Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the Cembra full year 2020 results conference call and live webcast. I am Paolo, 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. Robert Oudmayer, CEO, Mr. Pascal Perritaz, CFO, and Mr. Volker Gloe, CRO of Cembra Money Bank. Please go ahead, gentlemen.
Yes, thank you, Paolo, and good morning, everyone. I'm here with Pascal and Volker to talk about the 2020 results. Let's just start immediately with the 2020 highlights. I will talk a bit about the highlights and then Pascal and Volker talk about the financial results, and I will come back to you then on the outlook. Then of course, as always, we have the Q&A. If you look at the 2020 highlights, our net income was CHF 152.9, which was a reduction of 4% versus 2019, and EPS is CHF 5.21. What I would call resilient results. Receivables were 4% lower, with a more resilient business, especially in the auto business in the second half of 2020.
We will really talk a bit more in detail afterwards about the receivables. Net revenues were up 4%, with interest income up 30%, mainly driven by the acquisition of cashgate. Commission and fee income was down 17%, completely driven by COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions. I would say a very strong loss rate at 0.9%. Higher cost income ratio show a little bit higher, driven by two things, the acquisition of cashgate and of course, also the lower revenues.
ROE was at 13.8%, with a strong Tier 1 capital ratio of 17.70%. Proposed dividend is unchanged at CHF 3.75, which will mean a payout ratio of 72%. If you look at the next page to the products and markets. First of all, I'll talk a little bit about the personal loan market. What you see in general is that in a crisis like this, people are starting to save more and basically take less credit out. Savings quota, for example, in Switzerland went from 20% to 27%, sort of a higher savings. Volumes were lower.
You see that the market was down 3%. Also, the volumes at Cembra were lower. We also saw lower attrition. We also tightened the underwriting rules quite a bit at the start of COVID-19, and then we had some of the cashgate effect. I'll talk a bit more about the assets in the next page here, but the market share went slowly down from 44% in 2019 to 43% in 2020. If you look at the auto market. Auto market, the new car registrations were down 24%. If you remember the first half of the year, they were down 34%, so they recovered a bit in the second half, but still, -24% is in line with Europe. Used cars were pretty stable, -2% market, where the first half of the year still showed a -7%, but was basically almost unchanged.
If you look at Cembra, our financing receivables went down 2%, but they were slightly increasing in the second half of the year. Our leasing share went down from 23% to 21%. It was already at 22% at half year, mainly due to aggressive pricing by captive. You saw that the new cars that were sold were set pretty aggressively in the market, with very, very low prices. We moved more and more to used cars as well, which also has a higher share of loans. Partnerships are performing well. E-vehicles are outperforming the market. Maybe one word on e-vehicles. The new e-vehicles registration were 14% in Switzerland, up from 6%. It is really taking off in the Swiss market. Moving to credit cards. The transactional volumes were down 15% over the year. Cembra cards issued were 5% up.
We have now more than 1 million credit cards despite closure of partnering outlets. We saw that Fnac, Conforama, have been closed quite a bit in 2020, but still we had 5% more cards issued. The market share of card transactional volumes increased from 12% to 14%. We did, I think, a good job on the transactional volumes. Contactless is still very strong. We have a 20% market share in the total market of contactless. I think probably more interesting to talk a bit more about the asset evolution. If you look at the next page to the receivables. We've tried to give you a little bit more color on the year on the assets evolution. You clearly see that the Cembra assets were down in the lockdown.
We lost assets at 3% on the lockdown, the restrictions in November, December also gave us a 1% lower assets. Outside the lockdown, we were basically flat. Three product lines. Let's start with the personal loan ones. We're at -8% on the personal loans. We saw clearly that there was a lower demand. You see that the market effect is about 3%. We had reduced activity in the NN Corporation, we lost 2% of assets due to much lower volumes in the NN Corporation. There was a 3% loss, which I would say was a mix between underwriting restrictions that we put clearly in place at the beginning of the lockdown and cashgate dyssynergies.
We always said that when we take over cashgate, you will see some dyssynergies by losing some of the volumes by the same agencies kind of things. In total, -8%, was in line with our expectations, and it's also clearly market-driven. People are just very cautious in the personal loan market. If you look at auto, you see a -2%. You see really an effect of the lockdown in April, May, June, and then it recovers in August. You see basically that we had a nice rebound in the second half of the year. Auto is still doing quite well in 2020. Cards is really driven by volumes. You see that in lockdowns or in restrictions, the volumes go down. The interest-bearing assets are quite stable. The non-interest-bearing assets are really going up and down with the volumes.
Lower volumes in December and also in November due to COVID-19 had also an effect on the asset base. We move to the next page, the operational highlights. I would just focus on five things really quickly now. First of all, I think Cembra has been proven to be very resilient. The business performance has been resilient. We have long-term partnerships in place. I think we are very disciplined to cost management. Our cost of funds are long-term and very stable. Risk performance is extremely good and better than the long-term average. This is a very resilient business that also in a year, in 2020, can perform very well. cashgate integration was completed in 11 months, and we will deliver on the expected benefits. In July 2020, we integrated cashgate completely. We're also looking at growth now.
