence program. I think you indicated back in December and also reiterated in February that you would start implementing the core banking system for leasing in the first half of this year, along with a data center move or start of the data center move. Could you give us an update on these? Are these on track? Have these started or there's been a delay and these are mainly for H2? Just wondering. Thank you.
Yeah. Máté, thanks for the question. Let me take that. No, look, they're progressing well, these programs as well as some other ones that you know that constitute the overall operational excellence roadmap. Data center move is going to plan, as we presented it. On the platform, we've also kicked that off in the first half. I think we set the implementation towards the end of this year and roughly that's still where we are, right? There's an MVP approach. It'll be late this year, early next year, but we've kicked it off to plan, and so as such we're progressing with that, Máté.
Okay. Thank you.
Thanks for the question.
Gentlemen, so far there are no more questions.
Good. I would just say, thanks everyone for dialing in for the questions and attention this morning. You know, we're pleased with the progress that we're making here. A strong first half. The strategy execution delivery is progressing well. And again, reconfirming guidance that we had given in February for the full year as well as the midterm outlook that we had presented at the strategy day in December last year. Thanks again everyone, and have a great day. If we don't speak to each other, hopefully some good time off during the summer. Thank you.
Ladies and gentlemen, the conference is now over. Thank you for choosing Chorus Call, and thank you for participating in the conference. You may now disconnect your lines. Goodbye.