2020 was also a year, how do you prepare to rebound to growth? Swissbilling is growing. There are new partnerships. You've seen the announcement there. The SME value proposition was launched in February 2020. It was on hold due to COVID-19, and it's still on hold, but it was launched. We signed a partnership agreement with IKEA for cards and other products, and we will be live in March or April this year with the IKEA partnership. A lot of focus on digital transformation. I think there's an acceleration on the digital transformation. We have digital solutions for personal loans and SMEs in place. Personal loans also thanks to the cashgate acquisition. We're investing heavily in digital card solutions. We will have an improved value proposition for cards on the digital side this year. We're reducing our branch network.
If you exclude the cashgate branches, we also went down from 17 branches to 13, we're consolidating step-by-step the branches. Remember, about two, three years ago, we still had 26 branches. Last but not least, an enhanced focus on sustainability. For the details, you can look in the appendix at page 22 afterwards, we have improved ESG ratings everywhere and recognition in sustainability indices. Great Place to Work was renewed and had improved results, also as a company, I think we're on a good track here. For the details on the financial results, I'm going to hand over to Pascal now, he will start with the P&L.
Thank you, Robert. Good morning, everyone. Let me start with reinforcing what Robert just said. Cembra had a strong business performance in 2020. Our business model proved resilience. Our conservative, disciplined, consistent risk management approach is really paying off. Yes, the lockdown in Switzerland and abroad had a clear impact on our business, particularly on the credit card fees. This was partially offset by our solid loss performance, as well as our tight and timely expense management. Let's now dig deeper into the 2020 numbers, starting with the profit and loss. The net income decreased by 4% to CHF 152.9 million or CHF 5.21 of the share. This translates into a 13.8% return on equity. The net revenues rose by 4% to CHF 497.2 million.
Net interest income grew by 13%, mainly as a result of the 12 months of cashgate revenues in 2020 compared to the four months in 2019. Interest expense was down 3% lower at CHF 26.9, and this is due to the lower debt and favorable repricing of our funding portfolio. In total, the commission and fees income decreased by 17% to CHF 122.3 million. The increase in insurance and loan lease fees are due to the effect of the acquisitions.
The decrease in card fees was mainly driven by the lower spending abroad due to the continued travel restrictions following the COVID-19 pandemic. I will further comment on the card revenue in one of my next page. Cembra delivered a solid loss performance despite COVID-19 impact on the economy. The provisions for losses increased by CHF 11.3 million to CHF 56.4 million, primarily due to higher financing receivables following the acquisitions again.
The loss rate remained in line with prior years. Unfortunately, our chief risk officer will further comment soon. The total operating expense increased by 7%, mainly due to the acquisitions and integrations of cashgate. The cost-income ratio came to 49.8% compared to 48.3% in 2019. The reductions in the ROE is largely due to the increase of the average equity from 2019 to 2020. Let's spend a bit more time around the revenues now.
The net revenue grew by 4%, as stated earlier, and as you can see on the left side, with interest income increasing by 12% from CHF 400 million to CHF 402 million, mainly due to acquisitions of cashgate. In his 2020 highlights, Robert already provided insight behind the reductions in the net financing receivables by business. In a personal loan, interest income increased by 10% to CHF 190.7 million due to the acquisition of cashgate. The yield remains stable.
Similar as in auto, interest income was 17% higher at CHF 129.4, with a stable yield at 4.5%. Finally, in the credit cards, interest income grew by 5% with a yield of 8.3%. I think this is important to remark that this change in the yield is not driven by pricing changes, but by lower non-interest-bearing assets during the lockdown. Some words on the cards volume and revenues. As you can see, the first economic lockdown from March to June, as well as the economic restrictions from November, had a clear impact on the cards transaction volume and the card revenues. The volumes declined by 5%, respectively 7% for the first half of the year, and almost back at 2019 level in the second half of the year.
We observed sustainable shift to the card payment and away from cash, resulting in an increase in domestic volume offset by lower international volume due to the travel restrictions. We are, of course, pleased with our continued out-performance compared to the rest of the credit card market during this period. We have seen difference in volume growth, by industries in 2020. I want to give you a few examples. Volumes for grocery stores went up 63%. Garden, do it yourself, building materials went up to 39%. Electronics, digital goods went up to 26%. On the opposite, airlines went down to 75%. Travel agencies, rental car, 69%, lodging, 32%. The overall card revenues decreased by 14%, as you can see on this page, with the interest income increasing by 5% and the commission and fees income decreasing by 29%.
During the COVID-19 situations, we observed a shift in our source of revenue from cards with higher interest income driven by higher interest-bearing assets, mainly due to the increase in issued cards, more than offset by lower commission and fees income due to the significant reductions in the spending abroad, mainly due to the travel restrictions, as I mentioned before.
Not only transactions volume rebounds in June, but also the card net revenues variance to prior improved from -29% on a year-on-year comparison in April to 11% in November, before the second economic restrictions had an impact late in the year, respectively, in December. Some further comment on the operating expense. As mentioned before, total operating expense increased by 7% and the cost income ratio increased to 49.8%, adjusted for the integration cost and the transition services agreement with the cashgate seller. The cost income stood at 48.1%.
The personal expense came to CHF 129.5 million, raising 8%, as this is due to the increase of the average number of FTEs compared to 2019, and predominantly from cashgate. The number of the full-time equivalent employees declined from 963 to 928 by the end of 2020, and this is largely driven by the synergy realizations from the acquisitions. Professional services included in 2019 some extraordinary one-offs related to the cashgate transactions cost. The increase in IT was largely related to cashgate integrations on the run, as well as strategic investments, as an example, in digital platforms, digital cards, as mentioned earlier by Robert. Underlying depreciations and amortizations. The 36% increase was mainly due to the CHF 11.7 million amortizations of the intangible assets for the full year 2020, compared to CHF 4.3 million in 2019 for four months only.
As you might remember, these intangible assets were booked with the acquisition of cashgate and are mainly related to customer relationships, trademarks, and are depreciated over five years. At year-end, the remaining intangible assets related to cashgate was CHF 44.6. Robert already mentioned in his opening, the cashgate acquisitions and the successful integrations. We paid back CHF 1.45 billion bridge financing after six months and completed the integration in 12 months.
People, commercial, financial integrations, as well as IT carve-out went smoothly because of the thorough integrations planning, extraordinary teamwork, commitment, and an excellent collaboration with the seller to execute the carve-out. We are particularly pleased with the asset quality and the underlying loss performance of this business. The total integrations cost for cashgate came to around CHF 21 million, compared to the original assumptions mention of CHF 25 million. We incurred in 2020, CHF 8 million. After CHF 8 million incurred in 2019.
In addition, we capitalized around CHF 5 million costs, which we will depreciate over five years. The expense synergies have been triggered in the course of 2020, with close off branches from 26 just after the cashgate acquisitions to 13. Reductions of net FTEs across the bank from 963 to 928, as mentioned before. Vendor consolidations, marketing synergies as other examples.
Robert also commented earlier on the revenue dyssynergies related to Filone and Auto assets as expected. We are confident to confirm the run rate net incremental income out of cashgate in 2021, of CHF 25 million-CHF 30 million, or simply said differently, without these acquisitions, our net income will be around CHF 25 million-CHF 30 million lower in 2021. We are very happy to report to our shareholders today that the delivery of the cashgate integrations has been a full success, and now business is fully integrated into Cembra.
Few words on innovations. In 2019, we announced that we would invest around CHF 40 million in digital and product development for the period 2019, 2021. We incurred CHF 13 million for the full year 2020. In 2021, our main investments are related to digital card innovations. Let me finish these sections with our overall approach to expense management. Common to all industries is the need for greater speed control amid ongoing and unprecedented uncertainties due to COVID-19. In 2020, we carefully assess our discretionary spend and take necessary measure to address the lower revenues for the Green Card, but without jeopardizing our long-term strategic investments and ambition. As always, we'll remain as a discipline in our approach to cost management, which is part of our Cembra DNA. On the balance sheet.
The group total net financing receivables at the end of the year amounted to CHF 6.3 billion, which is 4% compared to 2019. For personal loan, the decline of 8%, 3% attributed to lower demand due to the consumer confidence in COVID-19, 2% related to reduced activities without any cooperations, and 3% related to underwriting restrictions and cashgate dyssynergies, as mentioned already before by Robert.
On the Auto side, we are pleased with the rebound we have seen second half of the year, and the lower assets were largely due to the lower volumes in December following the restated economic restrictions in Switzerland since November. The shareholder equity increased by 3% to CHF 1.127 billion after Cembra payout of the 2019 dividend of CHF 110 million in April 2020. A few words on the funding, stable funding. In 2020, our funding portfolio declined by 5%, in line with lower asset base.
The funding mix remains stable, with a well-balanced and diversified funding profile, 44% non-deposit and 56% deposit. The weighted average durations was 2.7 year, and the period end funding cost was stable at 45 basis point, close to the contractual maturity of the asset side for the durations. The main transactions in 2020 was our sixth ABS in March, amounting to CHF 250 million at 0% with a contractual maturity of 10 years, and an optional redemption date of four years from the date of issuance. Due to the increase in assets following the acquisitions and in line with our prudent risk management approach, we opportunistically increase our undrawn revolving credit line by CHF 50 million from CHF 350 million-CHF 400 million. With that, I would like to hand over to Volker for comments on the loss line.
Thank you very much, Pascal. Yes, for 2020, we can report a loss provision of CHF 56.4 million, which is at first sight, and in absolute terms, considerably higher than the CHF 45.1 in the previous year. There are two items that need to be mentioned. Firstly, in 2019, we considered only the fourth month of loss provision for the cashgate portfolio due to the timing of the acquisition. Now for 2020, we have it obviously in for 12 months, so for the full period. Furthermore, in 2019, there was a one-off effect related to the synchronization of the collections with the write-off procedures that gave the 2019 number a benefit of around CHF 6 million. A normalization would be needed.
If we normalize and rather look at the loss rate as the better metric to make the comparison over time, the 2020 and 2019 loss numbers are absolutely comparable at a level of 0.9% and also very consistent with the longer-term average that we have been reporting. The underlying asset quality also evidenced this consistency, and the level of 30+ delinquencies stayed at 1.8%, exactly on the same level as in all the years before. The NPL ratio came in at 0.7%, which is a slight uptick to the year before. This is rather related to rounding because the change is just very small in the second decimal. Considering the pandemic and its consequences in the macro environment, we can say that the overall loss performance and also general credit risk performance in 2020 has been quite solid.
The consistency and also discipline in the risk-taking, but also the implemented measures in the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic are certainly paying off. Governmental measures to support the economy in Switzerland probably also played a certain role, but what should be highlighted is that we observe a customer behavior that can be characterized as both cautious and diligent. Which means that there is a generally good discipline in fulfilling contractual payment obligations, but customers also show a certain degree of caution when taking up new loans or increasing existing loans.
Going forward, we obviously aim to continue to be prudent in our risk-taking, but as you can imagine, it is, in the current environment, rather difficult to come with any exact forecast. I guess what we can say, though, is that based on the risk metrics in the last year and also in the prior years, and also considering what we know today, our base scenario for the current period is that we would expect a continued resilience in the loss performance. With that, I hand it back to Pascal for the capital position.
We remain very well capitalized with strong Tier 1 ratio of 17.7% and a common equity as a Tier 1 ratio of 15%. Around 50% of the increase in Tier 1 capital ratio is related to the increase of the numerator of the capital and 50% by lower risk weighted assets, in line with the reductions of the net financing receivables. Given our resilient financial performance, the board of directors will recommend a stable and attractive dividend of 3.5% at the annual general meeting. This represent a payout ratio of 70%, which is slightly above our mid-term payout target range. Thank you for listening, and now, I would like to hand over to Robert for the priorities and outlook 2021.
Thank you, Pascal. Thank you, Volker, for the detailed explanations of the numbers. If you look at 2021, we've been focusing basically on four priorities. The first one is really continue to deliver in a difficult environment with COVID-19. We have a resilient business. We think we can regain organic revenue growth with continuation of risk management funding and cost management. We have been proved to be very disciplined on this one. We will continue this discipline. Innovate the card business now, drive new and existing partnerships. I'm excited that we have announced that we have IKEA, and we're going to be live with IKEA in the coming months. Not only with cards, but with other digital solutions, including Swissbilling. We continue to invest in digital card solutions.
We will have a cards mobile-first program live somewhere in the second half of this year, and we think it will really change the way we work with cards. Our third priority, we'll maintain the focus on ESG. Sustainability is extremely important to us. I also think that we are preparing for a new way of working. I don't think we're going to be all in the office anymore.
The way we're going to work is going to be differently in the future. As you know, this is my last earnings call as a CEO. I'm leaving the business after 12 years. I'm very happy that the board has chosen Holger Laubenthal as my successor. I know Holger since 2005. It is a really good choice. It's a person who is really very well-known and very well home in consumer finance.
We will have a smooth transition. It's not only me. I have also a very strong team in place with a good CFO and excellent management board. I will stay here in March and April to do a smooth transition to Holger, and I think this will go very well. If you look at 2021, at the outlook. Look, I know it's not an easy time at the moment, but I'm personally convinced that whenever people have the time and they can go again, they will go traveling again, though. I think, the second half of the year, revenues will go up again if the measures get loosened. The COVID-19 restrictions are tough for everyone, also for us, so you see an impact on the card spend, but I'm convinced it will come back.
We expect a resilient business performance with revenue being impacted by COVID-19, but also in the second half of the year, following the forecast of the economic recovery, a growth in cards fee income again. As Volker spoke already, we are confident that we have a solid loss performance for the year 2021. As Pascal already confirmed, net income delivery on cashgate is as planned. Our midterm targets basically are still the same, a ROE of above 15%, a Tier 1 capital ratio of at least 70%, and a 60%-70% dividend payout ratio. Return excess capital when we are above 19% capital. With that, I would open it up for question and answers. The three of us are very happy to take all your questions.
We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their 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. Questioners on the phone are requested to use only handset and eventually turn off the volume from the webcast. Anyone who has a question may press star and one at this time. The first question comes from the line of Andreas Venditti from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you. Good morning from my side as well. A couple of questions. On the auto business, you did quite well. That was a good achievement. We have now, I think, a new entrant as a market entrant as a partner for Tesla, which is Swissquote. Can you comment on anything that you see in terms of impact on the market from this new entrant? Second one, maybe if you can comment on your expectations or what you see for the new IKEA partnership, which I think is going to be launched in March.
What do you expect there? I guess you also had costs for the project, possibly, or likely already in 2020. Maybe you can quantify that. Also in terms of the SME, obviously it's on hold. What's the outlook there? When do you plan a relaunch, and also, do you think there's any changes in the business case compared to pre-COVID for this business? Finally, maybe an outlook on the yields for the three businesses. Thank you very much.
Thank you, Andreas. Almost all questions for me, but the last one I can at least give to Pascal, but I will try to answer the first one. The first question was about Swissquote and the entrance of a new leasing company there together with Tesla. Look, Tesla has big plans to grow their market share in the market, and they need more partners though. They cannot rely on one or two partners.
I think it's logical that they have a cooperation with another partner. I think three partners is fine. I don't think there you can have only one partner. I don't know what the effect is going to be now. We are still with Tesla on the commercial side. We are planning to have a loan product with Tesla as well. We did great volumes in last year. Tesla will continue to grow, in my view.
They're in a good shape. They have new models coming out. There will be another player in the market, but in my view it's completely fine because this is the market practice. On the IKEA partnership, the second question. I'm personally excited. I don't want to raise expectations that everything is going to be fantastic on day one. However, they have 1.7 million family members in IKEA, and we're going to target those family members to get them to a credit card. We also have Swissbilling in there. We're also going to have some other products there. Card Mobile first, what's going to be live in the second half of the year, will be first used for IKEA customers and then for other customers.
I think over time, and again, I'm hesitant to give you a number right now because I don't even know when the shops are opening again. Over time, I think it's a huge opportunity for us. It's much bigger than Conforama or Fnac. It's not as big as Migros, of course, but 1.7 million family members with extremely good brand, I think gives a very good opportunity for Cembra.
Hesitant to give you any numbers, Andreas, and I think you understand that. On the SME, the third question. Look, the day almost that we launched the SME business, we had a nice competitor in the market that's called government, and how they offloaded the market with loans, with no interest and no amortization for five years. I think that provided a lot of liquidity in the market, and I think the liquidity is still there.
I think it would be wrong to relaunch SME right now. I think on midterm, I still believe in SME. I think that it's a very good value proposition. It's completely online. I don't think the first six months in this year we launch it. It's probably too early. I think after the summer, we have to see how the world is changing, how the world is developing. It might possibly be launched in the second half, maybe even a bit later. For the moment, I will be very, I know Volker, I think, is agreeing with me there. I will be very restrictive in doing SME launch because I think there's still a lot of liquidity in the market. The fourth question was on outlook on the yield. Pascal, you want to say a few words?
First, in 2020, as we have been able to defend our pricing strategy despite the COVID situations. Of course, you would like to keep the overall yield stable also in 2021, but I think we need to be much more agile than in the past to see also what could be the impact of COVID and assess on a regular basis.
I think maybe in addition to this one, we really defended the yield in 2020, and for me, it's the right thing to do. I don't think we're going to trade heavily price for assets, no. That's not in our DNA. We have never done this, and I don't see that happening in 2021. I think yield is very important for us. I hope I answered all your questions, Andreas.
Yes. Thank you very much, Robert, and all the best from my side.
Thank you, Andreas. Thank you.
For the future.
Yeah. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Andreas Brun from Credit Suisse. Please go ahead.
Hello. Thank you. I've got four questions. The first one, did you release the additional loan loss provisions made in H1? The second one, you showed that net financing receivables during lockdowns came down on your sides. Does this hold true also for the current year for 2021 so far? Two questions on the credit cards. Could you please elaborate on the growth of the number of cards? It was 5% versus 10% in the last couple of years. Is this only due to COVID-19 or is there also a general downtrend in demand? The second one on the credit card. If one would adjust for FX related fees, which are not there currently, do you see pressure on fees per card in general and especially in Switzerland? Yeah, that's it. Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Andreas. I will give the first question to Volker, then I take two and three and the fourth one I'm giving to Pascal. On release loan loss provisions, Volker.
Yeah. The quick answer is no. Just to give a bit of context. In the first half, we booked an additional reserve, which we still have. At the end of the year, it was CHF 2.2 million, which is something that we called an environmental reserve, which we booked on key loans to be prepared for any kind of effect that the macroeconomic downturn might show that we would have not captured in our standard reserving models. Also there, we run a very prudent approach. We didn't see the need to release it because it's still in the macroeconomic situation that is fragile, so we keep it enabled.
Okay. Andreas, could you just repeat your second question? I'm not sure if I completely captured it.
On your slides, you showed that net financing receivables during periods of lockdowns came down. They were negative versus the periods during summer. My question is if this holds true year to date in 2021 as well.
Yeah,
Again in lockdown. Can we expect that during phases of lockdowns, it's still on the negative side?
It's difficult to say. It's a good question, but it's difficult to say. What we see so far, but we're only eight weeks into the new year now, is that application levels of personal loans and auto are much better than they were in the first lockdown last year. We seem to deal better as a country with this lockdown. What we saw basically in 2020, that we've had a sharp drop in personal loan applications and in auto applications in March, April, May. We had a bit of a drop this year in January, February, but it's much lower than we had last year. I can't answer your question. What I see is our auto business is basically almost continuing as normal. It's a little bit lower at this moment.
It's only eight weeks, so I don't know what's going to happen the next three, four, five weeks. I can't tell you, but that's what I say. In general, I think on the card side, it's very clear that when you have much lower volumes, you get lower assets, and when the volumes come up, the assets pick up. That's more fluctuation there. Your third question was on the credit cards and the growth on the numbers of cards, which was 5% last year.
I think it's mainly due to COVID. I think if you look at the cards growth, normally we are about 10%, and I think there was really actual slowdown on COVID. Also, we come to launch IKEA, so I expect also some credit cards there, but it's difficult to say how much it's going to be in this year. I think the 5% was really now driven by COVID measures. The FX adjustment, Pascal.
Yeah.
Credit cards.
Obviously, when we refer to international revenues in card business, this is of course, on one side of the pure FX or markups we have, but this is also related to the international interchange fees, where you might know that actually are highest than the domestic fees. Yes, we see the pressures on the fees on the margin, like we have seen for many years. There are new market entries, there are some strategic moves. On the other side, we have been always able to offset with some of the growth of our business, this is what we plan to do. This is what we are doing because we have announced the cooperation with IKEA Switzerland as an example. This is how we want to basically offset potentially the lower fees and commissions with higher growth.
Okay.
Yeah. Thank you.
We now have a question from the line of Benjamin Goy from Deutsche Bank. Please go ahead.
Yes. Hi, good morning. Two questions from my side, please. First on loan growth. Just wondering, will we see a recovery only in H2 given the broader macroeconomic recovery? Do you think it's already sufficient when lockdowns are lifted in H1 to see some of a volume recovery? Secondly, you commented, at least on some trends in 2021 on the yields. I was wondering if you have any thoughts on the potential entry of PostFinance into lending amid their privatization plans and your impact on Cembra or why you are more defensive maybe. Thank you.
Yes, Benjamin. Thanks for your questions. I think I will take them both. First of all, the loan growth. From what we see is that people are very cautious and people are waiting to spend the money and to go out. The savings went up significantly in 2020. People are very cautious. Personally, I think that whenever we get out of lockdown, people want to go traveling, people want to go out spend money, and people also need loans. I guess the loans will pick up as soon as we are really out of lockdown and people can start traveling again. That's where you will see, in my view, spending in the market, and that will also have an effect on loans.
How much it's going to be, I cannot tell you, but my personal expectation is that it will not be only in a half year. Depending when we have really loosening the measures, it will start happening. Your question on PostFinance, I don't see any impact there. I think PostFinance will be in finance, probably maybe more in mortgage than in personal loans. I don't think that's going to have any impact on us. I might be wrong, but I think I'm right. I don't see them as a competitor, so I don't feel any impact from their entrance in the 2021 market.
Thank you and all the best, Robert.
Thank you, Benjamin.
The next question comes from the line of Mate Nemes from UBS. Please go ahead.
Yes. Thank you for the presentation. Good morning. I have three questions, please. Firstly, just a follow-up on the year-to-date applications for personal loans, autos, and perhaps cars as well. I'm just wondering, have you seen any change in terms of the quality of applications? If you could perhaps compare the acceptance rate of these applications currently versus pre-COVID-19, and has there been any change from this perspective? Secondly, a question on cost base perhaps for Pascal. Would it be possible actually to discuss the main moving parts of the cost base going into 2021?
Shall we expect actually further decline, for example, in professional service fees and maybe any major change on the IT expenses line? Lastly, a broader question maybe for Robert. Do you see an increased threat from buy now, pay later solutions in Switzerland as some of the large retailers started offering these payment solutions? Is that a credible large medium-term threat? If so, what can you do, what are you doing to mitigate that? Thank you.
Okay. Thank you, Mate. I think we all have a question here. I think the first one is for Volker.
Yes. When it comes to the quality of the year-to-date applications. Also here, the short message is there is no significant change over time. I think this is also something that we have been showing in the past when we looked into the distribution of consumer ratings, that we are very consistent in our risk appetite, and when necessary, we change a bit here and there to ensure the stability of the loss rate. When it comes to the door population, also there, as mentioned, customers are cautious, but it doesn't give a big shift in the customer profile that is applying for loans. Overall, there is no big movement that we see, not only in year-to-date but also basically in the last year.
Pascal on cost base.
On the cost base. First, I will say a few words on the cost and then on the cost ratio, on the cost-income ratio. On the cost side, if you look at our compensations and benefits, it's clear that we have taken some measures, and ultimately realized the synergies in the context of cashgate, that we are faced with that. You mentioned the questions of IT, and obviously we see some increase of IT from CHF 31 million to CHF 39 million. Look, this is one post where I wouldn't expect to fundamentally change. In the context of digitalizations, in the context of COVID, if there is a line where I would expect even more spend going forward, this is this line. It's the acceleration in the digitalizations to enable a little better of a customer experience.
On the professional services, also linked ultimately with project we have, wouldn't expect too much changes. We are feeling actually quite comfortable with the cost in total. Obviously, the challenge is more the ratio because there are a lot of uncertainties around the revenue side and at which point the economy will recover. Our long-term aspirations remain unchanged. We said, also in the context of cashgate acquisitions, we would like to be at about 44 or even below. By when can we achieve this? It's something which is difficult to estimate now.
Yes. On the buy now, pay later, it's interesting thing though. Volker knows very well because he was in the Nordics for a long time, and Nordics has been very popular. First of all, we have buy now, pay later. On our credit card, we can do buy now, pay later, and we've done some of the tests with . In general, I would say that the Swiss market is not very eager to do this. I know now in Australia it's having a revival, a lot of retailers doing it.
I think if people want to do it, we can do it. We could do it for IKEA. We could do it for our retailers. In general, I've never seen it been a big success in Switzerland. We tried it also about 10 years ago in this business, to really do a buy now, pay later product. It never worked very well. We are able to do it, so if it's becoming very popular, we will do it, but so far, I don't see the trend moving into the Swiss market to buy now, pay later. That answer your questions, Mate?
Absolutely, it does. Thank you very much, Robert, and I wish you all the best in the future.
Thank you, Mate.
The next question comes from the line of Daniel Regli from Octavian. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you for taking my question. I have one follow-up question to Mate's question, then four other question, if I may. First on the cost. In the cost measures you have taken after, or the realization of synergies with cashgate, is there everything already visible in the H2 2020 number, or shall we see some further realization of the benefits The measures you have taken. I have two questions on page five, where we see the monthly trends in the receivables. First, maybe on personal loans, compared to the other two businesses, personal loans seem to depreciate or go down quite consistently over the year, whereas in auto leasing and cards, we clearly see, let's say, the impact of the lockdown or lockdowns, if you want.
Can you maybe elaborate a bit, what is the difference in nature that we see this kind of consistent decline with personal loans, but not on the other two businesses? Secondly, maybe also looking a little bit on the cards number and the dynamics on the yield or interest income on the different businesses. Is this, let's say, slight pickup we have seen, in gross yield, meaning net interest income divided by average receivables, mainly driven because of the monthly average being above the simple average between beginning of period and end of period in H2, or were there other dynamics?
I think you hinted to it when you were talking about the rates changes with non-interest yielding business on your balance. If you just could elaborate a bit more on this. Quickly on loan loss provisioning, I think you already talked about it, but can you give me kind of an idea or an indication on what you are modeling for in terms of pickup in default rates going into 2021?
I would assume that when all this government support measures are running out, we should see an increase of default rates, particularly for, let's say, smaller businesses. What are you already modeling in, what could you take wrong footed on the provisioning? The last question, regarding partnerships and, let's say, more general or strategic outlook going forward, where do you see opportunities to further expand your business? Are there businesses you could imagine Cembra doing which you don't do yet? What kind of partnerships are left after you're having, let's say, Migros, IKEA, and a lot of others. Are there many other companies you could work together left?
Okay. Daniel, if you keep on asking questions, we lost the first one almost, but we'll go for it.
Sorry. I have to keep it.
Pascal, that is yours.
I take it as the first one, Daniel. Obviously, H1, we had the integrations cost and majority of the integrations cost, as I mentioned, of CHF 8 million was in H1. I would say for H2, the majority of the synergies from the cashgate acquisitions and the actions we have taken are already visible in the H2 numbers.
On the pre-loan assets, your second question on why there's a difference with auto. I think in general, I think this is a trend what you see in crises like this. People are just very cautious now, people don't take loans at the moment. We saw very low attrition, very low volumes on the applications. I think it's getting a little bit better this year, I think people are just waiting. People have the money.
People are saving the money. That's also why you see the savings quote, people are just waiting to go out again and to spend money again. They don't want to spend money. The restaurants are partly closed. The holidays, people don't need money for these kind of things. I think auto is different because I think people just want to avoid public transport and people want to invest in cars. That's what you clearly saw on the used car. The used car market was basically unchanged last year. The new car market was really stopping for a while, also because the industry stopped for a while.
Used car market, people want to have transport now, and transport is something that people are not going to save on, in my view. Look, I expect personal loans market to pick up. I always said, though, for the ones who have been more years with us, that personal loans is a very stable market. You have good years and bad years, and we had a couple of good years, and now we have a bit of a bad year. It will come back at the end of the day. If you look at the long-term trend on personal loans, the asset base is quite stable in the market.
On the card dynamics, I think on the yield one, there are so many influential factors there. I think you should stick to more or less the yield that we have, in 2020. There's always some ups and downs there. It's very difficult to explain it into detail. If you want, we can have a separate call afterwards with Marcus to talk about it a bit more in detail. I think for this call, we would get a very technical discussion, and I think we would probably lose most of the audience here. Volker, the loan losses, that was a fourth question from Andreas, from Daniel, sorry.
Thanks for the question on the losses. It's actually a bit of a million-dollar question when it comes to the expectation for the future, when it comes to a potential pickup of default rates. Because this risk would not only exist for 2021, it would also have existed for 2020. What we did at that time is that we basically took countermeasures.
The exposed segments we identified and were a bit tighter on the underwriting in these segments and also kind of more focused on our collections activities to ensure the stability over time. That was actually also the reason why we took this environmental reserve of CHF 2.2 million that we still carry on the balance sheet. If we would come into a situation which would be an unexpected increase in default rates, we would have booked the reserve already this year.
On the partnership, Pascal, you want to say some words, or shall I say some words?
Of course, we are keen to sign additional partnerships. We always said one to two other partnerships would be nice. We have permanently as a pipeline we are looking at, we cannot win every time that we offer. This is clearly part of our strategy to try to sign a little more partnerships in the future, particularly in cards, but also in auto or even in personal loan.
Maybe I can give you a little bit more color on this, because I think the fact that we bought Swissbilling is paying off, because I think retailers are all the pressure in the market. They need to do more on customer loyalty, and they need to capture the customer more and more. One of the reasons we wanted IKEA was IKEA never wanted to do a credit card. Now I think they move. We spoke about five years, I think, with them. I think retailers need more loyalty. They need payment solutions as well. I think with the combined offering, Swissbilling, Cembra, and also having the opportunity to give loans and leases in there, I think there is a good side for more retailers in the future. Are we going to sign every new Migros? No.
I think IKEA is a great brand to sign, and I think there are more opportunities in the market. It's always a matter of, is the hand half full or half empty? There's a good pipeline, and we're building further on. This business is becoming more and more a cards business now, if you look in the last couple of years. It's less a personal loan business, more and more a cards business. We have over a million cards now, and the revenue stream on cards is getting more and more important for us. Yes, we are very interested in signing more partnerships.
Thanks. Very clear. Maybe just one follow-up on, let's say, adjacent businesses. Obviously, a couple of years ago, you have bought the Swissbilling, which was basically a new business, but leveraging your existing capabilities and platform. Are there other businesses which you're currently not doing but you could imagine Cembra to do going forward?
I think this is more of a strategic discussion that we can have, but I don't think we have the time, because this is going to be an answer of about 10 minutes for me, if you really want to get into detail. I'm happy to take you through it a little bit afterwards, in a one-on-one, whatever, if you want to, or Pascal can do this. This is more a strategic question for the I think, yes, there are some adjacent businesses, but there's also some timing effects there that we have to look at. For the rest, at the moment, we should really focus on recovering at the current business and building out the cards business. This is the priority for 2021 for Cembra.
Okay, very clear. Thanks a lot. I would appreciate, let's say, if we could just take this offline.
Absolutely. Yep.
Thank you.
Thank you, Daniel.
All the best. Thank you.
The next question comes from the line of Nicolas Bürki from Mirabaud. Please go ahead.
Good morning. Thank you very much for holding this conference. Currently, the theme is reflation and higher interest rate. Can you please remind us what are your levers on both sides of the interest income? On the pricing, I don't remember the exact parameters, with which the ceiling works. On the funding side, what are the levers? Are you tempted to go with longer bonds or something like that currently to protect future yields, please? Thank you very much.
I'll give you a quick view on how the system works, then Pascal will give you the view on the funding side. How the interest rate works in Switzerland is there's a three months short-term interest rate, and there is a 10% upside there for loans and 12% for cards. You can increase basically 10% for loans and 12% for cards. The floor is zero, so if the interest rate is a negative, it's still zero.
If the short-term interest rates are, and the measurement is every year in September, if the interest rates are above zero, that 50 basis points, you can basically have 50 base plus 10%, and 50 base plus 12%. Every year, the measurement is in September. I don't think it's going to change a lot. I think we will be at the current interest rates of the max interest rates of 10% and 12% for a while. You want to say a few words about funding?
A bit high level, ultimately, we are prudent in our asset and liability as a management. Duration 2.7 along the funding side, as always, not too far from our contractual durations we have on the asset side. No, we don't have tactical measures to change from this approach. For us, the asset liability matching is always something that we try always to look at. We are fine with the current durations.
Thank you very much.
We now have a follow-up question from the line of Andreas Venditti from Vontobel. Please go ahead.
Thank you very much. Just two smaller items. On the slides, you mentioned the NN Corporation, which had a 2% impact from reduced activity, you say, I'm surprised by the size, 2% impact for this corporation seems to me quite large. Maybe you can explain what's going on there. The second one, maybe Swissbilling is growing very nicely. Maybe you can explain a bit where this comes from and where we might be heading in terms of Swissbilling growth for Cembra. Thank you.
Yeah. On NN. We had a SPV with NN. We don't have a lot of volumes coming into the SPV. They are now to an agent agreement with us. For the agent agreement, we still get the volume, so it's not booked in the SPV anymore. Basically, we don't book a lot of volumes anymore in the SPV. If you know that portfolio has a three-year run rate, it goes down pretty quickly. We still work with them on an agent basis.
We still book volumes with them on agent base, which is not booked in NN anymore, but just in Cembra. On the Swissbilling side, I think Swissbilling is doing two things nicely. First of all, they are the billing as a service, so that's what they had some big corporations there. Also, I think on the IKEA side, they're growing. I think they are getting profitable. They are getting profitable really this year.
I think they are growing nicely. I think they have a good value proposition, and we have good expectations. Is it going to be significant for 2021? No. I think Swissbilling is also incremental in getting businesses for us. The IKEA deal, it was great that we have Swissbilling because they are really needed for this kind of retailer. In my view, Swissbilling pays for itself only by helping us with IKEA. Also on their own, they are profitable, they are growing nicely, and we have very good expectation from them. It is not going to be a significant event in 2021.
Thank you.
Good. I think we're running a bit over time. I think we should finalize it here. I think also there are no more questions. I would thank you for listening into the call. To all the analysts, I think most of us have been there for many, many years. I want to personally thank you, all the analysts, that you've always been very fair to us, critical, but very fair and very detailed. Thank you for the great cooperation. I hope you can have the same cooperation with Holger. I think so, you will have the same cooperation with Holger. We have Pascal and Holger to continue with you. I think it will be business as usual. Thank you for listening in, and I wish you all the best. Thank you.
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